French and Cultural Diplomacy – The African Experience.

Abstract

The French language is probably the most widely used language in the world after English, if one considers the number of people using it outside its native France. As the key that has opened France to many foreigners and the vehicle that has transplanted French culture to all corners of the known world, French and by extension French diplomacy, has been able to create as well as destroy a lot in the world outside France. Africa, the continent on which the largest number of people uses French, either as an official language or lingua franca, has had its affairs greatly directed and distorted even to an alarming proportion.The struggle for the survival of mother tongues and hence the people seem to be futile and wasteful under the relentless bombardment from a seemingly never depleting arsenal of the French language and its cultural diplomacy. As Africa writhing with pains from this cultural rape and sustained sapping of its very life’s blood contiues to suffer, one wonders if a middle ground can be found or do we have to wait for the ancient healer of all wounds; time?