Languages Are Not the Problem: Re-thinking Language Planning in Post-colonial Ghana Through African and Africana Philosophical Frameworks

This article extends discussions on decolonizing language policy and planning in African contexts to include African and Africana philosophical concepts. Drawing on Kwasi Wiredu’s project of conceptual decolonization and Molefi Asante’s concept of Afrocentricity, the article argues that the challenges facing Ghana and other African contexts in terms of educational language planning are primarily ideological which means “language-focused” concepts (e.g. mother–tongue bilingual education) alone might not be able to describe the complexities of the situation, instead theories that emphasize emancipation of the African mind might help us better understand the genesis of this problem and how it could be re-envisioned.