Decline of French Language Changes Madagascar’s Education Landscape

In Madagascar, a former French colony, the French language has traditionally played an important role in education. But in recent years knowledge and usage of French has been declining, leading academics to worry that the country’s educational standards will fall with it.

Though both French and Malagasy are official languages in Madagascar, Malagasy is widely spoken in the home and in informal settings. The French language comes into play in education, particularly at the university level, where classes are taught mainly in French.

Due to the declining popularity of French in day-to-day life, many university students are struggling.

Samuel Razasiarison, head of the French and Francophone Studies department at the University of Antananarivo, acknowledges that most Malagasy students and teachers are not proficient in French. Because of this, students who enter the university often face difficulties in their classes, and professors scramble to arrange French refresher courses before students fail.

Additionally, according to Jean-Michel Franchet, of Madagascar’s Alliance Française, if students haven’t mastered French by the time they leave university they may have trouble finding a job.

“When job hunting today, you see that job vacancies are written in French and that a decent level of French is required as a minimum,” he says.

But the wider culture that values French is changing, although slowly. Malagasy is the language of instruction in primary school. More and more often young people are choosing to study English instead of French as a foreign language, hoping for international jobs. Thus university instruction will need to accommodate the changing linguistic landscape in order to ensure that the Malagasy students can succeed in higher education and in their future careers.

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Written by Carla Drumhiller Smith