Newsletter 
Dr. Ibrahima Cissé, from the doctoral school of Mali, will speak on Thursday, April 7 at 5:00 pm on “The future of French is in Africa, but what kind of future is it?” and will be introduced by Lüpke Friederike.
Half of all French speakers come from the African continent and are distributed in a heterogeneous way according to the country. Although only 17% of Malians are French-speaking, French is still one of the three most spoken languages in the country. In order to better understand the future of French in Mali, the following questions will be addressed: What is the future of French if the current linguistic policy is maintained? What impact would the officialization of national languages have on French? What language policy should be adopted for inclusive multilingualism/plurilingualism in the service of good governance, peace and social cohesion in Mali?
The conference will be held in French and will be followed by a discussion with the audience.
Ibrahima Cissé:
Doctoral student at the University of Grenoble Alpes in cotutelle with the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, he is an assistant Lecturer at the Institute of University Pedagogy (Doctoral School), a consultant in the fields of Education, Culture, and Communication and Information at the UNESCO Office in Bamako and Coordinator of Operations at the UNESCO Chair of Community Research on the Levers of Development: “Emergence through Innovation” in Bamako, Mali. His research interests include the relationship between language and power, language and human rights, language and education in Africa, and language acquisition in children living in multilingual environments.