What transmits over Mali’s radio waves may signal a broader shift in the West African country away from the language of its former colonizer. Malian voters approved in June a new constitution proposed by the country’s military government that moved French from an official language to a working one.
The change raises complicated questions in a country with more than 70 local languages. French has served as a way for Malians of different ethnic groups to communicate; it has also allowed the government to sidestep privileging one group’s language over another’s. The constitution that demoted French is notably still written in the language.
The demotion is symbolic, but experts say it demonstrates the Malian regime’s decolonial ambitions as it prepares to hold elections for the first time since a coup ousted former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keïta in 2020.
The country’s military government has expelled France’s ambassador, banned French-funded NGOs and ushered out French troops, which struggled to help Mali in its fight against Islamist insurgents. Like other nations in the Sahel region, Mali has drawn closer to Russia, hosting Wagner Group mercenaries and Kremlin officials.
Asked about the shift from French when the draft constitution was released last year, commission chairman Fousseyni Samaké said his group tried to take “a dynamic approach to the problem of national and official languages,” Radio France Internationale reported.
The move may carry weight in France anyway, said Gregory Mann, a history professor at Columbia University who researches Mali and the Sahel.
“France is very sensitive to these questions of prestige and soft power on the continent,” he said. French President Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly visited former colonies since his 2022 reelection, pitching the relationship as one between equals and seeking to lessen Russian and Chinese influence in Francophone Africa.
The French foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment on Mali’s removal of French as an official language. The Malian junta could not be reached for comment.
Nearly 97 percent of voters approved the new constitution in June, though fewer than 40 percent of those eligible participated, election officials said.
The article which removed French’s official status gives the government wide latitude to use other languages, including 13 “national” languages that are now official. Bambara is the most widely spoken of the group, including in and around the capital of Bamako.
If the government conducts business in Bambara, it risks alienating members of other ethnic groups, said Cherif Ag Mohamed Ibrahim, who teaches linguistics at the Ecole Normale Supérieure Bamako. He said he has observed increased use of Bambara by military officials in recent months.
“It would be a source of constant division,” he said. Bambara is less common in Mali’s north, where the government has fought separatist movements.
Keïta, the Carleton College professor, was more hopeful, saying he believes the change may lead to increased investment in teaching local languages. (While Keïta shares the same last name as the ousted president, he said they are not related.) French remains associated with Mali’s elite, Keïta said, some of whom have spent time in France working or studying. African colonial subjects who assimilated French culture were once called évolués, or evolved ones.
“It’s only in Africa where if somebody does not speak a European language, that person is looked down upon,” he said.
Whether a shift from French will take hold depends on the Malian regime’s political fortunes during a time of upheaval in the Sahel. The junta has said it plans to hold elections next year in which military leader Col. Assimi Goïta may run.
Still, whoever takes power is unlikely to be friendly to France, said Mark LeVine, a historian at the University of California, Irvine.
“There could be another government that might scrap this constitution, but I don’t see France suddenly becoming everyone’s friend in Mali,” he said.
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