Globalization and Cultural and Language Diversity Essay

Globalization and Cultural and Language Diversity - Essay Example Website. Frida Mujale-Manenji stated that the effect globalization has greatly affected the African culture immensely and it's culture is presently diverse. It had affected the African people's cultural behaviors in different ways. People have had to adopt by changing their living ways in order to survive. The advertisements of the famous Coca-Cola drinks can be heard across boundaries in towns, cities and townships and even in remote rural areas where drinking water is a problem to get. Globalization in Africa involves the opening up of its economies to trading with the global market forces, freely and widely. Globalization has forced countries like Africa to deregulate foreign investment, liberalized its imports, remove currency controls, emasculate the direct economic role of the state, and so on. The effect on culture and language is to further undermine the internal, national productive capacity, social security and democratic integrity of these countries Journal. Journal. Kenyatta (2002) stated that "More than 100 students, activists and scholars gathered recently at Columbia University's Teachers College to explore the effects of globalization and decentralization on education, health care and land reform in Nigeria, South Africa and Uganda." The Globalization has a big effect on the culture and language of Africa and the supernational organizations such as The World Bank, The IMF (International Monetary Fund), the WTO (World Trade Organization) have come to dominate prescriptions underpinning state strategies for economic recovery and growth of this continent. Dr. Gregory Anderson, assistant professor of higher and postsecondary education at Teachers College stated that "these global forces are increasingly hegemonic and, in the case of Africa, with its longstanding history of problems and dilemmas, globalization as an ideology is distinctly shaping the arenas of policy and the directions and scope of state reforms." Therefore, Africa must learn to adjust itself to survive globalization. For a continent where several thousand languages are spoken within its borders, language has long been viewed as a challenge to education and political development. As a result, colonial language policies of the past often forbade the use of African languages in official functions of the state. Today, the official languages as well as the languages of instruction and scholarship in most educational institutions continue to be English, French and Portuguese, despite the fact that far greater numbers speak other languages. Globalization has lowered the status of the local dialects as compared to French, English and Portuguese. Newspaper/Magazine. ABC news dated Jan 17 stated that First Lady Laura Bush went to meet with the President of Ghana this morning. The First Lady is continuing her travels through Africa today as she heads to Nigeria where she will meet with President Obasanjo tomorrow morning. Vice President Cheney travels in Egypt and Saudi Arabia today. He is scheduled to meet with President Mubarak in Cairo and King Abdullah in Riyadh. These are some of the scheduled meetings from his trip to the region in December which needed to be cut short so he could cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate. The