Malian colonel, Assimi Goita, has banned French as official language in Mali

Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Malian colonel, Assimi Goita, has banned French as official language in Mali.

With its new constitution, Mali has dropped French, which has been the West African country’s official language since 1960.

Under the new constitution passed overwhelmingly with 96.91% of the vote in a June 18 referendum, French is no longer the official language.

French will be the working language from now on, and the 13 national languages spoken in the country will also receive official language status.

Colonel Assimi Goita, current military leader of Mali. Upon assuming office in two years, he has expelled French army, he has broken colonial ties with France, he has banned French as official language.

France’s embassy in Mali did not confirm to RFI how many French aid groups are still operating in the country now.

But those that remain have had to seek various ways to overcome the loss of funding, some more successful than others.

For security reasons, the people interviewed and their organisations are not disclosed.

Around 70 local languages are spoken in the country and some of them, including Bambara, Bobo, Dogon and Minianka, were granted national language status under a 1982 decree, Anadolu news agency reports.

On Saturday, Mali’s junta leader Col. Assimi Goita put the country’s new constitution into effect, marking the beginning of the Fourth Republic in the West African nation, the presidency said.

Since taking power in an August 2020 coup, Mali’s military has maintained that the constitution would be critical to rebuilding the country.

Mali witnessed two subsequent coups in recent years, one in August 2020 and the other in May 2021.

The junta had initially promised to hold elections in February 2022 but later delayed them to February 2024. Out of 294 NGOs – local and international – operating in Mali when the transitional authorities imposed the ban on 21 November 2022, around 40 were French.

It was just one of the results of the souring of relations between France and Mali after the 2020 coup led by Colonel Assimi Goïta.

The interim government did not ban all French NGOs working in Mali, but only activities supported financially or materially by the French government, which funds overseas aid work through its French Development Agency (AFD).

After toying with the idea of leaving Mali altogether, its director told RFI that he was confident the NGO could continue working in the country.

“Out of all the programmes that we put on hold [from November 2022], we only had to stop one of them altogether,” a director of a large humanitarian French NGO working in north and central Mali told RFI’s David Baché.

Around 30 percent of its funding used to come from the AFD and has now been replaced by funds from other sources, namely the European Union.

The aid group had to slightly reduce the number of French employees, but did not sack any Malian staff.