The news item appended below reminds me of a question I had re the use of African languages on currency in Africa. It's not something I've ever researched, but as far as I'm aware the only instance of an African language being used in the amounts (denominations) on the currency is the addition of Hausa Ajami (that is, Hausa written in Arabic script) on Nigerian Naira notes. It's a fairly common practice in many countries of the world to have more than one national language on their currency, sometimes in smaller letters or off to the edge etc. But I'm not aware of it in Africa. So, are there other currencies on the continent that have the denominations in African languages?
It is true that some African countries use a word from an indigenous language as the name of their currencies, so this is a second question: How many of the currency names in Africa are or were African words? (One no longer used is "sylli" [=elephant in Susu] in Guinea.) The item below from the Abuja paper Daily Trust was seen on AllAfrica.com at http://allafrica.com/stories/200605270071.html . It mentions some of the background of the use of Hausa on Naira notes and the current controversy over a proposal to remove it. Don Osborn Nigeria: Still on CBN's Restructuring of the Naira Daily Trust (Abuja) http://www.dailytrust.com/ OPINION May 26, 2006 Posted to the web May 27, 2006 M. T. Usman Kaduna The Guardian editorial, "Restructuring the naira?" trounces the decision of the Central Bank of Nigeria as announced by the governor, Professor Charles Soludo to restructure the naira and concludes -"Thus, beyond the award of fresh contracts, currency restructuring is the anaemic child of diminution in the value of a poorly-managed currency with no economic benefit. The proposed exercise should as a result --" (The Guardian issue of April 2006). Sadly, a more sinister motive is at the heart of the exercise than the opportunity to award fresh contracts. It is nothing less than the cultural cleansing of the naira to efface all vestiges of Northern cultural or artistic expression from the nation's currency notes. Such outcome has been canvassed since the beginning of the Obasanjo administration and is now finding fulfilment under the watch of Professor Soludo. The campaign against Arabic inscription on our currency notes (Ajami to give it proper classification) began life in the intellectual circles of the South-West among whom Obasanjo's return to power has engendered a triumphal and an unconcealed desire to eliminate Northern influence in the politics and economy of the country. The presence of the inscription was touted as evidence of an attempt, or a plot to Islamise Nigeria, deliberately ignoring their antecedent in the first place. Zealots in the youth wing of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) found in this a suitable battle-cry and instituted a court action seeking to halt the practice. The challenge of CAN provided the authorities in the Central Bank with the needed excuse; they then proceeded to declare a "trade dispute" so to speak and went on to seek arbitration from on high. The politics of the third term or tenure elongation has meant that the administration could use this issue to garner support as it h as done with similar divisive issues. The Presidency could thus unabashedly approve the removal of the Arabic inscription as underhandedly sought by the Central Bank on the ground that it had the potential to cause religious unrest. What is scheduled to replace the inscription when it comes out will make Nigerians wonder at the banality of our leadership. But why should the removal of the Arabic inscription matter or cause angst among Nigerians? The presence of the Arabic/Ajami inscription on our currency notes matters because it is an affirmation that we have a literary past, a pre-colonial history of literacy. The peoples of Northern Nigeria had, centuries before colonial rule and in the wake of the arrival of Islam, adapted the Arabic script to write their native languages. This engendered an appreciable level of literacy for that age among the populace, especially among the rulers and religious leaders. Such was the height attained that the leaders of the 19th Century Sokoto Jihad could write books, treaties, poems, etc. using the Ajami script (in addition to Arabic) to propagate their causes. British colonial rule therefore met in Northern Nigeria a people accustomed to literary pursuits in all ramifications. It was this fact of relatively widespread literacy that caused them to incorporate the Ajami inscription to denote the value of the currency notes in the native Hausa language, which incidentally has been the lingua franca of the region. It offered nothing but practicality and was an acknowledgement of the cultural heritage of Nigeria as a whole. Its retention on the currency notes of independent Nigeria undoubtedly derived from the same premise. Cultural icons from other regions of the country received similar exposure. The brief excursion into history above should help properly situate Nigeria's heritage of Islamic culture of which the art of Ajami writing is just a small part. Symbols of Christian heritage abound in our daily life, from the system of government to the calendar and so on. In the wider world, Saudi Arabia, that quintessentially Islamic country, has English inscription on its currency notes (denoting value still) without it being perceived as a threat from Christianity. What we have witnessed in this episode is the brazen application of power to banish from official public display a part of the iconography of the North in order to satisfy the irredentists of the South-West. Yet more is likely to follow. The apex bank could easily decide to put the portraits of President Olusegun Obasanjo and Charles Soludo on the soon-to-be-reissued notes and coins, one for being the longest-serving ruler of Nigeria, the other for being the first professor to head the Central Bank. This should not be laughed out of court. In this season of Oba-worship, such thoughts are never far from the minds of the dwellers of the corridors of power. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> You can search right from your browser? It's easy and it's free. See how. http://us.click.yahoo.com/_7bhrC/NGxNAA/yQLSAA/TpIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AfricanLanguages/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
