According to research from Common Sense Advisory,72.4% of consumers are more likely to buy a product with information in their own language.
But English is spoken as a first language by less than 5% of the world’s population, and by only 470 million to 1 billion as a second language.
Many African countries have a distinct lack of local language service – in commerce as well as public services. In Southern Africa, the picture is sobering:
- In South Africa, English is the official language that predominates, and yet it is spoken as a first language by only 9.6% of people – far fewer than isiZulu (22.7%), isiXhosa (16%) and Afrikaans (13.5%).
- In Namibia, English is the only official language, but only 1% of Namibians speak it natively.
- In Zimbabwe, which has 70% Shonaa speakers, education from Grade 4 upwards is almost exclusively in English.
Further north, Africans have for decades had to be satisfied with being served in English, French and Portugese. Colonial languages are seen as destructive of local languages, and even as tools of local elites to keep control over the masses.
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