Kiswahili goes .com

A kilometre into the Indian Ocean from Malindi, Captain John Mwaboza pulls his mobile phone from a pouch dangling from his neck.

“Evidence from oral traditions supports the fact that Kiswahili was in existence even before interaction with other cultures,” he reads from his Internet-enabled mobile phone. Tourists give him the thumps up. They then watch a video in Kiswahili by NTV’s Lolani Kalu.

Even among the communities where Kiswahili spread from, mastering the history, words, and culture of the rich language is proving difficult, especially to the young generations which can barely maintain the linguistic discipline not to mix Kiswahili with English and other Kenyan languages.

In Malindi, they speak Italiano-Kiswahili but the biggest threat to Kiswahili’s purity is Sheng.

www.swahilihub.com, a hotspot to promote Kiswahili and preserve it for posterity, could not have come at a better time.

“Even if all the old people, who are expected custodians of the language die, the language will not disappear because it is protected using the Internet,” says Capt Mwaboza, the breeze blowing away his words to the mainland.

Prof Rocha Chimerah, a lecturer at Pwani University, would agree. He says African languages that will not have digitised by the end of 21st century risk extinction. Kiswahili will definitely not be one of them.

www.swahilihub.com is a world-class Kiswahili website powered by Taifa Leo of Kenya and Mwananchi of Tanzania, both leading Kiswahili newspapers and brands of the Nation Media Group (NMG).

Although Kiswahili is fast gaining popularity on the Internet as more websites and social networking sites from Facebook, Google, to Microsoft incorporate it, www.swahilihub.com is the latest and most significant contribution to the creation of an online community and learning resource for the language.

A few months after its launch, the impact is being felt far and wide. At the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, Danish student Sarah Sejer Carlsen regularly uses the site to learn Kiswahili and is developing her thesis in the language. At Kenyatta University, Brendah Kabaji borrows from swahilihub.com as she studies for her Master’s degree in Kiswahili.

The site will be teaching Kiswahili online through audio, video, and PDFs of Kiswahili teaching modules for beginners, intermediate, and advanced levels through partnership with the best institutions in East Africa.

www.swahilihub.com is also offering historical photo archives of important events in Kenya and East Africa touching on personalities, events, and places.

It also hosts the most informative Kiswahili programme, Kamusi ya Changamka, on Qfm, and cultural and historical information on Kenyan and Tanzanian communities and their languages. Kiswahili is taught in more than 150 institutions of higher learning worldwide.

The website has downloadable Kiswahili award-winning essays by primary school pupils, compositions from the best of East Africa’s poets with archives that Taifa Leo has published since the 1960s.

The site is the first to offer Kiswahili Masters and PhD theses and other research papers for reference online through a resource centre called Maktabani Jisomee.

Maktabani is also offering archived KCPE and KCSE revision papers on all examinable subjects in Kenya downloadable for a small fee. Also the acclaimed serial features on Miaka 50 ya Uhuru Tanzania that ran in Mwananchi is now available for a dollar per article.

The site will offer professional services such as translation and interpretation services to academic institutions and sell Kiswahili literature guide books on new set books such as Damu Nyeusi na Hadithi Nyingine and the play Mstahiki Meya online and in print.

www.swahilihub.com is the only all-inclusive Kiswahili site with news, features, television news videos, classic photos, Kiswahili radio stations, and coastal music.

There is a Kiswahili e-paper version of both Taifa Leo and Mwananchi, online updated news, features and selected archives of editorials, commentaries and opinions that have appeared in Taifa Leo from 1958 to date and for Mwananchi since 2006.

Interesting shows on NTV like Makala ya Upekuzi, Hadithi za Kaya Kayaya, Gumzo Mitaani, Kukanganyana, Kurunzi, Makala ya Jumapili, Jarida la Kaunti, Msanii na Sanaa, Mseto, Taswira ya Jamii, Enzi Zao, Ukumbi wa Hamasisho and the popular QfmLive are available on the site.

Music lovers will soon also enjoy a collection of Taarab and Bongo audio and video formats on swahilihub.

“The site offers all that a Kiswahili-loving person needs. There has not been anything like this before,” Hezekiel Gikambi, the head of the project said.

Kiswahili is no longer an East African coastal language. It has made tremendous steps as a language globally and has ultimately placed itself as the most widely used African language.

The language is now popular in many universities outside Africa, especially in Japan, China, America, and Europe, where it has taken the lead among African languages like Somali, Hausa, Amharic, Wolof, and Isizulu, which are being taught outside the African continent.

Kiswahili is now spoken by more than 120 million people and has been proposed to be one of the United Nations working languages. Already, it is one of the official Africa Union working languages and is one of the four national languages of the Democratic Republic of Congo and the national language of Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda while it is widely spoken in Rwanda and Burundi.

The spread of Kiswahili from a community language to a lingua franca, and finally a national language, was driven by various factors.

Before 1900, such factors included maritime trade, the caravan trade with the interior, the rise of Zanzibar as East Africa’s commercial capital, and the spread of Islam.