Celebrating the Languages of Africa
Asilia Africa has shared that they’ve increased the number of driving guides with additional language skills. In Kenya, they can offer German-speaking guides and translators for Portuguese speakers. In addition, their tours in Tanzania now can communicate better with German, Spanish, French, Italian and Mandarin speakers.
This change utilizes how fascinating and broad Africa is linguistically. The continent has more than 2,000 distinct languages, in comparison to Europe which has roughly 300. In fact, 20 of the 25 most linguistically diverse countries are in Africa. A study conducted by Shigeki Kaji of Kyoto University in 2013 focused on inhabitants of the Ugandan town Hoima, found that the average inhabitant knows 4.34 languages.
Asilia’s aim is to better serve international guests who require driver guides, and so Asilia has a pool of multilingual speakers based in both Kenya and Tanzania. All guides, whether employed exclusively by Asilia or contracted on a freelance basis must undergo a thorough accreditation programme to ensure the highest quality of guiding skills are available to guests.
Thanks to Tomedes for the statistics!