If one knows their mother tongue and then adds other languages to it, that is empowerment

Ngugi wa Thiong'o (Distinguished Kenyan Professor and Novelist) explains (cited at Ekegusii Online dictionary and encyclopedia): One of the roots of our problem in Kenya and Africa; is that we begin our education by alienating a child from the language of their everyday culture, their mother tongue. An education system that is founded on a negative conception of self is seriously flawed. It’s an education that aims at producing educated slaves.

If one learns all the languages of the world and does not know their mother tongue, that is enslavement. But if one knows their mother tongue and then adds all the other languages to it, that is empowerment.1

A Gusii child should know and master Gusii language very well; then she or he should add Kiswahili to it, master it as well as EkeGusii. Then add to these two English and master it as well. The result will be an empowered Gusii.2

Keeping in mind the central transformative promise of the #2030Agenda for Sustainable DevelopmentLeaving no one behind- #unsdcf018Equal empowerment of all people through respect for all languages must be major drivers of a Platform for sharing digital public goods!


Delivering on the promise of #LeavingNoOneBehind to a person becomes harder when that person's mother tongue has fewer native speakers. Yet only when we recognize these barriers (constraints), we can develop the digital skills, attitudes and platforms to overcome them cooperatively: Global Digital Cooperation - #digicoop5a.


The table below lists the languages with the biggest challenges first3.

The availability of educational reading materials in a language, and the provision of these materials via #isic9101 - Library and archives activities is essential for pupils to achieve a sufficient literacy.


The level of Wikipedia development for a large number of languages in the world is reported at: …


The backlinks below usually do not include the child and sibling items, nor the pages in the breadcrumbs.


#tagcoding tags for goods, services and bads