Swahili

Swahili—or Kiswahili to its speakers—is the most widely-used African language with over 140 million speakers and is considered a lingua franca of the African continent for its everyday use in media, commerce, education, and culture. As a Bantu language, Swahili emerged on the East African coast from a diverse history of trading and cultural exchange between Arabic nations, coastal Africans, and Europeans. Swahili is the official national language of Kenya and Tanzania, and is spoken in Uganda, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, the Central African Republic, the Comoro Islands, Malawi, east Zaire, southern Somalia, northern Mozambique, Ethiopia, Sudan, and Northern Zambia.

The study of Swahili is increasingly popular among informed, globalized citizens, and Swahili competency enriches studies in Africana studies, archeology, anthropology, international business, history, literature, politics, sociology, governmental work, diplomacy, NGOs, and information technology infrastructure. Indeed, a flourishing online tech-culture scene is emerging in Swahili, known as “Swahilihood.”

African-Americans refer to their annual cultural festival as Kwanzaa, which is derived from the Swahili word kwanza or ‘first.’

The Department of Modern Languages at the University of Mississippi now offers Swahili-language courses. We are excited to have initiated instruction in the eleventh language program in our department. A two-year sequence is currently available in Swahili: SWA 101, 102, 201, 202. Each course is three credits and the four courses taken consecutively will satisfy the Liberal Arts foreign language requirement. Students can also pursue an undergraduate minor in Swahili. This minor requires the completion of 15 hours of coursework at the 200 level and above.