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Kenyan Swahili language scholar Professor Mohammed Abdulaziz (left) with a participant during a break at an educational seminar in Nairobi. October 23, 2014.
Zimbabwe is planning to make the teaching of four foreign languages, including Swahili, mandatory as part of an overhaul of the school curriculum.
According to reports by State media, Swahili, Chinese, French and Portuguese would be made compulsory in primary and secondary schools.
The new reforms will also see the introduction of agriculture lessons from primary school level.
The proposed reforms are drawn from findings by a commission set up by President Robert Mugabe in 1999 to investigate the state of the country's education sector.
Primary and Secondary Education minister Lazarus Dokora said the reforms that will also see secondary school leavers being compelled to go on industrial attachment before proceeding with their education had the backing of most Zimbabweans.
"We solicited for public opinion throughout Zimbabwe and informed them what our objectives were in trying to come up with a new primary and secondary curriculum," Dr Dokora told the Senate.
"As we were conducting public hearings during our investigations, over 961,000 people freely gave their opinions about what they want to see happen in the education sector at the level of primary and secondary education."
Bloated curriculum
However, the proposals have drawn considerable derision from Zimbabweans on social media who say they would be too expensive to implement and are not a priority for a country struggling to feed its people.
"Introducing agriculture at primary level, yes we need this," wrote one of the critics. "Swahili, Portuguese, Chinese and French, that means we need extra four teachers at each government school.
"We have to recruit from outside most of the teachers. On the other hand we also want to reduce the number of our civil servants to a manageable level."
Zimbabwe recently announced that it would trim its 500,000 strong civil service to reduce staff costs that now gobble 80 per cent of its revenue.
A senior educator and head of the College Lecturers Association of Zimbabwe David Dzatsunga told AFP on Monday that the reforms were a "pipe dream."
"To say we want to introduce all these languages to an already bloated school curriculum is a pipedream," Mr Dzatsunga said.
"Where is the funding going to come from considering that the government is already struggling to pay teachers for the current subjects?
"It's just hallucination. Do we have enough teachers to teach those languages?"
Zimbabwe has 16 official languages but only Shona, Ndebele and English are taught in schools.
A new constitution in 2013 made the teaching of the other 13 minority languages compulsory.
Zimbabwe has one of the highest literacy rates on the continent but of late the education system has been affected by the country's economic problems.
Swahili is the most widely spoken indigenous language in Africa. It has an estimated 150 million speakers across eastern and central Africa.
It already is an official language of the African Union.
Zimbabwe would be the first southern Africa country to decree its instruction at primary and secondary school levels.
Source: Africa Review
