Somalia will include Swahili, the lingua franca of East Africa, in its national curriculum, the president announced.

English is the language of instruction in most subjects in secondary schools across the country, with Arabic the only second compulsory language currently taught.

But President Hassan Sheikh Mohammed said Swahili should also be taught in schools and universities, making the announcement at the East African Community (EAC) summit in the capital Mogadishu.

Somalia formally joined the eight-nation regional trade bloc last year, aiming to boost economic growth after three decades of war.

With over 200 million speakers, Swahili is one of the 10 most widely spoken languages ​​in the world.

President Mohammed said: “The country’s universities, especially the National University of Somalia, should pay more attention to the development of Swahili, which is the language of East Africa.”

“Adopting Swahili is very important for our integration into the region,” he said.

Education Minister Farah Sheikh Abdulkader added that the government had high ambitions to adopt Swahili across the country.

“We would like to see Swahili become a language of communication, trade and learning, and even replace English at our next meeting,” he told the EAC meeting.

A dialect of Swahili is already spoken on Somalia’s southern coast, and the language has become more widely spoken across the country in recent years – one of the consequences of a civil war that broke out in 1991 and brought decades of instability and, more recently, jihadist violence.

Hundreds of thousands of people have crossed the Kenyan border seeking asylum, and many of them have gone on to learn how to speak Swahili, especially those who have gone through the Kenyan education system.

In recent years, as the situation in Somalia has stabilized, some Swahili speakers have returned or have connections back home, and the presence of African Union troops has also contributed to the growth of Swahili.

The soldiers, mostly from East African countries who have been deployed since 2007, often use Swahili as their common language.

Prior to 2016, the language of instruction in Somalia was Arabic in junior secondary schools and English in secondary and tertiary education.

The national curriculum for primary schools is now taught in Somali, higher education courses are still taught in English, and Arabic is used in Islamic schools.