Many ideas by very courageous contemporary African thinkers have been brought forth within the realm of language, whether in the philosophy of language, language policy or sociolinguistics. We consider the Kenyan Ngugi wa Thiong'o a primus inter pares on the programme for linguistic decolonisation, to which this book has a fundamental commitment.

Sociolinguistic responses in Africa and the economics of language will increasingly have to create new African forms of communication that articulate African interests. Ngugi argued these points in texts such as Moving the Centre and Decolonising the Mind. In the latter text, Ngugi makes a tribute and dedication to writers who publish their work in African languages.

Ngugi's contention was that language was a key instrument for colonisation. The overdetermination of language by power needed to be firmly re-articulated, contested, reconfigured and transformed for contemporary Africa.

Culture, for Ngugi, is almost indistinguishable from language, the latter making possible its genesis, growth, articulation and intergenerational transmission. Colonialism intercepted the organic evolution of the colonised societies’ mind. As Ngugi puts it, ‘Colonialism's most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonised, the control through culture of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world’.

Ngugi noted in 1986 that imperialism held sway over the lifeworld of the peoples of the South:

Currently, there are Africans who contend with much sangfroid that we must Africanise European languages like French, Portuguese or English, transmitting through them anfrican idiom, with amongst other goals being the construction of a Pax Africana in the sense of Ali Mazrui.