The second Annual New Year School of the ITUC-Africa started today January 23, 2012 at Tom Mboya Labour College in Kisumu, Kenya.

During the next five days, the participants will discuss the following theme: “Emancipation, decent work and development in Africa – The challenges for African trade unions”

This first day was marked by the speech of the Secretary General of COTU, Francis Atwoli, who congratulated the Nigerian trade union movement for mobilising virtually all Nigerian citizens against the increase in oil prices, and the opening speech by the Kenyan Minister for Labour and Human Development, Honourable John Munyes who promised Government support to workers’ education.

One of the main issues of the first day was the presentation by Dr Akua Britwun on Labour in African History from the 19th century to the present. In her presentation, Dr Akua Britwum put a special emphasis on the various hindrances that the world of world experienced including government interference in trade union internal affairs. An emphasis was also put on the emergence of the informal economy. This presentation generated an interesting debate in which participants raised issues like the economic crisis, corruption in African countries, trade union culture and trade union pluralism. In a nutshell, Dr Akua said that “Africa’s history has been the history of organised labour”.

In the afternoon, Prof kwesi Prah presented a paper on “Culture, African languages, renaissance and development”. This paper traces the origin of language and its importance in the development process. After defining the terms culture, language and renaissance, Prof Prah said that as long as Africa neglects its own languages and promotes exported languages, it will never develop. He stated that “the language of the conqueror in the mouth of the conquered is the language of slavery”. According to the Professor, language is power and with language people can move from the bottom to the top. After this presentation, there was an interesting debate on the need to promote African languages, the issue of disappearing African languages and the expansion of the English language.