Nach der Unabhängigkeit erlangte in den meisten Staaten Afrikas die Sprache der früheren Kolonialmacht den Status der Amtssprache. Vor dem Hintergrund der Diskussion um ein "empowerment through language" erörtern die Autoren dieses Bandes die Funktion von Sprache im Prozeß der Nationenbildung im postkolonialen Afrika. Besonders berücksichtigt wird das erst seit 1990 unabhängige Namibia. Inhalt: Martin Pütz: Language and colonialism in Africa - Introduction (1-8). I. Language contact and language conflict in Africa: Eyamba G. Bokamba: The politics of language planning in Africa: Critical choices for the 21st century (11-27); Neville Alexander: Nation building and language in the new South Africa (29-43); Zach A. Matsela: Empowerment of the masses through the use of African languages (45-56); Herman M. Batibo: The growth of Kiswahili as language of education and administration in Tanzania (57-80). II. Language expansion and language engineering: Case studies from Africa: Victor Webb: The technicalization of the autochthonous languages of South Africa: Constraints from a present day perspective (83-100); Efurosibina Adegbija: Marketing new lexical terminology in Nigeria: Some practical considerations (101-112); Annarita Puglielli: The Somali language lexical project: Aims and methods (123-137); Adama Ouane: Technicalization of the lexicon through endogenous language resources: A case from Mali (139-152). III. Language, culture and nation building: An illustration with Namibia: Martin Pütz: Official monolingualism in Africa: A sociolinguistic assessment of linguistic and cultural pluralism in Namibia (155-173); Hage G. Geingob: "Our official language shall be English": The Namibian Prime Minister's perspective (175-179); Brian Harlech-Jones: Language policy and language planning in Namibia (181-206); Anke Beck: Language and nation in Namibia: The fallacies of Modernization Theory (207-220). IV. The status and use of languages: Linguistic conflict in Namibia: Brian Harlech-Jones: The role of English in Namibia: A sociocultural and linguistic account (223-243); Martin Pütz: Attitudes and language: An empirical investigation into the status and use of English in Namibia (245-284); Rajmund Ohly: Lexical engineering in African languages: Exemplified through Herero (285-298); Hans-Volker Gretschel: The status and use of the German language in independent Namibia: Can German survive the transition? (299-313); Kotie Fourie: Afrikaans - The unwanted lingua franca of Namibia (315-324).