President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has said his government will make French a compulsory subject from the basic to the senior high school level in Ghana.

The Ghanaian leader noted that to survive in the ECOWAS sub-region, where Ghana is surrounded by French-speaking countries, it would be essential if majority of Ghanaians can speak French.

Speaking in a meeting with Ghanaians in Togo on Wednesday, 3 May, where he is on a two-day official visit, Mr Akufo-Addo said: “We are committed to making French a compulsory language in our schools right down to the end of senior high school but for that to happen we have to sit down with the educational authorities and work out exactly what it needs. … We’ll take this decision because as far back as 10 years ago when I led Ghana into La Francophonie in Bucharest, the decision was that the La Francophonie organisation would help us with the teachers of French in the schools. Because at the end of the day, everything you do about education always comes back to the teachers.

“Matthew Opoku Prempeh, the Minister of Education, has it as a major priority on his agenda, so I think that between now and hopefully the next academic year some positive development is going to come out of it because to me it is absolutely essential that we do so, so that we empower our own population with the capacity to survive in this ECOWAS environment. People speak English but we don’t speak French. It’s not good and I think that we have to go about it that way.”

Mr Akufo-Addo added that he believed the previous Minister of Education wasn’t “particularly interested in that project but I’m interested in it and my Minister of Education is interested in it and we are going to try to work it out to see how it pans out”.