By:Melanie Aanyu

The Cabinet will start taking Kiswahili lessons for at least one hour starting Monday as one of the steps to fully achieve East African integration, Ms Rebecca Kadaga, the First Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for East African Community Affairs, has said.

In July, the Cabinet approved the implementation of the 21st East African Community Summit directive in Uganda to adopt Kiswahili as the official language.

The Cabinet also approved compulsory teaching of the language in primary and secondary schools.

Kiswahili, mainly spoken in the East African region, is a fusion of the dialect born of Bantu and Arabic languages.

It has earned its place of pride as one of the world’s top 10 most spoken languages and Africa’s most widely used native language.

It enjoys official status in Kenya and Tanzania and is also widely spoken in parts of DR Congo, Rwanda, and Burundi. It became the first African language to be spoken by more than 200 million people.