ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author questions the validity of Western-based theories of literacy acquisition and argues that monolingual bias in literacy instruction practices plays a role in failing multilingual students, especially in the Global South. He proposes a translanguaging model that is based on the African cultural competence of Ubuntu: I am because you are; you are because I am as an alternative heuristic to monolingual bias that accounts for failing trends in the sub-Saharan education systems. The author describes dominant monolingual orientations that stem from the Enlightenment period of nation statism to show that these colonial practices of one language at a time in African classrooms are not normative to the sub-Saharan sociocultural milieus. He provides an argument that an alternative system based on the African cultural competence, Ubuntu translanguaging pedagogy, also known as multilanguaging, is a useful framework to guide literacy development for knowledge access.
