The African Academy of Languages, ACALAN is organizing a workshop to discuss methodology and technical support geared towards the production of a linguistic atlas the ECOWAS region.

The workshop which is billed to take place from October 30 to01 November in Abidjan, Cote D'Ivoire will bring together cartographers and demographers of the National Bureau of Statistics of the 15 ECOWAS Member States and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania.

The workshop will present the opportunity to start the implementation of the recommendations of the demographers and cartographers workshop earlier organised by ACALAN in collaboration with ECOWAS on the linguistic Atlas for ECOWAS and SADC regions in Mali.

The aim of the linguistic atlas project is to produce precise information on the number of languages spoken in the different regions of Africa, their interrelations and dialectical variations, for the purpose of informing corpus and status planning for multilingual education.

The workshop for cartographers and (field) researchers from ECOWAS member states will among other things looking to nominate and confirm a scientific committee for West Africa; identify statisticians and

researchers for field work; discuss data harmonization strategies and set map production plan; budgeting, procurement of software; appoint consultants/GIS expert; set time for collation of data and data processing.

Participants are expected to update information on population and language distribution in their respective countries.

The expected to attend the workshop include:  Cartographers and demographers from the 15 Member States of ECOWAS and the Islamic Republic of Mauritania;

A representative of the Regional Economic Community (ECOWAS); 

A representative of the Department of Social Affairs of the African Union Commission;

Representatives of UNESCO, the International Organisation of the Francophonie (OIF) and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL International), University departments in the host country;

Members of the ACALAN Secretariat;

Representative of Member of the Assembly of Academicians; and Representatives of the host country.