Africa is seen as a continent that lags behind in almost every area of development. The linguistic situation of most African countries has been characterized as a diglossic one, which is a linguistic distribution of languages according to their function in society. Thus, school subjects have been associated with the languages that brought them. Knowledge, aptitude and even intelligence have often been and are still associated with mastery of the coloniser's language. This paper aims at showing that Africa's general state of ‘underdevelopment’ can have several
interrelated causes that can be summarized as linguistic and cultural barriers to learning and development. The main objective is to show how the use of a foreign language in education, and bad language planning, have hindered developmental actions in several fields in Burkina Faso. The methodology, which is descriptive and analytical, relies on historical facts, existing literature on postcolonial education systems and data from Burkina Faso to carry out analysis. It presents the education system, some obstacles to development in Burkina Faso and then outlines some solutions and challenges, including the necessity to reconsider a number of concepts such as ‘development’, and ‘African epistemology.’

Education, Language and Development, Postcolonialism, Policy, Africa