Digital Humanities for Sustainable Learning: Lessons from Documentary Linguistics

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that documentary linguistics (DL), through its objectives (safeguard endogen knowledge), tools (digital technologies), methods (collaborative research), and results (digital archiving of data for posterity), constitutes a stable base onto which African education systems must reform. Admitting that a young Africa rich in natural and human resources but living in abject poverty is a paradox that can only be broken through education (Nana Akufo-Ado, pc), then, there is need to invent new ways to “do education” on the continent, in other to achieve sustainable development. Remote working and online education imposed on the world by the Covid-19 pandemic has come to exacerbate Africa's digital divide (DD). Despite the reality that close to 90% of students in Sub-Saharan Africa do not have access to learning tools like computers at home, and 82% lack access to the internet (Sikiti Da Silva, 2020), I argue that DL, as an academic discipline of the digital humanities (DHs), is a palpable means to contribute to closing the DD. Indeed, DL permits to increase computer literacy, enhance digital learning, and build academic resilience in Africa.