In an attempt to describe the historical origins of multilingual education in Eritrea, Horn of Africa, this paper looks at how missionaries, European colonisers, successive Ethiopian rules in Eritrea and the independence movements that fought Ethiopia defined ethnic, religious and linguistic differences of communities in the country. These…

Ideologies of language (and language learning)--in concert with discourses of individualism and meritocracy that characterize neoliberalism--shape pedagogical policies and practices in ways that are consequential for multilingual students all over the developing and developed world. To investigate how such intersections and influences work in…