BBC to Start Broadcasting in Afan Oromo, AGCC Statement Says

                               

The Afan Oromo Global Coordinating Committee (AGCC), the group that lobbied through a successful petition for the inclusion of Afan Oromo in BBC’s upcoming Horn of African service, has released a statement announcing that “the BBC Trust, the BBC Executive Board, and the Government of the United Kingdom have decided to start broadcasting to Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in Afan Oromo, the single most widely spoken language in Ethiopia.” The AGCC petition garnered more than 30,000 signatures during the month-long campaign in September 2015.

The following is the full statement posted on the AGCC official Facebook page; in the statement, AGCC also calls upon speakers of Afan Oromo and supporters of linguistic equality to mobilize resources to make Afan Oromo one of the Federal Working/Official Languages in Ethiopia, where it’s spoken by more than 50% of the population; despite this figure, however, Afan Oromo has been deprived of an official status in Federal institutions in Ethiopia.

BBC decided to start broadcasting in Afaan Oromo ***************************************************************
Congratulations! Pending formal announcement, our sources have confirmed that the BBC Trust, the BBC Executive Board, and the Government of the United Kingdom have decided to start Broadcasting to Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa in Afaan Oromo, the single most widely spoken language in Ethiopia.

Tigrigna and Amharic languages will also be part of the new proposed BBC medium and shortwave radio broadcast to Ethiopia and Eritrea. We thank the BBC Leadership and the Government of the United Kingdom for the decision and for heeding to the voice of tens of millions of our people.

The Afaan Oromo Global Coordinating Committee (AGCC) congratulates all Afaan Oromo speakers and supporters for the well-deserved success that mobilized our people and supporters from across the world in our petition drive to reach this goal.

Making Afaan Oromo the federal working language in Ethiopia on equal footing with Amharic will be the next major task in front of us.

The AGCC calls upon all Afaan Oromo speakers and supporters in Ethiopia and around the world to get mobilized in unison to create a more inclusive, federated and bilingual federal government institutions in Ethiopia, the municipalities of the charter cities of Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa.

Creating bilingual federal government structure by making Afaan Oromo an additional federal working language will allow Afaan Oromoo speakers to get unhindered access to all federal government employment, services, resources, information and opportunities by replacing the existing exclusionary and discriminatory monolingual language policy!!!

The Afaan Oromo Global Coordinating Committee (AGCC)