Rwanda has adopted English as a medium of communication. This decision sits well with the country's aspiration to join the Commonwealth.

English is the language of trade and commerce, science and engineering in addition to the web and electronic commerce, with over 60 per cent share of the world's online population.

The English language is also hugely important as an international language and plays an important role in countries where the United Kingdom has had little influence.

Western Europe adopted English as the principal foreign language in most schools and institutions of learning. It is an essential part of the curriculum in far-flung places like Japan and South Korea, and is today increasingly seen as desirable by millions of speakers in China.

The importance of English is not just in how many people speak it but in what it is used for. And this is what must have motivated the government in Rwanda to adopt this stand.

For the past 15 years, Rwanda has operated at official and other levels in both English and French besides Kinyarwanda. For all its advantages, this bilingualism has had a heavy toll on the country.

Neither French nor English are our languages, we just "inherited" them. We are neither anglophone nor francophone in the strict sense of the word. The legacy created by colonialism through the use of the colonial language is a subject for another day.

What we need in Rwanda is a medium of communication that can fast-track us into development and fill up the gap of lost opportunities.

If Mandarin, as a language, could play this role, we would consider taking it up. The duplication that Rwanda has had to undergo is difficult to justify in a country that surely has other pressing matters to attend to.

Having joined the East African Community and aspiring to join the Commonwealth, come 2009, Rwandans with good English will be much better fitted to compete for opportunities in the East African region and on the global market.

Therefore, Rwanda will be a more fully functional member of this huge economic bloc with English rather than French as our main medium of instruction and business.

Oscar Kimanuka is a commentator on social and economic issues based in Kigali.