MINISTER for Culture, Arts and Sports, Mr Mohamed Mchengerwa has met with the delegation of United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to discuss a plan to set up Kiswahili University in the country.

The ministry has set up a committee that will be responsible for outlining ways for implementing the plan for constructing the university, aimed at promoting the national language.

This was revealed over the weekend after the minister met with UNESCO officials on Friday. During the meeting in Dar es Salaam, Mr Mchengerwa issued a five-day ultimatum to the committee to come up with recommendations on implementation of setting up the university.

He said the recommendations should be submitted for final agreements. He elaborated that in efforts to develop and promote Kiswahili internationally; the government has already allocated 100 acres of land for the project.

"The government has allocated 100 acres aimed at developing and promoting Kiswahili language," he said, adding that efforts were ongoing to make more colleges in abroad adopt Kiswahili as both communication tool and a teaching language.

"Since Kiswahili originated in Tanzania the ministry saw it important to have the university that would also contribute to further spread the language in other colleges abroad," he said.

In developing Kiswahili, Mr Mchengerwa stressed that the Kiswahili University will also be working on adopting more vocabulary to make the language grow further.

The language is widely spoken across East Africa and in all parts of central and Southern Africa. UNESCO declared July 7 of every year as the World Kiswahili day in recognition of the global relevance of the language.