Nothing special, just an article link from 2008.

http://learnswahili.net/do-you-think-swahilikiswah...

Brings up some good issues I think which can be applied any language hoping to rule the world, let alone africa. (read the comments though since a lot of discussion happens there rather than the article).

Just posting this here while I'm looking for stuff about Swahili so I can half-learn it, forget about it immediately and not say a word past "hujambo", and then remember it several years on and regret not putting in serious effort.

Has there ever been an opinion poll on this question in an African country whose main languages do not include Swahili?

No doubt you have read the well-known article by Claude Piron on the subject of the language problem in Africa.

Not sure. But I'd imagine it'd be hilarious to look at (like saying French should become Europe's language, or Japanese Asia's).

(regarding Piron's article, it's not silly to imagine he'd put Esperanto in it somewhere, but I do find the idea of Esperanto in Africa a bit strange when Esperanto is very indo-european* in form (e.g. word endings using thematic vowels, european conventions in grammar and phrasing, etc). As he said though, a constructed solution would take time and effort, but I reckon such is allowable with such a complex affair, and that long time and effort would be a better foundation than the short-term relief Esperanto might seem to provide).

*Indo-European as opposed to more pidgin like grammatically, which comes to mind as the most compatible solution if the large problem of wordstock is ignored.