From ‘Ghana Must Go’ to ‘Abeg’: How the Global South is decolonising English - World Reframed 27
For decades, English has been treated as a language owned by a few powerful centres like Britain, the United States, and the institutions that emerged from colonisation. But in 2025, that idea is becoming harder to defend. Quietly but decisively, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) has confirmed what millions across the Global South have long known: English no longer belongs to one place or one people. It is being reshaped by those who use it every day.
Take “Ghana Must Go.” Today, it’s the name of a big, colourful travel bag used across West Africa. But the phrase comes from a painful moment in 1983, when Nigeria ordered the expulsion of undocumented immigrants. More than one million Ghanaians were affected and given just two weeks to leave. They packed their lives into cheap nylon check bags, and the name stuck. In December 2025, the OED officially added Ghana Must Go to the English language.
That moment says a lot about how English really works.
English spread through colonisation: through schools, churches, government, and media. But once it arrived, people didn’t just copy it. They adapted it, mixed it with local languages, humour, food, music, and everyday life. Over time, those local versions became the most real forms of English in those places.
We’ve seen this before. Words from Latin America and Asia have been part of English for years: macho, gringo, taco, guacamole, ceviche, reggaeton, cartel. These words stayed because English needed them. There was no better way to say what they meant.
In March 2025, the OED leaned fully into this idea with a “World English” update. It added everyday words like gigil from the Philippines, which means the urge to squeeze something cute, and alamak from Malaysia and Singapore, an expression of surprise or frustration. English didn’t have words for these feelings, so it borrowed them.
Then came December 2025, and a big moment for West Africa. The OED added words people already use daily: abeg and biko for polite requests, amala and moi moi for staple foods, mammy market for women-run community markets, and Ghana Must Go.
These words carry stories of migration, survival, humour, and community. And once they’re in the dictionary, no one can say they’re “not proper English.”
What’s changing is power. English is no longer shaped by one centre. It’s shaped by how people live. For years, speakers from the Global South were told their English was wrong. Now the same institutions are saying: this is English too.
Maybe English was never really “king.”Maybe it’s just a shared language constantly remade by the people who speak it. Global South isn’t just speaking English anymore. It’s rewriting it.
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World Reframed is produced in London by Global South World, part of the Impactum Group. Its editors are Duncan Hooper and Ismail Akwei.
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This story is written and edited by the Global South World team, you can contact us here.
