This article is a comparative study of how the language-in-education policies of two Southern African countries — Botswana and Malawi — have responded to the need to have citizens who can compete favourably on the global scene. While private schools have tended to offer several international languages, public schools, on the other hand, have not done so. Public schools are unable to give learners the linguistic power needed in a world in which, besides English, there are other languages of global communication. The paper also highlights the dilemma faced when one tries to reconcile the local and the global in the context of language-in-education policies.