Writing systems of Africa

• The
  Bagam (Tuchscherer 1999, Rovenchak 2009)^[21] of Cameroon
• The
  Tshiluba, Swahili, and other languages.^[22]
• Zaghawa (Beria) of Darfur and Chad, developed by Siddick Adam Issa from an earlier proposal by schoolteacher Adam Tajir based on traditional livestock brands.^[23][24]

West Africa

There are various other writing systems native to West Africa^[25] and Central Africa.^[26] In the last two centuries, a large variety of writing systems have been created in Africa (Dalby 1967, 1968, 1969). Some are still in use today, while others have been largely displaced by non-African writing such as the Arabic script and the Latin script.^[27] Below are non-Latin and non-Arabic-based writing systems used to write various languages of Africa:

• The
  Gambia
  .
• The Ba script, named for its creator Adama Ba, used to write Fula.^[29]
• Bamun language in what is now Cameroon. It quickly developed into a syllabary. It is rarely used today, but a fair amount of material written in this script still exists.^[30]
• Bassa alphabet^[31] of Liberia
• Bété syllabary of Ivory Coast
• Dita, used to write Fula.^[29]
• The Garay alphabet, used to write Wolof and Mandinka in Senegal and The Gambia^[32]
• Gbékoun script for Fon and other Languages of Benin.
• Gola Script for Liberia^[29] and eastern Sierra Leone.
• Goulsse Alphabet for Gur languages
• Several scripts used for the Hausa language
• Koré Sèbèli, developed in 2009 by sociologist Mohamed Bentoura Bangoura for writing the Susu language of Guinea and Sierra Leone.
• N'Ko alphabet
• Loma syllabary^[34] of Liberia and Guinea
• Masaba, a syllabary invented by Woyo Couloubayi (c.1910-1982) in the early 1930s for the Bambara language of Mali.
• Medefaidrin of the Obɛri Ɔkaimɛ Church for Ibibio people.
• The
  Ki-ka-ku or KiKaKui syllabary, invented by Kisimi Kamara in Sierra Leone in the early 20th century. It is still used.^[35]
• Ńdébé, developed between 2009-2020 by Nigerian software engineer Lotanna Igwe-Odunze for the Igbo language.
• N'Ko, invented in 1949 by Solomana Kante in Guinea, primarily for the Manding languages. It is apparently in increasing use in West Africa, including some efforts to adapt it to other languages (Wyrod 2008).^[36]
• The Nwagu Aneke syllabary invented in the 1950s for the Igbo language of southeastern Nigeria.
• The Oduduwa script of Benin and Nigeria, invented by Tolúlàṣẹ Ògúntósìn in 2016-2017 for the Yoruba language
• The
  Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ for the Vai language in what is now Liberia during the early 19th century. It is still used today.^[37]
• Yoruba Holy Writing for the texts of the Yoruba religion.^[38][29]

North Africa

Tifinagh (Tuareg Berber language: ⵜⴼⵏⵗ; Neo-Tifinagh: ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ; Berber Latin alphabet: Tifinaɣ; Berber pronunciation: [tifinaɣ]) is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg Berbers of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger and northern Burkina Faso for use writing the Tuareg Berber language. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by Berber Academy to adopt Tuareg Tifinagh for use with Kabyle; it has been since modified for use across North Africa.

Introduced and adapted writing systems

Most written scripts, including Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic, were based on previous written scripts and the origin of the history of the alphabet is ultimately Egyptian Hieroglyphs, through Proto-Sinaitic or Old Canaanite. Many other indigenous African scripts were similarly developed from previous scripts.

Phoenician/Punic

The Phoenicians from what is now Lebanon traded with North Africans and founded cities there, the most famous being Carthage. The Phoenician alphabet is thought to be the origin of many others, including: Arabic, Greek, and Latin. The Carthaginian dialect is called Punic.^[39] Today's Tifinagh is thought by some scholars to be descended from Punic, but this is still under debate.

Additionally, the Proto-Sinaitic Wadi el-Hol inscriptions indicate the presence of an extremely early form of the script in central Egypt (near the modern city of Qena) in the early 2nd millennium BC.

Greek

The

The

The first systematic attempts to adapt the

One of the challenges in adapting the Latin script to many African languages was the use in those tongues of sounds unfamiliar to Europeans and thus without writing convention they could resort to. Various use was made of letter combinations, modifications, and diacritics to represent such sounds. Some resulting orthographies, such as the

In many cases, the colonial regimes had little interest in the writing of African languages, but in others they did. In the case of Hausa in Northern Nigeria, for instance, the colonial government was directly involved in determining the written forms for the language.

Since the colonial period, there have been efforts to propose and promulgate standardized or at least harmonized approaches to using the Latin script for African languages. Examples include the

Following independence there has been continued attention to the transcription of African languages. In the 1960s and 1970s,

Braille, a tactile script widely used by the visually impaired, has been adapted to write several African languages- including those of Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia.

Office/computer technology, fonts and standards

Typewriters

There is not much information on the adaptation of typewriters to African language needs (apart from Arabic, and the African languages that do not use any modified Latin letters). There were apparently some typewriters fitted with keys for typing

Unicode in principle resolves the issue of incompatible encoding, but other questions such as the handling of diacritics in extended Latin scripts are still being raised. These in turn relate to fundamental decisions regarding orthographies of African languages.

In recent years,

Notes