The writing systems of Africa are the current and historical writing systems used on the African continent, both those which are indigenous and those which were introduced. In many African societies, history was traditionally recorded orally despite most societies having developed a writing script, leading to them being termed "oral cultures" in contrast to "literate cultures". However, this generalization misses the significant pre-modern use of written languages in various African cultures and the widespread modern adoption of written language on the continent.
Today, the Latin script is commonly encountered across much of Africa, especially in the regions of Western Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. The Arabic script is mainly used in North Africa. Among the indigenous writing systems, the Ge'ez script is widely used in the Horn of Africa, and the Tifinagh script is used in many parts of the Sahel region. Variations of the Arabic-derived Ajami script are also notably used in various regions of Subsaharan Africa. There are also several widely used constructed writing systems in wide use today in West Africa, with the most frequently used being the Vai syllabary and the N'Ko script.
There are also various notable indigenous African writing systems which are no longer in common use today, the most famous being Egyptian hieroglyphs. A significant number of less common writing systems are also of significant local, regional, or historical importance, many of which are described below.
While historic writing systems from North Africa are among the oldest in the world, native writing systems and scripts are less common in the cultures of Subsaharan Africa. However, this is not to say that there are no indigenous pre-modern writing systems in the region; the Tifinagh script has been used by the Tuareg people since antiquity, as has the Geʽez script and its derivatives in the Horn of Africa. Other groups have encountered the Latin and Arabic scripts for centuries, but rarely adopted them in a widespread manner until the 19th century as they simply did not find them necessary for their own societies (Ajamiyya writing being a notable exception).
Indigenous writing and symbolic systems
Ancient African orthographies Ancient Egyptian
Perhaps the most famous African writing system is ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. These developed later into forms known as Hieratic, Demotic and, through Phoenician and Greek, Coptic. The Bohairic dialect of the Coptic language is still used today as the liturgical language in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Church of Alexandria. Other dialects of Coptic include Sahidic, Akhmimic, Lycopolitan, Fayyumic, and Oxyrhynchite.
Ancient Meroitic
The Meroitic language and its writing system was used in Meroë and the wider Kingdom of Kush (in modern day Sudan) during the Meroitic period. The Kingdom of Kush previously used the Egyptian writing system since 2000 BC. The meroitic script was used from 450 BC to 400 AD.
Tifinagh
The Tifinagh alphabet is still actively used to varying degrees in trade and modernized forms for writing of Berber languages (Tamazight, Tamashek, etc.) of the Maghreb, Sahara, and Sahel regions (Savage 2008).
Neo-Tifinagh is encoded in the Unicode range U+2D30 to U+2D7F, starting from version 4.1.0. There are 55 defined characters, but there are more characters being used than those defined. In ISO 15924, the code Tfng is assigned to Neo-Tifinagh.
Ge'ez
The Geʽez script is an abugida that was created in the Kingdom of Aksum (in modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea) in the 1st-4th century AD for writing the Geʽez language. It developed from the Ancient South Arabian (Sabaean) Script which was introduced to Ethiopia and Eritrea around 800 BC. The script is used today in Ethiopia and Eritrea for Amharic, Tigrinya, and several other languages. It is sometimes called Ethiopic, and is known in Eritrea and Ethiopia as the fidel or abugida.
Geʽez or Ethiopic has been computerized and assigned Unicode 3.0 codepoints between U+1200 and U+137F (decimal 4608–4991), containing the basic syllable signs for Geʽez, Amharic, and Tigrinya, punctuation and numerals.
Symbols
Nsibidi Nsibidi (also known as "nsibiri", "nchibiddi", and "nchibiddy") is a system of symbols indigenous to what is now southeastern Nigeria that is apparently an ideographic script, though there have been suggestions that it includes logographic elements. The symbols are at least several centuries old: early forms appeared on excavated pottery as well as what are most likely ceramic stools and headrests from the Calabar region, with a range of dates from 400 (and possibly earlier, 2000 BC) to 1400 CE.
Adinkra Adinkra is a set of symbols developed by the Akan, used to represent concepts and aphorisms. Oral tradition attributes the origin of adinkra to Gyaman in modern-day Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire. According to Kwame Anthony Appiah, they were one of the means for "supporting the transmission of a complex and nuanced body of practice and belief".
Adinkra iconography has been adapted into several segmental scripts, including The Adinkra Alphabet, invented by Charles Korankye in 2015, and expanded and refined over the next several years to accommodate various languages spoken in Ghana and Ivory Coast such as Akan, Dagbani, Ewe and Ga- a process that culminated with the creation of a standardized font in 2020. Adinkra Nkyea, a writing system based on the Adinkra symbols.. Some Ghanaians use the Adinkra Nkyea writing system for the Akan Language and its dialects. A Majority of Adinkra Nkyea is derived from the original Adinkra Symbols. Adinkra Nkyea contains some 39 characters, ten numerals, and three punctuation marks.
Lusona Lusona is a system of ideograms that functioned as mnemonic devices to record proverbs, fables, games, riddles and animals, and to transmit knowledge. They originate in what is now eastern Angola, northwestern Zambia and adjacent areas of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Modern orthographies
East Africa The Luo script was developed to write Dholuo in Kenya in 2009.
Somalia: Writing systems developed in the twentieth century for transcribing Somali include the Osmanya, Gadabuursi (or Borama), and Kaddare alphabets, which were invented by Osman Yusuf Kenadid, Sheikh Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur and Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare, respectively. The Osmanya script is today available in the Unicode range 10480-104AF [from U+10480 - U+104AF (66688–66735)]. An alphasyllabic script for Oromo in Ethiopia was invented in the late 1950s by Sheikh Bakri Sapalo (1895-1980), and saw limited use.Hayward and Hassan, "The Oromo Orthography of Shaykh Bakri Saṗalō", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 44 (1981), p. 551 An alphabetic script called Nilerian has been invented by Aleu Majok for Dinka and other languages of South Sudan."The New Muonjang (Dinka) Script"
Southern Africa In Southern Africa, the Mwangwego alphabet is used to write Malawian languages. IsiBheqe SoHlamvu (Bheqe Syllabary), also known as Ditema tsa Dinoko, is a featural syllabary used to write siNtu languages.
Central Africa The Bamum script was developed largely by Sultan Ibrahim Njoya of the Kingdom of Bamum in Northwest Cameroon. It is a semi-syllabary writing system that utilizes the Bamum language. It is rarely used today, but a fair amount of material written in this script still exists."Chapter 19: Africa, Bamum" (PDF). The Unicode Standard, Version 10.0. Mountain View, California: Unicode, Inc. July 2017. . The Eghap script was used by the Bagam (Tuchscherer 1999, Rovenchak 2009)http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/endangeredarch/tuchscherer.html ; http://www.afrikanistik-online.de/archiv/2009/1912/ of Cameroon The Mandombe script was invented by Wabeladio Payi in 1978 in what is now Kongo Central province, Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is promoted by the Kimbanguist Church and used for writing Kikongo, Lingala, Tshiluba, Swahili, and other languages.Pasch, Helma. 2008. Competing scripts: the introduction of the Roman alphabet in Africa. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 191:65–109. Zaghawa (Beria) of Darfur and Chad, developed by Siddick Adam Issa from an earlier proposal by schoolteacher Adam Tajir based on traditional livestock brands.
West Africa There are various other writing systems native to West Africa and Central Africa. 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.Unseth, Peter. 2011. Invention of scripts in West Africa for ethnic revitalization. In The Success-Failure Continuum in Language and Ethnic Identity Efforts, (Handbook of Language and Ethnic Identity, Volume 2.), ed. by Joshua A. Fishman and Ofelia García, pp. 23-32. New York: Oxford University Press. Below are non-Latin and non-Arabic-based writing systems used to write various languages of Africa:
The Adlam alphabet developed for writing the Fula language, taught mostly in Guinea but has also been spread in neighboring countries like Senegal and Gambia. The Ba script, named for its creator Adama Ba, used to write Fula. Bassa alphabet of Liberia Bété syllabary of Ivory Coast Dita, used to write Fula. The Garay alphabet, used to write Wolof and Mandinka in Senegal and The Gambia Gbékoun script for Fon and other Languages of Benin. Gola Script for Liberia and eastern Sierra Leone. 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. Kpelle syllabary of Liberia and Guinea Loma syllabary 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 Mende Ki-ka-ku or KiKaKui syllabary, invented by Kisimi Kamara in Sierra Leone in the early 20th century. It is still used. 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). 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 Rainbow Oracle script invented by Aba Ota for the Edo language in what is now Benin during 1999. The Vai syllabary invented by Mɔmɔlu Duwalu Bukɛlɛ for the Vai language in what is now Liberia during the early 19th century. It is still used today. Yoruba Holy Writing for the texts of the Yoruba religion.
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