Exploring Africa’s Rich Literary Heritage: From Ancient Scripts to the Africa Alphabet

For many in the African diaspora, reconnecting with the continent’s literary and linguistic heritage often begins with books written in English, French, or Portuguese, the languages of colonial education. But Africa’s story of writing, reading, and literature goes much deeper than colonial tongues. Long before the arrival of European scripts, Africans were already writing, recording, and preserving their stories in their own ways and in their own alphabets.

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This is the story of that rich heritage from ancient African scripts to the creation of the Africa Alphabet (also called the International African Alphabet), a powerful attempt to give African languages a unified voice in writing. Understanding this story is not only about letters on a page, but also about identity, language pride, and the power of reconnecting with our ancestral voices.

Africa’s Ancient Love Affair with Writing

Let’s start by busting a myth: Africa has always been a continent of letters, and not just of oral tradition. From the north to the south, east to west, Africans have created and used writing systems for millennia.

• In North Africa, the Tifinagh script has been used by Amazigh (Berber) and Tuareg peoples for thousands of years. It’s still alive today, written on street signs in Morocco and Algeria and taught in Amazigh-language schools.
• In the Horn of Africa, the Ge‘ez script, one of the world’s oldest living alphabets, has been in use since at least the 5th century BCE. It’s still the script for Amharic and Tigrinya, used by millions in Ethiopia and Eritrea.
• In West Africa, the Vai people of Liberia developed their own syllabary in the early 1800s, entirely independent of European writing. Similar indigenous systems include Bamum in Cameroon and N’Ko, invented by Solomana Kante in 1949 for the Mande languages of Guinea, Mali, and Côte d’Ivoire.
• In the Sahel and across West Africa, scholars used Ajami, African languages written in Arabic script, to compose poetry, religious texts, letters, and history books. In Senegal, Nigeria, and northern Ghana, these handwritten manuscripts can still be found in family archives and mosques.

These examples remind us: Africa’s literary heritage is not a recent or borrowed phenomenon. It’s ancient, diverse, and proudly homegrown. Each script was a tool of communication and self-expression, a way for communities to record their lives and wisdom in their own voices.

The Colonial Disruption and the Question of Writing

The 19th and early 20th centuries brought a linguistic earthquake. European colonisers imposed their languages and Latin-based scripts across the continent, often dismissing African writing systems as primitive or irrelevant. Missionaries and colonial linguists began transcribing African languages using the Latin alphabet, but often inconsistently.

For instance, the same sound in Yoruba, Akan, and Igbo might be written in completely different ways, depending on the missionary or region. This chaos made reading and writing across languages, or even within the same one confusing. It also limited the creation of books, schools, and literature in African languages.

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It was out of this linguistic chaos that one of Africa’s most ambitious projects emerged, an effort to create a shared, scientifically sound, and practical alphabet for all African languages. That is where The Africa Alphabet came into the scene.

The Africa Alphabet: A New Script for a New Africa

In 1928, the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures (today called the International African Institute, or IAI) set out to solve a big problem: how to write all African languages clearly, consistently, and accessibly.

Led by German linguist Diedrich Hermann Westermann, with help from African language speakers, the team designed what they called The Africa Alphabet, or International African Alphabet (IAI Alphabet).

What Was the Goal?

The idea was simple but revolutionary: “To enable people to write for practical and scientific purposes in all African languages without the need of diacritics.”

Diacritics (like é or ã) made printing and typing African languages cumbersome. The Africa Alphabet wanted to simplify things, no accents, no extra marks, just clean, efficient letters that could represent all African sounds.

How It Worked

The Africa Alphabet borrowed most consonants from English but added new symbols for sounds that didn’t exist in European languages. For instance:

• Ɛ / ɛ for the “open e” sound (as in the Ewe word mɛ — “I”)
• Ɔ / ɔ for the “open o” sound (as in Twi ɔdɔ — “love”)
• Ŋ / ŋ for the “ng” sound (as in sɔŋa in Hausa)

These additions made it possible to represent African phonetics accurately, no confusing substitutions, no awkward spelling compromises.

How Far It Spread

The Africa Alphabet influenced writing systems for over 60 African languages, including Hausa, Yoruba, Igbo, Ewe, Dinka, and others. It became a foundation for later projects such as:

• The Pan-Nigerian Alphabet (1966)
• The African Reference Alphabet (1978)
• And many national orthographies that followed independence.

While not every country adopted it wholesale, the Africa Alphabet changed the game. For the first time, African languages were being written systematically, scientifically, and with dignity.

Why This Matters for Africans in the Diaspora

If you grew up in London, Toronto, New York, or Paris, chances are your experience of African literature began with Achebe, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in English. Maybe you have heard elders speak your heritage language, Yoruba, Kikuyu, Shona, Wolof but never saw it written down.

Understanding the Africa Alphabet helps reconnect that missing link between speech and script, between oral memory and written identity. Here’s why it matters:

1. Language Is Identity.

 Every African language carries unique ways of seeing the world. When we learn to read or write in them, we reclaim more than vocabulary, we reclaim worldview.

• The Written Word Is Power.

 Writing preserves culture. It lets us record our philosophies, spiritualities, and histories in our own words, not through translation.

• Orthography Is Self-Determination.

 The Africa Alphabet was about control, Africans shaping how their languages appear on paper, not foreign missionaries deciding for them.

• Diaspora Reconnection.

 Learning even the basics of how African languages are written helps diaspora Africans engage more deeply with family, music, and literature, and break free from the colonial idea that “real literature” only exists in English or French.

Africa’s Writing Revolution: Beyond the Africa Alphabet

The Africa Alphabet was just one chapter in a longer story. Across the continent, people continued to invent or adapt scripts to fit their languages, reaffirming that African innovation never stopped.

• The N’Ko script, created in 1949 by Solomana Kante in Guinea, became a unifying script for Manding languages. It’s now taught in schools and used online.
• The Bamum script in Cameroon, invented by King Njoya in the late 1800s, encoded thousands of royal records and cultural texts.
• The Mandombe script, from Congo in the 1970s, was inspired by the shapes of bricks and spiritual visions.
• Ajami, the Arabic-based writing for African languages like Wolof, Hausa, and Fulfulde, has seen a scholarly revival. Researchers at Boston University have found entire libraries of Ajami manuscripts, poetry, trade records, and letters hidden in family homes.

These innovations prove that writing in Africa has never been passive imitation; it’s been active creation, a continuous rewriting of what it means to be literate and African.

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From Paper to Pixels: The Future of African Scripts

Today, a new revolution is happening, online. African languages are entering the digital space like never before. Unicode now supports characters like Ɛ, Ɔ, and Ŋ that come from the Africa Alphabet. Keyboards, fonts, and apps are increasingly accommodating African letters.

Projects like AfroDigits and Masakhane are developing speech recognition and translation tools for African languages, ensuring that technology grows with Africa’s linguistic diversity.

For diaspora Africans, this opens new doors:

• You can now text in Twi or Igbo, type Ɛ and Ɔ on your phone, and read online content in your language.
• Diaspora creators can publish poetry or podcasts in African languages, bridging continents.
• Heritage learners can use digital tools to learn alphabets and pronunciation — no longer relying on colonial spelling systems.

The Africa Alphabet’s vision of accessibility is coming to life again — this time in the digital age.

Reconnecting Through Writing: How the Diaspora Can Engage

So, how can Africans in the diaspora participate in this literary renaissance? Here are some simple, meaningful steps:

1. Learn the Basics of a Heritage Language’s Alphabet: Whether it’s Twi, Yoruba, Somali, or Swahili, learn how the sounds are written. Start small. Even recognising Ɛ and Ɔ on a page is a powerful reconnection.
2. Support African Language Literature: Buy or download books written in African languages. Follow African publishers and language activists online. Share their work.
3. Use Your Language Digitally: Add African letters to your keyboard. Use them in your name, captions, or messages. Visibility normalises usage.
4. Join or Start Reading Circles: Organize community meetups (in person or online) to read African-language stories, even bilingual ones. Discuss the meanings, rhythms, and oral traditions behind them.
5. Collaborate Across Borders: Diaspora Africans can connect with writers, linguists, and educators on the continent to fund projects, translate works, or preserve oral histories.
6. Celebrate Your Alphabet: The alphabet is not just about spelling — it’s art, history, and identity. Wear it, print it, design it, teach it. Make it visible.

A Living Heritage

The Africa Alphabet is more than a linguistic invention; it’s a symbol of pride and resilience. It represents the effort of Africans, scholars, elders, and everyday speakers, to reclaim their voices in writing. It stands alongside centuries of creativity, from the Ge‘ez of ancient Axum to the N’Ko of modern Guinea.

See also Africa’s Hidden Literacy: Reclaiming Our Ancient and Modern Writing Systems

For the African diaspora, learning this story is an act of remembrance and renewal. It’s a way to look beyond colonial languages and rediscover the original alphabets of home.

When you see a letter like Ɔ or Ŋ, know that it carries centuries of sound, rhythm, and meaning, traces of ancestors who refused silence.

Our alphabet is our heritage. Our scripts are our stories.

 To rediscover them is to remember who we are, not just as descendants of Africa, but as inheritors of its vast, vibrant, written soul.

Sources: International African Institute (1930); Sow & Abdulaziz, “Language and Social Change” in General History of Africa, Vol. 8; Florian Coulmas, The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems (1996); African Arguments (2024); Boston University Ajami Project (2022); The Oxford Handbook of African Languages (2020).