Understanding the African Reference Alphabet: The Impact on Writing Systems and Literature in African Languages
Hey there, to all my fellow Africans in the diaspora: this is for you. I want to bring you in close to a part of our literary heritage that often goes unnoticed but is deeply powerful: the story of our languages, how they’ve been written, and how this connects to identity, culture, and the future of African literature.
Learn How to Leverage Your Story through our Story To Asset Framework.
The story behind the letters
When you pick up a book in English or French and read an African story, you might not immediately think about how the language is written. But the way a language is represented on the page matters — a lot. For many African languages, finding the right way to write them has been part of the struggle for visibility and dignity.
In 1978, at a conference organised by UNESCO in Niamey (Niger), language experts from across Africa met to discuss this very issue. They proposed something called the African Reference Alphabet (ARA): a guideline for how Latin-alphabet systems could be better adapted for African languages.
The goal was bold: one common “reference” alphabet for writing African languages with Latin letters, so that sounds like implosives, ejectives, clicks and labio-velars could be written more consistently, no matter the country.
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The meeting built on earlier work (there was one in Bamako, Mali in 1966) on harmonising transcriptions of African languages. The Niamey meeting recommended “the use of single letters for speech sounds rather than letter-sequences or diacritics.”
Why does this matter? Because if a language is hard to write (or has no stable writing system), it becomes harder to publish literature, harder to teach it, harder for voices in that language to claim space.
For a diasporan reading this: it means language is not only spoken at home or in village; it can also live in text, books, digital media — and the way it’s written influences how it is seen.
What the proposal looked like
The ARA (English version) listed 57 letters (both upper‐case and lower‐case) plus eight diacritics (acute, grave, circumflex, caron, macron, tilde, trema, superscript dot) and nine punctuation marks. Some letters were Latin letters with an underline. Some special letters (for example a hook-top “z”) could not even be accurately represented in Unicode at the time (and some still can’t).
Here are a few of the kinds of letters the proposal had: lowercase a, ɑ, b, ɓ, c, c̠, d, ḍ, ɖ, ɗ … uppercase A, Ɑ, B, Ɓ, C, C̠, D, Ḍ, Ɖ, Ɗ … and so on. These weren’t random: they tried to match specific speech sounds found across African languages.
They also recognised clicks, labio-velars (like “kp” and “gb”), implosives (ɓ, ɗ), retroflex stops (ʈ, ʖ) and others. The idea: if orthographies can express the actual sounds, then the literature in those languages becomes richer, more accurate.
What came next, and why it didn’t quite take off
In 1982 two linguists, Michael Mann and David Dalby, proposed a revision: 60 letters, all lower‐case (unicase), digraphs only for vowel length or double consonants. The idea: simplify, modernise, reflect the traditions of African languages rather than imposing upper/lower-case European conventions.
But when a follow-up conference was held in Niamey in 1984, this revision was not adopted as a continent-wide standard. Why? Because the continent is diverse, phonologies, colonial histories, orthographic traditions vary greatly.
What works for a Bantu language in East Africa might not fit a language in the Sahel. Also practical issues: printing, fonts, keyboard layouts, many proposed letters were not yet supported by Unicode or by printers/education systems in many countries.
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The result: while the ARA remains an important historical document, the dream of one continent-wide Latin alphabet for African languages faded. Instead, regional and language-specific orthographies continued, each with its own local logic.
Why this matters for our literary heritage
This might seem like a technical or linguistic tale. But it’s deeply literary, deeply human, and directly relevant to you as someone tracing African heritage, literature, identity. Here’s how:
- Language gives literature a home. A language without stable, accessible writing system is less likely to produce books, poetry, scholarship or digital content. By attempting better orthographies, the ARA was aiming to give African languages stronger homes in text — which means stronger literary futures.
- Writing is identity. When your language is written in your own way, with letters that reflect sounds you recognise, you feel: yes — this is mine. Diasporans searching for roots can find that in writing systems. The letters themselves carry culture.
- It’s about visibility. In the colonial era, many African languages were marginalised, treated as oral only, unsuited for print. Efforts like ARA signalled that African languages deserve print, deserve digital, deserve scholarship. When you see African languages in books, websites, social media, that’s part of the heritage.
- It shows continuity and change. The story of writing systems is not frozen in the past. New scripts, new orthographies, new digital fonts—these are happening now. The legacy of ARA is part of this continuum: even if one unified alphabet didn’t take off, the conversation continues.
- For diasporans, it opens doors. When you read African-language literature (or translations, or studies of African languages), knowing about writing systems helps you appreciate the full story — the how as well as the what. It invites you to explore books in African languages, or to think about publishing, or to consider language technology.
Wider context: Indigenous scripts & the digital age
Let’s step back a little and look at the broader landscape of African writing systems — because they enrich our sense of heritage.
Indigenous African scripts
Africa has invented its own writing systems, not just adopted Latin or Arabic scripts. Examples:
- N’Ko: created in 1949 by Solomana Kité for Manding languages (Mali, Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire). It is still used and taught.
- Tifinagh: used by Tuareg and other Berber peoples, with roots in ancient Libyco-Berber inscriptions.
- Scripts like Mwangwego (Malawi), Mandombe (DRC) are modern inventions to revitalise African languages and scripts.
- Historical systems: e.g., Ge’ez in Ethiopia/Eritrea, used from antiquity to today.
These scripts are part of our heritage — showing that African writing isn’t only about “we adopted Latin” or “we were illiterate.” There are centuries of script invention, adaptation, literacy.
Digital era, fonts & visibility
In the 21st century, the question of representation has shifted to the digital: fonts, keyboards, Unicode support. For example, companies like Google recognise this: they developed fonts that support African Latin alphabets so that African languages can appear correctly online.
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One blog gave the example of Google Fonts supporting African Latin characters because “languages are under-represented in digital communications when the fonts don’t support the letters and diacritics they need.”
For you, reading this in the diaspora, that means that when you browse African-language content online you may see special letters, diacritics, or, if the font is weak, awkward substitutions. Those letters aren’t decorative — they’re meaningful.
How you can engage with this heritage
What can you do, as someone in the diaspora, to tap into this literary heritage of language + writing? A few suggestions:
- Explore your heritage language’s orthography: If your heritage is Yoruba, Igbo, Akan, Wolof, Lingala, Shona, Arabic-Ajami or whatever — find out: what writing system does it use? What orthographic decisions were made? Are there special letters? What was the history of how it came to be written?
- Read literature in that language (or about it): This could be poetry, short stories, children’s books. The more you see the language in print (and now digital), the more you feel the living nature of the heritage. Notice how letters look, whether special characters are used, how the language handles sounds.
- Pay attention to how writing appears online: When African-language pages load, if you see weird boxes or missing letters, that’s a sign of font/Unicode issues. The struggle for writing support is ongoing. Being aware of this helps you appreciate the behind-the-scenes work of publishing and digital representation.
- Think about publishing, digital, language tech: Maybe you blog, maybe you publish, maybe you’re learning the heritage language. When you consider writing something in that language (or supporting someone else doing so), awareness of orthography, fonts, keyboards matters. It matters to visibility.
- Share the story: Many people don’t know about the ARA, or about the fact that African languages have unique orthographic and script traditions. Sharing this with your community (diasporan colleagues, heritage-language groups, schools) helps reclaim this part of the literary heritage.
Final thoughts
So, what does the African Reference Alphabet mean, and what does it not mean? It means a determined effort by Africans, for African languages, to shape how those languages appear in writing, and by extension, how they appear in literature, education and digital media. It means that writing is part of our literary heritage, not just the content of literature.
It doesn’t mean that one size fits all, nor that one unified system solved everything. It shows the complexity, the diversity, the uniqueness of each language, and the real challenges of standardising across a continent as rich and varied as ours.
For you, reading this in the diaspora: let this be more than an article. Let it be an invitation. An invitation to look more closely at your language, your letters, your writing system and through that, to build a bridge back to Africa, to the literature of your ancestors, to the living languages of the continent.
Because heritage isn’t only in what was written, it’s in how it was written, and how it is still being written.
Your heritage language, its letters, its orthography, its literature: they matter. They were never just afterthoughts. They are core to identity, to culture, to the future. Embrace them. Explore them. Write in them if you can. Because this is your literary heritage and it’s alive.
Learn How to Leverage Your Story through our Story To Asset Framework.
