In 1961, El Hadji Assane Faye was inspired by listening to a radio speech by the president of newly independent … Continue reading Gearing up for Garay

I have never been to Liberia.  I tried to get there once, in 2009, for the Liberian Studies Association conference … Continue reading Encountering the Vai script

In previous posts I have discussed the process of encoding West African scripts into the Unicode standard.  The question that … Continue reading Of browsers, keyboards, and fonts, with a focus on certain West African scripts

Back in the 1980’s, as the story goes, two Fulani brothers growing up in Guinea took it upon themselves to … Continue reading The Outlook for ADLaM

A fair amount of source material in the Kikakui script of the Mende language of Sierra Leone has just been … Continue reading Minding Mende

One of the more curious African scripts around is one that I was introduced to by Joe Lauer, a librarian … Continue reading A close look at N’ko

For those interested in learning more about the history and use of the Kpelle language and script, there are a … Continue reading Paths to understanding Kpelle

I write this in memory of Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, who called himself “Cheikh Nadro”, or “he who does not forget”. … Continue reading An Ivorian innovation: the Bété script

My memories of visiting Foumban, Cameroon in 2006 are still fairly vivid after a twelve-year absence.  The palace with a … Continue reading Ah, Foumban…

The tale of how the Bassa Vah script came to be encoded into the Unicode Standard winds through Syracuse, Germany, … Continue reading Encoding the Bassa Vah script of Liberia