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The N'ko Alphabet as a Vehicle of Indigenist Historiography1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 May 2014

Dianne White Oyler
Dianne White Oyler*
Affiliation:
Minot State University
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Extract

The N'ko alphabet made its first appearance in Bingerville, Côte d'Ivoire, on 14 April 1949? The invention of Souleymane Kanté of Kankan, Republic of Guinea, this alphabet constituted an attempt to provide a truly indigenous written form for Mande languages. Since its invention, a grassroots movement promoting literacy in the N'ko alphabet has spread across West Africa from the Gambia to Nigeria. A significant number of the speakers of Mande languages in Francophone as well as Anglophone West Africa have learned the N'ko alphabet, even though their governments use French or English as official languages and Muslim Mande-speaking religious leaders use Arabic in prayers and for study and teaching. The number of those who are literate in N'ko has increased without government intervention or support during the colonial and independence periods and without official support from the Islamic religious community. N'ko spread at the grassroots level because it met practical needs and enabled speakers of Mande languages to take pride in their cultural heritage. Informants from Kankan and its vicinity, one small part of the large region of N'ko's spread, said that their motivation to learn the alphabet was due to pride in their culture.

Here I examine the emergence of the N'ko alphabet as an indigenously created writing system currently used by speakers of Mande languages in the Republic of Guinea and in other countries across West Africa; the reasons behind the alphabet's creation and the process by which the alphabet evolved; seeks briefly to identify the process by which the alphabet was disseminated under the guidance of its creator in a grassroots movement fueled by individual initiative, I offer some indications as to the depth and breath of N'ko literacy within the Mande-speaking community. Finally, it discusses the motivation for learning the N'ko alphabet and the problems it poses for one local community.

Type
Research Article
Information
History in Africa , Volume 24 , January 1997 , pp. 239 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © African Studies Association 1997

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Footnotes

1.

This paper is based on the research in Kankan, Republic of Guinea in 1992-1993 and 1994, with the assistance of a Fulbright Dissertation Research Scholarship for 1992-93 and a West African Research Association Fellowship for the summer of 1994.

References

Notes

2. According to informants, this is the date that has been officially assigned to the invention. In reality, the date reflects the complicated process by which the alphabet was created.

3. Souleymane Kanté was born in 1922 in Soumankoyin-Kölönin about thirteen kilometers from Kankan, the son of a famous Quranic school teacher, Amara Kanté. When Souleymane finished his Qur'anic school education, he could read and write Arabic and translate Islamic texts. After his father's death in 1941, Kanté went to the Côte d'Ivoire to make his fortune. There he learned languages, read extensively, and became known as a self-taught scholar.

4. My research was centered on the official dissemination site for the alphabet, the city of Kankan, in the predominantly Muslim, Mande-speaking region of Haute-Guinée, Republic of Guinea.

5. Dalby, David, “Further Indigenous Scripts of West Africa: Manding, Wolof, and Fula Alphabets and Yoruba ‘Holy’ Writing,” African Language Studies, 10 (1969), 162–65.Google Scholar

6. Doualamou, Germain, Langues Guinéennes et education (Paris, 1980).Google Scholar

7. Personal communication with Missionaries from the Christian Missionary Alliance (CMA) and with SIM missionaries. Using the software supplied to him by SIM, missionary Jeff Morton created a computer program to write in the N'ko alphabet.

8. Interviews are numbered and, to protect the identity of the informant or informants, only present the interview number, date, and location. Interviews were done randomly as informants were available, or as I was able to make arrangements to travel to the town or country when the informants were not close to the Kankan area. I have in my possession the audio tapes in Maninka and the written translations in French.

9. L'Association pour l'Impulsion et la Coordination des Recherches sur l'Alphabet N'ko.

10. While not told on the grand scale of the Sundiata epic, the “Souleymane Kanté Story” follows oral tradition by recording his heroic deeds in verse which have been preserved by recording them in N'ko.

11. Group Interview 46,19 June 1993, Kankan; and group interview 08, 8 March 1993, Karifamoriah.

12. Interview 70, 18 July 1993, Conakry; in interview 22, 8 April 1993, Kankan, the informant reported that the Lebanese journalist had traveled to several countries and was visiting his brothers in Bingerville.

13. Interview 09, 11 March 1993, Kankan; and interview 08, 8 March 1993, Karifamoriah.

14. Interview 59, 28 June 1993, Kankan. This story is confirmed in the accounts from the maternal family in group interview 17, 5 April 1993, Balandou.

15. Interview 59, 28 June 1993, Kankan; interview 22, 9 April 1993, Kankan; interview 32, 8 May 1993, Kankan; interview 35, 11 May 1993, Kankan; interview 09, 11 March 1993, Kankan; and interview 59, 28 June 1993, Kankan.

16. Interview 35, 11 May 1993, Kankan.

17. Interview 26, 26 April 1993, Soumankoyin-Kölönin; group interview 17, 5 April 1993, Balandou.

18. Group interview 18, 5 April 1993, Balandou.

19. Group interview 45, 17 June 1993, Kankan.

20. Interview 09, 11 March 1993, Kankan; interview 35, 11 May 1993, Kankan; and interview 38, 13 May 1993, Bankalan.

21. Group interview 18, 5 April 1993, Balandou.

22. Interview 51, 22 June 1993, Djankana.

23. Interview 49, 20 June 1993, Kankan; and interview 59, 28 June 1993, Kankan.

24. Group interview 27, 26 April 1993, Soumankoyin-Kölönin.

25. Interview 62, 14 July 1993, Conakry.

26. Group interview 08, 8 March 1993, Karifamoriah.

27. Interview 59, 28 June 1993, Kankan.

28. Interview 59, 28 June 1993, Kankan.

29. Interview 62, 14 July 1993, in Conakry; and Interview 70, 18 July 1993, Conakry.

30. Interview 32, 8 May 1993 Kankan. The writer employs diacritical marks to indicate change in tonality.

31. Interview 62, 14 July 1993, Conakry; interview 70, 18 July 1993, Conakry; and interview 09, 11 March 1993, Kankan. Souleymane Kanté's experiments, reinforced by his acquisition of Arabic literacy as an Islamic scholar, were responsible for selecting this right-to-left orientation.

32. Interview 70, 8 July 1993, Conakry; Niane, Djibril Tamsir, Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali, trans. Picket, G.D., (Hong Kong, 1989), 87.Google Scholar

33. Formal publication could have been catastrophic in colonial West Africa. Africans were encouraged to take up the European civilizing mission and discouraged from participating in indigenous cultural development. Moreover, the French were extremely wary of a possible Muslim-initiated African resistance movement that could extend across their heavily Muslim colonies of West Africa. Brenner, Louis, Muslim Identity and Social Change in Sub-Saharan Africa (Bloomington, 1993), 76.Google Scholar

34. One of Souleymane Kanté's sons identified one of the informants in interview 84 as being Kanté's first student. Interview 62, 14 July 1993, Conakry; and in group interview 84, 15 August 1994, Abidjan, the informant named above claimed to be Kanté's first student.

35. Interview 59, 28 June 1993, Kankan.

36. According to the informants in group interview 08, 8 March 1993, Karifamoriah, at the time only Maninka-speaking long distance traders were merchants in Abidjan. When the exploitation of the Sefadou diamond mines in Sierra Leone began, many of these merchants carried the ability to write and teach N'ko with them into the new marketplace.

37. Interview 09, 11 March 1993 Kankan.

38. Interview 82,10 August 1994, Conakry.

39. Interview 21, 8 April 1993, Kankan.

40. Interview 68, 17 July 1993, Conakry, and interview 69, 18 July 1993, Conakry.

41. Guiné's ICRA-NK'O executive branch president reports that there are branches in Burkina Faso, Côte d'Ivoire, the Gambia, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, and Togo, as well as in Cairo and Mecca.

42. Interview 62, 14 July 1993, Conakry; interview 09, 11 March 1993, Kankan; and interview 70, 18 July 1993, Conakry.

43. Interview 35, 11 May 1993, Kankan.

44. I have not personally seen all the titles listed. Only the titles that are important for the entire Mande-speaking world have found their way into publication. Because the source of publication is in Cairo and because publishers only do limited runs, published texts are scarce. In a personal conversation with me, Fodé Baba Condé told me that he saw many of the manuscripts in the personal libraries of his informants as he conducted research for his senior thesis.

45. David Conrad has graciously provided me with a copy of the English translation of Kanté's history of the Manding for 4000 years originally written in N'ko.

46. Personal conversations with David Conrad.

47. See below for a sample of Mande history written in N'ko.

48. Interview 49, 20 June 1993, interview 50, 21 June 21, 1993, interview 56, 24 June 24, 1993, Kankan and interview 62, 14 July 1993, Conakry.

49. Interview 29, 3 May 1993, Kankan, interview 49, 20 June 1993, Kankan, and interview 68, 17 July 1993, Conakry.

50. Interview 82, 10 August 1994, Conakry.

51. Interview 05, 3 March 1993, Kankan.

52. This may be comparable to the period of Protestant Reformation in Western Europe, when religious texts were translated from the Latin into the vernacular languages so that people could read the Bible for themselves.

53. Marks, Shula and Trapido, Stanley, “The Politics of Race, Class, and Nationalism” in The Politics of Race, Class, and Nationalism (London, 1987), 1–70.Google Scholar

54. Interview 15, 20 March 1993, Kankan.

55. Interview 62, 14 July 1993, Conakry.