Technological Adaptation and the Role of Social Media in the Proliferation of the Newly Created Minim Script from Burkina Faso
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56666/ahyu.v6i.163Keywords:
West African Scripts, Social Media, Script Development, Burkina Faso, Grassroots LiteracyAbstract
This paper seeks to present an emerging, academically yet undocumented alphabetic script invented by Mahamadi Ouédraogo (*1983), an Islamic scholar from Burkina Faso. This script, called minim biisi (“Letters of Knowledge”) by its creator shows some historical continuities both to other West African Scripts as well as to Islamic traditions of cryptography and secret alphabets, yet at the same time offers interesting insights into the creative endeavours of a script creator in the digital age. Drawing on my fieldwork with the inventor of the script and some of his closest adherents in Ouagadougou, this contribution traces how Ouédraogo resolved the challenge of digitalizing his script by employing open-access font-creating software, thus avoiding regulating authorities such as the Unicode Consortium, Burkinabè policymakers, and software developers. It presents the various fonts he has created for his script and the possible issues and difficulties posed by some characteristics of his script, which are cross-linguistically rarely encountered. Additionally, it seeks to document how social media and social networks such as Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp play a role in the proliferation of this script and how these proliferation efforts are received by digital audiences. Due to the internationality of social media, these audiences are not only found within Burkina Faso, but also in the diaspora, which is reflective of the creative and decisive roles diasporas have played and continue to play in the creation and proliferation of West African Scripts, especially N’ko.
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