Dr Konrad Tuchscherer, St John?s University, New York
2005 award - major research project
£ 54,800 for 15 months.

At the Bamum Palace Archives ? a small dusty room
inside the walls of the palace ? are held over 7000
documents, many of which pre-date the arrival of the
first Europeans in 1902. These documents are written
in African languages and transcribed in an indigenous
African writing system ? the Bamum script of the
Cameroon Grassfields.

One book chronicles, from the Bamum perspective, the
arrival of the first German military officer and
trader. Other books are devoted to the founding of the
kingdom, to an invented Bamum religion (fusing
Christianity, Islam, and traditional beliefs), to
traditional medicine, and even to the art of love.
Many leading families in Foumban, the capital of the
Bamum Kingdom, also have important documents. One
family?s collection includes early Bamum script on
banana leaves. Another collection is particularly
important, containing thousands of documents on family
and kingdom history, transcripts of speeches given by
the Bamum King in the early twentieth century,
documents dealing with medicine, commentaries on Islam
and magic, and ? perhaps of greatest interest ? many
beautiful maps of the Bamum Kingdom with place names
and geographic features identified in the indigenous
Bamum script.

The above documents are all endangered. The documents
in the one-room Bamum Palace Archives, for the most
part, suffer less from the ravages of environmental
destruction than those in private collections, but the
environmental damage is still immense. Another threat
to documents is theft and sale, fuelled by the
international trade in Bamum art and antiquities.

The goal of this project, then, is to transfer the
most significant privately owned Bamum script document
collections to a rehabilitated Bamum Palace Archives.
Microfilm or digital copies of collections ? those in
both private hands and in the Bamum Palace Archives ?
will be deposited in the library archives of the
University of Dschang, which is the nearest
university, to be made freely accessible for
researchers in Cameroon. The outcome will be saving
for future generations the most significant
pre-industrial and non-western holding of indigenous
script manuscripts in all of sub-Saharan Africa.

In the early twentieth century the Bagam people of
Cameroon employed a pre-modern alphabet for
record-keeping, correspondence, and for farming
calendars. Today not a single document exists in
Cameroon in the Bagam script, the alphabet having
disappeared without a trace. The only known example of
the Bagam script is held in the Haddon Library of
Cambridge University, deposited by a British military
officer who served in Cameroon in the First World War.
Immediate action is necessary if Bamum is not to
suffer a similar fate.

http://www.bl.uk/about/policies/endangeredarch/tuchscherer.html

In Cismaaniya or (Osmaniya} standing "Somali writing."

The man who devised up the script writing his name in Osmaniya script (Cismaan Yuusuf Keenadiid).

'Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika' by Safi Mafundikwa

Synopsis:

African alphabets have a rich cultural and artistic history. Sadly, their story is little known both within and outside of Africa. The beautifully designed and illustrated book 'Afrikan Alphabets: The Story of Writing in Afrika' sets the record straight in a way that is easily accessible to everyone. Written by Saki Mafundikwa, graphic designer and founder of Zimbabwe Institute of Vigital Arts (ZIVA), the book documents the rich alphabets and visual symbols of Africa and reveals the continent's valuable contributions to the history of visual communication.

For the last twenty years, Saki Mafundikwa periodically researched and travelled across the African continent and Diaspora to present an exceptional account of the alphabets history and usage, including entertaining anecdotes and a wealth of highly graphical and attractive illustrations. Among the alphabets that are analyzed and illustrated are scripts such as Mende, Vai, Nsibidi, Bamum, Tifinagh; and the Somali and Ethiopian scripts. Other alphabets, syllabaries, paintings, pictographs, ideographs, and symbols are also compared and contrasted.

Few people realize that African societies were writing before the arrival of Europeans, in fact at the time Europeans 'discovered' the Vai script of Liberia in the early 19th century, literacy was more widespread among the Vai people than in certain parts of America and Britain. This reality is completely at odds with the popular 'Dark Continent' theory.

Mr. Mafundikwa explains, "The hope is that Africa is seen in a different light, that the prejudices of the past are finally laid to rest in the trash can of history." He adds, "The story of writing in Africa illustrates humanity s desire to create ways of record-keeping and communication. Sadly, most people do not know of Africa s achievements and contributions to history and to humanity. The words 'civilization' and 'writing', to many, are synonymous with 'Westernization'. This informative book will be of interest to anyone fascinated with African culture and art. The author adds, "For most of us Afrikans, history was not necessarily OUR story. My book is an attempt at telling a small part of it."

Source:
http://www.education.icograda.net/web/news-display.shtml?pfl=ien/news-single-past.param&op2.rf1=251