Zeinabu Kumanco, Pular Poet and Museum Curator in Labe, Republic of GuineaDaramani Tarawele, self-published Malian author with more than 100 Bamanankan titles
Halima Sarmey wrote the history of Niger in HausaMamou Rural Radio Station local language broadcasters and ALMA coordinatorYoussouf Haidara, Songhai language author and editor, head of educational reform, Ministry of Education, Bamako, Mali
The African Language Materials Archive, or ALMA, is a multi-partner project focusing on the promotion and documentation of literature and literacy in the languages of Africa. It further serves to assist African language authors and publishers in publicizing and distributing their work.
ALMA's Websites
ALMA has two websites. At our original site, a section of the Digital Library for International Research, you can find African language literary documents. This, our complementary site, contains complementary materials including African language video recordings, documentary video, translation work, and bibliographies, space for which is provided by the MATRIX Project of Michigan State University.
Background
In October 2000, UNESCO established a contract with the Council of American Overseas Research Centers (CAORC) for the feasibility phase of the Senegambian portion of the African Language Material Archive (ALMA). CAORC subcontracted with the West African Research Association (WARA) to facilitate the necessary work. ALMA is an initiative that aims to increase dissemination of and access to materials published in indigenous African languages, thereby serving as a vehicle for education and literacy in Africa, and for African language study in the diaspora. ALMA involves the identification, collection, and digitization of published materials and their subsequent production in both CD-ROM and web formats. The website serves as a resource demonstrating the depth and breadth of publishing in African languages, and is designed to facilitate and publicize the work of African authors and publishers. Senegal and Gambia were chosen for the ALMA pilot since they share several prominent languages – Wolof, Pulaar, and Mandinka – in which publication has been plentiful. Since then, the project has been expanded and now presents materials from various West African countries as well as from eastern and southern African countries. ALMA is part of the CAORC-sponsored American Overseas Digital Library, which aims to make inaccessible material available in electronic form to all audiences.
Title VI National Resource Centers' contributions to ALMA
In recent years, the ALMA project has benefited greatly from annual contributions made by Title VI National Resources Centers.
The following Title VI Centers remain generous supporters of ALMA and make ALMA's work possible
Charles L. Riley is the Catalog Librarian for African Languages at Yale University Library. He is continuously working on improving technical standards, script encodings, and guidance available for cataloging in diverse African languages, from Amharic to Zulu. He recently became independent in constructing personal name records to add to the Library of Congress Name Authority File and is co-directing, with Youn Noh, a project to remediate bibliographic descriptions that otherwise rely on collective language codes in the Yale catalog. He serves as Interim Manager of ALMA.
James Essegbey, University of Florida
James Essegbey is Professor of African languages and linguistics at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a field linguist who specializes in Ghanaian-Kwa languages, especially Ewe (Gbe), Akan, Nyangbo and Animere (Ghana-Togo-Mountain (GTM)), and Dwang (Guang), Surinamese creoles and Englishes of African descent. He works primarily on semantic typology, lexical semantics, syntax-semantics interface, and documentary linguistics. Essegbey is interested in the difference between the endangerment situations in Africa compared to the Americas and Europe, and the contribution of endangered languages to linguistic theorizing. He conducts research using verbal and non-verbal elicitation tools, experimentation as well as non-elicited spontaneously produced language data recorded in multi-media formats and processed with state-of-the-art technological tools. For the past 22 years, Essegbey has been conducting research on the GTM family of languages which are threatened by Ewe and Akan. He is co-editor of the Studies in African Linguistics journal and President of the Association of Contemporary African Linguistics.
Korku Karsah, NativeWords
Korku Karsah is a software engineer and language-technology practitioner focused on the digital preservation, ethical use, and accessibility of African languages. His work sits at the intersection of technology, linguistics, and community-centered data stewardship.
He is the founder of NativeWords, a free and openly accessible multilingual dictionary and language infrastructure project dedicated to documenting African languages—beginning with Ghanaian languages including Twi, Ga, and Ewe—through structured lexical data, IPA transcription, example usage, and culturally grounded definitions. The project emphasizes community contribution, responsible data governance, and long-term preservation, while enabling modern educational and research use cases. NativeWords works in collaboration with academic institutions, language educators, and diaspora communities to ensure authenticity and cultural accuracy in language documentation.
Korku brings deep experience in software architecture, data modeling, and platform development, with a strong focus on building reliable, scalable systems for language data, including relational and graph-based representations of linguistic relationships. His technical background enables him to bridge archival language materials with contemporary digital access models, without compromising ethical standards or community ownership.
Phiwokuhle Mnyandu, Howard University
Dr. Phiwokuhle Mnyandu was born in South Africa. He is the currently the assistant director of the Center for African Studies at Howard University where he is also teaches courses on Africa. He is an expert on China-Africa relations, focusing on the intersection of academic diplomacy, soft power, and great power competition. His book, South Africa-China Relations: Between Aspiration and Reality in a New Global Order, was the first China-South Africa relations written by a single author. He is currently working on a book looking at lives of African students in China.
Phiwo also researches the growth of African languages in China and the United States, focusing on their intersection with art and technology. He is currently looking at how African languages are becoming engines of economic growth and spaces of strategic power competition. He authored 502 Zulu Verbs, the first ever conjugation manual for the Zulu language, and developed the Zulu Ordinal Prefix System (ZOPS), the only one in existence for the language.
Phiwo consults industry and governments on culture and geostrategy. He is also the Associate convener for the International Model African Union. He received his MA from Warwick University and PhD from Howard University.
You can read more about Phiwo’s work and current projects here.
Donald Z. Osborn, Bisharat
Donald Z. Osborn has professional and research interest in the intersections of African languages, information technology, and rural development. He has focused on facilitating use of African languages on computers and the internet through the Bisharat! initiative, funded projects, conferences, and online fora and content. Publications include A Fulfulde (Maasina)-English-French Lexicon (MSU Press, 1993) and African Languages in a Digital Age (IDRC/HSRC, 2009).
Mich-Seth Owusu, Freelance Consultant
Mich-Seth Owusu is a dedicated problem solver and innovation leader with an extensive background in implementing knowledge-sharing projects for development programs across Africa. Currently serving as the Community Lead for Ghana Natural Language Processing (Ghana NLP), he manages a community of over 500 NLP enthusiasts and leads capacity-building initiatives to advance local-led solutions to NLP problems. Most notably, he has championed the accessibility of African linguistic resources by creating and publishing over 1,000 open-access datasets, significantly supporting the broader AI community on the continent. His commitment to indigenous languages is further reflected in his role as the Founder of Kasanoma, an open-source initiative that has developed offline Text-To-Speech models for languages in Ghana, Malawi, and Mozambique. Mich has extensive experience in development and humanitarian cooperation, having worked with organisations such as the African Union and the United Nations World
Food Programme.
Jackson Weako, Liberia Endangered Language Project
Jackson Weako, PhD, is a Liberian computational scientist, language advocate, and founder of the Liberian Language Institute (LLI). He leads national and international efforts to document, digitize, and revitalize Liberia’s sixteen Indigenous languages through research, data creation, and community-based education. His work bridges language preservation, artificial intelligence, and inclusive digital development, including the creation of Liberian language datasets, keyboards, and culturally grounded language-learning programs. Jackson has collaborated with academic and research institutions in Africa, Europe, and the United States and is committed to ensuring that under-resourced languages are represented in global knowledge systems. His work focuses on language equity, access, and sustainability in the digital age.
Leo Zulu, Michigan State University, ex officio
Leo Charkes Zulu (ex officio) is the Director of the African Studies Center and Professor of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University, where he leads interdisciplinary research and partnerships focused on Africa. A scholar of political ecology, natural resources governance, climate change adaptation, and rural livelihoods, he has worked extensively across Sub-Saharan Africa on community-based forest management, sustainable agriculture, clean energy transitions, and landscape restoration and climate change adaptation in Least Developed Countries. His work integrates rigorous spatial analysis with grounded, community-engaged research aimed at strengthening equity, resilience, and sustainable development.
Dr. Zulu has published widely, advised governments and international organizations, and supported capacity-building initiatives through long-standing collaborations with African universities and research networks. In his ex officio role on the ALMA Board, he
brings deep expertise in Africa-focused scholarship, institutional partnership development, and inclusive, impact-oriented program leadership.
Former Advisory Board Members
Ousseina Alidou, Rutgers University
Director of African Languages & Literatures in the Department of Africana Studies, Alidou works on women's literature in the languages of Niger and is an activist promoting the use of African languages in African education systems. Her current research interests include African women's literary and expressive cultures, comparative women's narratives (Afro-Islamic and Francophone Experience), and African Muslim women and the politics of agency and cultural production.
Issa Diallo, University of Ouagadougou
Professor Diallo is the Director of the National Commission of the Fulfulde language of Burkina Faso, and holds a faculty position in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Ouagadougou. He has done extensive research on literacy, establishing an experimental literacy program for pastoralists. His work also focuses on language contact.
John Hutchison, ALMA Director Emeritus, Boston University
Emeritus director of ALMA since 2025, Hutchison worked as African Language Coordinator at Boston U. from 1980 until 2007. As ALMA Coordinator he has worked to expand ALMA in new directions. He is now Associate Professor Emeritus of African Languages & Linguistics. He works principally in West Africa on the cultural and linguistic reform of education systems and on the promotion of the local language publishing industry there.
Zoliswa O. Mali
Zoliswa Mali earned her PhD in second language acquisition focusing on linguistics and technology at the University of Iowa. She is especially interested in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and computer–mediated communication (CMC). She earned a MA (cum laude) in African languages (morphology and syntax) from the University of Stellenbosch, and a BA (Honors) from the University of Fort Hare, South Africa. She also obtained a MA in linguistics at the University of Iowa. Before coming to the United States, she had worked at The University of Fort Hare as a lecturer for isiXhosa linguistics and literature. She founded the isiZulu Program, which she taught for at The University of Iowa from 2000 to 2006, and was later part of the formulation of an autonomous language learning network (ALLNet) at The University of Iowa. Dr Zoli Mali has also been an instructor of isiZulu for intensive summer language programs, at Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind., University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA), as well as for the University of Florida. She joined Boston University in 2007 as Clinical Assistant Professor (at the School of Education) and Coordinator of Southern African Languages (CAS) and is now a senior lecturer at CAS, in African Studies. She also is the Director of the African Language Program, in the African Studies Center, at the Pardee School of Global Studies, at Boston University. She is also the immediate past President of ALTA (the African Language Teachers Association in USA).
Henriette Ouedraogo Ilboudo, Radio Rurale, Ouagadougou
Director of the Rural Radio Services of the national radio station in Ouagadougou, Ilboudo is an activist for women and for local languages. She is the founding editor of a women’s newspaper in Moore.
Kassim Kone, State University of New York-Cortland
Tenured Associate Professor of Anthropology at the State University of New York at Cortland, Kone completed his PhD at Indiana University on the role of the proverb in Bamana society in Mali under Michael Jackson. He is a renowned scholar of Mande studies and Vice-President of MANSA.
Fallou Ngom, Boston University
He became Associate Professor of Anthropology at Boston U. in 2008. He works in sociolinguistics and literacy. Fluent in a number of West African languages, Professor Ngom is currently conducting comparative research on Ajami literatures of several Muslim ethnic groups of the Senegambian region. He also works in Forensic Linguistics with a focus on refugees and asylum seekers from West Africa. This new field uses Language Analysis as a way of determining the accurate national origin of some asylum seekers in many Western countries.
Brian Nowak 1977-2021
Brian Nowak was an independent consultant and educator from the suburbs of New York City. As an undergraduate, he studied in Niger with a Boston University study abroad program for a year and a half, focusing on the social aspects of bilingual education, formal and informal education, and the possession ceremonies of the Hausa and Zarma/Songhai. Upon returning to the States for graduate school, he taught for 5 years in New York City public schools, piloting an inclusive classroom program, a multi-cultural music program, and an after-school music therapy class in a Pre-K to 6 school in Brooklyn. He moved to Niger in 2005 where he lived in an adobe off-grid home, travelling extensively in rural Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo and Northern Ghana.
With a background in anthropology and education, Brian has consulted for international humanitarian organizations and academics and was the programs director of American NGO Rain for the Sahel and Sahara. He previously taught 3 courses for the Boston University study abroad program, consulted for the West Africa Research Association conference in Niamey as musical program organizer, led expeditions for music label Sublime Frequencies, and is participating in the planning of the Niger Heritage museum project for Niamey and Agadez in Niger led by Paul Serano. Brian initiated and was the main contributor for the Language of African Music for the ALMA website. Other interests included collecting traditional West African music, studying pastoral lifestyles, animist practices, possession music, and intra-cultural differences.
Please read more about his amazing life here: Brian Nowak in Memoriam
Website Credits
The ALMA Project organizers would like to acknowledge here the financial support from the group of the Title VI Africa National Resource Centers who have kindly agreed to contribute funds to support the ongoing development of the African Language Materials Archive.
John Hutchison, ALMA Emeritus Director
Brian Nowak, ALMA Former Board Member and Language of African Music Producer
West African Research Association
MATRIX Center for Digital Humanities & Social Sciences
Charles L. Riley is the Catalog Librarian for African Languages at Yale University Library. He is continuously working on improving technical standards, script encodings, and guidance available for cataloging in diverse African languages, from Amharic to Zulu. He recently became independent in constructing personal name records to add to the Library of Congress Name Authority File and is co-directing, with Youn Noh, a project to remediate bibliographic descriptions that otherwise rely on collective language codes in the Yale catalog. He serves as Interim Manager of ALMA.
James Essegbey is Professor of African languages and linguistics at the University of Florida, Gainesville. He is a field linguist who specializes in Ghanaian-Kwa languages, especially Ewe (Gbe), Akan, Nyangbo and Animere (Ghana-Togo-Mountain (GTM)), and Dwang (Guang), Surinamese creoles and Englishes of African descent. He works primarily on semantic typology, lexical semantics, syntax-semantics interface, and documentary linguistics. Essegbey is interested in the difference between the endangerment situations in Africa compared to the Americas and Europe, and the contribution of endangered languages to linguistic theorizing. He conducts research using verbal and non-verbal elicitation tools, experimentation as well as non-elicited spontaneously produced language data recorded in multi-media formats and processed with state-of-the-art technological tools. For the past 22 years, Essegbey has been conducting research on the GTM family of languages which are threatened by Ewe and Akan. He is co-editor of the Studies in African Linguistics journal and President of the Association of Contemporary African Linguistics.
Korku Karsah is a software engineer and language-technology practitioner focused on the digital preservation, ethical use, and accessibility of African languages. His work sits at the intersection of technology, linguistics, and community-centered data stewardship.
Dr. Phiwokuhle Mnyandu was born in South Africa. He is the currently the assistant director of the Center for African Studies at Howard University where he is also teaches courses on Africa. He is an expert on China-Africa relations, focusing on the intersection of academic diplomacy, soft power, and great power competition. His book, South Africa-China Relations: Between Aspiration and Reality in a New Global Order, was the first China-South Africa relations written by a single author. He is currently working on a book looking at lives of African students in China.
Mich-Seth Owusu is a dedicated problem solver and innovation leader with an extensive background in implementing knowledge-sharing projects for development programs across Africa. Currently serving as the Community Lead for Ghana Natural Language Processing (Ghana NLP), he manages a community of over 500 NLP enthusiasts and leads capacity-building initiatives to advance local-led solutions to NLP problems. Most notably, he has championed the accessibility of African linguistic resources by creating and publishing over 1,000 open-access datasets, significantly supporting the broader AI community on the continent. His commitment to indigenous languages is further reflected in his role as the Founder of Kasanoma, an open-source initiative that has developed offline Text-To-Speech models for languages in Ghana, Malawi, and Mozambique. Mich has extensive experience in development and humanitarian cooperation, having worked with organisations such as the African Union and the United Nations World
Food Programme.
Jackson Weako, PhD, is a Liberian computational scientist, language advocate, and founder of the Liberian Language Institute (LLI). He leads national and international efforts to document, digitize, and revitalize Liberia’s sixteen Indigenous languages through research, data creation, and community-based education. His work bridges language preservation, artificial intelligence, and inclusive digital development, including the creation of Liberian language datasets, keyboards, and culturally grounded language-learning programs. Jackson has collaborated with academic and research institutions in Africa, Europe, and the United States and is committed to ensuring that under-resourced languages are represented in global knowledge systems. His work focuses on language equity, access, and sustainability in the digital age.
Leo Charkes Zulu (ex officio) is the Director of the African Studies Center and Professor of Geography, Environment, and Spatial Sciences at Michigan State University, where he leads interdisciplinary research and partnerships focused on Africa. A scholar of political ecology, natural resources governance, climate change adaptation, and rural livelihoods, he has worked extensively across Sub-Saharan Africa on community-based forest management, sustainable agriculture, clean energy transitions, and landscape restoration and climate change adaptation in Least Developed Countries. His work integrates rigorous spatial analysis with grounded, community-engaged research aimed at strengthening equity, resilience, and sustainable development.
