adlam

Adlam is a writing system created for the Fulani languages of West Africa. It was designed in 1989 by two brothers, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Diallo, in Guinea to provide a native script that could express Fulani phonology alongside or beyond Latin and Arabic scripts. Adlam consists of its own set of characters representing consonants and vowels and is used to write Fulani varieties such as Pulaar, Fula, and Fulfulde. The script has seen regional adoption in countries where Fulani communities are present, including Guinea, The Gambia, Senegal, Mali, Niger, and Nigeria, and it is also used by diaspora communities in Europe and North America. In education, publishing, journalism, and digital media, Adlam serves as a community literacy tool and cultural marker.

Adlam has gained formal recognition through its encoding in the Unicode Standard, which enables consistent digital rendering across fonts and platforms. A range of fonts and input methods supports writing Adlam on computers and mobile devices. The Script is maintained by community-led initiatives and language advocates who publish learning materials, dictionaries, and online resources, to promote literacy in Fulani languages and to preserve linguistic diversity in the region.