What could sub-Saharan African lit look like a century from now?

In English? Nope.

In any Indo-European or Afro-Asiatic language? Heh, no.

Even in Roman or Arabic script? Probably not, if the developers of N’Ko and Mandombe have something to write about it.

N’Ko, first launched in 1949, is a writing system created by Solomana Kante of Guinea for the Mande languages (although initially for his own Maninka). With its spread and promotion in Mande-speaking regions (it has spread into neighboring Mali and Cote d’Ivoire’s own Mande-speaking areas, even though they are to be found throughout West Africa), it has gained increasing recognition and attention within academic circles, and has received sponsorship from the ISO to UNESCO’s Initiative B@bel; it was approved this year for Unicode 5.0. However, it faces a challenge at home from the French (and other Indo-European) language and Roman alphabet, which are the rule of the day in West Africa (even though you have Arabic script as an alternative), and dominate the communications of West Africa with the world.

Further southeast of N’Ko’s home, you have Mandombe, a syllabary invented by Wabeladio Payi of Bas-Congo province (now Kongo central as of July 30, when the new constitution is officially supposed to kick in), Democratic Republic of the Congo (fmr. Zaire), in 1978. It’s being promoted by the demographically-influential Kimbanguist Church (its also being taught in the primary-to-post-secondary schools owned by the church) and by the 500-or-so professors at the Center for Negro-African Script (CENA) in Kinshasa. Currently, it has been transcribed to the 4 national languages of the DRC – KiSwahili, Lingala, Tshiluba, and KiKongo – and an ongoing effort is underway to transcribe it to other (most likely Bantu) languages. There are no calls for Unicode approval at the moment, and remarks by linguists (particularly software linguists) on the script have so far been negative concerning the structure of the script.