Nolence Mwangwego

Nolence Mwangwego is a Malawian linguist who has invented a writing system mean for writing Malawian native languages. The system was invented in 1979. Nolence Mwangwego has published a book written in Chichewa thanks to his invention. The inventor asserts that his writing system is more economical than the Latin alphabet when writing down Malawian languages. Thus, the word “Malawi” which is currently written with 6 letters with the Latin alphabet is written with 3 symbols which stand for the 3 syllables: Ma-la-wi. The word “Mankhwala” which is written with 9 letters of the Latin alphabet is written with 3 symbols which stand for the 3 syllables: ma-nkhwa-la. 

According to Nolence Mwangwego, this writing system should bring cultural independence and identity to Malawians who will use it to innovate and invent in their native language. 

To compare, people who use the following writing systems: Hebrew, Hindi, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Greek, just to mention a few, are proud of them as they reflect their cultures and their countries are far more developed than Malawi [and the vast majority of Africans States]. In short, this script should help Malawians in decolonizing their mind in order to change their mind set which makes them believe that anything worth learning or using should come from the Western World. They will also learn to use this script to manage and exploit Malawi’s abundant natural resources to develop the country further.

Source: http://www.kumatoo.com