Long before British missionaries introduced Latin-based alphabets to southwestern Nigeria, Yoruba people maintained sophisticated writing systems that colonial education systematically erased from popular memory.
Nigerian scholars and cultural preservationists are working to revive awareness of Aroko—a symbolic communication system using cowries, kola nuts, leaves, and other objects to convey complex messages—and Anjemi, the Yoruba adaptation of Arabic script used for centuries before colonization.
"The narrative that Yoruba had no written tradition before the 1840s is colonial mythology," explained Dr. Kola Tubosun, a linguist working on Yoruba language preservation in Lagos. "Aroko was a complete system of coded writing, and Anjemi manuscripts document our literary and scholarly traditions going back centuries."
Anjemi, also known as Yoruba Ajami, used modified Arabic script for everything from religious texts to commercial contracts, medical formulas, and poetry. The writing system flourished in trading cities across Yorubaland, where Muslim scholars and merchants created an extensive written corpus that largely disappeared under British colonial education.
The linguistic legacy remains embedded in everyday Yoruba. Words like alùbọ́sà (onion, from Arabic al-basal), àlàáfíà (peace, from al-afiya), àdúrà (prayer, from du'a), and wààsí (sermon, from wa'z) reveal centuries of Arabic-language scholarship in Yoruba communities.
"Notice how we often add 'a' or 'o' sounds at the end," noted Tubosun. "That's our phonetic system adapting Arabic words. These aren't borrowings—they're evidence of deep integration between Anjemi literacy and Yoruba language."
Digital technology now offers new opportunities to preserve these scripts. Several Nigerian tech initiatives are working to create fonts, digitize manuscripts, and develop educational resources for Aroko and Anjemi, alongside the later —a syllabary created in the early 20th century.
