Mali CMC Makes N’ko Newspaper’s Circulation Soar
12-01-2005 (Paris)
Previous, handwritten version of “Sindjiya”, local Koutiala paper in the N’ko alphabet
© UNESCO
Before the community multimedia centre (CMC) opened in Koutiala, Mali’s second largest industrial town, the only local paper in the N’ko alphabet was painstakingly written out by hand. Just 20 copies of each issue of the Bambara-language “Sindjiya” were made.
When the CMC opened its doors in 2002, N’ko software made it possible to produce the paper electronically and Sindjiya was then printed out on A4 paper, with 500 stapled photocopies produced and circulated in the town each month. Today, after training in desktop publishing at the CMC for Sindjiya staff, the paper appears as a broadsheet and all 1000 copies are reserved and paid for in advance.
“We can’t meet the full demand because printing costs are too high if we go over 1000 copies”, explained CMC manager Malamine Sylla. Each issue is edited and laid out at the CMC and sent on CD ROM over 400 kilometres to the capital, Bamako, for printing. Although the Koutiala district is home to half a million people, it has no printing press and the CMC provides the only public access to Internet, email and computer training.
Koutiala CMC provides the only electronic N’ko publishing currently available in Mali. The national N’ko association in the capital sends all its documents hand-written to the CMC to be put into electronic form. “Thanks to this service, N’Ko is becoming much more widespread”, noted Mamady Doumbia, a tailor and member of the N’ko association in Bamako.
“The CMC has made a huge difference for us”, said Mamadou Diarra, Sindjiya editor and member of the N’ko cultural association of Koutiala. “We have been able to expand our activities and foster the use of N’ko, which is a really important vehicle for local cultures”.
The N’ko alphabet was invented in 1949 by Soulemayne Kante in Guinea and is used by speakers of Malinke, Bambara and their dialects in Guinea, Mali and Ivory Coast. Originally created to demonstrate that African languages could be written down, as a medium for traditional knowledge and to make the Koran accessible, N’ko is becoming increasingly popular. One great advantage is that it makes reading and writing accessible to people who lack formal schooling.
Before ICTs made electronic publishing of N’ko texts possible, its proponents had to produce all materials by hand. The Koutiala cultural association possesses a well-worn French-N’ko dictionary, dating from the first years of N’ko, whose tens of thousands of entries were carefully inscribed by hand.
Today, desk-top publishing, multi-lingual software and numerous other multimedia applications available in the CMC ensure that local people can produce local content themselves, either for community radio or in a range of media using the telecentre.
Koutiala CMC recently produced its own training CD Rom for radio producers wanting to go digital. As the first pilot CMC to be established in Mali, it will play a leading role in supporting the newly emerging CMCs currently being established as part of UNESCO’s CMC scale-up initiative in Mali, Mozambique and Senegal, launched a year ago at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva.
UNESCO, through its Initiative B@bel also supports the development of a standard for N'ko to the international character encoding standards Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. The project is being conducted by the University of California Berkeley's Script Encoding Initiative.
“We can’t meet the full demand because printing costs are too high if we go over 1000 copies”, explained CMC manager Malamine Sylla. Each issue is edited and laid out at the CMC and sent on CD ROM over 400 kilometres to the capital, Bamako, for printing. Although the Koutiala district is home to half a million people, it has no printing press and the CMC provides the only public access to Internet, email and computer training.
Koutiala CMC provides the only electronic N’ko publishing currently available in Mali. The national N’ko association in the capital sends all its documents hand-written to the CMC to be put into electronic form. “Thanks to this service, N’Ko is becoming much more widespread”, noted Mamady Doumbia, a tailor and member of the N’ko association in Bamako.
“The CMC has made a huge difference for us”, said Mamadou Diarra, Sindjiya editor and member of the N’ko cultural association of Koutiala. “We have been able to expand our activities and foster the use of N’ko, which is a really important vehicle for local cultures”.
The N’ko alphabet was invented in 1949 by Soulemayne Kante in Guinea and is used by speakers of Malinke, Bambara and their dialects in Guinea, Mali and Ivory Coast. Originally created to demonstrate that African languages could be written down, as a medium for traditional knowledge and to make the Koran accessible, N’ko is becoming increasingly popular. One great advantage is that it makes reading and writing accessible to people who lack formal schooling.
Before ICTs made electronic publishing of N’ko texts possible, its proponents had to produce all materials by hand. The Koutiala cultural association possesses a well-worn French-N’ko dictionary, dating from the first years of N’ko, whose tens of thousands of entries were carefully inscribed by hand.
Today, desk-top publishing, multi-lingual software and numerous other multimedia applications available in the CMC ensure that local people can produce local content themselves, either for community radio or in a range of media using the telecentre.
Koutiala CMC recently produced its own training CD Rom for radio producers wanting to go digital. As the first pilot CMC to be established in Mali, it will play a leading role in supporting the newly emerging CMCs currently being established as part of UNESCO’s CMC scale-up initiative in Mali, Mozambique and Senegal, launched a year ago at the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva.
UNESCO, through its Initiative B@bel also supports the development of a standard for N'ko to the international character encoding standards Unicode and ISO/IEC 10646. The project is being conducted by the University of California Berkeley's Script Encoding Initiative.
Current, electronically produced and printed out version of “Sindjiya”© UNESCO
Related themes/countries
· UNESCO and Community Multimedia Centres (CMCs)
· News Archives 2005
· Mali: News Archive 2005
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