African Keyboard

Dominik M. Ramík

About this app

For installation instructions please visit http://dominicweb.eu/en/african-keyboard

The African Keyboard app is an Android keyboard implementing special characters of African languages that use Latin-based alphabets. Its goal is to give users means of writing their native languages and as such to promote the preservation and growth of those languages and their cultures.

The keyboard offers familiar QWERTY and AZERTY layouts and thus is usable for casual writing of English, French and so on. On top of this it offers sets of special characters used in various African languages. Those characters are grouped under keys according to graphical or phonetic resemblance and are accessible after long press on the key. Many African languages use various accents to express tones, nasalization and so on. The uppermost line of the keyboard gives access to such accents, that can be combined virtually with any letter.

Although you can use the default "Full African Keyboard Character Set", which gives access to all special characters, you can also go to the Options and chose a particular character set that implements characters of languages from your area. The available options are:

Standardized alphabets:
- African Reference Alphabet (included in the "Full Character Set")
- Benin National Languages Alphabet
- Berber Latin Alphabet
- General Alphabet of Cameroon Languages
- Guinean National Alphabet
- Pan-Nigerian Alphabet
- Tamasheq Latin Alphabet
- Yoruba Alphabet (Yoruba Orthography Committee)

Informal sets of characters by country: Algeria, Angola, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mayotte, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Republic of Congo, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Ratings and reviews

I like! It is very intuitively (is that a word?) to use. You could improve on the design and offer a wider variation of configuration options such as vibration or sound, but it was the first keyboard offering all characters with all accents. Last but not least, I did not encounter ANY ads, which is one of the reasons I give 5 stars.

Simple to use, easy on the eye, has all of the European characters that my default English keyboard didn't, doesn't force autocorrect on me, doesn't require any dubious permissions, has a very responsive/considerate developer and is free, without ads. Minor flaws in backspace not deleting entire selections, not being able to close punctuation/emoji menus without first making a selection and a lack of emojis, but all in all a great keyboard - everything that I want and more than I could ever need

Wonderful App. It's been years since I downloaded this app and it's sad I completely forgot to rate it. Never had any problem, so easy to use and it's my permanent keyboard for my phones. Recommended it to friends as well. I applaud the author for a great job well done.

What’s new

Keyboard updated yet another time as per user request.

Minor bugs fixed.