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