An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982. The conference recommended to use single letters for a sound (actually a phoneme) instead of using two or three-letter combinations or letters with diacritical marks.
The African Reference Alphabet is clearly related to the Africa Alphabet and reflected practice based on the latter. The Niamey conference also built on work of a previous UNESCO-organized meeting on harmonization of transcriptions of African languages, that was held in Bamako, Mali in 1966.
Read more about African Reference Alphabet: 1978 Version, 1982 Version
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