The Fulani of West Africa are the world’s largest nomadic group at over 40 million people.

For most of their history, Pulaar, their native tongue, never had an alphabet — driving high levels of illiteracy. For generations, they’ve relied on the spoken word to pass down traditions and history, and to conduct business. And when the need called for it, they created written records cobbled together from various foreign alphabets. Determined to preserve their people’s language, Ibrahima and Abdoulaye Barry created a handwritten alphabet — ADLaM.

But as the Fulani increasingly used modern technologies, the need to digitize the alphabet became an imperative. If the Fulani can’t communicate digitally with an alphabet that reflects the language they speak, they’ll use other writing systems, and one day, other languages — diminishing their culture.

Microsoft understood the urgency and following their brand mission of empowering every person and organization in the world to achieve more, set out to help.

Empowering this community extended brand love and the reach of their products to a new group of potential users that until now were left out of the digital world.

How do you help preserve a culture as deep and vibrant as the Fulani’s? The 40-million-person diaspora remained connected online using language cobbled together from various foreign alphabets. For generations, they’ve relied on the spoken word of Pulaar — their native tongue — to pass down traditions and history, and to conduct business. But as their culture transferred to the digital world, their language needed to as well.

We aimed to help the Fulani people in the preservation of their culture by creating a new and optimized version of their new alphabet — ADLaM — that would help them navigate an increasingly digital world on their own terms.

As part of our strategy, we also wanted to fight the high illiteracy rates in the Fulani. By making ADLaM letterforms easier to read and write, and optimizing them for digital spaces, students around the world would feel more included as the community advanced into the 21st Century.

While alphabets take hundreds of years to evolve into their final form, we were able to speed that process, using real-time community feedback to rapidly revise the outdated letterforms of ADLaM and help to prepare future generations of the Fulani for a modern world.

Once ADLaM was initially encoded on Windows with the help of keyboard experts, font specialists and Windows operating system leads, community feedback revealed major revisions were needed to make the alphabet easier to learn, read and write. With the Barry brothers, typeface experts and Fulani graphic culture specialists, we revised the letterforms of the alphabet, creating a new and optimized version.

We took inspiration from Fulani’s visual culture, researching hundreds of traditional textile patterns and designs; uncovering their unique meanings to define the final form of the characters. By weaving their heritage into the solution, they saw themselves, instilling them with pride and ownership of the new alphabet.

The revised alphabet is being made accessible on over 1 billion devices running Microsoft 365 Office apps, through a new typeface — ADLaM Display.

We then helped develop learning tools to promote literacy in Guinean schools, including the “ABCs of Fulfulde” children’s book, classroom posters designed to teach the alphabet and the “Learn to Write Book,” a book of materials and activities for learning how to write the letters.

The efforts of the Barry brothers and Microsoft helped ADLaM gain popularity within the Fulani community spread across the globe — helping secure the future of the alphabet and their culture for future generations:

ADLaM is being made accessible on over 1 billion devices worldwide.

ADLaM is being used on social media to fight illiteracy. The project also sparked the co-creation of the first ADLaM dictionary, through #ADLaMRe.

In the last 4 months the number of ADLaM students has increased by 30K+

The alphabet will also be used to preserve the Bambara, Bozo and Dogon languages due to shared phonology and syntax with Pulaar.

The first two ADLaM-focused schools will open this year in Guinea and for the first time, allow Fulani children to study a full curriculum in their native tongue.

Guinea’s Minister of Education is taking steps to ensure ADLaM is recognized as Pulaar’s official alphabet.

The Mali Government is recognizing ADLaM as an official alphabet in their constitution. Clearing the way to legally teach Pulaar using the ADLaM alphabet.

By helping up to 40 million new people join the digital world using Microsoft technology, it’s a victory for inclusivity and the preservation of the world's cultural heritage.