Ibrahim Njoya's Innovative Work

Battle of Manga

While reading about African writing systems, the kingdom of Bamum crossed my radar. Their visionary king, also called Ibrahim Njoya, formed an alliance with Fulbe Muslims to secure his throne and initiated a series of progressive reforms. One of them being a writing system, but also support for the arts, particularly the works of his relative, Ibrahim Njoya. Naturally, this led to Dan Mazur's detailed article on Njoya's life and work. It's clear that his work represents an indigenous development of a comic book, with the text written in the local Bamum script devised by his king to accompany his own incredibly detailed and unique style, depicting the kingdom's history, its traditions, etc. He worked across multiple mediums and, if French colonial policies had been less intrusive, perhaps Ibrahim Njoya could have established in the 1920s and 1930s an African tradition of comics unlike what could be found in colonial newspapers across much of the continent. For more examples of Njoya's work, as well as that of other artists of Bamum, Les dessins bamum contains a plethora of additional sources. The photographs delineate the various styles and influences apparent in Njoya's oeuvre. 

Conte de la rate et ses quatre ratons