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Mother Tongue Editions is a non-profit organization that works to:

• commemorate and promote traditional artisanry through the sale of greeting cards of African art;
• publish African language literature;
• promote and support African language literacy;
• document African languages;
• reward African language authors with royalties;
• encourage African language publishers;
• promote awards and recognition for African language writers.

Mother Tongue Editions History

Mother Tongue Editions (MTE) is a non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion of African languages and cultures, in all of the forms in which they are manifested. Initially involved uniquely in publishing, today MTE produces and distributes a variety of culturally significant representations of language and traditional artisanry. MTE seeks to promote the use of African languages in education and throughout society in Africa. The strategy adopted by MTE is to produce credible and significant documents in African languages that demonstrate the importance and the power of those languages as vehicles of the transmission of knowledge, both to their own speech communities as well as to the rest of the world. Profits from the sale of MTE's products are destined to be shared by their authors and creators, and to be collected for the purchase of strategically important equipment for use in encouraging the promotion of African languages and cultures throughout the world.

MTE was founded in 1988 at a point when the founder, John Hutchison, had just completed the editing of a collection of riddles in Cape Verdean Kriolu and also a small Kriolu dictionary, in collaboration with his then Hausa language student, Joao Jose Rodrigues Pires, who was studying theater at Boston University at the time. The books were displayed and sold at the Annual Conference on African Linguistics hosted at Boston University in 1988. Subsequently Hutchison associated with Professor Kassim Kone of the State University of New York at Cortland, and together they began producing books in other West African languages, particularly in Bamanankan, Kone's language in which he went on to produce — and continues to do so — a significant body of literature. MTE is also committed to the promotion and support of women and women's organizations engaged in the arts, literacy, publishing, and micro-credit, to cite a few.

Editors:

Editorial Advisory Board:

• M. Sadialiou Bah, UNICEF, Cotonou
• Issa Diallo, U. of Ouagadougou
• El-Hadj Yazi Dogo, Niamey, Niger
• Youssouf Haidara, Ministry of Education, Rep. of Mali
• Ousseina Halidou, Rutgers U.
• Desiré Hounguès, Savannah College of Art & Design
• Mtembezi Inniss, Columbia U.

Contact

NGOs, authors, publishers and artists are encouraged to contact Mother Tongue Editions and to communicate their needs and ideas in areas of common interest.

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