In Mali, several sign languages are used. In deaf education and younger urban deaf communities, an ASL based sign language is used. LaSiMa is the local sign language of Mali. It has developed spontaneously, outside the context of Deaf education. In 1995, a dictionary of the language was published by Pinsonneault. From 2007 to 2012, two large projects took place to document local sign language use at various places in Mali, leading to two digital video corpora, with annotations in French.

The first corpus contains recordings of sign language use in Bamako and Mopti, consisting of over 27 hours of recorded discourse, featuring 65 signers. This corpus project, based at Leiden University and the Institut des Langues Abdoulaye Barry, in collaboration with AMASOURDS, was led by Victoria Nyst. Main members of the corpus team were Moustapha Magassouba, Siaka Keita and Kara Sylla. A more in-depth description of Malian Sign Language as used in Bamako, as well as its corpus is found in Nyst (2008; 2010). We thank the Hans Rausing Endangers Language Project for funding the corpus project. The collection is stored in the Endangered Languages Archive.

• Nyst, V.A.S., Magassouba, M. & Sylla, K. (2011), Un Corpus de Reference de la Langues des Signes Malienne I. A digital, annotated video corpus of the local sign language used in Bamako and Mopti, Mali. [dataset]. Endangered Languages Archive. 

In Ghana, several sign languages are in use. Ghanaian Sign Language (GSL) is used in Deaf schools and urban Deaf communities (Nyst, 2010). Adamorobe Sign Language (AdaSL) is used in the village of Adamorobe. AdaSL is an old, established sign language. For linguistic and anthropological studies of AdaSL, see Nyst (2007) and Kusters (2011) among others.

Between 2010 – 2012, a trilingual video corpus of AdaSL was compiled. The corpus is stored in the DoBeS archive.

• Nyst, V.A.S. (2012), A Reference Corpus of Adamorobe Sign Language. A digital, annotated video corpus of the sign language used in the village of Adamorobe, Ghana. [dataset]. In African Sign Languages collection. The Language Archive.

• Nyst, V.A.S., Magassouba M. & Sylla, K. (2012), Un Corpus de reference de la Langue des Signes Malienne II. A digital, annotated video corpus of local sign language use in the Dogon area of Mali. [dataset]. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden. [accessible on request].  

Like in several countries in West Africa, at least two sign languages are used in Ivory Coast. American Sign Language (ASL) is used in Deaf education and by educated Deaf adults. Deaf people with no formal schooling use various forms of Ivorian Sign Language (ASL). ASL is spreading in the Ivorian Deaf community at the cost of Ivorian Sign Language or Langue des Signes de Côte d’Ivoire (LSCI).

This collection consists of documentation and analysis of LSCI. It includes a digital corpus that features a representative sample of signed discourse, a lexical database and a description and analysis of selected features of the language. The collection is stored in the Endangered Languages Archive.

• Admasu, K., Mark, L. van der & Nyst, V.A.S. (in progress), Language Socialization in Deaf Families in Ethiopia. [dataset]. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden.

• Angoua, T., Mark, L. van der & Nyst, V.A.S. (in progress), Language Socialization in Deaf Families in Côte d’Ivoire. [dataset]. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden.

• Burichani, E., Mark, L. van der & Nyst, V.A.S. (in progress), Language Socialization in Deaf Families in Kenya. [dataset]. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden.

This Ghanaian Sign Language  (GSL) lexicon contains over 1200 signs from Ghanaian Sign Language and their OpenPose data. This lexicon has been used on the GSL Ghanaian Sign Language mobile app. The GSL app is an initiative of the HANDS! Lab for Sign Languages and Deaf Studies at Leiden University, as part of the Language Socialization in Deaf Families project funded by the Leiden University Fund.
The content of the GSL app was recorded by Marco Nyarko, Ghanaian Sign Language teacher at the University of Ghana, Legon.

Each folder contains the equivalent sign as well as the per frame output of OpenPose containing the predicted body joints.

• Fragkiadakis, M., Nyst V.A.S. & Nyarco M. (2021), Ghanaian Sign Language Lexicon (1.0) [dataset]. Zenodo

• Magassouba, M., Sylla, D., Mark, L. van der & Nyst, V.A.S. (in progress), Language Socialization in Deaf Families in Mali. [dataset]. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden.

• Nyarko, M., Mark, L. van der & Nyst, V.A.S. (in progress), Language Socialization in Deaf Families in Ghana. [dataset]. Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Universiteit Leiden.

The WOCAL website contains a proposal of signs for use during the Workshop on African Sign Languages at WOCAL 10, including name signs for almost all presenters at the workshop.