NKo (ߒߞߏ), also spelled N'Ko, is an alphabetic script devised by Solomana Kanté in 1949, as a modern writing system for the Manding languages of West Africa.

Kanté created N’Ko in response to erroneous beliefs that no indigenous African writing system existed, as well as to provide a better way to write Manding languages, which had for centuries been written predominantly in Ajami script, which was not perfectly suited to the tones unique to Mandé and common to other West African languages.

An anecdote popular with N'Ko proponents is that Kanté was particularly challenged to create the distinct system when, while in Bouake, he found a book by a Lebanese author who dismissed African languages as “like those of the birds, impossible to transcribe”[3] despite said Ajami history.

[4] Kanté then devised N’Ko while he was in Bingerville, Côte d'Ivoire and later brought it to his native Kankan, Guinea.

[9] This introduction of the script led to a movement promoting N’Ko literacy among Mandé speakers in both Anglophone and Francophone West Africa.

Publications include a translation of the Quran, a variety of textbooks on subjects such as physics and geography, poetic and philosophical works, descriptions of traditional medicine, a dictionary, and several local newspapers.

There has also been documented use of NKo, with additional diacritics, for traditional religious publications in the Yoruba and Fon languages of Benin and southwestern Nigeria.

Diacritics are also placed above some consonant letters to cover sounds not found in Mandé, such as gb-dot for /g/; gb-line for /ɣ/; gb-two-dots for /k͡p/; f-dot for /v/; rr-dot for /ʁ/; etc.

A DOS word processor named Koma Kuda was developed by Prof. Baba Mamadi Diané from Cairo University.