Mahuton Possoupe

Revitalizing the Fon language in Paris, France.

Based in

France

Cohort

2023 cohort

Working on

fon

Fongbé

Category

Technology Tools

Fon is a Gbe language spoken by 1.7 million people in Benin, Togo, Nigeria, Ghana, and Gabon. The language has a Wikipedia project, wp/fon, which was created in 2018 and now has over 500 articles. Although Fon is a national language in Benin, it is still under-resourced, especially within digital spaces.

Mahuton’s project has two primary goals: first, to make the Fon mobile keyboard accessible to everyone by creating tutorials on how to install and use it on Android devices; second, to develop an online Fon typer/editor that will allow people to type Fon on their computers. In 2018, a typer was developed for the incubated Fon Wikipedia, and Mahuton plans to reuse its base to make it available for everyone outside the Wikipedia ecosystem. The long-term objective is to have more people who can speak and understand Fon to be able to write it easily. He intends to accomplish this by making the language more accessible through online tools and social media platforms.

Links
About the Fellowship

Wikitongues Fellows are bold, community-rooted leaders driving the future of their languages. Through a year-long accelerator, they receive funding, hands-on technical training, and strategic mentorship to launch and scale projects in documentation, education, lexicography, media, and Wikimedia platforms. Each Fellow joins a global cohort of language activists who share tools, experiments, and hard-won lessons, transforming local initiatives into sustainable movements. The result is practical, community-owned work that keeps languages spoken, taught, recorded, and alive for generations.

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