Mandombe as Political Epistemology: Script, Symbol and Sovereignty in Central Africa

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This article treats Mandombe as a political epistemology: a way of organising reality that has direct implications for sovereignty. Extending the institutional argument advanced by Kibavuidi Nsiangani in “Pan-Africanism Reimagined” (2010), I claim that federative projects fail when they are expressed through colonial scripts whose symbolic logic encodes hierarchy, linearity and external reference. Through close analysis of Mandombe’s geometric base, recursive construction and quadrant logic, I show how the script affords a matrix view of relations, better suited to federal, polycentric governance. The article mobilises examples from grassroots educational experiments at USK and CENA, where Mandombe is used to teach logic, design thinking, innovationand risk modelling.

Further, I rely on semiotic analysis, classroom ethnography and comparative script studies, while engaging critically with Eurocentric typologies that classify African scripts as “secondary” or “mnemonic”.

In dialogue with the articles on Kikongo, Papal Bulls and symbolic sovereignty in this issue, I argue that script choice is not neutral: adopting Mandombe in core state functions (education, statistics, legal codification) would constitute a concrete step towards epistemic and political independence much like Mvemba Nzinga's adoption of latin script in insitutions cemented western codes and dominion in Kongo.