I have named the font “Makonde” after an tribal group in southeast Tanzania and northern Moambique that is well known for their intricate and semi-realistic wood carvings. The patterns that decorate the Makonde font remind me of the Makonde wood carvings.

The Makonde font is a useful resource for anyone creating designs or producing text that has African look. Typified by a stark African angularity the characters reflect the ethos of Africa. Each Makonde font contains the full range of upper and lower case characters, all punctuation and special characters as well as the accented characters used in the major European languages. More…

The Makonde tribal group is of historical interest because Frelimo, the resistance movement which ended Portugese colonialism in East Africa, originated in the homeland of the Makonde.

The character shapes in the Makonde font are very similar to those in a style of Umkhonto called Umkhonto Wide. Using Umkhonto together with Makonde gives the designer enormous flexibility.