An African king invented a whole writing system for his people, and it started with a dream.
King Njoya of Bamum, in the grasslands of what is now western Cameroon, was a writer, inventor, architect, historian and the founder of his own religion. After winning a civil war with Fulani help, he set out to give his people their own script. Over about two decades he reworked it from some 500 picture symbols down to about 80 syllables, opened schools to teach it, and used it to write his kingdom's history, laws and medicine. He mapped his kingdom, built a printing press, recovered his father's skull from the Nso, sent his throne to the German Kaiser and designed a new royal palace in Foumban.
Under French rule his schools were shut and in 1931 he was exiled. But his script survived, and since 2009 it can be typed on any computer or phone.
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