David Wabeladio Payi

David Wabeladio Payi was born on 15 January 1957 in Ngombe Lutete, in the Bas-Congo region of what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He completed his secondary education locally and, in 1977, obtained his technical certificate at the Centre Social Technique in Mbanza-Ngungu. A devout member of the Kimbanguist Church, Payi's life changed on the night of 13-14 March 1978, when, at the age of 21, he experienced a series of dreams and visions he attributed to Simon Kimbangu, the founding prophet of the Kimbanguist movement.

In the vision, Payi saw geometric patterns on his bedroom wall resembling the digital-display numbers 2 and 5. Taking this as instruction, he withdrew to Nkamba, the Kimbanguist movement's sacred site, for months of spiritual retreat and meditation, from which he emerged with the foundations of a complete new writing system he called Mandombe — meaning 'that which is Black' in Kikongo. Designed around combinations of the shapes he had seen, Mandombe was built to transcribe Bantu languages such as Kikongo, Lingala, and Swahili without relying on the Latin or Arabic alphabets inherited from colonisation.

It took Payi four years to secure formal recognition for the script, and a further twelve before it was properly introduced to the public, with the Kimbanguist Church playing a central role in promoting it. He went on to teach Mandombe for the rest of his life, not only at the University of Kinshasa but at centres in Brazzaville, Brussels, and Paris, and served as professor at Simon Kimbangu University and director-president of the Centre de l'Écriture Négro-Africaine (CENA). A digital operating system called Nzitani was later developed entirely in Mandombe script, allowing computer users to write and compute in the writing system electronically.

In recognition of his work, the University of Kinshasa awarded Payi an honorary doctorate — Doctor Honoris Causa — on 22 December 2011. He continued teaching and promoting Mandombe until his death in Turkey on 4 April 2013, aged 56, while travelling abroad for medical care. He was survived by his wife, Eugenie Dikembi Dinueni, and their five daughters.