The Bamum scripts are an evolutionary series of six scripts created for the Bamum language by King Njoya of Cameroon at the turn of the 20th century. They are notable for evolving from a crude pictographic mnemonic aid (proto-writing) with 500-600 glyphs, through various logosyllabic systems, to a partially alphabetic syllabic script with 80 in the space of fourteen years, from 1896 to 1910. (A few final touches were added as late as 1918.) Njoya had copper sorts cast for printing this last script, which is called a-ka-u-ku after its first four glyphs. It fell into disuse with the exile of Njoya in 1931, but attempts are currently being made to modernize and revived by the Bamum Scripts and Archives Project in the old Bamum capital of Foumban. However, it is currently not in any significant use.

The 80 glyphs of modern Bamum are not enough for all of the C V syllables of the language. The deficiency is made up for with diacritics and by combining glyphs with CV₁ and V₂ values, for CV₂, making the script alphabetic for syllables not directly covered by the syllabary. Adding the inherent vowel of the syllable voices a consonant: tu + u = /du/, fu + u = /vu/, ju + u = /ʒu/, ja + a = /ʒa/, ʃi + i = /ʒi/, puə + u = /bu/.