Boko (or bookoo) is a Latin-script alphabet used to write the Hausa language. The first boko alphabet was devised by Europeans in the early 19th century,^[1] and developed in the early 20th century by the British and French colonial authorities. It was made the official Hausa alphabet in 1930.^[2] Since the 1950s boko has been the main alphabet for Hausa.^[3] Arabic script (ajami) is now only used in Islamic schools and for Islamic literature. Since the 1980s, Nigerian boko has been based on the Pan-Nigerian alphabet.

The word boko also refers to non-Islamic (usually western) education ('yan boko = "modern school")^[4] or secularism. The word is often described as being a borrowing from English book.^[5] However, in 2013, leading Hausa expert Paul Newman published "The Etymology of Hausa Boko", in which he presents the view that boko is in fact a native word meaning "sham, fraud", a reference to "Western learning and writing" being seen as deceitful in comparison to traditional Quranic scholarship.^[6]

There are some differences in boko used in Niger and Nigeria due to different pronunciations in the French and English languages. The letter ⟨ƴ⟩ is used only in Niger; in Nigeria it is written ⟨ʼy⟩.

Tone, vowel length, and the distinction between /r/ and /ɽ/ (which does not exist for all speakers) are not marked in writing. So, for example, /daɡa/ "from" and /daːɡaː/ "battle" are both written daga.

• Ajami (Arabic alphabet) for Hausa language
• Boko Haram, terrorist group which considers Western education sinful (haram)

• Coulmas, Florian (1999). The Blackwell encyclopedia of writing systems. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 196. ISBN 0-631-21481-X.
• Austin, Peter K. (2008). One Thousand Languages: Living, Endangered, and Lost. University of California Press. p. 64. ISBN 978-0-520-25560-9.