The terms “optimal” and “supradialectal” in reference to orthographies are borrowed from Halle and Chomsky (1991: 48-54). They claim that English orthography is optimal because it reflects closely the abstract underlying representation of the language. They also note that it is supradialectal because it meets the needs of multiple dialects of English around the world. The goal of this presentation is to investigate further the characteristics of optimal and supradialectal orthographies with the purpose of proposing an orthographic approach that can be used to write African languages. Such an approach should meet both the optimality constraint and the supradialectal criterion. Given the complexity of issues involved in designing an orthography, a multidisciplinary approach such as the one represented in Diagram 1 below will be used: