Sheet 05 · Legend

read the edge

The mineral rail

Seven segments run down the binding edge of every page on this site. Each is a mineral mined in Africa, and each carries a meaning the interface actually uses. This is the key.

Fig. 01 — Why stones

Why stones, and not a palette

A palette named primary, secondary and accent tells you where a colour goes and nothing about why it exists. The Mzizi design system names its colours after minerals mined across the continent, and keeps the provenance attached: where the stone comes from, what it stands for, what it is for in an interface.

That provenance is the point. Cobalt out of Katanga is in the phone you are reading this on. Naming the link colour after it is a small refusal to treat the material as abstract.

Mzizi is a nyuchi project in the Bundu ecosystem, built on the Ubuntu principle that gives the whole thing its shape — I am because we are. The system, its tokens and its accessibility toolkit are at mzizi.dev.

Sheet 05 · The seven

top to bottom
  1. 01

    cobalt

    Means
    Digital future, trust, knowledge
    Mined in
    Katanga (DRC) and the Zambian Copperbelt
    Used for
    Links, focus rings, informational states
    #00B0FF8.22:1 AAA
  2. 02

    tanzanite

    Means
    Premium, creativity, connection
    Mined in
    Merelani Hills, Tanzania
    Used for
    Primary brand accent
    #B388FF7.49:1 AAA
  3. 03

    malachite

    Means
    Growth, nature, success
    Mined in
    Congo Copper Belt
    Used for
    Success states, positive actions
    #64FFDA16.02:1 AAA
  4. 04

    gold

    Means
    Honey, rewards, warmth
    Mined in
    Ghana, South Africa, Mali
    Used for
    Achievements and highlights
    #FFD74014.30:1 AAA
  5. 05

    terracotta

    Means
    Earth, community, grounding
    Mined in
    the Pan-African Sahel
    Used for
    Community surfaces, warmth
    #E1B07E10.18:1 AAA
  6. 06

    sodalite

    Means
    Intelligence, depth, reasoning
    Mined in
    the Kunene River, Namibia and South Africa
    Used for
    AI surfaces, deep-reasoning states
    #3D5AFE3.89:1 AA Large
  7. 07

    copper

    Means
    Connection, foundation, stewardship
    Mined in
    the Central African Copperbelt, Zambia and DRC
    Used for
    Ecosystem identity, the commons
    #FF8A658.62:1 AAA
Fig. 02 — Accessibility

Every one of them, measured

The ratios above are WCAG 2.2 contrast against this site’s ground (#05090F), computed at build time from the same tokens the rail draws with. They are not claims copied off a swatch sheet — if a token changes, the number on this page changes with it.

Mzizi ships the checking as part of the system rather than leaving it to each consumer: contrast against its APCA and AAA floors, plus colour-vision simulation, available in the toolkit at mzizi.dev and over its MCP server, so an agent building against the system can verify a pairing before it ships it.

On this site the minerals are a non-text mark, so the bar they have to clear is WCAG 2.2 SC 1.4.11 at 3:1 — which every one of the seven does. Colour is never the only carrier of meaning here: the rail is aria-hidden, every segment names itself on hover, and this page is the text alternative.