NISA is a huge Africanistic symposium which works on a comprehenƯsive, coherent linguistic phylum (area), which comprises Mali and Niger in West Africa up to Ethiopia, Kenya and Tanzania in Eastern Africa. The main purpose of the colloquium is to bring scholars of Nilo-Saharan languages together for scholarly exchange and disƯcussion. Many Nilo-Saharan languages have little or no documenƯtation. Only through adequate cooperation with colleagues from all over the world can fundamental progress be achieved in this vast research area. The symposium has a long tradition: The first symposium took place in Kisumu, Kenya already in 1986. The University of Nairobi was given the mandate to arrange the 12th symposium which took place in September 2015. Papers dealing with a diachronic or comparative perspective or with phonetic, phonoƯlogical, morphological, syntactic, semantic, discourse and pragƯmatic issues of Nilo-Saharan languages were presented.