??Why there is no Couscous Emoji?

??These little yellow, happy, sad faces we use daily—have you ever wondered about their origin?

As a North African, I wondered why different emojis about food worldwide exist but not emojis from my culture. Why there is no Couscous emoji?

Emojis are not random images on our keyboards. They are carefully reviewed, selected, managed and licensed by a standards organisation called Unicode Consortium.

???? The Unicode Consortium: Guardians of Emojis

? When you send an emoji from your Apple keyboard, your poor friend will receive a similar emoji on his poor Android phone ?? . The Unicode Consortium ensures that emojis are licensed across 20 billion devices, enabling different operating systems to communicate with each other.

The consortium includes major tech companies like Apple, Google, Microsoft, Adobe, Facebook, and IBM, as well as government bodies, research institutions, and individual members .

?? Why No Couscous Emoji?

Coming back to our beloved Couscous, there are two criteria for accepting or rejecting new emojis.

1. Popularity and Cultural Significance: The proposed emoji must represent something widely recognized and significant in various cultures. Habibi, Couscous is a UNESCO World Cultural Heritage and is consumed worldwide. So that’s a check?.
2. Distinctiveness: The emoji must be easily recognizable and distinct from other emojis. Unfortunately, current designs for a Couscous emoji look too similar to existing rice emojis ?.

??? How to Submit an Emoji

If you are an artist and think you can draw Cousous, submit your emoji idea to The Unicode Consortium website. The Unicode Consortium encourages public participation in the creation of new emojis.

And, I really want to send Couscous emoji to my white friends.

?? Let me know in the comments what new emojis we need.

Yasser Machat