This is slightly misleading, Ajami hasn't been particularly ignored. There are a huge number of african manuscripts in a variety of languages including Arabic which haven't been studied, it's been estimated that in Mali alone there are something like 250,000 - 500,000 manuscripts from 1100-1800 AD in private hands. Just in Timbuktu it's estimated their are upwards of 100,000+ manuscripts (Wikipedia has more details if people are interested).<p>The official libraries struggle to even catalogue the material they have. The Ahmed Baba Institute is trying to digitize it's collection but has only manage a tiny fraction of the 18,000 manuscripts they hold.<p>Largely it's a problem of money and staff, obtaining, preserving and cataloguing these manuscripts isn't cheap, let alone studying them all. Even preliminary analysis of the manuscripts available in libraries is a task that will take millions of man-hours.