Embracing Openness in African Libraries through Open Licensing Digitization in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana

What does it mean to open up knowledge for everyone, everywhere? For us, it’s about more than just digitizing books or uploading collections. It’s about breaking barriers, building skills, and ensuring that African cultural heritage is preserved and shared with the world. That’s the heart of “Embracing Openness in African Libraries through Open Licensing Digitization in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana”, a groundbreaking project funded by Creative Commons through its Open Culture Platform Funding program.

Building Capacity, Preserving Heritage

Our mission is simple yet ambitious; to equip librarians across the three countries with the tools, knowledge, and confidence to lead in open access and digital preservation. Woraking in partnership with the National Library Association chapters of Nigeria, Kenya, and Ghana, the project intended to train 15 librarians from each country in areas that are too often overlooked:

• Hands-on digitization and metadata curation.
• Wikisource documentation skills.
• Understanding national copyright laws, exceptions, and limitations.
• Applying Creative Commons licenses and public-domain concepts in practice.
• Learning and taking inspiration from the Kenya National Library (KNL) digitizations efforts with a case study.

We received an overwhelming number of librarians who expressed interest in the project during our call for participation. This made the team readjust our focus to train only 45 librarians to accommodate all the librarians who expressed interest to participate in the training. We made a zoom webinar subscription to accommodate a large number of librarians who wished to participate in the online training series. By doing this, we’re not just running workshops, we’re sparking a movement. Each participating librarian is empowered to digitize and curate unique collections from their libraries, aiming to make about 60 cultural heritage collections openly available through Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource.

The Team Behind the Vision

This project is steered by a diverse and passionate team:

• Bukola O. James (User:Bukky658) – Team Lead, Nigeria.
• Mohammed Awal Alhassan (User:Alhassan Mohammed Awal) – Project Manager and Lead, Ghana.
• Esther Nganga (User:Ngangaesther) – Project Lead, Kenya.
• Oby Ezeilo (User:Oby Ezeilo) – Project Lead, Nigeria.

Since our very first meeting on May 16, 2025, we’ve been intentional about structure and sustainability. We drew up a roadmap, established weekly check-ins, and created a project meta page, our digital home where anyone can explore training resources, timelines, and updates.

Overwhelming Interest and Powerful Partnerships that Led to a Revision of Our Initial Targeted Number of Participants

When we announced the call for participation, we expected modest numbers. Instead, we were blown away. Over 180 librarians expressed interest in joining, far beyond the initial target of 45. With support from AfLIA and other librarians in our networks with outreach efforts that resulted in this large number, we expanded the capacity by upgrading to the Zoom Webinar, ensuring nobody was left behind.

The enthusiasm was contagious. From June to September 2025, participants joined the online sessions that blended expert-led training with practical exercises. All course guides, slides, and recordings remain freely accessible on our meta page so that even those who couldn’t attend live can still benefit.

Sharing the Journey on the Global Stage

Our work didn’t stop at training sessions. We proudly presented a pre-conference lightning talk at Wikimania 2025 in Nairobi, sharing our story with the global Wikimedia community. Our proposal to present the project at the upcoming Wiki GLAM conference in Lisbon has also been accepted, a recognition of the project’s potential impact far beyond Africa. Again, we have submitted a proposal and if accepted, we will present the project at the upcoming WikiIndaba in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

Facing Challenges, Finding Solutions

Of course, it hasn’t been without its hurdles. Time constraints stretched the team as we balanced this initiative with our day jobs. Unreliable internet made it hard for some participants to join live sessions. And access to public domain materials, often housed in national libraries located far from some participants, posed another challenge as they are unable to find many public domain materials in their community libraries.

But like any committed community project, we adapted. We contracted expert trainers to keep materials high-quality and timely. All the course materials developed can be accessed from our project documentation page on meta under Training Resources column. We recorded all sessions and shared them via our dedicated WhatsApp and our meta page under the Timelines. We also developed the activity tracking form to help librarians practice identifying and documenting public domain works in their own libraries. To help with the documentation of media files related to the project, in addition to the meta page, a parent Wikimedia Commons category was created with subcategories to keep track of all media files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons concerning the project.

What’s Next?

As we move toward the final phase, uploading public domain collections to Wikimedia Commons and Wikisource by November 2025, we are excited about what is ahead. Participants who complete their uploads will earn certificates acknowledging their expertise and contributions to the global TAROCH initiative, which champions open access to cultural heritage worldwide.

Our call now is simple: if you are a librarian in Ghana, Kenya, or Nigeria, or simply someone passionate about open knowledge, explore the training resources we’ve made freely available. Learn, share, digitize, and join us in ensuring Africa’s knowledge doesn’t sit hidden on dusty shelves, but shines in the open for generations to come.

This is more than a project. It’s a movement. And we’re just getting started.