SN 3 EP 7: Preserving African Knowledge Through Digital Libraries with Dr. Nkem Osuigwe

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode, Dr. Nkem Osuigwe talks about her journey from a child in post-war Nigeria to an award-winning librarian. Dr. Osuigwe shares her work with the African Library and Information Associations and Institutions (AfLIA) and as 2022’s Wikimedian of the Year. The conversation explores pressing issues in African librarianship: preserving traditional knowledge, translating materials into local languages, ensuring data sovereignty, and linking Wikipedia articles about Africa to African libraries rather than external institutions. Dr. Osuigwe emphasizes how digital libraries can amplify African stories globally while protecting knowledge sovereignty.

Here Are the Key Things to Look Out For:

• The Evolving Role of Libraries in Research Support

Dr. Osuigwe explains how libraries in Africa are no longer just repositories of books—they are becoming active research partners, supporting scholars, providing access to digital resources, and facilitating evidence-based decision-making.

• AfLIA’s Commitment to Human Capacity Development

Learn about AfLIA’s extensive training programs aimed at equipping librarians and information professionals with the skills to support researchers, policymakers, and communities in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

• Decolonizing Knowledge and Reclaiming African Narratives

The conversation addresses the need to challenge colonial structures in knowledge systems, highlighting the role of African libraries in preserving indigenous knowledge and promoting locally driven research.

• Promoting Research Literacy and Civic Education at the Grassroots

Dr. Osuigwe shares examples of how libraries can improve public access to information, enhance community learning, and build research literacy among non-academic audiences.

• Strategic Partnerships for Systemic Change

The episode explores how collaborations between libraries, academic institutions, and government bodies are essential for building a sustainable, inclusive research ecosystem across Africa.

EPSIODE TRANSCRIPT

Intro:

Welcome to Mazungumzo, African scholarly conversations, a podcast that highlights the perspectives of various stakeholders in academia, and research fields across Africa through open dialogue or mazungumzo on scholarly communication in Africa.

Joy Owango:

Welcome to mazungumzo, African scholarly conversations, where we are joined by an expansive list of African policy makers, science communication specialists, innovators and tertiary institution leads who contribute to this realm of scholarly and science communication. I’m your host, Joy Owango, the Executive Director of the Training Centre in Communication, TCC – Africa. Capacity building trust based at the University of Nairobi, chiromo campus in Nairobi, Kenya.

Welcome to Mazungumzo – African Scholarly Conversations, where we are joined by an expansive list of African policymakers, science communication specialists, innovators, and tertiary institution leads who contribute to this realm of science communication.

I’m your host Joy Owango, the Executive Director of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC Africa), a capacity-building trust based at the University of Nairobi, Kenya.

Today, we have the privilege of speaking with a remarkable guest, Dr. Nkem Osuigwe. Dr. Osuigwe is not only an award-winning librarian, but also a passionate advocate for equitable access to knowledge, and a champion of preserving and amplifying Africa’s stories on global platforms.

Dr. Osuigwe has redefined the role of librarianship in Africa. From her formative experiences in libraries to her impactful work with AfLIA and her leadership within the African librarian community, she has consistently championed the power of libraries to preserve traditional knowledge and share the narratives of African communities in meaningful and innovative ways.

A warm welcome to the programme, Dr. Osuigwe,

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Thank you very much. Joy. Glad to be here.

Joy Owango:

Okay, so Dr Nkem, you’ve had an incredible career in libraries spanning over 35 years. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your journey, and what are some of the key moments or experiences that have shaped your path on defined your work in the field?

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Thank you very much. I hope you love listening to stories, because I’m going to spend a long story now.

Joy Owango:

Fantastic.

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

When I was around, that should be five years, getting on to six.There was a civil war in Nigeria, and it ended in 1970.

Joy Owango:

You talk about the Biafran war?

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Exactly, that we all fled to the villages. My side lost the war. So we came back to the city  in 1971/72 i should say so. One day my mother wanted to go to the market.

Joy Owango:

Yes, please continue. So your mother wanted to go. So you went. You came back home to the city after leaving the villages after the the war ended in 1971 so what happened?

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe

Yeah, and my older ones had gone to school, so it was just me and the baby he she had in 1970 in July 1970 the baby was still small, and my mother didn’t want to leave the baby with me, because she told the safe then she said, How does she two of us to the market. So she carried my little sister on the back,and I worked with her through a path, and on the way to the market, she saw that the library was open. Yeah, it was open, so she said that she drops me here on her way back. She’ll come and pick me up that she can’t take to a horse inside the market. So she kept me in that library. And that was my first time of seeing anything like that. We were, you know, fresh from the war, you know, and the emphasis then, or the focus or the priority was to eat shelter, you know, clothes and shoes were not really the priority. Then we met so many children. You know, I don’t remember the reason that I know that our clothes were not the best, and it was in the library she was telling a story of the competition between the sun and the wind.. Never forget. Moment, one side of the room and the wind was going, I was like, this kind of thing can happen by her the story she told. You know, how she helped us to understand the story. I couldn’t read. Many of us could not read, but her telling the story made us realize that between books, that there are walls, you know, different things that one could learn. After that day. I always used to beg my mom please take me to the library. And she continued. And by 1980 I finished my O-level. I did that. I went to that library and got a job. Now, I got a job, yeah, as a library assistant. And that was in 10th, December, 1980 and I worked in that library. I got a study to do my first degree. I got another one to do my Masters, and I was progressing in the library. And then, because I started work, then, actually, by that 1980 December, I had just turned 15 years so by and it is statutory that you retire after 35 years in service, or at the age of 60. So by 50 years, I had reached my limits, and I retired. But I retired as the head of that library.

Joy Owango 

Oh, my goodness. So you worked in there as a child, and then you end up working there after becoming the head of the library.

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Exactly, you know. So I have been in libraries all my life. I’ve come to see the power of the written word, the power of stories, of libraries that allows everybody in, you know, like I said after the war, you know. The library allowed all of us in about libraries always bridging the gaps. For that has stopped me all those years. Then I worked briefly for Nigerian book foundation that was in 2016, 2017 and 2018 I moved over to Aflia and then, by the time I left the book foundation, I was a director right now, Board of Trustees of Nigerian book foundation.

Joy Owango

 Nice.

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe

Okay,and I now work for Aflia and  for a then there have been watershed moments. One in particular I want to talk about is being introduced to the open movements. You hear about open access, it never really strikes you. How big that entire spectrum is. I got involved in creating and running a course, sponsored by Bucha and as associates of South Africa Foundation, right and in running that course, it was all on any literacy, the development, but I saw the power of open licensing, I saw that we could use it to create books, translate books into our local languages. It could really help to increase the holdings of libraries in Africa. I can tell you that since then, I’ve not looked back on open you know, because it has so many possibilities of you know, ensuring that knowledge gets to people, knowledge that can be used, reused and adapted to fit our local realities. So that is that. Thank you.

Joy Owango 

Wow. I like that story from walking in into the library barefoot, having survived the war, the Civil War, the Biafra Civil War, and being welcomed into this common space to you becoming the director. That is indeed a story to tell. It’s worth listening to. It’s worth talking about as many times as possible, because it’s just a story of inspiration, because the library is meant to be open to the community. Information in a library is meant to be accessible in the community, and when you connect it with the open movement. It’s what I love about libraries right now, and particularly what Aflia is doing in making sure and advocating for the openness of knowledge and access to information, because you do not know who you are impacting just by the near fact that this library allowed you to step in there and they beseech your little your sibling, you ended up becoming the director of the library years later. That is a story in itself. We need to be very cognizant on the power of libraries, on how they are advocating for openness of information, because the impact is actually generational, and you’re a classic example of a generational impact from a child to an adult who ended up becoming a director. Now we are talking about openness, and you were recently named the wikimedian of the year under the new category in 2022 for your contributions in bridging the gap between African libraries and Wikipedia. How has this recognition influenced your work, and how do you see the relationship between African libraries and platforms like Wikipedia evolving to improve access to accurate and diverse information.

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Thank you for this. You know, let me tell another story for the stories. Now, when the day that I was invited by the Wikimedia group in Nigeria to please come over to Lagos on my way from Ireland for a meeting. I had no idea what it was all about, so I went there, and I was like, Okay, what do you want?Let me see how can I help you do this? And we know,honestly,I had no idea that that was Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikimedia, wow, and he told me that I screamed. We want to give you this. I was like, wow, really,Im a grandmother, do you know that there are young people that has followed me on, to understand that the things we do, the value we bring to each table that we find ourselves at or on, is really critical. Don’t just take any opportunity that’s just Okay.Give me your best shot.

So now, after that, I started making investigations. I became curious. I mean, that I did this out of them, wanting African Liberians to be a part of what others are doing all over the world, investigating where is the place of African knowledge within this whole wikiverse? Because Wikipedia has been around since 2001 so let’s say this has been around for two decades and counting. Then I started making investigations, interrogating, like I told them, and I found out that even now, if you open Wikipedia, search for any African country, whether it’s Kenya or Uganda, Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone,Gambia anywhere, any African country, when you see the article on that country,scroll down, down, down, down right to under,you see a little tiny box that they wrote authority control and as a librarian I was curious, And I saw that is the same thing we do in libraries that we call authority control files, and I want us to check okay, where does it lead us to? And I found out that every article about every African country, every biography about great Africans that are all on Wikipedia are all linked to libraries outside of Africa, hey, I went like ballistic, and I told them no. And they said, We don’t understand what the problem is. What do you think is the issue? How can we address it? And I kept on asking questions until it was just this year that we got another grant on what they call knowledge equity funding, to see, how can we create semantic authority files for national libraries In Africa, all over Africa, that will help link all these articles to African libraries. So that’s where we are at now. We just started training is something you do behind those things,by this time the next day, all these articles I spoke about will be linked to the National Library in Africa.

It’s easy to see what is up front.Okay, you can just say, Oh, they wrote about the Tanzania on their own, beautiful pictures, everything. AFLIA, You know when to investigate behind the scenes, right? You know you see because knowledge is power, information is power. And when you’re doing categorization, whether physically or online, and you missed out a continent, something is wrong, either something is wrong or something was not well done. So we something was not well done, and that is what we are trying to correct now. So that is how we are. We are going on in our work with Wikimedia, because we believe that such a source, such a platform, that has billions of every month, whatever information that is there about Africa should be linked to African libraries.

Joy Owango:

Absolutely, I like that. So now AFLIA plays a key role in advancing Libraries and Information Services across the continent that is in Africa. Would you tell us about some of these key programs driving this vision? And also, how do you envision these efforts shaping the future of public right libraries and their role in African communities?

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

A couple of well, like five years back, Aflia gotten funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, global libraries initiative. We got it for running two key programs, and those two key programs are still aimed at changing the mindset of librarians, the International Network for imagine library, you know, Sub Saharan Africa, and the Africa and the Aflia Leadership Academy. And why are those things key? You see, the way libraries have been portrayed in Africa, or the way we, quite a number of us, have been doing our jobs, many of us that that passion is inside. But how do we express it? What do we do next? How do we even understand this better? You just read about some of the fantastic things that people are doing in other times and you wonder,can it ever work in Africa? So these programs have been aimed at letting librarians, especially those in public and community libraries, hey, you can scale the heights, you can innovate, you can collaborate, you can talk. There are things you can do that are important to your user community, this can make them change how they see libraries. That is not all about that libraries, especially public and community, libraries, should not be elitist in the sense of, oh, if you only. Even read and write in English.

How are people that can read and write in and local languages? Where do you keep them? Throw them away? How about those that dropped out of school? Like Well, right now, Sub Saharan Africa is the headquarters of out of school children, children all over the world, with my country, Nigeria, leading the park. So what do you do to out of school? Please. What happens to them if the formal education sector cannot take them in what can the public and community libraries do for them? So it is like is we continue to learn, but Aflia is intentional in changing mindsets and then building the capacity of African Liberians to better appreciate their local contexts and the services they can offer within those contexts, while we still look at other things outside of the continent and maybe joint trends and stuff like that, but let us learn how to serve the people that we live with, even if you have to borrow from again, outside of the continent, localize and then use such in serving our views. So that’s what we’ve been doing. Then, of course, we we have this,our conferences every two years.That has been a major program that we’ve run in Aflia, because we want a situation where Liberians can gather right from one another and then be able to determine the way we wish to go. This is the other way that we want to explore. Who can work with me along this path. You know, We do that every two years, and the next one will be  in Namibia, in 2025 from May 19 to may 22.

Joy Owango:

Fantastic,okay. I mean, it brings the conferences brings together literally, the majority of librarians from the continent, whether it’s institutional, national or government or even academic libraries and and it’s the one place that what I love about that conference is the one place that there’s a lot of knowledge sharing from the various stakeholders. And I am glad that this is a conference that has been successful over the years, and it’s one of the major calendar year activities when it comes to scholarly communication in Africa. So that is a big achievement. So congratulations about that.

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Thank you.

Joy Owango:

Yeah, so I’ll talk about traditional knowledge. Traditional knowledge and local histories are vital to Africa’s identity. In your view, what steps can libraries take to lead the way in preserving and sharing this knowledge, especially in the context of open data management, and with respect to ethical issues like community concern?

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Let us get into it. We have published the UNESCO OER recommendation and open knowledge and overview for African librarians, Bucha and astorship, and in that, should I call it report, or something like that? We had dedicated a chapter to traditional knowledge, how do we collect it? Should we just overlook it and stuff like that? And right at the end of that report, we put in them a draft consent form. And one of the things there is that, please, before you collect traditional knowledge, there must be consent. There must be consent, not just consent, but you know some printed or signed by whoever that is giving you that knowledge or that information, and the person, again, should be aware of what he or she is doing, because for us to assume that community knowledge belongs to everybody. I don’t know how right that is, but the important thing is, we are aware that we need consent, and then also about traditional knowledge. You know, I have spoken about that early literature development course as an introduction to open licensing for me. And one of the things that we do there is that we translate books into our local languages,  and we’ve done that now for four cohorts. We hope to do the next one in 2025 and one of the things that we found out is that our local languages, many of us are not right in it.

Joy Owango:

That is true. That is very true.

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

And then also sometimes the argument debates about the right way to translate some words, right, especially was ones that are not in our local vocabulary or in in the experience of our people before English came. Let me give you an example. We were trying to translate books,story books for kids on  science and tech, you know, STERM, we came across a book we wanted to do, and it was on the Internet of Things, okay, how do you translate Internet of Things? Yeah. So what we what we are doing, is that we ask people to please, first of all, understand the concept in English language. What does that mean? When you understand it, then translate it as a phrase, not a single word, because that we do not have sort of Yes, and it’s helping Liberians to understand that you see when you want to preserve local histories, traditional knowledge, you also have to think of languages, because languages are like our second things. You cannot translate these things without understanding, or you cannot collect them. Let’s say in your local language without understanding How can I put it in English to make it more accessible to others.

I can tell you, it’s not been easy at all. Then again, I don’t know, let me say this. We’ve also found out. I hope I can talk about this. Quite a number of countries in Africa have this national language policy,that children within the age of so, should be instructed in those.

And we found out that honestly, countries in Africa do not have enough reading resources for children in their mother tongues. I’m talking of classroom texts. Then you now go to supplementary reading text. And Aflia is trying to think, how can librarians waiting, since it is all about reading resources. How are we improve some things using open science to see if we can get books from the ministries of the of of the education for that then that are openly licensed, and we can translate it into as many languages as we can, right? So that when, when you go to a Cosmo political city like Nairobi, or, let’s say,  Abuja, or there are people from different countries, people from different local languages.If we can translate the same text in their local languages, when this Teacher even is teaching in English or any other language, it will be the same text as assignments, but they will do it in their different languages, in their different right languages? Is there a difficult thing to fully envision and then to be able to clear pathway to how we can achieve that is what we are. That’s what we look forward to doing. And then,at the Third World Congress that in Dubai last month, I was there, and we spoke about it was like ,Nigerians would have to be in the forefront. Yeah, they have to. They have to show by their skills, that they can translate this into local languages and then that they can solve them in their spaces, you know, websites, repositories and so on. It is not as easy as it sounds, and that is where we want to go on. Aflia, we want to walk around and like. I think, in doing all that we are also looking like you say at the community also to run a course on inclusive Well, we are almost done With the in creating the course, but that course will teach librarians see that all these OER exist.

You can access them, you know their licenses and enable you to play around with them. You know, repurpose them and so on. Have you ever thought of getting local knowledge, traditional knowledge, local histories, local occurrences, local examples to put inside the OER that you repurpose? And it’s not a one step thing, you know, just do it and you’re done. We are looking at, how do we have repositories where, if Liberians collect this knowledge that they can put things through, how do they get that knowledge like we talked about, and then to ensure that everybody in Africa, or even outside Africa, has access to whatever we are going to so that exactly used and reused, redistributed because the important thing is, African knowledge needs to be seen, heard and shared. Will come tomorrow and say, Oh, Africans. Africans knowledge even outside of the academic journals, Africa has plenty of traditional knowledge that we are going to capture, you know, and put in repositories. I hope I answered you. Thank you.

Joy Owango: 

You have, actually, you have, because as you’re speaking, I was just thinking through our interactions with the various African librarians for in our open infrastructure program, the Africa PID Alliance, where we want to produce African originated persistent identifiers supporting indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage to begin with, as a subject case. And it is interesting, because when you start talking to the librarians on how they actually curate and store indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage, you realize, there are two faces. Number one is, it is, in some cases it’s not digitized, so you still have everything in physical format. Number two, if it is digitized, or if they’ve started digitizing the process the way they are curating, it doesn’t make the information accessible. So when, when I’m listening to you and you’re saying, it’s just not an issue of curating is making that information accessible and reusable within the respective repositories that you curate this information, that is something that as African librarians, we need to really push for, because I and you know what I understand, because indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage is very localized, even within a country, it is extremely localized.

Even when you’re trying to get standards on how to curate it, you you realize that it, it’s you can’t get some you can’t get a one size fits all. So, but the main thing is, number one, collate, curate, then number two, curate, try and digitize it. Because you see, you’re talking. About open repositories, when they tell you putting this information in a repository, you needed to have digitized that information, digitize it, then use systems that can make that information accessible. Because, as you said, Africa has a lot of indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage, and it contributes greatly to research, so we need to see that connection of the pipeline of the research output to the indigenous knowledge and, you know, and it’s also a way of protecting the sovereignty of our indigenous knowledge and cultural heritage. I guess it’s baby steps, because again, Dr Nkem, the librarian, has evolved. He’s not the librarian has moved from being a physical librarian to a digital librarian. So I guess we need to count our success stories or our wins where we are seeing our librarians move into the digital space and support them on how they can better curate and digitize their the indigenous knowledge so that it can be accessible and and can be used by the various communities. So yes, so thanks for bringing that out and and I’m really glad that you’re seeing it as a pain and trying to figure out how to solve it.

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

You see the for physical information resources, throughout the world, you know libraries have standardized taxonomies. And when you go through them, you find out that African knowledge is like cramps into tight corners,there’s one that we use for most public libraries. Did you read the small classification scheme?Like an example? You go to the 200 class,you find out that it begins to talk about religion in Africa, and when it starts, it’s talking about Christianity in Africa. I used to ask if we have religion in Africa before Christianity and open repositories, we have to be careful with the taxonomies to be used in all the categorization meta data and so on to ensure that it is all inclusive. It doesn’t cramp us into one corner. It doesn’t feel that, oh, like, how do I put it now? Like, as if Africa started when the whites came, sorry for that.

Joy Owango:

Thank you. And you know what you’re saying is actually leading to the next question, which is on data sovereignty, which is an important issue when it comes to open data conversations. So what unique challenges do African libraries face when it comes to ensuring that data created within Africa remains controlled by African communities How can librarians contribute to addressing these changes?

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

I don’t know if you read last, I think it was in November, the African Commission on Human on people’srights, this is an arm of the African Union. The organization had adopted a resolution on on data exploitation of Africans and in Africa, and had gone on to call on the text, you know, the entities, let’s say Google, Tiktok and so on, to give Africans what Europeans already have.What do I mean? You know, in, in EU, if you wish to speak about yourself from Tiktok and you apply, you get it, it will be sent to you. But then in Africa, there’s even no opportunity for you to do that, So, yeah. So why I’m bringing this up is that it starts from our government.It starts from our government. Yes, do we know about everything our government is doing? Do we have the data? Yes, you know, and like libraries are there? Let’s say. That you award the contract. Nobody’s asking you how much you know, whatever that one is. We want to know, was there an environmental impact assessment done before building that bridge? If it was done, it should be in the library, it should be open and in the library, you know such things, so that the sovereignty of data should reside with the people, now, now when, when you do not share such information with people, you think that big tech will share the one that they have with you? I don’t know. I’m thinking aloud, and then you also have to think, now there’s global citizenship thing. You can be in Nigeria, and you work for somebody in Kenya, and you report to somebody in the USA.

So where do you keep that data of all those interactions? But what we are saying is that libraries are just open spaces for everyone, and if all this information are available through the libraries, whether the libraries in the USA or anywhere anybody can access it, who does it belongs to the person that the people that generate the data in doing that, like I said, we need to ensure that we have the how do I put it now, the enabling environment within African countries to ensure that data is open. You can be doing the developmental work in my community. I want to go and read and find out what are the aspects there? What are the things that should be there so that I’ll have the power? Because they say Information is power. So now say, Oh, you’re doing this wonderfully. Well. This is excellent. Exactly the way you find it is the way it’s going, flip the coin. I now understand why important thing is that we need to have the enabling environments sovereignty  with just individuals. Start with the government. You know, do you know how many people there are in Kenya? How many are males? How many are females? How many goes to school? How many dropped out from school? And stuff like that?i hope i answered your question.

Joy Owango:

Yeah, yes, you did very well, and it’s a nice way for us to wind up with the with the last question on how do you envision the future of African of the African library community, and what steps do you think need to be taken to empower librarians in Africa to take on the leadership roles in the global knowledge space?

Dr. Nkemdilim Osuigwe:

Okay, thank you for that. In Aflia, we are looking at fueling stronger networks within Africa, but within 38 countries, Aflia is now in 34 African countries, and we want to see how can we help Liberians within those countries to build their capacity to face what is our realities. You see, I told some people, I think it’s this morning, I told them that, see, that information is power. Liberianship lost the essence without thinking about it, yeah, we could not grasp that idea that, hey, this is, you know, a powerful thing that information, access to information, access to data, opening it up is powerful, and we are losing that power so that we have to regroup. And I told them that in that they should check every country, in every country where there is a war, one of the things that are destroying our libraries. Why? Because they they contain the cultural heritage and history of people. And yes, that is destroyed, then the people, you know, they are really captured, but if libraries are left that that power of information will make the people grow again. About that, we now say that see localization with globalization. I’ve said it before here for libraries to really help our countries develop, we must think local and act global, so that the information we are getting globally can be used to help people locally and in order for librarians to really do that, like I said before, changed mindsets, understanding of the power of knowledge, of the power of data, is now more valuable than all you i heard because it’s what somebody knows about you that the person can use to either make you big or pull you down. The power of information, the power of data, the power of knowledge needs to be emphasized and re-emphasized, and then we as African Liberians need to understand that it is critical that knowledge is shared. First of all, it is available, then that is shared, and everybody has equitable access to it, not just that, but also the representation of African knowledge must not be pushed to a corner. Thank you.

Joy Owango: 

Yes, you have and thank you so much. This has been a very exciting podcast you know, listening to your to your journey from working to a library to becoming the director of the library to advocating for and fostering for good practice in librarianship in Africa, and advocating for open data, open management, Open Data Management amongst our librarians at the same time and at the same time, protecting the sovereignty of our data has been truly a journey to you, and it’s quite inspiring. I’ve really enjoyed this podcast. Thank you so much for making time to taking part in in Mazungumzo, African scholarly conversations. Thank you so much. Dr Nkem, thank you. Thank you so much and do have a lovely day. Goodbye for now. Bye.

Outro:

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