Connexion
ArchiveAfrica Is Building Africa's First Crowdfunded Cultural Archive
In November 2021, thousands of artifacts were destroyed in a fire at the National Museum of Gungu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Four years later, the Sudan National Museum met a similar fate, as tens of thousands of artifacts were either destroyed or shipped off to be sold when the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) seized the country's capital. In other parts of the continent, like Ghana and Nigeria, archival documents and records are being improperly stored or are already deteriorating.
While the knee-jerk answer to these setbacks has mostly been a surge of creators digitally preserving African history and culture — from Fu'ad Lawal's Archivi.ng to Juliana Oduro's Vintage African Women to Rwanda Archives to Decolonising the Archive — creators like Kofi Iddrisu are now playing vital roles in archiving both digitally and physically.
Founded in 2020 solely as an Instagram page, Iddrisu's project ArchiveAfrica has attained a global audience of over 200,000 followers, a growing digital store of over 1,800 photos, videos, and documents, as well as partnerships with institutions like the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Oxford Afro Caribbean Society, 154 Art Fair, amongst others. What started as a personal project for Kofi to post images, whether submitted by followers or sourced across the continent, gradually evolved into an audio-visual archive curated to enable university students, historians, art enthusiasts, and cultural workers to utilize it without worrying about payment or subscription.
"Before now, it was very difficult to find a giant archive of African history and art that isn't behind a paywall or hidden in some Western university's library," Kofi tells OkayAfrica. Now, students and academics can access this freely.
Kofi, born Kofi Nana Oduro Iddrisu in North West London, has always been fascinated by his African roots. His parents ensured that he spent his formative years in Accra, prioritizing African history and culture at home while he was schooling in the UK. "It was easy to lose connection when you are in the diaspora," he explains.
It was when he moved back to Ghana in 2020 to further his medical studies that the brainwave for ArchiveAfrica started. His siblings, Kanchelli Iman and Charney Iddrisu supported the project and played a crucial role in curating the page. They later went on to establish respective projects focusing on Black-owned businesses and the cinema industry.
Now in its fifth year, ArchiveAfrica is expanding to create a physical archival space in Accra, enhancing preservation and accessibility. Kofi says that one of the reasons for this is the unreliability of social media pages. Instagram, a common platform used by photographers, archivists, cultural workers, and models to share ideas, has been deactivating accounts without warning or explanation.
"If the goal of our work is preservation, we need a medium that is permanent," Kofi states. "How can we transfer this massive social media following and condense it into actual physical space?"
The plan for the museum's construction is underway. The museum will be dedicated to the royal history of Ghana's Upper West region and will also house a library and writer's retreat in Accra. This will create a space for archival research, literature, and creative work that fosters deeper engagement with African history and storytelling.
While there are existing physical archives in Ghana, such as the Public Records and Archives Administration Department (PRAAD) created in 1997, Kofi laments that these archives are at risk of deterioration. For the museum project, he has made a GoFundMe page for donors to support construction and maintenance. But there are challenges.
"Nowadays, funding is so precarious, so while we don't have long-standing paid staff on our list yet, we have received numerous offers to volunteer from different countries," Kofi says. He envisions the museum to house a mix of audio-visual, textual, and tactile materials.
The fundraiser has raised only £865 ($1,177) of its £60,000 ($81,693) target, but this initial success has prompted the architects to begin planning the site. While the crowdfunding goal may appear ambitious, Kofi stresses that this is an early-stage project where raising awareness is essential for attracting both institutional and individual support. He is actively pursuing partnerships and exploring alternative funding approaches with diverse organizations, including Mubi UK, 154 Art Fair, and the British High Commission.
Once the museum is established in Accra, Kofi plans to expand to other countries on the continent and beyond: "We are hoping for a permanent space in different African countries and multiple spaces in the diaspora to support the next batch of cultural workers in terms of giving access to spaces and encouraging networking."
"The overarching goal is to have a physical location where the average African person can walk through the doors, borrow a book or photography collection, go home, do research, and return it," he says.
