African Literary Metadata
MENU

Contribute and Collaborate

Would you like to contribute to, or collaborate with, ALMEDA? Here’s how you can help.

  • Share your data with us. All data on the ALMEDA project will be open and linked. Should you have information about oral, performed, ephemeral or informal African expressive forms and would like it included in our database and linked to our data, please be in touch.
  • Propose your own case-study. If you are working on materials that fall within our area of interest and would like methodological input on how best to capture data on your materials, contact us. PhD students are particularly welcome to propose case-studies, for which our team would be happy to offer mentorship.
  • Contribute a lexicon of literary terms in an African language. One of the biggest challenges with linked open data is to find ways of linking data across multiple languages. This is crucial to the development of African language knowledge resources. Please follow this link if you’re interested in working with us on a lexicon in an African language.
  • Review our data. If you are working on an area that we are including in our first batch of case studies and would like to review our data, let us know. All our data is available on request.

We are excited to develop collaborations with existing initiatives in African digital humanities, cultural heritage, libraries or any other stake-holders. Please be in touch if you would be interested in collaborating with us.

New dataset: Atọ́ka Magazine Nigerian Photoplays

We have published our first Yorùbá-content dataset! Atọ́ka was a Nigerian photoplay or fotonovella magazine that was published in Lagos by the West African Book Publishers. The Modern Endangered Archives Program has created a digitized collection of the magazine in collaboration with the Archive of Sound and Vision, at the Institute…

Read more

Postdoc News: Gloria Ajami Makokha works with the British Institute in Eastern Africa

Read the BIEA’s recent blog on this collaboration.

Read more

New dataset: Two Tone Magazine, Zimbabwe

This dataset covers poems published in Two Tone magazine from its first volume in 1964 to its final issue in September 1982. Two Tone was founded by Phillippa Berlyn and Olive Robertson and was published by the National Arts Foundation of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and the Department of English at University of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. An interesting aspect…

Read more

Messy Data, Ephemeral Literatures, and the Future African Archive, Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen, 6 May 2026

Ashleigh Harris will present ALMEDA’s work with ‘Messy Data’ at the Centre of African Studies, University of Copenhagen at 15:00 on 6 May 2026. Abstract: A significant portion of African Literature and expressive cultures – from the late 19th century to the present – has been produced as print, audio, video,…

Read more