NAIROBI, Kenya – The Africa PID Alliance (APA), the Open Infrastructure Program of the Training Centre in Communication (TCC- Africa), has formalized a partnership with African Digital Heritage (ADH), a Nairobi-based non-profit dedicated to sustainable digitization and innovation in African cultural heritage. This partnership addresses a key gap in many African institutions: the capacity to manage and track the usage of their digital heritage.
African Digital Heritage has played a crucial role in digitizing Africa’s rich cultural heritage, from archival records and cultural objects to interviews and 3D models. However, challenges remain in ensuring long-term accessibility, interoperability, and the ability to track how these digital collections are used. The Africa PID Alliance will play a critical role in bridging this gap by deploying its cutting-edge DOCID™ system. DOCID™ is a persistent identifier solution that empowers institutions to create a dynamic, interconnected ecosystem for cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge systems, ensuring that these valuable collections are not only preserved but also recognized and used in meaningful ways around the world.
“This partnership is about moving beyond digitization to build an African-led infrastructure that protects provenance and empowers local institutions,” said Joy Owango, the project lead at the Africa PID Alliance. “DOCID™ assigns persistent identifiers, enabling African cultural heritage to remain findable, accessible, and trackable in perpetuity.”
“While the preservation of African indigenous knowledge systems presents challenges for many organizations and individuals working in digital preservation, these challenges also offer opportunities to innovate and advance the heritage ecosystem toward digital solutions that address the unique contexts of our cultural knowledge and environments. We are excited to collaborate with the Africa PID Alliance on this timely and much-needed platform,” commented Chao Tayiana Maina, the founder and director at the Africa Digital Heritage
This collaboration represents an important step in ensuring that African cultural heritage remains connected to our communities and relevant in the global landscape.
About the Africa PID Alliance
The Africa PID Alliance is dedicated to securing the future of African innovation, indigenous knowledge, and cultural heritage. Through the provision of reliable open research infrastructure services, the alliance enables access to knowledge and metadata about digital objects, with a strong emphasis on Africa’s unique contributions to global research. The Africa PID Alliance is the Open Infrastructure program of the Training Centre in Communication
For more information on the Africa PID Alliance visit: https://africapidalliance.org/
About African Digital Heritage
African Digital Heritage is a Nairobi based, non profit organization working to encourage a more critical, holistic and knowledge-based approach to digital solutions within African heritage. Through this, we hope to cement the place of African culture in an era of rapidly changing technologies and endless frontiers.
For more information on the African Digital Heritage, visit: https://africandigitalheritage.org/aboutus/