Most repositories – libraries, digital archives, even the servers hosting this blog – are situated in the global north. There is a promise of global accessibility today, thanks to the miracles of the internet, but the reality remains very different, so these collections remain colonial archives in terms of access and in terms of creators, despite good intentions to overcome this legacy.

Today serves as a vivid reminder of this enduring inequality to me. I’m typing this one my phone, the only way to get it online, as the slow internet connection in Bamako, Mali, doesn’t agree with my computer.

I’m not telling you this to complain about a personal inconvenience but because it is the reality for millions of Africans. Yes, web access is there, but only in its flimsiest forms: enough for a Facebook Like or a WhatsApp message, but not for really equitable sharing, very often not even access. Achille Mbembe, the continent’s most influential philosopher, calls for a broadening of perspectives, a pluriversity to replace the Eurocentric university. Not easy when you need to chase network coverage and type from your phone, even more so when you try to access some of the works written on you by a Northern researcher, including almost all research on African languages, sadly including most of my own.

Since making African perspectives visible on the net is one of the reasons I’m here, I will blog about these obstacles and how they are experienced by my colleagues and collaborators from Donkosira for the days to come, and I’ll also try to find out through which tricks they overcome some of the infrastructural hurdles put in their way. You’ll get a synopsis at my return if I can’t get online!