Between a Rock and a Safe Space: The African Library as an Alternative Site for Knowledge Creation and Movement Building

Using the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) as a case study, this paper will show how the creation of alternative, knowledge-producing institutions on the African continent is essential for nurturing individual production and collective intellectual consciousness by championing indigenous knowledge and public scholarship outside of the confines of academia.

Established in 2017 with the explicitly decolonial aim of serving the local population in Accra, Ghana with indigenous and culturally-relevant literature, the Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD) has become an alternate channel of knowledge creation and circulation. With a reference library, writing residency, research institute and museum-in-the-making, LOATAD serves as a bridge between formal and mass education, privileging indigenous knowledges and epistemologies and offering public scholarship from an Africanist perspective for all in a non-intimidating setting.

Founded on the key principles of knowledge production, knowledge preservation, and knowledge dissemination, LOATAD embraces the concept of the De/Colonial Library and takes it further by greenhousing literary production through its residency programmes that focus on, not only changing narratives of Africa for the outside for world, but for the writer him/herself, surrounding them with African perspectives and praxes in a decolonised setting.

Furthermore, by providing access to literature "for the people, by the people" and connecting writers of African descent from around the world, LOATAD has sparked a local and global movement around literature as a tool for individual and collective liberation that can be replicated across the continent and the Diaspora.

Paper co-authored with: Seth Avusuglo, Library Of Africa and The African Diaspora (LOATAD)