Let’s pick a year from Nigerian history: 1960. It’s the year of Nigeria’s independence. If you want to learn about how Nigerians reacted to and planned for this monumental event, you’ll have better luck finding it in the online archives of old publishers headquartered in New York or London, but not in Lagos.

Nigerian history, recorded by Nigerians, is hard to find. Historical documents and newspapers can often only be found in specific public libraries and exclusive private archives. Even if you find them at these locations, they’re hard to use because the documents are likely decayed and disorganised.

At Archivi.ng, we see a massive vacuum, and we’re doing everything we can to fill it with context and knowledge. That’s why we go to these physical archives, find old newspapers, digitise them, and make them available for limitless possibilities.

By doing this, we’re taking our destiny into our own hands, ensuring our stories and perspectives are captured for the future, and building a knowledge infrastructure critical to advancing our society and world. We’re making it accessible for people who need it: journalists, Economists, Designers, Teachers, Historians, Students, and every knowledge worker or curious person everywhere.

The future we’re trying to create is one where we have contributed immensely to recapturing lost African history and inevitably built the most dependable resource for public information about the continent.

We’re on the brink of an irreparable loss

Large, flimsy sheets immediately come to mind when you think about physical newspapers. These sheets are designed for short-term use because you get the news of the day or week, you read it, and you’re done with the paper. If the paper materials are fragile from the onset, you can imagine how quickly they deteriorate over the years.

Grace and Boyega, two of our archivists, already struggle with the weakened fibres and faded text of the newspapers from the late 1980s in our collection. You can only imagine what awaits us as we archive papers like Iwe Irohin, first published in 1859. If we don’t act now, we risk losing access to this information forever.

Your donation will keep our work going

The work at Archivi.ng is resource-intensive. We’re working hard to expand our archives over the next year, from now until March 2025, digitising newspapers from 1960 to 2010.

Your donations will help us accomplish this goal by funding the expansion of our archiving operations, reinforcing the team, and allowing us to commit more resources to improving our web experience.

As you participate in digitising the archives

We’ll never forget what you did; no one will. That’s why we’ll digitise a newspaper in your name for every donation and cement your contribution in the archives forever.

Think, “March 5, 1965: Archived by Adekunle Ciroma Chukwuma”

Why does Archivi.ng matter now, despite everything happening in the world?

Our world is changing really fast, in some ways adversely: economic hardship, security, migration, etc. The world might be in flux, but some things will never change. People will always need their history. Erasure is, in some way, extinction. This context might perhaps offer us a grounding sense of continuity as we march into our future.