The year I graduated from university, I wrote down a very non-specific New Year’s resolution in my journal: to figure out my life. It was 10 years ago, and it has become an annual ritual to renew that resolution because the work is never done, and always needs recommitment. It’s kind of like Archivi.ng.

We’ve come a long way since Fu’ad first announced the idea—to digitise and archive Nigeria’s history—to the world in 2019, and nurtured it with your material help and moral support. That support got us our first scanner and helped us make 50,000 newspaper pages accessible in 2023. 

As I mentioned in last month’s dispatch, 2024 was the year of launching The Archivist, displaying our work in more physical spaces, and launching The Archivi.ng Fellowship. The journey has been eventful, but we still have a long way to go and will need your support, more than ever.

Before discussing how we’re thinking about 2025, it’s important to touch on how we ended last year.

Archivi.ng Is Coming Through With The Receipts

Our newspaper clips—bites of history shared daily on Twitter—were viewed over 1.2 million times in December. Here’s what the figures really translate into for us.

The story of Sarah Oluwabunmi, a Lagos woman trapped between rock embankments for 28 days with little help, racked up almost 200k views. Her 1994 plight sparked discussions about the responsibility of the government to citizens; and how journalists wrote better in the old days.

We started a conversation about how far back Nigerians were talking about the culture of crossdressing in entertainment, with the story of Ibrahim Ogundero, a man who was one of the hottest “female” dancers for Fuji and Juju music stars in the 1990s.

Our most-viewed post for the month, a Gbenga Adeboye interview from 1996, added context to a raging Twitter debate about the history of Nigeria’s comedy industry and who contributed what.

The conversations that our posts create in public discourse matter to us because every single one is a window into history, and the outcome is an enlightenment about Nigeria’s past. 

We started last month with 9k followers on Twitter and ended it with over 10.3k followers. 

If you don’t already follow us, do that now @startarchiving across all platforms.

We Closed on a Couple of Partnerships

Those shocking Uber prices really left everyone second-guessing how much they needed to do Detty December. But we had to be outside in the final days of last year for “You Should Know This,” an engaging event hosted by That New News. It was an evening of Nigerian history brought to life through film, trivia, and music. We spoke to attendees about our work and why filling Nigeria’s history vacuum is necessary.

We also concluded a partnership with Loose Talk, the pop culture podcast co-hosted by Osagie Alonge, Steve Dede and Ayomide Tayo. Starting next week, the Loose Talk Giants will discuss a past event—researched by Archivi.ng—in a new segment called “This Week in History.” 

These partnerships further advance our goal of being the source of knowledge about Nigerian history in mainstream consciousness. We look forward to more of them as the year progresses.

We Kept Our Word

Early last year, we set a target to raise $100k to expand our operations and make meaningful mission progress, so we asked you to open your wallets. We raised $14,300, which meant a lot to us, especially in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.

Because we wanted to show you how deeply we appreciate your generosity, we made some promises to demonstrate the impact of your contributions. We especially offered to tattoo your names on our foreheads: by archiving newspaper pages stamped with your name, so that everyone knows who’s really keeping our mission alive. 

Today, when you visit Archivi.ng to search for information in newspapers, you’ll find a donor's name on the page. So if you want to read what Nigerians were saying about Abacha’s 1997 Independence Day speech, a portion of the page lets the world know that your contribution made easy access possible. You did that and we appreciate it.

How We’re Thinking About 2025

We’ve learnt a lot about the stakes of our mission since we launched the first batch of newspaper pages in 2023. We’ve developed an appetite for making sense of the archives with The Archivist, and set the course for enhancing knowledge about Nigerian history with The Archivi.ng Fellowship.

The most important lesson? Archivi.ng needs to become the critical source of the Nigerian context. That means we must continue to work to become an essential source of data for research, build cutting-edge tools for power users, and deliver seamless access to rich historical archives. By the end of 2025, we’d have digitised and created access to three major newspapers mainly produced in each of Nigeria's six geopolitical zones.

When you read this dispatch next year, we’d have made 70 years of Nigerian history as recorded in newspapers and magazines—between 1940 and 2010—available to the public.

We'll again lean on your goodwill to achieve our ambitious goal. Make Archivi.ng your New Year’s resolution, and remember that your support keeps our mission alive.

Have a great 2025, and see you on February 1.