We are honored to join the Ustadh Mau Digital Archive (UMADA) team for The Swahili Digital Libraries one-day conference; an encore that emerges after almost two years of cultural and digital preservation of the private library of Ustadh Mau.
Since October 2022, a digitization archive room and work aimed to preserve over a thousand items has been carried out by a team of young researchers (Naima Idris, Fahim Abdalla and others) under the supervision of archive owner Ustadh Mau and Annachiara Raia. Thanks to the support of the Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP), the team has been digitizing an impressive Swahili Muslim multilingual and multimodal private collection. The UMADA online and open-access collection will enrich the way audiences look at knowledge practice in Africa, and understand Islam. As Ustadh Mau also puts it “people will benefit a lot from his open-access poetry and Friday sermons, as they will learn and see other ways to look at the world”.
Although the two-years MEAP funds are coming to an end, UMADA has still a lot to preserve and share with its community, the Swahili plus its international audience. As a result, UMADA is convening experts and institutions to reflect on topics and lessons, challenges and satisfactions on navigating a sustainable digital heritage practice in Africa. They include Mutanu Kyany’a of African Digital Heritage, the TiaSauti@Lab impact partners (Voice4Thought and Mkuki na Nyota), Khadija Issa – Head librarian of Lamu Fort Library and the UMADA team.
At the core of this one-day conference lies the question, ‘how can we continue to care for, sustain and preserve heritage in all its formats, but also communally commit to enshirine it in our daily cultural and digital experience?’
They wished it from the beginning: tembea umada tembea.
