Books for Africa, the Minnesota-based nonprofit with a warehouse in Atlanta helping solve what it calls a “book famine” on the continent, hosted a volunteer work day with more than 100 university and high school students on Martin Luther King Jr. day.
About a hundred student volunteers from Morehouse College, Spelman College, Kennesaw State University and The Lovett School split two-hour shifts in the morning and afternoon, packing books for shipment to Africa. Off from school, many students use the federal holiday created to mark the civil rights hero’s birthday to honor his legacy of service. Repair the World Atlanta, a Jewish service organization, also participated.
In 2022, Books for Africa shipped more than 3.2 million books to 27 African countries. It also shipped 355 computers and e-readers containing more than a million digital books.
In a survey of 36 libraries across 13 countries that received shipping containers brimming with books from Books for Africa’s warehouses, all respondents said library usage increased post-delivery. Some 93 percent allow books to be checked out for home use, and 92 percent agreed that Books for Africa had improved resource access for their communities.
In a counter to those worried about the prospect of a well-meaning organization dumping unwanted books on unsuspecting libraries, the respondents reported that on average, just 5 percent of books libraries got were perceived to be “irrelevant.”
A contact in Kenya had this to say:
I was worried that maybe we would get books that were not culturally sensitive or not in good shape. That wasn’t the case at all.
The survey has been conducted annually for seven years and has received 249 responses from 35 countries. See more results here
Dr. King, in whose spirit the volunteer work was conducted, was a strong proponent of knowledge and learning, and he continues to be revered across Africa for his leadership role in the nonviolent movement to end segregation and afford Black citizens their full rights as Americans.
His work inspired Nelson Mandela and the movement to end apartheid in South Africa, which Dr. King labeled an insidious form of racism he compared with the Jim Crow South. Mr. Mandela became South Africa’s first Black president after apartheid was gradually dismantled in the early 1990s.
Dr. King also set foot in Africa. In March 1957, he attended the inauguration of Kwame Nkrumah, the first African-born prime minister of the newly independent Ghana, later connecting Africa’s struggle against colonialism to the long fight for civil rights in a post-slavery society in the U.S.
In 2022, Books for Africa raised $2.3 million to ship books valued at $26.7 million.
