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The Islam West Africa Collection (IWAC), directed and developed by Frédérick Madore, is a collaborative, open-access digital database supported by the Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO) and funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Science, Health and Care. Building on the success of the award-winning Islam Burkina Faso Collection launched in 2021, this repository features over 11,000 archival documentsnewspaper articles, diverse Islamic publicationsaudio and video recordings, and photographs relating to Islam and Muslims in Burkina FasoBeninNigerNigeriaTogo, and Côte d'Ivoire.

Although most of the materials are in French, the Collection also includes items in HausaArabicDendi, and English. It indexes more than 850 references—books, articles, chapters, theses, reports and blog posts—and applies optical character recognition (OCR) to each document. This approach, combined with thorough metadata tagging, enables efficient keyword searches and advanced multi-criteria queries. The IWAC also provides a comprehensive index of over 3,500 events, languages, locations, organizations, people, and topics.

The IWAC is committed to democratising access to vital research materials. By making these resources available online without financial barriers, we offer both West African and international researchers a valuable alternative to the challenging conditions often found in regional libraries and archives. The database also supports flexible data export and adaptable query methods, and aims not only to promote research on Islam in West Africa, but also to serve as a pioneering model for future digital initiatives.

News and release notes

The website is constantly evolving, with metadata being edited and new documents being added to the collection on a regular basis.

17 April 2024

The Collection is now compliant with the International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) standards. This enhancement not only marks a leap forward in our commitment to making the database more accessible and user-friendly, but also underscores our commitment to promoting interoperability among digital repositories. The Universal Viewer allows for more interactive and immersive exploration of digital objects. Users can zoom, pan and explore images in fine detail.

22 January 2024

11 issues of the Islamic newspaper ASSALAM from Benin, published between 2002 and 2018, have been added to the Collection.

9 November 2023

The Islam West Africa Collection was officially launched on 9 November in Berlin. Further information.

31 October 2023

To demonstrate the potential of digital humanities to analyse the data in the Islam West Africa Collection, a series of visualisations were created using two corpus of press clippings from Beninese and Burkinabè newspapers. See more here.