Launch Islam West Africa Collection, 9 November 2023, MiCT, Berlin/Online
- Title
- Launch Islam West Africa Collection, 9 November 2023, MiCT, Berlin/Online
- list of authors
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Frédérick Madore
- Journal
- ZMO Bulletin
- issue
- 44
- page start
- 9
- page end
- 9
- Date
- April 2024
- Language
- Anglais
- Identifier
- iwac-reference-0000295
- content
-
On 9 November 2023, the Islam West Africa Collection (IWAC) was officially launched at the offices of Media in Cooperation and Transition (MiCT) in Berlin. Directed by Frederick Madore (ZMO), the IWAC is a collaborative, open-access digital database that currently contains over 5,000 archival documents, newspaper articles, Islamic publications of various kinds, audio and video recordings, and photographs on Islam and Muslims in Burkina Faso, Benin, Niger, Nigeria, Togo, and Côte d’Ivoire. The site also indexes over 800 relevant bibliographic references. This project was funded by the Berlin Senate Department for Science, Health, and Care. As an NGO developing media on the African continent, MiCT, co-founded by Klaas Glenewinkel, was a very suitable host. Ulrike Freitag (ZMO), Mauro Nobili (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA), Issouf Binaté (Université Alassane Ouattara, Côte d’Ivoire), Vincent Favier (ZMO), and Kai Kresse (ZMO) commented on the project. Nobili, an expert on Arabic manuscripts from West Africa, argued that the IWAC allows us to appreciate the diversity and richness of West African Muslim intellectual culture, which transcends the boundaries of format and the dichotomy between traditional and modern materials. Binaté emphasized the importance of the project in protecting endangered documents and ensuring their accessibility for future research.
Beyond the event itself, the launch helped to generate significant interest in the database. In less than a month, the site had more than 700 different visitors from 71 countries and several thousand pages viewed. Far from being the end of a project, this is just the beginning, as the IWAC will continue to grow with the inclusion of thousands of other documents that Madore has already digitized and will lay the groundwork for future collaborations with other scholars and institutes.
Photos and recordings of the interventions can be found here: https://islam.zmo.de/s/westafrica/item/244
Linked resources
Part of Launch Islam West Africa Collection, 9 November 2023, MiCT, Berlin/Online