Not Just Books: Reimagining the African Library
Africa's libraries are too few and badly underfunded. Larry Ajuwon, co-founder of Afrelib Trust, plans a community hub in Lagos that combines books with maker spaces, IT facilities and room for events, echoing the town square that has always been central to African communal life. The hub is meant to be a blueprint for the whole continent.
Interview: Damien Leaf
Photo: Larry Ajuwon; © Ajuwon
Mr. Ajuwon, Afrelib aims to strengthen libraries across Africa. What does the library landscape look like today?
There are two problems: not enough libraries and the ones that exist are severely under-resourced. If you look at the numbers – libraries per capita – the gap compared to Western and global averages is enormous. Academic libraries attached to schools and universities are functional to a degree, but even there you find outdated collec-tions and limited services. Public libraries are in a far worse state: underfunded and largely stuck in an outdated model. The building is there, the books are minimal, and there is very little else on offer.
Are there regional differences?
Yes, clearly. North Africa is generally better resourced than sub-Saharan Africa. Within sub-Saharan Africa, South Africa, Ghana, and Kenya stand out in terms of library infrastructure and availability. Nigeria has strong academic libraries, which makes sense given its population and the number of universities, but on public libraries it lags behind a smaller country like Ghana. And then there is Rwanda, which I think is a genuinely standout case across the board: education, health, infrastructure. Their library facilities reflect that broader commitment.
Your initiative is called Afrelib Trust. What is the core idea?
At its heart, Afrelib is about learning, literacy, and ensuring that communities have the tools they need to thrive. But the specific vehicle we are building is not a traditional library in the conventional sense – it is a community hub where a library is one component among several. You have a space for books and materials, but also maker spaces, IT facilities, a room for symposia or events. The model has to work for a professional who needs to research something, but also for a schoolchild who just wants a quiet place to read, and for a community group that wants to hold a meeting. All of that under one roof.
What triggered the whole project?
My father was a civil engineer who ran his own company, building national housing projects for the federal ministry. I visited construction sites with him, and at one point he genuinely wanted me to become an architect. I was effectively his sounding board when the family was designing our house in our home town. That interest never fully left me. My mother was an educator and primary school headteacher. The Afrelib project is their legacy, and they were its founding benefactors. And then libraries: growing up in Lagos, the library was a place of escape. It was quiet, it was calm, it was a completely different world from the street outside, and I could tell my parents I was going to study and they would not ask questions. That combination – architecture and the library as a space – eventually came together in this project. The immediate trigger was more practical. When tablets became widely available in the early 2010s, my brother, Joseph, and I thought: we can load these with books and educational content and give them to schools in Lagos. So we did. Teachers loved the idea and started building video lessons in a Khan Academy style. But scaling it was difficult because we could not secure funding. To continue supporting teachers and students, we created an academy to provide training for schools, then e-learning programmes and robotics challenges. At the back of all that was our original vision of building a physical space: a permanent, open, well-designed location that anyone could walk into.
The European library model has shifted significantly over the past decade or two: away from book storage towards community spaces, with events, music, coworking, and social gatherings. Is that relevant to what you are designing?
AIt is not just relevant – it is exactly the model we have in mind. And here is the interesting thing: that shift in Europe is being celebrated as an innovation, but it is actually a return to something that has always been central to African communal life. The town square, the space where everything happens – sharing information, storytelling, music, socialising – that is not new in Africa. What we want to do is design a space that reflects how communities actually function. Some submissions to our current design challenge have already picked up on this: people are saying the space should be free to enter, that it should be open to anyone regardless of whether they are there for books or for something else. I think that is exactly right.
You have also been working on a sustainable library design guide for Africa. What are the key requirements that keep coming up?
When we developed the guide, we organised it around six themes: building features, energy, water and drainage, economic sustainability, waste management, and librarian training. What we are seeing in responses to our current design challenge is that energy is the dominant concern – specifically, how to power these buildings, and almost universally that means integrating solar. The second major theme is climate adaptation: libraries in much of sub-Saharan Africa are simply not designed for local conditions. They get unbearably hot, there is no natural ventilation, no greenery. People are proposing solutions like incorporating plants and trees into the building fabric itself. And the third thread is the librarian – not just as a custodian of books, but as a trained community resource who can support professional development and sustainability education. That role needs to be redesigned from the ground up.
Visualisation of the central reading hall of the planned Afrelib Library in Lagos, Nigeria: The sustainable community hub is designed to bring together books, digital learning, workspaces, and events under one roof – as a model for future libraries across Africa. © Ajuwon/Afrelib
Afrelib Trust is registered as a social enterprise. How do you think about financial sustainability – for the Lagos library specifically, but also as a model that could be replicated?
That was my brother’s absolute insistence from the start: if it is not financially self-sustaining, it will not survive. One-off grants are useful, but they are not a business model. The idea is that certain services within the facility generate revenue that cross-subsidises the free or low-cost elements. Whether it is paid training, event hire, or maker space subscriptions is something we are still working through. But the principle is non-negotiable. We want this first library / innovation hub in Lagos to be a working proof of concept that others can copy. The vision is that it functions as a template: you take the model, adapt it to your context, and build it elsewhere. A network of these spaces across the continent. That only works if the model is genuinely replicable, which means it has to be financially viable from day one.
Where does the project stand right now, and what comes next?
The e-learning and training side of Afrelib has been quiet for the past couple of years; Covid disrupted the funding and activities. The Afrelib library development project is in the design and planning phase. We have secured the land, and we have been doing all the groundwork, including consulting with library professionals, educators, sustainability experts, and architects, participating in university lectures, organising webinars, and developing an African sustainable library guide in collaboration with AFLIA – the Association for Library and Information Associations on the African continent – to make sure we are incorporating the actual voice of African librarians into the design. I am supported by volunteers, friends, family, and a core team – Ms. Oreoluwa Adekunle, Mr. Jide Ayoola, and Dr. Ayodele Alonge – whose contribution has been immense. And now the Afrelib Challenge 2026, a two-stage open innovation competition inviting Africa-based teams to reimagine what a sustainable library and innovation hub could look like. Stage one closed in May with seven submissions, six of them strong. Five teams made the shortlist and have developed their proposals for the second stage. Our next priority is to recognise the teams, support the prizes, and give the finalist work wider visibility – possibly through a showcase in Amsterdam.
What kind of partners or support are you looking for?
Several things. Knowledge: people working in architecture, sustainability, and library science who can improve the design we already have and stress-test its viability. Funding, financial support and advice – specifically on how to structure the self-financing model so it actually works and so other libraries can replicate it. And technical partners who understand construction in the Nigerian and African context. Our ambition is not just one building. It is also to develop a viable blueprint that can be replicated across the continent.
LARRY AJUWON grew up in Lagos, studied chemistry, and has spent the past three decades in Europe – first in the UK, now in the Netherlands, where he works in pharmaceutical biotech research. In his spare time, he runs Afrelib Trust, a UK-registered social enterprise that he co-founded with his brother, Joseph, to advance education, literacy, and sustainable library infrastructure in Nigeria and across sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative's flagship project is a purpose-built community library and innovation hub in Lagos, currently in the design phase, with construction planned to begin later this year. Its design is being shaped by the Afrelib Challenge 2026, an open competition for Africa-based teams: five teams have been shortlisted and are completing their final submissions, and a showcase of the finalist projects in Amsterdam is under consideration.
Tom Ravenscroft mit Philipp Meuser, Verleger von DOM publishers, bei der feierlichen Preisverleihung. © DOM publishers
