African librarianship: a relic, a fallacy or an imperative!

Abstract

There is an abundance of evidence in the literature that corroborates the hypothesis that African librarianship has its roots in the colonial era. In developing African librarianship, the colonial masters set in place a library and information service infrastructure that propagated western philosophies and imperatives. As pointed out by duPlessis (2007), the colonial powers, to support their anticipated protracted stay in Africa,developed an excellent library infrastructure and commensurate services. Running in tandem with this colonial agenda was the humanism issues and the quest to ‘illuminate the dark continent’ through missionary work for the betterment of the African people. To aid in the ‘illumination’ process, Africans were taught to read the Bible and the Koran. Bukenya (2008) makes the assertion that missionaries had to spread literacy among the converts and create new literature for consumption. However, libraries and reading were alien to communities that had very strong oral communication networks for the sharing of information and knowledge.