The 1st International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1), will be held on 1-3 July 2009 at the United Nations Conference Centre (UNCC), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Rationale: Africa as a continent is lagging far behind in the global drive to build digital libraries and archives. As a continent, it has not engaged in any significant discussions and dialogue on strategy and policy for preserving and accessing its resources in digital form. There is urgency to these policy discussions as major digital initiatives involving African content are currently being undertaken by non-African organisations without widely accepted protocol and agreement on issues of ownership of intellectual property rights, local African access rights, and long term sustainability. The aim of the conference is to: bring together key African and international stakeholders to discuss critical policy issues and explore approaches and challenges facing Africa in relation to the digitisation of African resources; and promote ways of strengthening, coordinating and forging stronger links between African digitisation initiatives, networks, projects and policies.

Format of the Conference: The first day of the conference (1st July) will take the form of a Strategic Roundtable with key African regional and sub-regional organizations to advocate for the inclusion of significant library services and other knowledge input elements in African development strategies and programmes. The event, which is being held pursuant to IFLA Presidential theme, is titled Building on Knowledge: IFLA Roundtable with Intergovernmental Organisations on Putting Libraries on the African Development Agenda. The 2nd and 3rd days will be devoted to the main conference theme Connecting Africans to Their Own Resources: Developing Policies and Strategies for Africa’s Digital Future.
We invite participation from all African countries, private and public international development organizations, and other countries aiding Africa to tackle its development challenges.

Themes & Issues:

• Knowledge as the Basis of Development Effectiveness

• Knowledge Audit of New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), and other African Development Strategies

• How Best to Put Knowledge on Africa’s Development Agenda

• Re-orientating Development Policy in Africa for the Information and Knowledge Age

• Regional, National and Local Policies and Strategies for Developing Digital Libraries and Archives in Africa to improve access to knowledge for development

• National Perspectives, Cases and Best Practice Projects and Programmes Involving the Digitisation of African Heritage & Scholarship

• Access to Knowledge in Africa: Challenges and Innovation

• Institutional Repositories: Policies, Strategies, and Practices

• Capacity building in Context: what is needed to create critical and sustainable digital outputs and services

First Open Announcement and Call for Papers [Format: ]