Ithaka is a non-profit organisation which promotes innovation in higher education by helping pioneering initiatives thrive. Aluka was launched in 2003 as one of Ithaka's first projects. Aluka collects and collates digital material concerning developing countries and posts the results on the Internet. Its initial focus is on Southern Africa, and it has been working with archives, libraries, museums, herbaria and universities to gather scholarly resources for the past three years. To date, it has collected resources on African cultural heritage sites and landscapes, African plants, and struggles for freedom in Southern Africa.

In 2007, we granted $2.5 million to Aluka to help develop its digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. Aluka aims to gather materials that are physically scattered, rare or difficult to access, and make them accessible to the global academic community online. In this way, it hopes to create new possibilities for research and teaching about Africa, and to end the marginalisation of African scholars by allowing them to easily contribute to and access scholarly materials.

Our funds will support Aluka’s core operating costs, including content development, technology, capacity building and training for partners across Africa, and the creation of a sustainable business model. This will help Aluka build a network of high quality scholarly contributors and become a premier resource for the study of Africa.