African Librarianship: A Relic, a Fallacy, or an Imperative?

African librarianship has its roots in the colonial era, with colonial powers developing excellent library infrastructure with commensurate services in anticipation of their protracted stay in Africa. However, libraries were alien to African communities, which had a very strong oral tradition and used such a tradition to share information and knowledge. The “un-African” library infrastructure was challenged by some leading African scholars, who argued that there has to be a system of librarianship that delivers on African realities and imperatives. This paper interrogates the need to transform the concept of African librarianship in search of a path that addresses African imperatives; it also examines the need to separate the relic in pursuit of reconceptualization. There is little doubt that there is a need for, at the least, a hybrid—that is, incorporating the best from the colonial era with that which is African, such as the oral tradition—that would result in the transposition of concepts to create a new, relevant, effective, and efficient form of librarianship—namely, librarianship in Africa.