Open Access Initiatives in Africa — Structure, Incentives and Disincentives Williams E. Nwagwu ⁎ Africa Regional Centre for Information Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria Department of Information Science, University of South Africa, South Africa abstract article info Article history: Received 20 November 2012 Accepted 20 November 2012 Available online 16 January 2013 Keywords: Open access Africa South Africa Development Science and technology Building open access in Africa is imperative not only for African scholars and researchers doing scientific research but also for the expansion of the global science and technology knowledgebase. This paper examines the structure of homegrown initiatives, and observes very low level of awareness prevailing in the higher educational institutions and research institutes, organizations and governments. Increasing penetration of internet as well as growing proficiency in its use account for any evidence of OA movement in the region. The absence of interest and willingness of governments and policy makers to take a role in building the movement in the region makes any observed progress a fragmented one. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. As we hurtle into the twenty-first century, will we be passive downloaders of content or active uploaders of meaning? 1 INTRODUCTION Open access (OA) is now happening everywhere in the world, in- cluding Africa. 2 Although the global pattern and level of awareness and deployment may follow the paths of digital advantage, 3 the move- ment has gained tremendous pace, probably due to increased global access to the internet, 4 the activities of OA promoters and the perti- nence of the mission of the movement. 5 Scholars in Africa and other developing regions no longer mourn the inaccessibility to research outcomes from the developed world. This is because, on a daily basis, both older and newer in-lab and out-of-lab information mate- rials – books, serials, gray materials and others – are uploaded onto the internet, and downloaded by other scholars and researchers. The objective of this paper is to examine the structure OA initiatives in Africa as well as incentives and disincentives to the movement. To achieve this objective, the paper briefly examines Africa's position in the global pyramid of knowledge construction and argues that Africa's untapped knowledge resources could be an opportunity to explore OA as a strategy for making African information resources part of the global knowledgebase. The paper also argues that OA visibility in Africa may be a question of serendipity — people will use any informa- tion they can find, the ubiquitous internet having made access to information very easy. Finally, the paper highlights lack of national and institutional awareness as being responsible for the low uptake of the OA movement in many of the countries in the region. To support this research, the paper relied on syntheses from DOAJ, 6 DOAR, 7 the UNESCO's 8 global assessment of OA in various parts of the world plus practitioner's experiences and available literature in the field. AFRICA IN THE PYRAMID OF KNOWLEDGE CONSTRUCTION Africa consists of more than 53 nations, with thousands of native languages, and a variety of ethnic and cultural diversity. A major beauty of the continent is the unprecedented abundance of human and natural resources — Africa's biodiversity remains one of the richest in the world. 9 However, Africa is confronted with poverty, political instability, corruption, diseases, armed conflicts and ethnic and tribal chauvinism, all often blamed on postcolonial woes. In the country-by-country outlook on Africa in 2009, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) 10 reviewed the African economic condition and concluded that more than half of African nations are off-track of their development objectives to achieve universal primary education by 2015. Africa is the cradle of education in the world. According to Guinness Book of Records in 1997 11 University of Al-Karaouine, at Fez in Morocco, was founded in CE 859, followed by Al-Azhar University in Egypt in CE 970. Although the early educational activities of these institutions were mainly religious, this history represents a landmark for learning. How- ever, today, education, even at the early levels, is performing below expectation. A typical example of state of affairs of basic education in Nigeria is the information below: With Universal Basic Education Primary Schools in northern Nigeria still located in makeshift buildings, and with some of the schools The Journal of Academic Librarianship 39 (2013) 3–10 ⁎ Africa Regional Centre for Information Science, University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Tel.: +234 8030494806. E-mail address: willieezi@yahoo.com. 0099-1333/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.acalib.2012.11.024 Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect The Journal of Academic Librarianship