‘The world’s memory’: why Nigeria is burying its history under a mountain in Svalbard

It is the first African country to deposit data in the Arctic World Archive, a storage facility designed to preserve records of everything from cultural practices to historical events A decommissioned coalmine near the north pole is the last place you’d expect to find Indigenous stories from rural Nigeria, but deep below the Arctic permafrost of Svalbard a storage unit contains a cache of cultural and literary records from the West African country. The Arctic World Archive (AWA) is a data sto...

By Gabriella Opara