In Sub-Saharan Africa, a significant portion of historical and cultural archives remain in the custody of private families and businesses. These collections, which contain invaluable heritage materials, are often inaccessible to researchers, scholars, and the wider public due to concerns over ownership, commercial exploitation, and cultural sensitivities. The push for digitization presents both opportunities and challenges, particularly in terms of ethical considerations and licensing frameworks. While open-access knowledge sharing is a widely advocated approach in the global digital landscape, its implementation in Sub Saharan Africa is met with resistance, primarily due to concerns over intellectual property rights, misuse of heritage content, and the absence of licensing models that align with local and cultural realities.

Aim
To provide culturally relevant licensing models that strike a compromise between open-access knowledge sharing and ownership rights, this study intends to investigate the ethical and licensing issues surrounding the digitization of private heritage collections in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Goals:
1. Examine the viability of the current licensing methods for Sub-Saharan African heritage preservation.
2. Create a new framework that ensures ethical and non-exploitative access while taking cultural and regional issues into account.
3. Address private custodians' worries about ownership and misuse while suggesting ways to involve them in digitization initiatives.

Major Challenges with preserving archives

The tension between ownership and accessibility is the main obstacle to digitizing private cultural assets in Sub Saharan Africa. Many private custodians worry that their cultural heritage may be exploited or misrepresented if their collections are made publicly available under free and open licenses. It is challenging to create frameworks that strike a balance between information sharing and cultural protection because current copyright laws and licensing models do not sufficiently address these issues.

Justification

The current ethical and licensing issues that impede the digitization of private heritage archives in Sub-Saharan Africa must be addressed by this study.
First, it looks into different licensing schemes that support regulated access to historical materials while upholding private custodians' ownership rights. Creating a framework for licensing that is sensitive to cultural differences, like free but non-commercial licenses, can provide a compromise that promotes digitalization without sacrificing regional considerations.
Second, the study is essential for assisting foundations, open-access platforms, and politicians in reevaluating and updating existing licensing practices to better reflect African viewpoints. African heritage items will be conserved and disseminated in ways that are consistent with regional values and legal systems if biases in international licensing models are addressed.
Last but not least, this study seeks to increase awareness and motivate private institutions to get more involved in cultural preservation initiatives. In order to digitize Africa's historical and cultural assets in a more ethical and sustainable manner, the project will investigate ways to involve families, companies, and other custodians. The long-term objective of guaranteeing greater accessibility to African history while upholding ownership rights can be accomplished in this way.