Q: What kinds of books are the African Library Project looking for?

A: The African Library Project collects baby board books, paperback easy readers, children’s picture books, juvenile literature, chapter books, K-8 textbooks (English, math, geography, and science), dictionaries, and encyclopedias and atlases (preferably post 1990).

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Q: Do you accept all donations?

A: Since these books are collected to help build community and school libraries, many of the readers will be school-aged children. Therefore, we cannot accept adult books with profane content or explicit language. Additionally, books that strongly advocate for American patriotism, holidays, or a specific religious denomination are generally not accepted.

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Q: How do you sort the books?

A: When we ship our books, we generally sort them into one of three categories: Kindergarten to 3rd grade, 4th to 8th grade, and teacher manuals and references.​ For more details, please see our What We Do page.​

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Q: Why send books in English?

 A: Most secondary schools in Africa speak English or French. Currently, the African Library Project is working in countries where English is a major language required for secondary education.

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 What age children are your libraries targeting?

We receive requests for books for pre-school, elementary school, secondary school and community libraries. Our books are read by all ages, especially children.​​Q: What age children are your libraries targeting?

A: The African Library Project receive requests for books for pre-school, primary school, secondary school, and community libraries. Our books are read by all ages, especially kids.

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Q: How are monetary donations used?

A: With sending the books comes a shipping fee of $500 per library. This covers the
roughly $200 needed to ship the books to the warehouse in New Orleans, and a
$300 (tax deductible) check needs to be written to the African Library Project to
cover storage costs and shipping to Africa.

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Q: Where in Africa does the African Library Project work?

A: So far, the Penn State chapter of ALP has helped create libraries in Botswana, Ghana, Malawi, Sierra Leone, and Swaziland. As of January 2013, our parent African Library Project organization as a whole has built 985 libraries in Botswana, Cameroon, Ghana, Lesotho, Malawi, Nigeria, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, created 750+ partnerships with U.S. schools and other organizations, and collected over a million books!