Yorùbá language educator and cultural advocate, Damilola Adebonojo, has raised concerns over the marginalisation of African languages – particularly Yorùbá – in the literary space.
Adebonojo, popularly known as Ìyá Yorùbá, said despite the richness and depth of Yorùbá, it remains underrepresented, especially in published works.
She made the statement while unveiling YorùbáTexts.com, a digital catalogue that seeks to document and archive all known publications in the Yorùbá language.
“It simply points to where each work can be found, read, borrowed, or bought — functioning as a public catalogue and digital directory,” she explained.
She said “The platform is designed to host no books directly but offers an extensive, searchable index of Yorùbá texts. Each entry is tagged by author, genre, publication year, and subject”.
Adebonojo said she was inspired to start the project after realising how difficult it was to access older Yorùbá texts – many of which are now out of print or never digitised.
“I couldn’t even find books I knew existed. Some were never archived, and others are only found in private collections,” she said.
The digital archive relies heavily on community input, with librarians, researchers, and the general public encouraged to submit titles they find.
“We’re building it book by book,” she noted.
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