Aluka digital library

Habenaria pasmithii, discovered by Okavango researcher Pete Smith, from Kew Gardens collection, Aluka site

Aluka is an international, collaborative programme that is building an online digital library of scholarly resources from and about Africa. Aluka seeks to attract high-quality scholarly content about Africa from institutions and individuals across the globe. By contributing their collections to the Aluka platform, content owners have a means of offering access to their collections to an international audience—without having to develop and support their own technology platforms.

Included among the pilot content resources are African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes, and African Plants. The African Cultural Heritage Sites and Landscapes content area links high-quality visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage sites including photographs, 3D models, GIS data, site plans, aerial and satellite photography, images of rock art, excavation reports, manuscripts, traveller's accounts, historical and antiquarian maps, books, articles, and other scholarly research. The African Plants content area comprises scientific data contributed by the African Plants Initiative (API), a collaboration among more than 50 institutions in Africa, Europe, and the United States. Botswana content in Akluka includes images of rock art and herbarium samples.