News

Books For Africa is excited to share the results of our recently completed photo contest! We received fantastic photo submissions from across the African continent; our thanks to our partners for sharing their work with us. This year's winning photo was submitted by our friends from TESOL International Association in Libya, whose photo will be featured in our upcoming annual report!

Last summer we were pleased to host a group from the MN Orchestra at our Minnesota warehouse, where they helped unveil two beautiful Little Free Libraries to be included in a BFA container shipment to South Africa.  These books have now been delivered and distributed, and are contributing to educational opportunity for students in Soweto, South Africa.  T

Books For Africa founder Tom Warth is organizing a fundraiser to ship books to Zimbabwe!  Tom plans to hike Eagle Mountain, the highest elevation in Minnesota at 2,301 feet.  This will take place Sunday, May 26, 2019  Participants will combine fundraising efforts, with a $12,000 goal to fully fund a 40 foot ocean container of books to be distributed to schools across Zimbabwe.

Around the world, Thomson Reuters engages in efforts to strengthen the rule of law and help democratic values flourish, even in places where progress in these areas can be dishearteningly slow.  For the past ten years, Thomson Reuters has been helping Africa’s emerging democracies build the foundation for a civil society through its work with the non-profit groups Lawyers Without Borders and Books For Africa. 

Minneapolis attorney and former Star Tribune reporter Roberta Walburn and Chief U.S. District Judge for Minnesota John Tunheim discussed the late federal Judge Miles Lord at a special event Nov. 14 at Thomson Reuters. The program was a partnership between Thomson Reuters and Books For Africa’s Law and Democracy Initiative.

The late Kofi Annan, the former United Nations Secretary General and a son of Africa, once said: “Literacy is quite simply the bridge from misery to hope.” That sentiment is nowhere more important than among the youth of Africa, which has the youngest population in the world. Some 225 million Africans are between the ages of 15 and 24, a number that is expected to more than double in the next 40 years, according to the United Nations.