headerimage

Books for Africa Schools


About Us

Books For African Schools  is a book drive based in Berkeley, California, collecting book donations for school libraries in Africa. Public school libraries in Africa have a great student demand for books, but don't have the money for well-stocked libraries, if they have any at all. We think books are a valuable educational resource, and there is a large supply of quality books here in the Bay that have great educational (and entertainment) potential, and some of them have little resale value here. We have decided to try to meet the demand of book-hungry students who may miss out on the resource we probably took for granted while in high school, the school library.    The cost of shipping will be high, over $1,000 to ship sixty boxes; we plan to hold a book sale of some of the donated books to help raise part of this cost.

The school we are currently collecting books for is City High School in Kampala, Uganda. The headmistress at the school, Clare Nduhuura had provided us with some guidelines.    Once we have sent a shipment to that school, we will start collecting for a school in Ghana.     We hope to be in operation indefinitely; so whenever you clean out your bookshelves, we can take your books.

As of the end of June 2008, we have collected 34 books (banker’s box size).of appropriate nature to ship. However, we have set aside only a few books for the book sale.    Our target is 60 boxes of books to ship, and 40 to 50 boxes of books of good resale value for the sale. 

We have also been buying books from Friends-of-the-Library sales around the Bay Area, with our own money.   In certain categories, especially modern novels, books that will be in extremely high demand in Africa can be picked up at the last-day sale, for $3 a bag.