Sankofa Digital Heritage Library

Overview

Sankofa Digital Heritage Library takes its name from the Akan proverb "it is not wrong to go back for what you forgot". It is a SmartQix product that preserves and shares Ghana's history as readable stories: 244 pieces spanning the pre-colonial era, the independence movement, and modern Ghana, from the Ghana space programme and the first offshore oil field to market queens, railways, and the Black Queens. Alongside the stories sit an interactive timeline of 259 events, historical maps, an AI chat for asking questions of the collection, and a 3D heritage library. It is in public beta and we build, host, and edit it ourselves.

The challenge

Most of Ghana's history lives in archives, academic papers, and out-of-print books that ordinary readers never see. We wanted a place where a student, a teacher, or someone in the diaspora could read a well-written 10-minute story about any part of that history, see where it sits in time and on the map, and follow the threads between events. That meant producing and editing hundreds of stories to a consistent standard, structuring them by era and theme, and building interfaces for time and place that work on a phone as well as a large screen.

What we built

We built the library as a Next.js application with server-rendered story pages for speed and search visibility. Stories carry era, theme, reading time, and word count, and can be browsed by filter or discovered through an AI chat grounded in the collection. The timeline renders 259 dated events across three eras with zoom from centuries down to single years, a major-events filter, and horizontal and vertical modes. Historical maps give geographic context, and the 3D library presents the collection as shelves you can explore. Accounts let readers save and follow stories, and a blog carries editorial pieces on African and Ghanaian literature. An editorial pipeline with AI assistance and human review keeps new stories flowing.