Facebook & Mandela Foundation to digitise life of Madiba

The partnership is aimed at putting together and documenting the life and times of Nelson Mandela.

The foundation's director of communication, Luzuko Koti, says this will help in preserving Mandela's legacy.

"It will help us in ensuring that more people have access to Nelson Mandela's story and are going to contribute in sharing it with audiences beyond what we can reach as the Nelson Mandela Foundation," says Koti.

"Yesterady was a day where we celebrating this partnership and solidifying it and clarifying what it will mean and this is one step towards many other things we want to do with them," he explains further.

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Koti says their intention as the foundation is to make the archives of the late head of state accessible for education, among other things.

"We feel that keeping it within the walls of the foundation is not enough for it to reach the young people in the far corners of the African continent," says Koti.

Koti says they will still own the rights to documentation and will curate them, but Facebook is a platform that has a wider reach.

Koti explains that the documentation will not be available on Facebook per say: "Facebook will help the foundation in terms of digitisation and making sure that there are quicker and sophisticated search facilities that will be in play for people to access them through a variety of platforms."

The mechanics behind the digitisation and archiving will work so that even people with no data, slow internet or search facilities are not as advanced as urban areas would be able to have access to the archives.

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