AFRITERRA: The Cartographic Free Library

Gerald J. Rizzo is President of the AFRITERRA Cartographic Free Library, established in Boston 1995, preserving and securing the rarest original maps focused on Africa.  [ph. 727 278 9873]

Thirty years library management skills in Content-prioritization, Catalog and Aesthetic-design, Quality-control, Security-control, Financial Accountability.

Resume of Exhibitions:

The Gold of Africa: A Super-Bowl Cultural Exhibit, Tampa Museum of Art, January 1991

A Cartographic History of Africa: The Millennium in Review, Harvard Pusey Library, Cambridge MA 2000

 Early Mapping of the Nile, International Cartographic Association, Cambridge, 2005

Patterns and Meaning of a Great-Lake in West Africa, African Studies Association, San Francisco, 2005

Before Mandela: A Cartographic History of South Africa 1513—1917, Boston Map Society, 2015

The Gambia, Smithsonian Museum of African American History, Satellite Opening 2016 

The Trans-Atlantic Horizon: A Cartographic Observance of the 400th year since the Jamestown Advent, African Studies Association, Boston, 2019

The Afriterra Library is unfurling historical geography as a means to eclipse the global specter of racial and religious Intolerance.

The distinction stands on FOCUS, CONTENT, and ACCESS, digitizing 5000 of the rarest original maps of Africa, spanning 500 years, and streaming images so explicit as to touch the face of a continent

To make the world a better place, one has to visualize the world as a place. Here we enable every person to absorb the details of global space. Then society can notice people as a continuum of mutual identities, gained by familiarity with the paths of history. By accruing more spatial identities, we can makeover the roots of prejudice, eclipse intolerant views, and elevate a more inclusive place for Humanity.

The Problem is Social-Intolerance.

The Solution is to expand Identities.

The Method is Geographic Exposure.

The Result is a peacefully expansive society.

The Afriterra Cartographic Library posits the use of geographic education as a means to eclipse the pervasive problem of social intolerance and prejudice, which affects the migration talent in every region of the world. This is such an urgency as to be cited in the International Religious Freedom Act. The U.S. State Department and Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor have further characterized the problem being, “both ethnic and religious prejudice, stereotyping, scape-goating, hate-speech and ultimately other violent acts normalized through public media.”

Systemic Need: By turning to education as the remedy, we find specific problems evident from the poor outcomes on the National NAEP report-card, revealing only 25% of students scored above the proficient level in geography.

• Content
• Access
• Cost

Individual's Need:

• Need for physical links to the contemporary world.
• Need for historical links to modern life and one’s view of ‘self’.

As stipulated in 2016, “UNESCO states that education is a human right for all throughout life, and that access must be matched by quality as the Global Education 2030 Agenda. The road-map to achieve this is a new vision for education, with bold and innovative actions”.

The AFRITERRA LIBRARY embraces a philanthropic mission to preserve and access the rich cartographic record of Africa, enabling a transformative education.

The product is achieved by cataloging, digitizing, and displaying over 5000 of the rarest original maps, spanning 500 years, and covering all regions and scales in 8 different languages.

The initial innovation is the Assemblage..., the orderly identification of a definitive cartographic record, previously scattered and sequestered over centuries, and now captured as a unified digital parade focused on Africa.

The urgent innovation is Access..., the immediate delivery of deep content at the touch of any ardent student or teacher or hot-spot.

The ultimate innovations are the new Identities..., created by users personally absorbing new spatial experiences, forging a bond with all humanity.

These methods of use allow any person to create their own lessons, searches, and questions.

1) A handy Lesson-Companion to localize and realize a broader view of any current-event or lesson-plan in a ready display of historical details.

2) A reachable, searchable database for any keyword, place, date, creator, or GPS coordinate.

3) Visual enhancements easily oriented by panning-and-zooming high-resolution digital images.

4) Engineering digital applications layering data-sets, GPS, and Optical Character Recognition.

The Afriterra Cartographic Library understands numbers [UNESCO and World Bank]. Yes, we see numbers as ‘lives’ aspiring for historical resonance. We intend to serve every one of more than 50 million students within African Communities and even more left out. This includes 200 public universities and 468 private colleges. Additionally more than 250,000 students from sub-Saharan Africa are enrolled in universities abroad. Just a one percent increase in the average level of education in Africa would raise annual GDP 12 percent. The returns on investment in higher education is 21 percent in Africa—the highest in the world.

American Communities also hold numbers to serve.

[U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics]

Teachers, 3.2 million, [80.1% White, 8.8% Hispanic, 6.7% Black, 2.3% Asian]

School Libraries 98,460; Public Libraries 9,057

1700 Public Universities, 2500 Private

132,853, Community schools.

Public: 91,147, [50.8 million students,]

Charter: 7,011, [3 million students]

Private: 34,576, [5.7 million students]

Home-school, [1,6 million students, 3.3 percent of all students]

Our one Library’s impact, [graphically re-orienting the past], will transform a wall of isolated numbers into a recognizable cohesive society, if only we can agree to see.

The Afriterra project relates first to the elevation of a student’s opportunity for explicit spatial learning. Any lesson operating a map can transform a 'name' into an 'experience.' Then the user is free to align their own paths, close the distances, and open the boundaries. Cartography expands the 'image of self' by expanding the space filled by 'self.' A project that affords unlimited journeys can replace centuries of empty pages. Indeed anyone now can understand the arrival of a person as a continuum, or a horizon, or an opening to see beyond.

The Idea came in two key realizations: 

MEASUREMENT and ORIENTATION.

First of all, there is no other exercise so focusing as taking a MEASUREMENT. In this act, an individual learns by holding a ruler and aligning the eye in complete absorption of the attention required. The result is a personal accomplishment, the confirmation of a certain fact.

When performed on a map using the concept of scale, one learns even more about computation, extension, projection, logic, and even epistemology to arrive at how true any theory or opinion can be.

The other Idea came from forging trails in the forest. We know that being lost feels deeply vulnerable, whereas acquiring context opens a most liberating sense. This is precisely how Cartography showed me a natural spark for widening my world. Like oil-reserves, maps hold historical-energy. They can fuel hours of curiosity about what was or is relatable. Here is a platform where any hand can repeatedly refresh a journey, where a space can be joined, where viewers imagine themselves differently, where fresh fountains of identity flow.

The passionate connection cries out from July of the year 2000, when I was shivering in subzero temperatures as I climbed over 19,000 feet, forgoing food and sleep to reach the summit of Mount Kilama-njaro. Standing there at sunrise, above the clouds, across the highest point in Africa, I shouted to the Gods with tears running down my dusty face:

 “May the next millennium be kinder to Africa than the last….”

I have always been deeply attached to the exquisite lines of nature;

But yet deeply troubled by witnessing certain behaviors in human nature.

I could never reconcile how both can be.

Such passions lead me to an answer, and enable me here to transmit it from the digital clouds.

The earth itself, is that wondrously diverse remedy.

With the right tool, every human can know that we too are all a wondrously diverse product, originating from wondrously diverse lands, following wondrously diverse paths; and now meeting together across the ages, bringing wondrously diverse talents to ascend together in the common goals of recognition, prosperity and peace.

To answer the question of POSITIONING, The Afriterra Library captures these positions:

Our Tactical-Position strikes the largest visual-footprint, reinforced by ready repetition.

Our Authoritative Position is much more important.

Afriterra stands emphatically on the material-position, an authority above all others. Once given open access to 'historically exclusive' material, every individual user can also claim this position of authority in their education of time and space.

Most of all, our position is ready, like a coiled-spring, quivering with stored energy gathered over countless years. The coil is literally compressed into one digital chamber, fully loaded with 5000 spatial images and millions of data points. The historical blast of such a spring is only waiting for a necessary trigger to Elevate this Prize back into the atmosphere of a global cloud.

This position is an outgrowth of the vision, talents, and passion of our highly motivated board providing creative value to maximize any philanthropic goal.

Executive Director: Gerald J. Rizzo, Project Manager and Director of Content.

Board Member, Timothy C. Weiskel, Rhodes Scholar, DPhil (Oxon), MLS

Board Member, Robert R. Bellinger, PhD, Professor of History and African-American Studies, Suffolk University, Boston, MA

Board Member, Thomas J. Bassett PhD, Professor of Geography, University of Illinois, Champaign/Urbana, invited author, History of Cartography Project, University of Wisconsin.

 Board Member, Lucia Lovison-Golob PhD, Instructor, Geographical Information Systems.

Obstacles and Perseverance do not define us, but they do take us to another level.

As we approach the 100th anniversary of the discovery of Insulin, the endless obstacles of ‘Sugar-Diabetes’ continue to burden and extinguish the lives of millions suffering such physical limitations.

My blood is naturally normal, but my son must regulate all his own. I have silently carried my own burden of uncertainties during the 30 years since he suddenly lost the auto-feedback in the islets of his pancreas. I was carrying grief, knowing all too much about fated outcomes of amputation, blindness, dialysis, or coma.

Here is what we used to persevere:

Hunger [a intense passion focused on specific tasks],

Endurance [to use time as an asset],

Partnership [to fill your lapses].

In this case, my son became the partner who showed me how to actually change fate. After I ignited his passion for science, he endured the minute by minute monitoring of tests, injections, and results. So finally, we mastered the setbacks so well now that he carries us both over other technical obstacles that have impeded our next goal: Transforming the obstacle of Social-Intolerance.

In November 2019, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and the Afriterra Library each lead the academic community by producing premier exhibitions of historical material focused on Africa for the Annual Convention of the African Studies Association. The first exhibit was MFA’s Nubian artifacts never before seen in our lifetime. In the other leading exhibit, we unfolded our Library in a live examination of the 10 rarest original maps documenting the precise origins and locations of the West African Slave Trade that marked the 400 years since the Jamestown advent.

I had always planned a powerful discussion of the Slave-Trade, so I choose a most inspiring perspective to elevate a 400 year contribution to the ‘new world.’ We invited a preeminent scholar from UCLA, Professor Judith P. Carney, to add her field work proving that African Black Rice was independently cultivated in the West Coast of Africa in the precise locations visualized on these maps of the African coast. Together, we tracked the migrations of slaves and rice from Africa to the earliest introduction on the American coastal plain, using demonstrations of hiding seeds in hair-braids, grinding techniques, and the mechanical agency of riverine watersheds in early African agriculture.

AFRITERRA’s initial innovation is Assemblage..., the orderly identification of 5000 definitive cartographic records, previously scattered and sequestered over centuries, and now captured as a unified digital parade of historical Africa in high-resolution.

The urgent innovation is the Access..., the immediate delivery of rich content at the touch of any ardent student or teacher or pillar institution, or any other cellular hotspot throughout the world.

The ultimate innovations are the new Identities..., created by users personally absorbing new spatial experiences, forging an identity with all humanity, and collectively finding the land as a continuum of changing horizons.

The following methods of use allow any person to create their own lessons, searches, questions, pathways, and identities based on their individual or community needs.

1) A handy Lesson-Companion to localize, realize and facilitate a broader view of any current-event or lesson-plan in a ready display of rare historical details.

2) A reachable, searchable database for any keyword, place, date, creator, or GPS coordinate.

3) Visual enhancements easily oriented by panning-and-zooming high-resolution digital images.

4) Engineering new creative digital applications such as place OCR [optical character recognition], along with an online forum where the public can share their experiences positioned on  GPS layers over the precise spot and place-name on the original historic maps.

These innovations expand the ‘image of self’ by expanding the space filled by ‘self’. Indeed, by accruing more spatial identities, anyone can makeover the roots of prejudice to eclipse an intolerant view of the world.

To make the world a better place, one has to visualize the world as a place. The ontology is Ludwig Wittgenstein’s picturing-relation, as the logical basis of language following a praxis of rules: ‘That is how a picture is attached to reality, it reaches right out to it’. A symbol contains identity. A map is a gesture. It points to an entity, a space to focus attention on an actual state-of-affairs.

We can plainly define a map as the point where three variables come together: reality, representation, and the gaze of a user. The viewer is at the same time outside the representation and enveloped by it. Such a ‘zooming-in’ capacity sparks an immediate impact to take hold of intimate identities.  The nature of thought itself is engraved  on  these maps as a lasting remnant of paths through the human mind.

Any lesson operating a map can transform a ‘name’ into an ‘experience.’ This method opens new ways people can assemble ‘space,’ and thus unpack fundamental truths about themselves, including their place in a greater world. Cartography expands the ‘image of self’ by expanding the space filled by ‘self.’ Here, this channel brings substance to space…by opening more experiences to grow the ‘self’ as a keen absorber of spaces. The conscious mind serially maps a string of experiences known as ‘self,’ as well as a void unknown as ‘other.’ When woven together, they form the basis of our very existence.

Thus, to map…is to exist….

Indeed, by accruing more spatial identities, anyone can makeover the roots of prejudice, fulfilling more reality, more worth, and more than ample support, to eclipse an intolerant view of the world.

The Problem is Social-Intolerance.

The Solution is to expand Identities.

The Method is Geographic Exposure.

The Result becomes a peaceful expansive society

References:

Sarkis, Hashim; MIT Dean Architecture & Planning

Wittgenstein, Ludwig, , Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Harcourt Co, 1922; Philosophical Investigations. 

Jacob, Christian; Conley  and Dahl (ed.), The Sovereign Map

Carano.; ‘Breaking Stereotypes: Constructing Geographic Literacy and Cultural Awareness through Technology’, The Social Studies, Journal Volume 98-2, 2007

The Afriterra Cartographic Library understands numbers [U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, UNESCO and World Bank]. 

Yes, we see numbers as ‘lives’ aspiring for historical resonance. 

American Communities in every region are now able to use Afriterra online.

Teachers, 3.2 million, [80.1% White, 8.8% Hispanic, 6.7% Black, 2.3% Asian]

School Libraries 98,460; Public Libraries 9,057

1700 Public Universities, 2500 Private

132,853, Community schools.

Public: 91,147, [50.8 million students,]

Charter: 7,011, [3 million students]

Private: 34,576, [5.7 million students]

Home-school, [1,6 million students, 3.3 percent of all students]

African Communities: In 1 year we aim to serve 6085 public and private schools in Lagos Nigeria. In 5 years, we aim to serve every one of more than 50 million students within Africa Communities and even more left out. This includes 200 public universities and 468 private colleges, and more than 250,000 students from sub-Saharan Africa enrolled in universities abroad. 

First Goal Completed: We have assembled a historical performance.

The Elevate Prize will create the 'ARROW' pointing to www.afriterra.org

Immediate Goal: The Individual’s Need:

•           Need for physical links to the contemporary world.

•           Need for historical links to modern life and one’s view of ‘self’.

Final Goal: The Systemic Needs:

•           Need to enrich content pertaining to Africa.

•           Need for visual aids in learning and applying knowledge.

•           Need to reach to every person.

•           Need for cost and time efficiency.

•           Need to change intolerant perceptions.

Like oil-reserves, maps hold historical-energy. They can fuel hours of curiosity about what was or is relatable. Here is a platform where any hand can repeatedly refresh a journey, where a space can be joined, where viewers imagine themselves differently, where fresh fountains of identity flow.

Economic Impact: Just one percent increase in average level of education in Africa would raise annual GDP 12 percent. The returns on investment in higher education is 21 percent in Africa—the highest in the world.

Social Impact: Our Library’s ultimate impact [actually re-orienting the past], will transform a wall of isolated numbers into a recognizable cohesive society, if only we can agree to try.

The two barriers are entwined in the concept of 'reach'

Our library's substantial content already exists as material assets.

The world's substantial teachers already exist as eager assets.

The barrier is marketing to point HERE at www.afriterra.org.

The remaining barrier is partnerships.

The Elevate-Prize will finally enable us to 'reach' over these barriers by producing two Access-Agents, [one American Access-Agent and one African Access-Agent] to promote, register and form networks of libraries, schools, universities, institutions, teachers, corporations, media, and officials in each country, and then scale another Access-Agent for each additional State District or Country. 

The Elevate Prize is a key link to partner institutions, corporations, and donors who have reach but but lack material depth.

None at present.

Product: 5000 orderly education visuals on the topics of Africa, Geography, History, and Social Studies in an online Cloud Image Database

Beneficiaries: Global Schools-->Teachers-->Students-->Employers and Society

Execution: Our business model is free Subscription and Premium Membership service using accessible cloud, phone, or laptop.

Free Subscription Uses:

• Unlimited Search Lists.
• Unlimited Favorite Lists.
• Unlimited Zoom Viewing Online.
• Current-Event Newsletter and Map Links.
• Lesson research and homework uses.

Premium Membership Produces:

• Classroom online projection [lesson-plan, demonstration, assignments]
• Downloadable Image Requests
• Online Classes
• Slide-Lectures
• Research Papers
• Book/eBook Publications
• Essays research and references
• Term-Paper and Thesis research and references
• Network exchanges of images and writings
• News Stories research and reference
• Podcasts
• Post-ups
• Blogs
• Travelogues
• Posters/Banners/Flyers
• Institutional Literature
• Ancestry Literature
• Gifting opportunities to underprivileged students

Funds that we receive will be dedicated to new technology such as:

* digitized books, 

*GPS photo/text mapping, and 

*OCR/Optical character recognition software development to tag names of geographic settlements, kingdoms, and land forms within each map. 

*Updating our user interface to make our searches more intuitive.

This will require a 'Software Contractor' and 'marketing 'Access-Agent' 

Membership will both fund our efforts and add the ideas of others, in an expanding network of users exchanging their experiences and contacts in our premium feature. This would include the ability to create personalized accounts where users could save maps relevant to their research, as well as gain access to the images and writings of others in a global community.

We achieve financial strength through:

A.  Philanthropic Education Grants. 

B. Partnerships with Public Libraries and School Libraries.

C  Membership Network of educational institution departments of Geography, History, African Studies and Social Studies for use of digital images, research citations, and exchange of ideas.

D. Premium Subscriptions

E. Cloud Software as a Subscription Service :

https://woocommerce.com/products/woocommerce-subscriptions/

https://www.zuora.com/

Overall, We expect to 'Elevate' our reach to a global audience through technology innovations, research citations, exhibitions, and the marketing efforts of a registration Access-Agent.

Afriterra Foundation: Facility Structure [Completed 1995--present]

Afriterra Foundation: Material Assets [Completed 1990--2020]

Afriterra Foundation: Maintenence and Utilities, $35,000/year donation

Personnel: All Volunteer

Debt: none

Grants: Needing $284,000 per year to extend the current reach.

With this funding, we will be able to employ the key personnel to deliver:

-Global Access to the cartographic record of the African continent.

-Implement marketing agents who will extend the user base of Afriterra to a global audience, and share the positive social impact of geographic and cultural education with professors, students, and society.

-Begin the services needed to digitize our collection of rare books and papers documenting the world's awareness and attitudes toward the realization of Africa.

-Integrate GPS coordinate mapping and OCR/optical character recognition software into our map database, to spatially orient our maps as well as recover the settlements, kingdoms, and land forms recorded in each map.

-Develop interactive material to engage with students, and create written lesson companions for educators.

Maintenence: $ 12,000/yr

Utilities: $ 2,000/yr.

GeoReference Libraian: $ 90,000/yr

Access-Agent x2: $ 75,000/yr each

Software contractor: $ 30,000/year

Total: $ 284,000/yr

The Afriterra Library serves vivid experiences, however this only becomes global by The Elevate Prize to reach a Global-Education and Transform something as serious as Social-Intolerance.

The primary need is Funding for hiring Access-Agents to market and enroll U.S. and African schools and teachers

The definitive need is Partnerships of any institution, corporation, or foundation with similar worthy goals.

We seek an Engineering partner to develop the powerful tool of OCR/Optical Character Recognition software to scan a map for identifying thousands precise "Place-Names" in their original engraved font on the original map recorded centuries ago. Then match GPS postion trends over each date to determine continuity, migration, destruction, re-naming, and finding historical significance or even lost significance.

We seek a Marketing partner with influence in multiple African countries within the school districts or administrative or business communities to point awareness of this highly effective educational material to produce an engaged and tolerant workforce and greater society.

Our goals are best aligned with funding and expertise by these organizations. We would be happy to partner with these institutions to share our message and resources with a greater audience of students and educators:

MIT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Initialized, Garry Tan and Alexis Ohanian

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

The Barack Obama Presidential Library

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture

Black Lives Matter (associated educational resources and outreaches)