What do magazines produced on the African continent tell us about the act of reading in that space? How can the heritage of print culture produced in the global South be best preserved, and for what purpose? Via the digitisation of the earliest Senegalese women’s magazine, Awa: la revue de la femme noire, an exhibition, and colloquia/publications, this project seeks to respond to these questions by collating, researching and promoting the archive of ‘popular’ print media in francophone Africa.