A number of book donation organisations around the world are helping to address the shortage in African university libraries of books, needed to give African students a chance at optimal learning.

One of them is United Kingdom-based charity Book Aid International (BAI), which supports a range of higher education institutions – universities, teacher training colleges, nursing colleges, vocational training institutions and polytechnics – through the provision...

When Belgium-born Gauthier Van Malderen was doing his masters in entrepreneurship at the Judge Institute in Cambridge in the United Kingdom, he found he was paying more than £300 (US$368) per term for textbooks and saw a business opportunity to launch a digital alternative to having to buy key academic titles.

Launched in 2016, the Perlego online library for academic textbooks now employs a 32-strong team of international graduates in London and offers students across Europe easy access to...