What we do
We record, convert and keep the things a family or a community uses to remember, and we leave the people they belong to in charge of them. Three things are being lost at the same time.
Voices
Much of our history was never written down. Oríkì, lineage recitations, the founding story of a town or a compound. These live in elders. When an elder dies unrecorded, that knowledge is gone for good.
Tapes
From the 1980s to the 2000s, families recorded weddings, burials, installations and naming ceremonies on VHS and audio cassettes. Those tapes are now 20 to 40 years old, kept in hot rooms, and the machines that play them are no longer made.
Paper and objects
Land documents, letters, church and mosque records, school registers and photograph albums. Heat, humidity, termites and floods destroy them faster than archives built for cooler climates ever planned for.
Why this matters to us
Legacify began with something we watched happen close to home. In many Nigerian families and institutions, history is not kept in a filing cabinet. It is kept in people: the relatives and elders who went to the meetings, followed up the paperwork and knew what every letter meant.
Those people grow old, and some have already passed on. The documents remain, but often only one or two people alive can say what each one is and why it mattered. When they go, the paper stays and the meaning leaves with them. The next generation inherits a box it cannot read.
That is the loss Legacify exists to end, and it is not one family’s risk. Every family, every church whose founders are ageing, every school and every town union reaches the same moment.
Legacify has three parts
The Family Tree is only one of them, and it is the only one that exists today.
Legacify Archive
legacify.ng
The main platform. Private vaults where families, communities and institutions keep their documents, photographs, audio and video, and decide exactly who may see them. Every viewing leaves a trace the custodian can read.
Designed. Not yet built.
Legacify Conversion Studio
A physical lab, then mobile kits
Turns VHS, audio cassettes, reel tapes, slides, negatives and paper into archival digital files, once, at a standard good enough that nobody has to do it again. The originals go back to their owners.
Designed. Not yet equipped.
Legacify Family Tree
family.legacify.ng
Private family trees built for the way Nigerian families are actually shaped, with their own admins, invitations, photographs and voice recordings.
Live since 1 October 2026.
The rules every part is built to
- The custodian owns it. Legacify keeps material and never owns it. A custodian can change who has access or withdraw an item, and the physical original always goes back to its owner.
- Nothing without consent. Consent is recorded for every item, and separately for every person heard or seen in a recording.
- Nothing is public unless its custodian makes it public. Legacify is not a social network and it is not a download site.
- Every access leaves a trace. Who viewed, who asked, who approved and what was sent. The custodian can read that record at any time.
- Spoken history is evidence. An elder’s account is kept as a primary source, in the elder’s own language. Where accounts differ, both are kept side by side.
- Nigerian heritage, Nigerian ground. The primary copy of the archive stays in Nigeria, under Nigerian law.
Where we are
As of 7 October 2026. One part of Legacify is live and two are on paper. We would rather say that here than have you find it out later.
- Done
The Family Tree is live. It opened on 1 October 2026 at family.legacify.ng. It began with ten families of Ọ̀rún-Èkìtì in Ekiti State, and any Nigerian family, from any state, can now open its own archive. It is in its first weeks.
- Done
The design is written. The Legacify Platform Blueprint sets out the Archive, the Studio, the capture standards, the security, the data protection approach and the way custodians govern their own material.
- Now
The groundwork is what we are doing now. October and November 2026 are for the first recording sessions with elders, registration with the data protection regulator, quotes for equipment and storage, and the first grant applications.
- Not yet
The Archive is not built. It is designed in detail. No vault exists yet, and nobody can deposit a record in it today.
- Not yet
The Studio has no equipment. We know which machines it needs and to what standard it must capture. None of them has been bought.
- Not yet
The main platform is not funded. So far Legacify has been built on very little, by a small team. That was enough for the Family Tree. It is not enough for the rest.
Where we are going
A pilot in Ekiti State between now and August 2027, and after it, growth one community at a time.
The pilot runs one fixed Studio and one field kit. It serves a first group of custodians: six families, one community and one traditional institution. Each phase ends at a gate, and the next phase starts only when that gate is passed. The dates hold only if the funding does.
Phase 0
Groundwork
Oct to Nov 2026
First recording sessions with elders. Data protection registration and legal advice. Equipment and storage quotes. First grant applications.
Gate to pass: Money in place for the next phase, or a decision to start lean.
Phase 1
Build and set up
Dec 2026 to Feb 2027
The core of the Archive is built. The Studio room is fitted, and its equipment is bought and tested. Technicians are trained.
Gate to pass: The Studio captures 20 test items to standard, and the platform passes testing.
Phase 2
Pilot capture
Mar to Jun 2027
The first vaults open. Tapes, photographs and papers are converted and returned. An independent security test. A report to funders every month.
Gate to pass: Capture targets met, no data incident, and custodians who would recommend Legacify.
Phase 3
Launch
Jul to Aug 2027
Public launch, with a first exhibition chosen by the custodians themselves. The pilot report is published.
Gate to pass: Launch held, and the pilot report sent to funders.
After the pilot
Growth
Sep 2027 onward
Towards ten communities, a second field kit, a first contract with an institution, and homecoming exhibitions each December.
The pilot is in Ekiti State, but the model is built for any Nigerian community, and in time any African one, that keeps its history in people, tapes and paper.
What we need
The main platform needs roughly
₦15 to 20 million
We are raising it through grants and donations, and we are open to every form of support. Money is one of them. It is not the only one.
What it pays for, in this order
Hardware and equipment. Tape decks, capture equipment, scanners, recorders, storage and backup power for the Studio.
Software and building the platform. The Archive itself, built to the level of security a private archive demands.
Licensing, registrations and legal. Data protection registration, legal advice and the licences needed to hold sensitive records properly.
People. Kept small on purpose: a core team, working with archivists from universities in Ekiti State.
Everything else. The running costs of the pilot.
The first two take the bulk of it.
Five ways to help
- Fund it. A grant, a donation, or the sponsorship of one line in the list above. Write to us and we will send the details.
- Give or lend equipment. A working VHS or cassette deck, a scanner, a camera or a recorder may be one thing fewer for us to buy.
- Offer a skill or a service. Archivists, conservators, lawyers, data protection officers, engineers, translators, and anyone who can sit with an elder and listen properly.
- Introduce us. To a funder, an institution, a diaspora association, or a community that wants its records kept.
- Bring your family. Open your family’s archive on the Family Tree today. It is the part of Legacify that already works.
Talk to us
Write to hello@legacylab.ng and tell us how you would like to help. Every message is read by the team.