![\"Malik](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/malik-afegbua-legacylink-1.png\")
<\/p>\n\n Around the African continent, there is a saying: \u201cWhen an elder dies, a library burns to the ground.\u201d For Nigerian artist and filmmaker Malik Afegbua, that loss is not just a metaphor. \u201cI don\u2019t know what my great-grandfather looks like,\u201d he told CNN. \u201cI don\u2019t have stories about him.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThere is no data, there is no library,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n
\n Afegbua has launched LegacyLink, a project that hopes to not just preserve the experiences and lives of elders around the continent, but make them \u201clive forever,\u201d he says.\n <\/p>\n
\n He has been interviewing elders about their lives, recording their stories, capturing videos and making 3D scans of their family heirlooms, like masks and drums. With this data, he hopes to make \u201cdigital twins\u201d of the elders and present them as holographic displays in public areas, like airports, where people can speak with them, using AI to bring their responses to life.\n <\/p>\n
\n The final displays will feel \u201clike someone is standing in front of you, having a conversation with you,\u201d Afegbua said. Users would be able to ask the digital elders a question about their lives and experiences, with AI generating a response based on Afegbua\u2019s interviews with that person. He also plans to create an online chatbot, to make the project as accessible as possible.\n <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n The initiative is still in an early phase. Afegbua said that he has interviewed 15 people in Nigeria, with 30 more interviews planned, branching out to Kenya and Cameroon. His aim is to have interviewed 1,000 people by 2028.\n <\/p>\n
\n He wants the final project to be available in as many languages as possible and says that he is relying on human translations as \u201cAI does not understand certain languages, or what certain nuances might mean.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Initially, some of his subjects were hesitant, he said. When he went to interview one group in Ikorodu, Lagos State, they told Afegbua that their ancestors had said to never share these stories.\n <\/p>\n
\n Afegbua went with a slideshow to explain the concept to the elders, and he said after showing it to them, \u201cthey were excited, they were intrigued, they want to learn.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n He introduced the elders to large language models \u201cto help them understand how AI can assist with storytelling, memory recall, and structuring ideas.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n He also showed them how AI can be used with photos, videos and audio recordings from their phones to help \u201crefine stories, generate transcripts, expand memories into written narratives, or structure content in ways that could be shared more broadly.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n The interviews initially focused on \u201cnormal life,\u201d he said, before he began to ask about their individual experiences, to find out \u201cwhat really happened in a certain time.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Afegbua said he had to be careful around sensitive topics like the Nigerian Civil War (from 1967 to 1970). \u201cThe majority were hesitant \u2014 some said outright they didn\u2019t want to talk about it,\u201d he recalled. He has plans to \u201caddress the war directly\u201d through interviews with people personally affected, but \u201cthe trauma is still very present. We never push.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Afegbua previously earned international attention from another project focusing on elderly people. In his 2023 work \u201cThe Elders Series\u201d,<\/a> he used AI to generate images of older Africans on the catwalk.\n <\/p>\n \n Where LegacyLink aims to preserve the knowledge of living people, Afegbua is also working on a visual project to restore the past \u2014 using AI to recreate African heritage sites that have been lost, destroyed, or are no longer accessible.\n <\/p>\n \n For the ReMemory project, Afegbua bases his AI recreations on historical records and academic studies. Once the work is completed, users will be able to navigate the sites on their phone or computer, as well as through virtual reality.\n <\/p>\n \n The idea grew out of a project he did at the Kofar Mata dye pits in Kano, Nigeria, which have been operating for five centuries and made the city famous for its traditional indigo dyed cloth. Insecurity in the region means that some people do not want to go there, Afegbua said, so he made a VR film of the traditional pits, \u201cin case it does die out.\u201d\n <\/p>\n ![\"Malik](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/malik-afegbua-kano-dye-pits.png\")
<\/p>\n