Donate books and computers to charity, and fund their journey to Africa

How To Donate Items

Donate your books, computers and educational materials in 3 easy steps.

1. Package Your Items

Use any good cardboard boxes (or buy some here) to package your items and seal each box with tape. Make sure each box weighs no more than 20kg and is no longer than 60cm on any side. Complete our online booking form to Arrange a Collection by DHL from any UK address or Schedule a Drop-off appointment to deliver to a DPD drop-off point near you.

2. Fund the Journey of Your Items

Contribute a minimum financial donation of £4 per box (Drop-offs) or £8 per box (Collections) to fund the UK journey of your items to our Processing Centre in Canterbury. You can go further with an optional additional donation of £8 per box to also fund the Africa journey of your items from our UK Processing Centre to approved beneficiaries across Africa.

3. Track the Impact of Your Items

After completing your booking, write your Tracking Reference on all your boxes before sending them to our UK Processing Centre, where your items are processed, catalogued, categorised, and shipped in containers to approved projects in Africa. We'll email you tracking notifications along the journey and an impact photo of a beneficiary in Africa holding at least one of your items.

Items You Can Donate

Here are the types of books and computers you can donate.

Donate Books

How we process donated books

Each of your donated books will be scanned and catalogued at our Processing Centre to create a record of all your donated books. A minimum of 80% of donated books are allocated to one of several subject categories and palletised together with similar books from other donors ready for shipping to projects in Africa. The remaining 20% consists of books that are sold via our Charity Shop to fund our overheads and about a small minority of damaged books which are recycled responsibly.

Donate Computers

How we process donated computers

We are a Microsoft Third Party Refurbisher (TPR) and our Tech Team checks and refurbishes donated technology in line with Microsoft’s standards, ensuring all data on devices are securely wiped. We wipe data from compatible devices using BitRaser – a secure drive wiping software tested and approved by the NIST which also generates 100% tamper-proof digitally signed certificates that ensure compliance with various national & international data protection regulations. If donating Apple or Google devices, please remove your iCloud or Google account.

Other Items You Can Donate

You can include these items in your box to be sold via our Charity Shop to raise funds for the charity. 

Donate DVDs and CDs

Donate Toys and Games

Donate Shoes

Send Your Items

After packaging your items into cardboard boxes, you can send your items in 3 ways: Arrange a collection from any UK address, Deliver to a DPD Drop-off Point near you, or Deliver to our Processing Centre in Canterbury.

Arrange a DHL Collection

Deliver to a DPD Drop-off Point

Deliver to Canterbury

Organise a Readcycling Week.

You can organise a Readcycling Week to collect donated books from others in your community. Readcycling Week is Books2Africa’s book drive campaign and is the perfect way to maximise your impact. Choose a week for people in your workplace or community to bring their donated books and computers to a central location within your premises to be boxed up and sent to Africa. You can also ask people to make cash donations to fund the journey of their items by creating a JustGiving page. Register to get started and download readcycling week promotional resources such as posters and slides.