Europeans introduced the print culture to other continents. However, the Yoruba people in Nigeria used specific terms to describe modernity before the arrival of the Europeans. There is no study yet examining how networks of people with shared and even diverged interests in journalism and literature changed Yoruba and Nigerian history through printing. The EU-funded YORUBAPRINT project investigates over 150 years of printing culture in the Yoruba-speaking area and its cross-cultural connections to reveal a solid history of West African engagements with modernity. The project will work with local researchers and archivists, examining the richest collection of rare samples in Nigeria and produce data and literary theories disseminating them into platforms.