This paper attempts to provide a comprehensive report on school libraries and the status of training of school / teacher librarians in thirteen African countries. A full report will be presented to the IASL Research Forum 2012 in November 2012. Recently, the IASL Research SIG, Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) Information & Library Services, the ENSIL Foundation (Stichting ENSIL) and a number of other international school library colleagues have been co-operating in an attempt to collect reliable research data on public school libraries. The provision of a new form of affordable online training for school librarians / teacher librarians is introduced. It also presents an idea for a new form of affordable online training, combining the use of ICT with traditional concepts, which could eventually be used for the training of school library staffthroughout the world. Background In most African countries primary and secondary schools that have internet access and enough books to read and study for their pupils is considered a rare luxury. The concept "school library" is often unknown to the pupil, and and the more common scenario is that the student is not likely to visit a library until he/she is able to pursue higher education. For a university to be accredited, one of the conditions is to have a library on the campus. For schools it is not compulsory to have a library on their premises, yet. In 2007 and again in 2010, school libraries were included in the IFLA/FAIFE World Reports (Bothma 2007, and Bothma 2010). The following statistics for school libraries on the African continent (excluding countries in North Africa) were published: These reports also discuss the availability of the Internet to school libraries on the African continent. Sometimes training of library staffcan take place via the Internet, if reliable facilities are available. The reliability of some of the statistics on Table 1 and Table 2 has been questioned at the international level. Questions have been asked about the methods that were used in data collection, definitions which were used and the actual dates when data collection took place. It is not the intention of this paper to corroborate or question these data and methods, but rather to illustrate the difficulties in identifying school library facilities. Only then, is it possible to start a benchmark study and compare literacy data and assess their dynamics. In a next phase it is possible to start to collect information to improve strategies for enhancing the educational roles of school librarians in various parts of the world. UNICEF (2010) and the World Bank (2011), both confirm that 21.4% of all illiterate adults live in sub-Saharan Africa. International data suggests that school libraries play an important role in promoting reading and literacy, additionally; it is possible to do a comparative research among schools with and without a library. We may even conclude that the lack of libraries (and by extension books) throughout the African continent, also contributes to the lack of a reading culture. Introduction The importance of definitions The research group agrees that first of all, for the purpose of this paper and in order to provide reliable data, agreement needs to be reached on international definitions and terminology for: * A school library * A teacher librarian and other school library staff * The training required for a qualified teacher librarian. Reliable data about school libraries could be used for advocacy, to raise the prestige of school libraries at international level. International definitions should be acceptable to both the Library and Information Science (LIS) and the educational communities, since a school library should provide a link between the library world and the world of education (Boelens, 2010). These decisions should not be made just by librarians but by librarians and teachers working together at international level. …