This paper reports on African Higher Education Research Online (AHERO), an innovative web based open access project that facilitates the communication of research on African higher education that is otherwise invisible. In addition, the paper demonstrates the functionality of the AHERO website, to show how and why authors may deposit their papers; and provides a report of the methods used to populate the archive, how AHERO deals with copyright and the progress that has been made thus far. Some experiences are shared. It ends with the conclusions and recommendations drawn from an assessment survey.