Research Guides: Guide to Primary Sources: Africa

Links to collections

African Journal Archive
Retrospective open access archive of African journal literature dating as far back as 1906, from African publishers and societies.
African Journals Open Access from Sabinet
Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent
Digitized primary and secondary resources (books, images, and sound) covering forty five African nations, with a focus on West Africa. Produced by the University of Wisconsin Libraries.
Digital Benin
Objects, historical photographs, and documentation from collections worldwide to provide an overview of the royal artifacts from Benin Kingdom looted in the late nineteenth century.
African Posters
Collection of posters from African political, labor, social, religious, educational, cultural organizations and governments. Topics include South Africa under apartheid; anti-apartheid movements; South African 1994 elections; HIV/AIDS; Portuguese speaking African liberation movement; Nigerian social values.
African Activist Archive Project
Documents on activism in the US supporting the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice, from the 1950s through the 1990s.
African Studies Center at MSU: Academic Resources
Guide to text, image, film, and primary source collections covering Africa.

World Heritage Sites: Africa
Collection of more than 86,000 objects of visual, contextual, and spatial documentation of African heritage and rock art sites.

Duke Papyrus Archive
Provides electronic access to texts about and images of nearly 1400 papyri from ancient Egypt.

Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa
Materials from archives and libraries worldwide documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region. Focus on liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

Genocide Archive of Rwanda
Testimonies, videos, audio, photographs, documents, and interactive maps about the 1994 genocide, as well as post-genocide reconstruction efforts in Rwanda.
Internet African History Sourcebook
Sources on the history of human societies in Africa. From Fordham University.
Library of Congress World Digital Library
Cultural heritage materials gathered during the World Digital Library (WDL) project, including thousands of items contributed by UNESCO partner organizations worldwide as well as content from Library of Congress collections.
British Online Archives
Multiple collections of British colonial and missionary archives.

African Diaspora (1860-Present)
Primary and secondary sources on migrations and global communities of people of African descent, from 1860-present. Focus on diasporic communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, France, and the UK. Covers movements and ideologies, including "Back to Africa" and Pan-African movements. Includes personal papers and letters, organization papers, government and court documents, journals, newsletters, and ephemera.
Black Drama
Plays written by playwrights from North America, English-speaking Africa, the Caribbean, and other African diaspora countries, from the mid-1800s to the present. In full text.