Primary Sources for African Studies
- Gale Primary Sources (includes Gale NewsVault) This link opens in a new windowSearch every Gale Primary Source from a single, powerful interface. The refreshed user interface and updated tools make it easier than ever to find documents for research and teaching. The new interface now features integration with leading cloud storage systems for saving and organizing your documents. Learn more about this database.
- Struggles for Freedom: Southern AfricaSummary: “Focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in Southern Africa, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The contents of the collection document colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region. Included are periodicals, nationalist publications, records of colonial government commissions, local newspaper reports, personal papers, correspondence, UN documents, out-of-print and other relevant books, oral histories, and speeches.”
Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa is a rich collection of more than 27,000 objects and 190,000 pages of documents and images. - African History DigITal Document Portal
"AH_DigITalPortal project is dedicated to gathering for Web placement photos, audio transcripts, and photo/copies of rare historical documents, and especially archival notes and manuscripts, that are either inaccessible or for some reason are no longer available in the archives in African countries where their originals were housed. AH_digITalPortal solicits researchers and students of Africa for copies of such manuscripts and other types of relevant primary source documents that they have acquired during the course of their careers so we can convert them into electronic and digital formats and make them readily and freely available to a wider audience of students and researchers:
• Digitizes copies of historical documents that scholars of Africa have acquired during their research or otherwise convert them to electronic format and hosts them
• Restores alternative access to documents whose originals in the archives are lost, misplaced, or are torn or ruined.
Preserves rare and valuable documents
• Facilitates public access to otherwise unavailable or inaccessible resources
• Saves re/searchers the effort, time, cost and risk they would otherwise bear for traveling to the African archives that host originals of these documents
• Makes private field interviews available to a wide scholarly and interested audience
• Serves as a service arm that helps in putting to good use for creating and circulating knowledge about Africa some odd historical documents that otherwise sit un-utilized in cabinets, boxes, and drawers.
• Iincreases the many sites from where similar documentary sources on the history of Africa can be readily and easily accessed"
Internet Resources
16th-20th Century Maps of Africa
This site features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid 16th Century to the early 20th Century. Northwestern Univ.
Africa through a lens | The National Archives
Africa through a lens is a set of thousands of images taken from a broader photographic collection of Foreign and Commonwealth Office images, held at The National Archives. UK
A collection of posters created by African governments and international agencies, as well as political/labor/social/religious/educational/ cultural organizations. Topics include anti-apartheid movements; HIV/AIDS; Lusophone African liberation movement; Nigerian social values; 1994 South African elections; and South Africa under apartheid.
Ancient Manuscripts from the Desert of Libraries Timbuktu
Arquivo Histórico de Moçambique (AHM)
Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record
The 1,280 images in this collection have been selected from a wide range of sources, most of them dating from the period of slavery. This collection is envisioned as a tool and a resource that can be used by teachers, researchers, students, etc.
Children and Youth in History by Region Africa
Children and Youth in History is designed to help teachers and students learn about the important roles of young people throughout history by providing access to information about the lived experiences of children and youth from multiple perspectives as well as changing notions about childhood and adolescence in past cultures and civilizations. The materials on this website address such questions as: What was it like to be a child or adolescent throughout history? How is childhood defined? How has it changed and how has it remained the same? What factors have shaped childhood and how did children shape history, society, and culture?
On this site you will find videos relating to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi enriched with synchronized transcripts, searchable index terms, and maps. Videos include testimonies of Genocide survivors and perpetrators, Gacaca Justice System court proceedings, and remembrance ceremonies. The site also includes audio, photographs, documents, and interactive maps about the 1994 genocide as well as post-genocide reconstruction efforts in Rwanda.
Historical Papers held by the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Internet African History Sourcebook
Editor: Paul Halsall
Africa is both the most clearly defined of continents - in its geography - and the hardest to pin down in historical terms. Human beings originated in Africa and, as a result, there is more diversity of human types and societies than anywhere else. It is not possible, in any non-ideological way, to claim any one of these peoples or societies as more essentially "African" than others; nor is it possible to exclude a given society as "not really African".
On this site historical sources on the history of human societies in the continent of Africa are presented, when available, without making prejudgements about what is "African".
Islamic Manuscripts from Mali (Library of Congress)
Features 32 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, both in Timbuktu, Mali. The manuscripts presented online are displayed in their entirety and are an exemplary grouping that showcase the wide variety of subjects covered by the written traditions of Timbuktu, Mali, and West Africa.
Liberian Collections Project (IU)
The Liberian Collections include historical and ethnographic documents, newspapers, government publications, books, journals, dissertations, maps, slides, negatives, photographs, microfilms, audio & video tapes, artifacts and memorabilia. IU
Library of Congress - Islamic Manuscripts from Mali
"twenty-two Islamic manuscripts [in Arabic script] containing important insights into the life and culture of West Africans during the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Era." A project of the Library of Congress and the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library of Timbuktu, Mali.
A biography, bibliography of books on Nkrumah, photographs, audio clips. Designed by Zizwe Mtafuta-Ukweli for R4R productions.
The archive preserves and makes accessible a set of linguistic field notes recorded by Eleanor Vandevort, who was a missionary in the South Sudan between 1949 and 1963.
Ross Archive of African Images
The Archive aspires to include all the figurative African objects in books, periodicals, catalogues, newspapers, and other publications appearing in 1920 and earlier - the oldest dates to 1591.
Slavery and Manumission Manuscripts of Timbuktu
Documents regarding slaving through Timbuktu.
South Africa: the Making of U.S. Policy, 1962-1989
South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission
The TRC effected its mandate through 3 committees: the Amnesty Committee, Reparation and Rehabilitation (R&R) Committee and Human Rights Violations (HRV) Committee.
Traces of Truth: Documents Related to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission
Full-text access to records of the South African TRC, a project of the Historical Papers Archive of Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg and the South African History Archives Project.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia
The report contains major findings on: the root causes of the conflict, the impact of the conflict on women, children and the generality of the Liberian society; responsibility for the massive commission of Gross Human Rights Violations (GHRV), and violations of International Humanitarian Law (IHL), International Human Rights Law (IHRL) as well as Egregious Domestic Law Violations (EDLV).
The National Reconciliation Commission’s mandate was to promote national reconciliation among Ghanaians by establishing "an accurate and complete historical record" of human rights violations and abuses related to the killing, abduction, disappearance, detention, torture, ill-treatment, and seizure of property during three periods of
The Equity and Reconciliation Commission’s mandate was to investigate forced disappearances and arbitrary detention between Morocco’s independence in 1956 and 1999, to rule on reparation requests pending before the former Independent Commission of Arbitration (created in 1999), and to determine “the responsibility of the state organisms or any other party”.
Truth Commission: Sierra Leone
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was to produce a report on human rights violations beginning in 1991, provide a forum for both victims and perpetrators, and recommend policies to facilitate reconciliation and prevent future violations. The TRC act provided one year for the commission to produce its report and recommendations, with the possibility of an extension.
Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, 1860-1960
Includes over 1,700 photographs showing life in East Africa from 1860-1960. Materials part of the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University.
The World Digital Library (WDL) is a project of the U.S. Library of Congress, carried out with the support of the United Nations Educational, Cultural and Scientific Organization (UNESCO), and in cooperation with libraries, archives, museums, educational institutions, and international organizations from around the world. The WDL makes available on the Internet, free of charge and in multilingual format, significant primary materials from all countries and cultures.