African History: By Region

DISA is a freely accessible online scholarly resource focusing on the socio-political history of South Africa, particularly the struggle for freedom during the period from 1950 to the first democratic elections in 1994, providing a wealth of material on this fascinating period of the country’s history. Much time, creative thought and debate goes into the selection of the content, and participation and input from interested persons, scholars and institutions in South Africa and overseas is encouraged. (from the website)

The site provides finding aids for primary source materials that can be found at different Nordic archival institutions, NGOs, and archives of individuals who have been involved in the liberation struggles in Southern Africa. The available materials are mainly in the Nordic languages, but where possible, English is indicated. The website holdings include interviews with important actors, photographs, publications and posters and pins from 1960-1996. The finding aids are meant to facilitate information search on the Nordic countries' involvement in the liberation struggles. (from the website)

SAHA's archival collections are largely made up of documents, posters, photographs, ephemera and oral histories donated to SAHA by individuals and organizations involved in past and ongoing struggles for justice in South Africa. These include significant collections relating to the anti-apartheid struggle, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In our archive, you will also find collections relating to SAHA's work using freedom of information legislation to promote awareness of access to information in South Africa, as well as materials created or collected in the course of SAHA's various oral history, education, heritage and outreach projects. (from the website)

South African History Online (SAHO) is a non-partisan people's history project concerned with the presentation of a critical, open access, and democratic history of South Africa. SAHO’s principal goals are to produce and promote new research and popularise history via our website, develop innovative educational programmes, organise conferences and travelling exhibitions, publish books, and through our community projects enable people to tell their own stories about the building of their communities, their struggles for freedom, democracy and the building of non-racialism and a just society. (from the website)

South African Voices is a three-volume work by Prof. Harold E. Scheub that includes: A Long Time Passed, Created in Olden Times, and The Way We Travelled: Oral History and Poetry. (from the website)

The Historical Papers research archive, situated in the William Cullen Library at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, was established in 1966. Historical Papers is one of the largest and most comprehensive independent archives in Southern Africa, housing over 3,300 collections of historical, political and cultural importance, encompassing the mid-17th century to the present. (from the website)

Onitsha Market Literature consists of stories, plays, advice and moral discourses published primarily in the 1960s by local presses in the lively market town of Onitsha, an important commercial site in the Igbo-speaking region of southeastern Nigeria. In the fresh and vigorous genre of Onitsha Market Literature, the commoner wrote pulp fiction and didactic handbooks for those who perused the bookstalls of Onitsha Market, one of Africa’s largest trading centers. Twenty-one pamphlets from Onitsha Market appear here fully digitized and annotated to exemplify styles of expression found in this intriguing form of African popular literature. They are part of a unique collection of more than 100 pamphlets from Onitsha now held at the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas. (from the website)

A digital collection of primary source material deriving from the travels of Herbert Lang and James Chapin in the Belgian Congo in the early years of the 20th century.

The Genocide Archive of Rwanda was established by the archive and documentation department of the Aegis Trust Rwanda, a non-governmental organisation that strives to prevent mass atrocity and genocide through education. (from the website)

The goal of the Rwanda Documents Project is to collect and make available primary source materials from international and national agencies, governments, and courts that relate to the political and social history of Rwanda from 1990 to the present. (from the website)

The Voices from the Rwanda Tribunal collection contains 49 video interviews conducted with personnel from the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR). Collected in 2008, these interviews reveal the challenges of striving for justice and reconciliation after genocide. In their own voices, tribunal personnel speak to Rwandans, the international justice community, and the global public, now, 50 and 100 years from now. We offer this digital collection to all people to watch, tag, curate, and download for their use in future projects. (from the website)

The Ethiopian Manuscript Imaging Project (EMIP) helps preserve images of Ethiopia’s manuscript heritage and make them available for scholarly study. The manuscripts were located in the possession of university libraries, dealers and private owners. Most have come from North America, though a few are from England, Israel and Kenya. Complete image sets are available online for nearly 350 codices and 340 magic scrolls. (from the website)

Yale University Divinity School Library has partnered with Uganda Christian University (UCU) to archive and preserve Christian records in Uganda and the region. The archives of the Church of Uganda date back to its foundation, in 1877, by the Church Missionary Society of the Church of England. They include records on the growth, general administration and development of the church; on institutions established by the church, such as, schools, hospitals, and bookshops; and on the church's relationship with the Church of England, the British government and other organizations. (from the website)

The Sudan Open Archive offers free digital access to knowledge about all regions of Sudan. It is an expanding, word-searchable, full-text database of historical and contemporary books and documents. The current version, SOA 3.0, includes two new special collections: the first thirty-two volumes of Sudan Notes and Records, Sudan’s flagship scholarly journal, and the collected papers of the late Sudan scholar, Richard Gray. (from the website)

The Nuer Field Notes Project aims to preserve and make accessible a set of linguistic field notes recorded by Eleanor Vandevort, who was a missionary in the South Sudan between 1949 and 1963.

The Winterton Collection includes about 7,610 photographs organized in 76 separate albums, scrapbooks or loose collections. The photographs depict life, primarily in East Africa, between about 1860 and 1960. (from the website)

A collection of primary source documents related to the conflict between Somalia and Ethiopia in the late 1970s (also known as the 1977-1978 Ogaden War or the Ethiopian-Somali Conflict). Later documents cover Soviet policy toward the region, Ethiopian relations with the Eritreans, the role of the US in Africa, and US Operation Torch. (from the website)