15 |
Print and Electronic Resources |
“Digital technologies, in reshaping the information landscape, also have altered the relationship between recorded knowledge and the activities of research and teaching.” This statement by Dan Hazen points to several developments that have shaped the way we conduct research and that are worth keeping in mind before embarking on research in African studies. Electronic information is widely available. Libraries subscribe to vast databases, which provide access to journal literature; Google continues to digitize books and to make many of them available on the web; initiatives such as HathiTrust make the full text of out-of-copyright books available; libraries digitize many of their special collections as well as other content; individual researchers digitize their materials and post them on websites. Students and researchers expect to find large amounts of information in electronic form and, in fact, prefer it to print.
On the web, the traditional barriers to publishing—for example the peer review process for scholarly publications—are removed. Everybody can participate in electronic conversations and create and disseminate content on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter as well as other sites, and authors can remain anonymous if they choose to do so. A democratization of knowledge creation has taken place.
A few things to remember when searching for information on African studies topics:
• An ever-increasing amount of African studies information is available electronically—scholarly content in library databases, digitized books in Google Books, other open-access materials produced by researchers and/or organizations in the United States, Europe, and Africa.
• Despite this wealth of electronic information, a considerable amount of information relating to Africa is still only published in print format. Research for most topics in African studies requires a combination of print and electronic sources.
• The availability of print versus electronic information varies by discipline. For example, a student interested in health-related publications may find a wealth of information online, ranging from statistics to the full text of articles and reports, whereas if that same student were to conduct research for a paper on religion in Africa, he or she would in all likelihood find some information on the web, but would have to combine that information with more in-depth books as well as journal articles from library online databases or even print issues of journals.
• Success in finding relevant sources depends not only on the researcher’s ability to look in the right places and use just the right combination of print and electronic resources, but also on knowledge of the discipline and its terminology as well as on the ability to evaluate the sources found.
In order to effectively search for information for a paper, not only do you have to be able to navigate this complicated world of information in print and electronic formats, but you also need to be able to evaluate the sources you encounter—how reliable, credible, objective or subjective, or scholarly are they? Please also see the section “Evaluating Online Resources” at the end of this chapter. Remember that websites change frequently, and some of the URLs in this chapter may not always be active. In case of inactive URLs, use the information in the annotation for that website to conduct keyword searches that will lead to similar websites.
Even though you may not physically enter the library’s building, many of the online resources you are using are made available by the library, and in all likelihood you access the library’s resources every day, albeit online. Librarians are one of those resources—don’t hesitate to ask your librarian for help!
Realizing that students will work on a variety of very individualized research topics, and considering the proliferation of resources available—in print and electronic formats, on the web, in social media, and in subscription-based databases; some of them filtered and presented by librarians, others just published on the web—it is not possible to present a comprehensive list of “most important” publications a student should consult for papers on African studies topics. Instead, the focus of this chapter is on providing resources that will provide basic information for each field, suggest examples for more in-depth research, and point out where and how to find more information.
• The sections in this chapter for the most part follow the chapters of the book. However, African studies is an interdisciplinary field, and it is hard to isolate some areas of research into separate academic disciplines. Most chapters in this book connect with content discussed in other chapters, and the same is true for this section on resources. For example, if you are writing a paper on geography in Africa, you will find information in the section “Africa: A Geographic Frame,” but there will also be publications related to your topic in the sections “Legacies of the Past: Themes in African History” and “Social Relations and Livelihoods”; a student researching social relationships in African societies will consult “Social Relations and Livelihoods” but may also want to take a look at the sections on African history, urban Africa, and so on.
• Many sections in this chapter begin with a list of subtopics for each discipline. These subtopics can be used as keywords for searches in library online catalogs or on the world wide web. Consider combining the subtopics with the name of an African country to conduct a more targeted keyword search, for example, Ghana and sustainable development, or Nigeria and women’s rights.
• A selection of specific resources is provided for each chapter. Where available, sections begin with overviews or research guides as a good first step, which are then followed with specific titles and/or websites and additional information on how to find more in-depth materials.
As a good first step to obtain initial, general information about a topic, consult an encyclopedia or handbook:
Africa South of the Sahara. 1971–. London: Europa Publications. Annual. Good for overview information. Arranged alphabetically by country. For each country, includes information on the country’s physical and social geography, its recent political and economic history, and statistical surveys, as well as a bibliography with suggested sources for further reading.
Appiah, Kwame Anthony, and Henry Louis Gates Jr., eds. 2005. Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Five-volume set. Includes information about Africans in sub-Saharan Africa, the United States, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Europe. Provides biographical information as well as detailed entries on topics such as African oral tradition, the history of writing in Africa, the transatlantic slave trade, AIDS in Africa and the United States, affirmative action, African American architects, and others.
Middleton, John, and Joseph C. Miller, eds. 2008. New Encyclopedia of Africa. Detroit: Thomson/Gale. Five volumes. Detailed and extensive entries.
Wikipedia, www.wikipedia.org. Freely available online encyclopedia. Word of caution: While Wikipedia is a good reference source and contains a vast amount of valuable information, it is helpful to know that content may be added and edited by anyone and may not always be accurate. If in doubt, cross-check Wikipedia’s information with information in another encyclopedia or web resource.
Africa-specific web portals focus exclusively on Africa and are maintained by Africana librarians. They are quality-controlled and up to date and will retrieve more targeted results than Google or other search engines. A few examples:
Africa South of the Sahara: Selected Internet Resources, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts.ssrg.africa/guide.html. Developed by Karen Fung (Stanford University) for the Electronic Technology Group of the African Studies Association. Excellent gateway to Africana information. Site is searchable by topic, country, or keyword/phrase.
A-Z of African Studies on the Internet (by Peter Limb), http://staff.lib.msu.edu/limb/a-z/az.html. Extensive list, in alphabetical order, of Africa-related websites.
Columbia University Area Studies: African Studies Internet Resources (developed by Yuusuf Caruso), www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/index.html. Provides access to online journals and newspapers from or about Africa; also includes an international directory of African studies scholars and links to Africana library collections in the United States, Europe, and southern Africa, as well as to information on a variety of topics. The site is searchable by keywords or can be browsed by subject or country.
African E-Journals Project, http://africa.isp.msu.edu/AEJP/about.htm. Includes links to the full text of eleven African scholarly journals as well as a journals directory with tables of content.
H-Africa, www.h-net.org/~africa. Extensive website and listserv. Includes links to past discussions, organized by topic (e.g., slavery, development, art, environment, etc.). Good place to find out about current topics of interest in the field of African studies.
AllAfrica.com, www.allafrica.com. Aggregates and distributes daily news from more than 130 African news organizations. Good place for news and discussions on current issues.
BBC News Africa, www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/africa. Daily, up-to-date news from and about Africa.
CNN Africa, www.cnn.com/WORLD/africa/archive. CNN’s daily coverage of news about Africa.
Look on the web for numerous blogs about Africa. Keep in mind the evaluation criteria at the end of this chapter as you read information posted in blogs!
Find blogs by searching Google for blogs on Africa, or on specific African countries or topics. A few examples:
African Arguments Online, http://africanarguments.org. The Royal African Society’s blog, designed to reflect debates on important and current African topics.
Africa Is a Country, http://africasacountry.com. Very active blog that tries to counter the stereotypical image of Africa in the media.
The Africanist, http://theafricanist.blogspot.com. Maintained by anthropologist Richard Vokes from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. Blog is focused on Uganda, where the author has conducted extensive research. This is also a good example of a blog that provides a long list of links to other Africa-related blogs.
Africa Past and Present, http://afripod.aodl.org. Podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. Includes interviews with scholars and authors about current events and other debates about Africa.
BBC Africa Today, www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/africa. Contains the day’s top stories from Africa.
Find more podcasts by searching Google or iTunes.
Good places to look for current information and debates about your favorite authors, journals, music. Search for authors’ names, journal titles, and so on.
Geography is an interdisciplinary field and encompasses a wide range of topics:
• Physical landscapes
• Climates
• Bioregions
• Maps
• Issues surrounding the environment
• Cities
Research on geography often overlaps with that of other academic disciplines. For information on closely connected topics, such as pan-Africanism, the slave trade, the emergence of the idea of Africa as a continent, and economic livelihoods, see the sections “Legacies of the Past: Themes in African History” and “Social Relations and Livelihoods.”
Use a combination of print and online sources to obtain good search results.
Maddox, Gregory H. 2006. Sub-Saharan Africa: An Environmental History. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC Clio. Good starting point. Part of the series Nature and Human Societies. Provides a narrative analysis of a region along with a body of reference material. Also gives a detailed overview of African environmental history, including such topics as the development of food production systems, the development of societies, the reorganization of space under colonial rule, and Africa in the age of conservation and development, as well as case studies. Includes glossary with definitions of geographic terms and a chronology with an overview of the development of Africa’s environment from five million years ago to 2004.
Room, Adrian. 2008. African Placenames: Origins and Meanings of the Names for Natural Features, Towns, Cities, Provinces and Countries. 2nd ed. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Alphabetical listing of African place names with brief explanations of their meaning and origin.
Consult the list of recommended readings at the conclusion of the chapter “Africa: A Geographic Frame.”
National Geographic’s Map Machine, http://maps.nationalgeographic.com/maps. Includes basic printable maps for each country.
The University of Texas Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection, www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/africa.html. Extensive listing of high-quality maps of Africa, ranging from political to topographic and reference maps; also includes links to relevant maps on other websites.
Don’t forget: many university libraries provide access to GIS (Geographic Information Systems), and librarians are available to help create customized maps.
AllAfrica.com, http://allafrica.com/environment. Look for the section “Environment News,” which includes articles from African newspapers on issues related to the environment, including water and sanitation, wildlife, agriculture and food, health, sustainable development, trade, refugees and displacement, aid and assistance, et cetera.
Digital Library of the Commons, http://dlc.dlib.indiana.edu (developed collaboratively by Indiana University’s Digital Library Program and Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis). Provides a more scholarly and in-depth treatment of environmental issues, with access to an extensive archive of full-text articles, papers and dissertations, links to reference sources, and a comprehensive bibliography on such common-pool resources as wildlife, land tenure and use, urban spaces, forest resources, agriculture, etc. Good source for recent and up-to-date articles as well as for older publications that may serve as background reading.
Inventory of Conflict and Environment, wwwl.american.edu/TED/ice/ice.htm. Part of the same project as TED. Has a worldwide approach but includes several case studies on Africa, for example, studies on the Darfur conflict and drought, or the Tuareg and civil conflict.
Trade and Environment (TED) database, wwwl.american.edu/TED/ted.htm, developed by Dr. James Lee from American University in Washington, DC. Includes full-text case studies and reports on various aspects of environmental and economic issues; not focused exclusively on Africa, but a list of case studies limited to the African continent can be accessed by using the site search box to search for studies relating to Africa.
Suggested keywords for searching your library’s online catalog, Google Scholar, or other databases (accessed through your library’s website) for more resources:
• Africa and climate
• Country name (e.g., Nigeria) and environment
• Country name (e.g., Kenya) and wildlife
• Africa and resource management
• Country name (e.g., Somalia) and refugees
• Africa and sustainable development
• Country name and sanitation
• Political ecology and urban Africa
Reflecting Africa’s long and rich history, this field covers a vast area of topics and time periods:
• Studies of the precolonial and colonial periods
• Studies exploring the connections between Africa and the Indian Ocean world and between Africa and the Atlantic Ocean world
• The slave trade
• Analyses of African countries since independence
• Studies of South Africa and its apartheid and postapartheid history
Encyclopedias, while they do not reflect current scholarship, are a good place for overview information.
Cambridge History of Africa (1975–86) and UNESCO’s General History of Africa (1981–93). Both of these are eight-volume sets that provide detailed overviews of the continent’s history by following chronological timelines beginning with Africa’s prehistory, and their coverage extends well into the second half of the twentieth century. Look for them in your library’s reference room.
For more concise overviews, use one-volume histories:
Cooper, Frederick. 2002. Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Iliffe, John. 2007. Africans: The History of a Continent, 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. Includes revised and updated chapters on African prehistory and the Atlantic slave trade.
Another good starting point:
Falola, Toyin. 2002. Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. Intended for high school and college students; contains chapters on thirty-six significant events that shaped African history. Topics include the civilizations of ancient Egypt, the spread of Islam, kingdoms of West Africa, the rise of the Swahili states, the Atlantic slave trade, the colonial experience, and the fall of apartheid.
Use Falola’s book in combination with other, more detailed and recent thematic studies of aspects of African history:
Chamberlain, Muriel Evelyn. 2010. The Scramble for Africa. 3rd ed. Harlow: Longman. Overview, including specific case histories and primary sources, of the historical period when Europe took control of Africa, known as the “scramble for Africa.”
Hawley, John C., ed. 2008. India in Africa, Africa in India: Indian Ocean Cosmopolitanisms. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Edited volume that offers interpretations of the historical relationship between India and Africa while also incorporating current relationships between those two world areas.
Lovejoy, Paul. 2000. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa. 2nd ed. New York: Cambridge University Press. While more detailed studies of various aspects of slavery, including time periods or regions where slavery took place, are available, Transformations in Slavery presents a history of slavery for the entire continent.
Meredith, Martin. 2005. The State of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. London: Free Press. Traces the history of African states, beginning when they first moved toward independence and continuing through the next fifty years.
The history of South Africa is often treated separately in the scholarly literature:
Berger, Iris. 2009. South Africa in World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Concise overview that traces the country’s history from prehistory to the present; provides a general survey of South African history that integrates social history and women’s history as well as the connections between the United States and South Africa.
Many primary sources relating to South African history can be accessed online:
Aluka, www.aluka.org. Provides full-text access to documents relating to struggles for freedom in southern Africa, including periodicals, personal papers, nationalist publications, life histories, speeches, and so on. Unlike DISA, Aluka is a fee-based database, so access is limited to students who are affiliated with a subscribing institution.
Digital Innovation South Africa (DISA), www.disa.ukzn.ac.za. Freely available database with full-text documents, primarily periodicals; focus on sociocultural history of South Africa between the country’s struggle for freedom in the 1950s and its first democratic elections in 1994.
Historical Papers Wits, www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za/index.php?l/P/Home. Independent South African research archive; includes a link to digitized collections that are available in an open-access environment.
South African History Online (SAHO), www.sahistory.org.za. Largest independent history education and research institute in South Africa. This website includes sources related to politics, arts, culture, and society, as well as numerous biographies of South African personalities.
Worger, William H., Nancy L. Clark, and Edward A. Alpers. 2010. Africa and the West: A Documentary History. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Includes two volumes: vol. 1, From the Slave Trade to Conquest, 1441–1905, and vol. 2, From Colonialism to Independence, 1875 to the Present. Excellent selection of primary sources documenting all of Africa’s relationship with the West; includes first-person narratives, poetry, correspondence, political speeches, and so on.
A number of websites present both primary and secondary sources in full text, documenting the continent’s history from its origins to the modern day.
Africa South of the Sahara, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history/africanhistoryelectronicbooks.html. Offers one of the most comprehensive listings of links leading to the full text of electronic books. Treasures such as accounts by the explorers and travelers of the nineteenth century as well as many current-day scholarly publications can be discovered through this portal and accessed freely on the internet. A few examples:
Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: Being a Journal of an Expedition Undertaken by Heinrich Barth. Published 1896, Harper and Brothers.
Travels in the Interior of Africa by Mungo Park. Published 1860, A. and C. Black.
Travels in West Africa by Mary Henrietta Kingsley, William Forsell Kirby. Published 1897, Macmillan.
Africa South of the Sahara’s section on African history, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/history.html. Further subdivided into more than thirty topics and themes, ranging from human origins, exploration between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries, slavery, and the colonial period to Afrocentrism, pan-Africanism, and others. Each of these subcategories links to a multitude of resources and full-text documents.
The social relationships and ways of creating livelihoods described and discussed in the chapters “Social Relations: Family, Kinship, and Community” and “Making a Living: Livelihoods in Africa” touch on many issues and are, more than any other section in this overview of resources, connected and related to almost every other chapter in this book. Consequently, sources for much of what is described in those two chapters will be found throughout the various sections of this chapter, depending on your research focus and interests. Both chapters address many issues and concepts that are typically discussed in anthropological literature. A generation of anthropologists conducting research in Africa during the colonial period produced studies that became classics in the discipline:
Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1940. The Nuer. Oxford: Clarendon.
Fortes, Meyer. 1953. “The Structure of Unilineal Descent Groups.” American Anthropologist 55:17–41.
Fortes, Meyer, and E. E. Evans-Pritchard, eds. 1940. African Political Systems. London: Oxford University Press.
Radcliffe-Brown, Alfred R., and Daryll Forde, eds. 1950. African Systems of Kinship and Marriage. London: Oxford University Press.
Contemporary cultural anthropologists explore phenomena such as:
• Transformations of kinship and marriage in relation to politico-economic processes
• Transnational families and networks
• Gender and work
• Children and youth
• Religious communities
• Media, popular culture, and globalization
• Ethnicity and the state
• Witchcraft, modernity, and development
• Resource extraction and violence
For explanations and definitions of these concepts, consult an anthropological encyclopedia in your library’s reference room, such as:
Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer, eds. 2010. The Routledge Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London: Routledge.
Levinson, David, and Melvin Ember, eds. 1996. Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology. New York: Henry Holt.
Consult the bibliographies at the end of the chapters on social relations and livelihoods. The books listed there include extensive bibliographies that will refer you to other current scholarship on your topic.
Find current journal articles in databases, most notably AnthroSource, which includes full-text issues of the American Anthropological Association’s journals, bulletins, and newsletters. Note the “Resources” tab, which provides access to an extensive list of links for finding information on anthropology on the web.
Anthropology Plus, JSTOR, and Google Books and Google Scholar are other databases and search engines with relevant content.
Remember that this is an interdisciplinary field and select other databases according to your research focus. For effective keyword searches, combine some of the terms/concepts discussed in the two chapters and those listed above with country or peoples’ names. Some examples:
• Marriage and Bamana
• Social anthropology and Africa (or substitute with a country name)
• Bridewealth and Niger
• Funerals and Ghana
• Migration and social relations and Senegal
• Child-headed households and South Africa
• Youth and Madagascar
• Maasai and NGOs
• Kenya (or other African country name) and urban livelihood
• Microcredit and Malawi
• Agroforestry and Gambia
• Morocco and remittances
• Social transformation and Sahara (or substitute with another region or country)
Keep in mind the interdisciplinary nature of this field as you look for resources. For example:
• If you are interested in topics related to health, healing, HIV/AIDS and its impact on African societies, the role of indigenous knowledge in healing, or something related, also consult the section “Health, Illness, and Healing in African Societies.”
• For information on urban spaces, see the sections “Urban Spaces, Lives, and Projects in Africa” and “Africa: A Geographic Frame.”
• For more in-depth research connected to economic livelihoods, also consult the sections “Development in Africa: Tempered Hope” and “African Politics and the Future of Democracy.”
• If your research interest is the study of music and social life, be sure to look at the sections “African Music Flows,” “Visual Arts in Africa,” and “Religions in Africa.”
Asante, Molefi Kete, and Ama Mazama, eds. 2009. Encyclopedia of African Religion. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Excellent introduction to concepts in “traditional” African religions. It includes a reader’s guide designed to help the reader locate articles on topics such as ancestral figures, communalism and family, concepts and ideas, deities and divinities, rituals and ceremonies, sacred spaces and objects, societies, symbols, signs and sounds, taboo, and ethics. Thought and belief systems throughout the African diaspora are also included. Available in print and in electronic format.
Bongmba, Elias, ed. 2012. The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to African Religions. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons. Provides essays from international scholars on topics relating to African religious experiences in indigenous, Christian, and Islamic traditions across the continent; explores diverse methodological approaches to specific religious traditions and issues such as religion and the arts, health, politics, globalization, gender relations, and the economy.
Culture and Customs series from Greenwood Press. Several volumes, each focusing on a different African country. Each volume in the series includes a chapter on religion and worldview for the specific country.
Isichei, Elizabeth Allo. 2004. The Religious Traditions of Africa: A History. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Provides a more detailed overview by outlining the development of Islam and Christianity across Africa and discussing “traditional” religion in detail.
During the past decade, the study of religion in Africa has been characterized by a proliferation of cross-disciplinary studies, such as analyses of religion and women, theological studies within contexts of reconciliation and forgiveness (e.g., in the context of post-apartheid South Africa, post-genocide Rwanda, post–civil war Liberia, etc.), religious movements, Pentecostalism, health and religion, religion in connection with culture, philosophy, anthropology, history, human rights, religion and law, etc. To find these studies in a library’s online catalog, combine the topics listed here in keyword searches, for example:
• Africa and religion and women
• Africa and religion and politics
• Reconciliation and South Africa
• Africa and religion and law
• Rwanda and forgiveness
BBC World Service, The Story of Africa, www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/. Brief overview of religions in Africa, covering such topics as Islam, Christianity, missionaries, religious practices, and so on. Includes audio clips of the original radio broadcast.
Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa, www.ascleiden.nl/Library/Webdossiers/IslamInAfrica.aspx. A web dossier/bibliography on Islam in Africa, compiled by the Library, Documentation and Information Department of the African Studies Centre in Leiden, the Netherlands. Developed in connection with a multiyear research project that culminated in a conference of leading scholars on Islam in Africa. The sources included in the dossier are publications by the conference participants and include books and articles published over the last two decades.
Religiously Remapped: Mapping Religious Trends in Africa, www.religiouslyremapped.info/. Website developed by Eugene Carl Adogla in 2007, funded by a Stanford University grant. Includes twenty-two maps on topics such as the predominant religion, the main minority religion, Christianity (including Catholicism and Protestantism), Islam (Sunnis, Shiites, and other branches), traditional religions, Baha’i, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, atheism, religious freedom, religion and conflict, interesting religious facts, and religious change.
Recent scholarship on urban spaces in Africa acknowledges the rapid growth of African cities and the fact that much of the future of African culture and society will in some way be connected to cities.
These describe the development of African cities from the earliest time to the present day:
Anderson, David M., and Richard Rathbone eds. 2000. Africa’s Urban Past. Oxford: James Currey. Survey of cities in Africa from a historical perspective. Each chapter focuses on one city and its history; together, the chapters combine to an overview of the history of urbanism in Africa.
Falola, Toyin, and Steven J. Salm, eds. 2005. African Urban Spaces in Historical Perspective. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press. Provides an interdisciplinary approach to the study of African urban history and culture, incorporating historical methodologies with those of anthropology, geography, literature, art, and architecture.
Freund, Bill. 2007. The African City: A History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Provides a comprehensive overview of cities in Africa from the early origins to the present.
Demissie, Fassil. 2007. Postcolonial African Cities: Imperial Legacies and Postcolonial Predicaments. London: Routledge. Describes new forms of urban development through the lens of historical developments. Themes and topics include colonial legacies, cosmopolitan spaces, and urban reconfigurations.
Murray, Martin J., and Garth A. Myers, eds. 2007. Cities in Contemporary Africa. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Noteworthy for its inclusion of African scholarship. Each chapter provides a glimpse into the complex dynamics of urban life in various African cities.
Simone, Abdou Maliq. 2004. For the City Yet to Come: Changing Life in Four Cities. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Series of case studies that examine informal economies and social networks in four African cities (Dakar, Pretoria, Douala, Jeddah) and argues that African cities ought to be analyzed in their specific historical contexts—which would dispute the argument that they are “failed cities” when compared to those of the North.
In addition to overviews of urban life in Africa, case studies of various aspects of life in cities might be useful. In this context, women and migrants have been important foci of urban ethnography. Examples include:
Hoodfar, Homar. 1997. Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Study of Sahelian migrants in Brazzaville.
Whitehouse, Bruce. 2012. Migrants and Strangers in an African City: Exile, Dignity, Belonging. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Globalizing cities and Africa
• Urban poverty
• Sustainable cities
• Urban governance
• Urban housing and infrastructure
• Urban life and name of city
• Street children
• Migration and name of country or city
Research on health, illness, and healing in Africa encompasses information on:
• Statistics
• Biomedical topics
• Sociocultural analyses of illness and healing
• Analyses of traditional medicine
• Indigenous forms of knowledge in the context of healing
A considerable amount of health-related information, such as statistics by international organizations (e.g., the World Health Organization and the United Nations), is available online on detailed websites that are more up-to-date than any comparable print resource could be. These organizations, as well as many smaller NGOs, also create and publish online research reports on such topics as:
• AIDS education and prevention
• Malaria prevention
• Indigenous knowledge
AllAfrica.com: Health, http://allafrica.com/health. News service that has a section on health; features articles on topics such as HIV/AIDS, anti-malaria campaigns, and the impact of tobacco on people’s health.
HighWire Press, http://highwire.stanford.edu (a division of the Stanford University Libraries). Good place to find peer-reviewed articles on health-related topics. Includes 1,270 journals (mostly from the medical fields) and provides access to full-text journal articles. A keyword search entered in the search box “Anywhere in the text”—for example “AIDS stigma in Uganda”—will retrieve relevant articles.
Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS, UNAIDS (co-sponsored by WHO, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, UNESCO, and the World Bank), www.unaids.org/en/. Provides HIV/AIDS-related information; includes up-to-date country fact sheets with statistics and, in some cases, articles about a specific country’s response to the HIV/AIDS pandemic.
United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), www.genderandaids.org. Acknowledges the complicated situation of women in relation to HIV/AIDS; includes links to full-text country-specific articles and reports, book descriptions, conferences, and so on.
The World Health Organization’s home page, www.who.int, and WHOSIS, the WHO’s statistical system. Extensive information on Africa. WHOSIS is an interactive database that provides access to health statistics for the 193 WHO member states. Can be searched by health topics; also has a list of countries, providing access to core health statistics for individual countries. Areas covered: chronic diseases, child malnutrition, access to water, sanitation, information on HIV/AIDS, health expenditures, et cetera. The WHO home page also includes full-text reports on health-related issues.
Many more websites with full-text articles and/or statistical information exist—too many to mention here. Stanford University’s Africa South of the Sahara/African Health and Medicine, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/health.html, is a good place to obtain access to many of them.
Often this kind of information is discussed and analyzed in anthropological rather than medical studies. Use a combination of print and electronic sources to find relevant information. The materials suggested for further reading, as well as the bibliographies included in those materials, at the end of the chapter “Health, Illness, and Healing in African Societies” are good places to look for print resources. Also:
Konadu, Kwasi. 2008. “Medicine and Anthropology in Twentieth Century Africa: Akan Medicine and Encounters with Medical Anthropology,” African Studies Quarterly 10(2–3). Points to the tendency in the field of medical anthropology to focus on witchcraft as the basis of African medicine; argues that many of the existing case studies apply concepts of medical anthropology to African contexts without incorporating African perspectives.
Werbner, Richard. 2011. Holy Hustlers, Schism, and Prophecy. Berkeley: University of California Press. Discusses Eloyi, an apostolic faith-healing church in Gaborone, Botswana.
These films on faith healing were directed by Richard Werbner:
Encountering Eloyi. 2008. Media Centre, University of Manchester. Manchester, UK: International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research.
Séance Reflections. 2005. International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research. Manchester, UK: International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research. Documentary about a couple who travel to the husband’s village in Botswana (Moremi) to consult a diviner and healer to determine why they are childless.
Shade Seekers and the Mixer. 2007. Media Centre, University of Manchester. Manchester, UK: International Centre for Contemporary Cultural Research, University of Manchester. Documentary set in the same village (Moremi, Botswana) as the previous film; about a healing diviner.
Sharp, Lesley A. 1993. “The Possessed and the Dispossessed: Spirits, Identity and Power in a Madagascar Migrant Town,” http://publishing.cdlib.org/ucpressebooks/view?docId=ft6tlnb4hz&brand=ucpress. Full text of a book published by the University of California Press; analyzes the powerful role of spirit medium healers in the specific context of a Madagascar town.
Shikanda Portal, www.shikanda.net. Includes several articles on spirit healing by Wim van Binsbergen.
“Traditional Medicine Strategy,” published by the World Health Organization, www.who.int/medicines/publications/traditionalpolicy/en/index.html. Intended as a policy framework to regulate traditional and alternative medicine, make it safer, and improve access to it.
Search your library’s databases, such as Academic Search Premier, JSTOR, and Anthroplogy Plus. Selected keywords:
• Healing and indigenous beliefs
• Traditional healers and Africa (or use a country name)
• Spiritual healers
• Shrines
• Talismans
• Indigenous knowledge
• Indigenous magic
• Medicine (or healing) and religion
• Herbalism/healing and Africa
Scholarship related to art in Africa focuses on various aspects, for example:
• Painting
• Sculpture
• Pottery
• Metal works
• Architecture
• Exhibitions
• Photography
• Popular art
• Traditional art
• Masks and masquerades
• Body art
• Rock art
• The sources listed at the end of the chapter “Visual Arts in Africa” are a good place to find detailed overview information on art for the African continent.
• Grove Dictionary of Art. 2000. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Thirty-four-volume set with more than forty-one thousand articles on the arts in Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific. Many libraries have its online version (Grove Art Online), which provides access to the full text of all articles, with new additions, updates, and image links.
• Search your library’s databases to find journal articles. JSTOR, which includes major African studies journals in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, most notably the important journal African Art, is particularly useful to find articles on art in Africa.
Combine the topics listed above and in the chapter on the arts in Africa with the names of African countries and/or peoples, for example:
• Africa and architecture
• South Africa and rock art
• Zulu and pottery
• Maasai and body art
• Mali and photography
AfricaFocus, http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/AfricaFocus/subcollections/FocusAbout.html. Online collection maintained by the University of Wisconsin–Madison Libraries. Includes digitized images and sounds of Africa that have been contributed to the university’s African Studies Program. Images are arranged in subject groupings, such as artisans, buildings and structures, cities and towns, landscape, drums, rites and ceremonies, and so forth.
Google Life Photo Archive, http://images.google.com/hosted/life. Provides access to millions of photographs from Life’s photo archive. Search by keyword to find images for African art.
The Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs: 1860–1960, http://repository.library.northwestern.edu/winterton/about.html. Website that provides access to the digitized version of this collection of more than seven thousand photographs depicting life in Africa.
Selections from Eliot Elisofon Photographic Archives, http://sirismm.si.edu/siris/eepatop.htm. Research center at the National Museum of African Art. Includes more than three hundred thousand photographic images on the arts, peoples, and history of Africa. Searchable by country, by cultural groups, and by subjects.
Also look for images in Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, and YouTube, as well as Google Images and Bing Images.
Exhibitions are a place to see art displayed, and exhibition catalogs often have an impact on how art is perceived and studied. Examples of important exhibitions:
Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art, organized in 1991 by the Center (now Museum) for African Art in New York. Exhibition catalog by Susan Vogel. New York: Center for African Art, 1991. Considered a turning point in its display of the wide range and variety of visual arts in Africa.
The Global Africa Project, organized in 2010 by the Museum of Arts and Design. Catalog by Lowery Stokes Sims. New York: Museum of Arts and Design, 2010. Explores contemporary African art, design, and craft worldwide. Features more than a hundred artists working in Africa, Europe, Asia, the United States, and the Caribbean.
In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present, shown in 1996 at the Guggenheim Museum. Exhibition catalog by Clare Bell. New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1996. First major U.S. exhibition of African photography.
The Short Century: Independence and Liberation Movements in Africa, 1945–1994, displayed in Germany, New York, and Chicago. Catalog by Okwui Enwezor. Munich: Prestel, 2001. Connected the visual arts with political changes that took place during the second half of the twentieth century.
Sources about African music include:
• Musicological studies
• Anthropological studies of music
• Combinations of both
• Discographies (i.e., bibliographies of recordings)
• Sound recordings in various forms (records, tapes, DVDs, etc.)
Stone, Ruth M., ed. 1998. The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, Volume 1. New York: Garland. Provides detailed overview of music in Africa. Presents connections of African music to dance, drama, other visual arts, and religion. Reflects that African music cannot be studied in isolation and, rather, is an integral part of social, cultural and political contexts. Owned by many university libraries. The volume is accompanied by a CD with music samples.
Stone, Ruth M. 2008. The Garland Handbook of African Music. 2nd ed. New York: Rout-ledge. Abridged version of the encyclopedia. Takes recent scholarship on music in Africa into account. Includes emerging new research on East Africa, music and video in North Africa, music and HIV/AIDS education, women’s dance in the Christian church of Malawi, and so on.
These are examples of book-length case studies you can consult to find up-to-date research on African music:
Askew, Kelly. 2002. Performing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Analysis of taarab music performance in Tanzania as an expression of Tanzanian culture and cultural policies.
Charry, Eric S. 2000. Mande Music: Traditional and Modern Music of the Maninka and Mandinka of Western Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Detailed analysis of Mande music in its social and historical context. Includes a disc with recordings of traditional and modern pieces of Mande music.
Monson, Ingrid T. 2000. The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective. New York: Garland. Includes essays about jazz, music in Mali, music in Martinique, the Yoruba folk opera, and other topics.
Moorman, Marissa. 2008. Intonations: A Social History of Music and Nation in Luanda, Angola, from 1945 to Recent Times. Athens: Ohio University Press. Social history of African music from Lusophone Africa. Analyzes the relationship between culture and politics during the late colonial and postindependence periods of Angola’s history.
Perullo, Alex. 2011. Live from Dar es Salaam: Popular Music and Tanzania’s Music Economy. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Reed, Daniel. 2003. Dan Ge Performance: Masks and Music in Contemporary Cote d’Ivoire. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Explores the social and religious contexts in which Ge, a performance among the Dan people of western Côte d’Ivoire, takes place.
For a more detailed analysis of the theory of African music:
Kubik, Gerhard. 1994. Theory of African Music. Wilhelmshaven: F. Noetzel.
Many scholarly books on music in Africa include CDs with music samples. Additionally, there are a variety of internet sources that provide access to African music.
Africa South of the Sahara’s section on music, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/music.html. Offers an excellent list of web links providing access to articles from African news sources, links to discussions on music, blogs, links to vendors selling African music, and many audio samples.
African Music Treasures, Voice of America blog by Heather Maxwell, http://blogs.voanews.com/african-music-treasures. Features interviews with African musicians.
Afropop Worldwide, www.afropop.org. Website accompanying a radio program by Georges Collinet with music from Africa, the Caribbean, and the Americas. Includes a wealth of information, ranging from program schedules, discographies, and information on how to access African radio stations to musicians’ biographies, a bibliography of books, and much more.
The Pan African Space Station (PASS), www.panafricanspacestation.org.za. Internet radio station affiliated with Chimurenga magazine in Cape Town, South Africa. Free streaming of music twenty-four hours a day.
To date, Africa has produced five African Nobel laureates:
• Albert Camus (1957, Algeria)
• John Coetzee (2003, South Africa)
• Nadine Gordimer (1991, South Africa)
• Najib Mahfuz (1988, Egypt)
• Wole Soyinka (1986, Nigeria)
In addition to these well-known writers, there are many African authors who are now considered classics, as well as a vibrant scene of younger authors. Consult the chapter “Literature in Africa” for authors’ names and for information about the titles of their publications. Their works—particularly those by the well-established, older generation of writers—can easily be retrieved from most college library online catalogs by doing a search for the author’s name. Alternatively, do a keyword search for Heinemann African Writers Series. Works by many well-known African authors have been published in this series, which can be found in many college and university libraries. Some libraries subscribe to a selective online version of this series, titled African Writers Series and published by Proquest.
Africa’s 100 Best Books of the 20th Century, web dossier compiled by the African Studies Centre Library Leiden, www.ascleiden.nl/?q=content/webdossiers/africas-100-best-books-20th-century. The goal of this project was to compile a list of the hundred best books and to direct the world’s attention to African writing published during the twentieth century. The dossier provides background information, the top 12 list, the top 100 list, and related web resources. Includes creative writing, academic writing, and children’s books.
In recent years, a new generation of writers has begun to adapt genres such as the novel and the short story to African realities and ways of storytelling. In addition to writing in well-established genres, these young authors also utilize social media such as Facebook and Twitter as well as personal websites to reach out to their readers. The result is a vibrant literary scene that is increasingly attracting international attention.
Some places to look for recent works:
Caine Prize anthologies. Since the Caine Prize for African Writing was first awarded at the Zimbabwe International Book Fair in 2000, eleven anthologies of stories short-listed for the prize have been published. Find the Caine Prize anthologies by conducting a keyword search in your library’s online catalog, using “Caine prize” and “African writing” as keywords. The winning and short-listed stories for the current year can also be found online on the Caine Prize’s official website at www.caineprize.com/.
Gray, Stephen. 2000. The Picador Book of African Stories. London: Picador. Presents African short fiction, including translations of works from various languages and many works that are not usually found in other anthologies. Includes an interesting introduction that outlines the development of broad themes in African literature, from the generation of writers after independence in the 1960s, whose writing was a counterdiscourse to the colonial powers, to the next generation, which was characterized by anger and disillusionment, and writers who emerged during the late 1980s and afterward and who are developing authentic African models of literature.
Spillman, Rob. 2009. Gods and Soldiers: The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing. New York: Penguin Books. Includes short fiction as well as passages from novels. Excellent introduction that conveys the excitement and vibrancy of the recent African literary scene.
Look for recent African literature in various places. Publishing venues for the new generation of African writers are wide and varied. For example, an author may publish a novel in the traditional book format while also maintaining a website and a blog, have a short story published in the New Yorker, and be included in several anthologies of recent African writing.
The Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie website, www.13.ulg.ac.be/adichie. (Note: “1” before “3” in url is lowercase L.) Nigerian author who is known for her short stories and her award-winning novels Purple Hibiscus (2003) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). The website includes biographical information on the author, bibliographies, and interviews.
Teju Cole, www.tejucole.com. Nigerian author who now lives in Brooklyn, New York. In addition to being a writer, he is also a photographer and an art historian. His novel Open City (New York: Random House, 2011) received the PEN/Hemingway Award. The website includes many of Cole’s photographs, biographical information, and bibliographies. Also look for Cole’s tweet-sized narratives in his project “Small Fates” on Twitter.
Other authors’ names to look for:
• Tanure Ojaide
• Helon Habila
• Doreen Baingana
• Binyavanga Wainaina
• Sefi Atta
• Leila Aboulela
Africa Is a Country, http://africasacountry.com. Includes many interesting posts and discussions on African literature.
Crime Beat, http://crimebeat.bookslive.co.za/blog. Blog about the thriving genre of crime fiction in South Africa.
Chimurenga, www.chimurenga.co.za. A pan-African publication of writing, art, and politics. The website includes links to the Chimurenga Library, an online archive of pan-African, independent periodicals; the Chimurenga Chronic, a one-time edition of Chimurenga in the form of a newspaper, with open access to parts of it; and the Pan African Space Station, with access to the latest in African music.
Kwani?, www.kwani.org/aboutus/kwani.htm. Literary network based in Kenya and dedicated to the development of creative writing in Africa. Good place to look for news about current authors and literary initiatives.
To become familiar with Africa’s literary heritage, guides, literary encyclopedias, dictionaries, and overview volumes are a good starting point for initial information about authors and their works and guide to further reading:
Gikandi, Simon, ed. 2003. Encyclopedia of African Literature. London: Routledge. Designed for readers who either encounter African literature for the first time or who seek facts on topics, writers, and movements; includes all aspects relating to the study of African literature, ranging from historical and cultural issues affecting literature to theoretical and critical frameworks that influence interpretations.
Columbia Guides to Literature since 1945 series. Each of these three volumes, edited by a well-known scholar of African literature, provides biographical information about authors, criticism, bibliographies, and suggestions for further readings; connects the literature of specific regions to their political and social contexts.
Cox, Brian, ed. 1997. African Writers. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons. Offers introductions to a variety of late nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature from Africa. Provides excellent signed entries that give an overview of a writer’s life, work, and the social and historical context in which he or she writes, as well as extensive bibliographies and lists of further readings. Limited to well-known authors.
Gikandi, Simon, and Evan Mwangi, eds. 2007. The Columbia Guide to East African Literature in English since 1945. New York: Columbia University Press.
Moss, Joyce, and Lorraine Valestuk. 2000. World Literature and Its Times/African Literature and Its Times: Profiles of Notable Literary Works and the Historical Events That Influenced Them. Detroit: Thomson Gale. Introduces literary works, gives plot summaries, links the works to concrete political and historical events, identifies sources used by the author.
Owomoyela, Oyekan. 2008. The Columbia Guide to West African Literature in English since 1945. New York: Columbia University Press.
Roscoe, Adrian. 2008. The Columbia Guide to Central African Literature in English since 1945. New York: Columbia University Press.
In addition to overviews and works about individual authors, much scholarship exists on various aspects related to the study of African literature, as outlined in the “Literature in Africa” chapter. Use any of the themes identified in the chapter for keyword searches in your library’s online catalog or databases such as MLA, for example:
• African literature and gender
• African literature and Islam
• African literature and colonialism
• African literature and transnationalism
Websites about and by African authors abound. These websites offer a variety of information, such as the full text of short stories, sections of novels, biographic information, poetry, essays, and interviews. Find them by searching Google using the author’s name.
Good for initial research:
Literary Map of Africa, http://library.osu.edu/literary-map-of-africa/, developed by Miriam Conteh-Morgan. One of the most comprehensive and up-to-date databases serving as a research guide; offers bio-bibliographic information on African literature. Intended as a starting point for more detailed research. Includes information on Anglophone as well as Francophone and Lusophone authors.
For more detailed information on Francophone African literature, consult Brown University’s guide to online resources, which includes annotated descriptions of websites extending to areas such as music, dance, theater, and the visual arts: http://dl.lib.brown.edu/francophone.
Relatively few online resources treat the medium at a level that provides insights into interpretations and analyses. When researching African film, therefore, use a combination of print and electronic information.
Armes, Roy. 2006. African Filmmaking North and South of the Sahara. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Describes the origins of cinema in Africa from a historical viewpoint, from the 1890s to the first years of the new millennium; provides comprehensive overviews of films and filmmakers and also discusses the influence of political and social events, such as Islam and colonialism, on film. Outlines the development of predominant themes in African films over time, ranging from concerns with social issues of postcolonial societies to a focus on more personal themes in recent times.
Armes, Roy. 2008. Dictionary of African Filmmakers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Divided into two parts: an alphabetical listing with 1,250 filmmakers, including information about date and place of birth, training and/or film industrial experience, other creative activities, and a list of feature films; and an alphabetical listing of the countries associated with the filmmakers as well as a chronology of the feature films.
For more detailed research, supplement with:
Gugler, Josef. 2003. African Film: Re-Imagining a Continent. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Detailed overview of film across the African continent by discussing selected films in chapters such as “Recovering the Past,” “Fighting Colonialism,” and “Betrayals of Independence.” The detailed film discussions succinctly situate the films in their historical, political, and social contexts. Includes helpful, substantial bibliographies for further reading.
Russell, Sharon. 1998. A Guide to African Cinema. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. In-depth discussions of individual films that seek to give a representative idea of the genre in Africa. Arranged as an alphabetical listing of filmmakers and films. Each entry is followed by a list of further readings and, where applicable, a filmography.
Thakway, Melissa. 2003. Africa Shoots Back: Alternative Perspectives in Sub-Saharan Francophone African Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Similar to Gugler’s book, connecting the genre to specific social, cultural, and political contexts, but with a focus on Francophone Africa; different from the dictionaries and overviews mentioned above, the author of this book is more selective in the films she discusses and pays particular attention to specific characteristics and themes that emerge in Francophone films.
Dovey, Lindiwe. 2009. African Film and Literature: Adapting Violence to the Screen. New York: Columbia Press. Discusses how African films reflect social and political conflict in Africa, for example, in relation to HIV/AIDS or racial conflict.
“African Cinema,” Wikipedia entry, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_cinema. Parts of the site are still under development; nevertheless, good for analyses and/or critical information about films, filmmakers, and directors. Provides a succinct overview of the development of the genre across Africa, in addition to fairly extensive, analytical discussions of the development of cinema in individual African countries (e.g., “Cinema of Senegal,” “Cinema of Nigeria,” etc.); also includes a section on women directors, a directory of film directors by country, a bibliography for further reading about film in Africa, and links to related websites on African film. (Remember to combine this information with information found in other resources.)
Africa South of the Sahara: African Films, Movies, and Videos, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/film.html. Extensive coverage of African film; provides annotated list of links to a variety of web sources related to the genre.
H-AfrLitCine Discussion Network, www.h-net.org/~aflitweb. A listserv devoted to African literature and cinema; good place to follow current discussions about African film. An archive of past discussions can easily be accessed from the listserv’s homepage.
Literature about politics in Africa is concerned with, among other things:
• Governance
• Democracy
• Political recovery/democratic movements of the 1990s
• One-party politics as well as multiparty systems
• Structural adjustment programs
• Armed conflict in areas such as Darfur, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, and the Niger Delta
• Ethnicity and politics
Mehler, Andreas, Henning Melber, and Klaas Walraven, eds. Africa Yearbook: Politics, Economy, and Society South of the Sahara. Leiden: Brill. Joint project by major European African studies centers. Good for factual information. Has been published yearly since 2004, and each volume focuses on developments during the year it was published. Includes country-specific articles that cover domestic politics, foreign affairs, and socioeconomic developments in the states of sub-Saharan Africa. Based on scholarly work, but specifically aims at a wider target audience of students, teachers, journalists, et cetera.
The Political Handbook of Africa 2007. 2007. Washington, DC: CQ Press. Good overview of individual African countries’ political situations. Provides descriptions of each country’s government and politics as well as information about the constitution, the country’s foreign relations, descriptions of political parties, the legislature, the press, and so forth.
Combine overviews with more in-depth analyses in books and articles, many of them available online:
Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA), www.codesria.org/?lang=en. Headquartered in Dakar, Senegal. Provides free, open access to books on politics, although its list of publications is not as extensive as that of the HSRC. Good place to find well-researched books that shed light on various political issues from an African perspective.
Human Science Research Council (HSRC), www.hsrcpress.ac.za/home.php. Nonprofit, open-access publisher based in South Africa; members of the academic community are on its editorial board. Makes publications freely available on its website. Excellent source for well-researched publications. Publications listed under the category “Politics and International Relations” include research on most of the issues outlined above, most notably renowned scholar Mahmood Mamdani’s recent book on the Darfur crisis (Saviours and Survivors: Darfur, Politics, and the War on Terror).
Nordic Africa Institute, www.nai.uu.se. One of the premier research institutes on Africa in Europe, based in Uppsala, Sweden. Extensive website with free access to full-text policy papers, political studies, and development papers, all of them in PDF format.
Remember to consult the books at the end of the chapter “African Politics and the Future of Democracy.”
Keep in mind that in addition to research institutes, numerous nongovernmental and international organizations also make a wealth of information available online. Among them:
The African Union, www.au.int/en/. Union of fifty-four African states established to promote and defend African common positions, to promote good governance, human rights, and democracy, and to promote peace and security in Africa. Website includes full-text documents, speeches, news, and discussion forums as well as useful links.
Sub-Saharan Governments Search Engine, www.google.com/cse/home?cx=004216246918580239447:kzrbc4uvlna. Search engine that retrieves websites of African governments. Useful results can be obtained by using either a country’s name or language(s) as search terms.
The World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, and UNDP all offer a vast amount of information, which can be found either by going directly to the organization’s website or by searching www.unsystem.org, the official UN web site locator, which allows searches across all UN-affiliated organizations and is an efficient way to locate documents.
African Elections Database, 2004–2011, http://africanelections.tripod.com/index.html. Archive of past and present election results for African countries. Also includes political profiles for each country as well as information on political parties.
Afrobarometer, www.afrobarometer.org. Survey center based at Michigan State University. Designed to measure the social, political, and economic atmosphere in Africa. Available are four rounds of public opinion data collected since 1999. Round five is currently being conducted. The site also includes full-text working papers.
Specifically of interest:
Bratton, Michael, E. Gyimah-Boadi, and Robert Mattes. Afrobarometer 2008–2009. 2010. East Lansing, MI: Afrobarometer.
Polity IV, www.systemicpeace.org/polity/polity4.htm. Measures democracy in every African country annually. Used as an indicator for democracy.
Development literature includes:
• Official documents of international and nongovernmental aid organizations
• Surveys
• Overviews
• Statistics
• Responses and analyses to official documents by influential organizations, such as the World Bank
• Case studies by scholars in various disciplines
Joseph, Richard, and Alexandra Gillies, eds. 2009. Smart Aid for African Development. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. Provides and analyzes perspectives on aid.
Moss, Todd J. 2007. African Development: Making Sense of the Issues and Actors. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Consider these two websites as excellent starting points with links to enormous amounts of information ranging from websites of nongovernmental and international organizations to full-text research papers, reports on development projects, policy papers, and books. Focus is on economic aspects of development, but both websites include information on related issues, such as women in development, the environment, the African Virtual University, wildlife conservation, and others:
Africa South of the Sahara’s section on development, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/devel.html.
Economic Development, Education, and Environmental Affairs, on Columbia University Libraries’ African Studies Internet Resources—Virtual Library, http://library.columbia.edu/locations/global/virtual-libraries/african_studies/intlorgs/economic_development.html.
Human Development Report. 1990–. New York: Oxford University Press for the United Nations Development Programme. Issued annually. Also online at http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2013. Takes issues such as human rights, cultural liberty, climate change, gender, and democracy into account and does not automatically assume a connection between economic and human development. For example, titles include:
New Dimensions in Human Security
Overcoming Barriers: Human Mobility and Development
People’s Participation
Sustainability and Equity: A Better Future for All
UN Statistical Database, http://unstats.un.org/unsd/databases.htm. Statistical database that covers the entire UN system. Use this database to search across UN websites for information on topics such as trade statistics, census information, demographics, and others.
Many organizations make their data and reports available on the internet.
The World Bank, www.worldbank.org. Has been strongly involved with economic development in Africa for many years and has been instrumental in implementing the controversial structural adjustment programs. Website provides large amounts of full-text information. Includes statistics, reports about specific aid projects, information on business in Africa and on indigenous knowledge, and annual reports of World Bank activities in Africa. Website has a search engine and is keyword-searchable. Of particular interest:
World Bank Data by Country, http://data.worldbank.org/country. Provides country-specific data.
World Development Indicators, http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do?Step=12&id=4&CNO=2. Statistics on education, the environment, economic policy, health, infrastructure, poverty.
World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) initiatives, most notably the World Bank’s structural adjustment programs, have been controversial, and alternative plans and responses exist:
The Bretton Woods Project, www.brettonwoodsproject.org. Good place to find up-to-date comments on World Bank and IMF initiatives, with reports and briefings that can be searched by keyword and specific countries. Aim of the project is to work as an “information provider, media informant and watchdog to scrutinize and influence the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”
Herbert, Ross, and Steven Gruzd. 2008. The African Peer Review Mechanism: Lessons from the Pioneers. Johannesburg: South African Institute of International Affairs. A new approach to improving governance, applied more recently by several African countries, is the peer review process. This in-depth study analyzes the evolving peer review process in the five African countries where it was first applied (Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda, Mauritius, and South Africa).
Find more information on websites of nongovernmental and international organizations:
The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), www.nepad.org. NEPAD is an economic development program of the African Union. The website provides access to the full text of documents on such topics as agriculture and food security, human development, climate change, natural resource management, and economic and corporate governance. It also includes a section on news and a blog.
Southern African Development Community (SADC), www.sadc.int. Includes information on the work of SADC and the full text of key documents, such as SADC’s Protocol on Energy, Protocol on Wildlife Conservation and Law Enforcement, Protocol on Trade.
The sources listed here focus mostly on economic development. However, development can be measured and evaluated in various ways, depending on the perspective of one’s analysis. Other aspects related to development:
• Political, social, and cultural development
• The quality of a society’s environment
• Access to sanitation
• Education
• The number of women in government
These factors are addressed in more detail in the sections on geography, politics, human rights, and social relations and livelihoods.
In recent years, China’s involvement with Africa has steadily increased, with impacts in political, economic, and cultural areas. There is now a burgeoning literature reflecting these developments.
“China and Africa: Emerging Patterns in Globalization and Development.” Special issue of China Quarterly, vol. 199, 2009. Provides a good introduction to this angle of research from a development perspective.
Discourse about human rights extends into a wide range of areas and includes discussions and analyses of:
• Physical abuses of individuals
• State repression
• The treatment of children
• Women’s rights
• Refugees
• Academic and intellectual freedom
• Issues of censorship
• Inter-African relations
The literature on human rights in Africa reflects the complexity of these frameworks.
Akokpri, John, and Daniel Shea Zimbler, eds. 2008. Africa’s Human Rights Architecture. Auckland Park, South Africa: Fanele. Discusses the development of human rights frameworks in Africa since the end of the Cold War. Also analyzes human rights institutions and their work in Africa.
Lawrence, James T., ed. 2004. Human Rights in Africa. New York: Nova Science Publishers. Provides brief one-to-two-page country surveys, and offers bibliographies for more detailed information about each country.
African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights (also known as the Banjul Charter). Multiple references. Search Banjul Charter. Intended to promote and protect human rights and basic freedoms on the African continent.
Protocol to the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights on the Rights of Women in Africa. A supplement that focuses specifically on women’s rights.
United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, www.ohchr.org/EN/UDHR/Pages/Introduction.aspx. Proclaimed on December 10, 1948, this document declares fundamental human rights to be universally protected.
The University of Minnesota Human Rights Library, wwwl.umn.edu/humanrts. One of the largest collections on this topic, including more than sixty thousand human rights documents. Also has a section on African human rights resources: wwwl.umn.edu/humanrts/africa/index.html.
Children in Africa, web dossier, compiled by the Library, Documentation and Information Department of the African Studies Centre at Leiden University (September 2008). While not all sources listed here link to full text, this dossier provides information about publications on children in Africa, focusing on themes such as children and society, children and law, children’s rights, children and war, children and work, street children, children and health, orphanhood, and other topics. Also includes web resources. Use this as a bibliography of sources to be looked for in your library’s online catalog.
Femnet—African Women’s Development and Communication Network, http://femnet.co/index.php/en. Includes publications, online reports, and other information related to women’s rights in Africa.
Urgent Action Fund, http://urgentactionfund-africa.or.ke/. Pan-African women’s human rights organization; website has reports and other publications.
Zia, Adilili, and Billy Kahora, eds. 2007. Sex Matters. Nairobi: Urgent Action Fund. Available at www.urgentactionfund-africa.or.ke/pdfs/Sex%20Matters.pdf. Provides access to reports and papers on women’s rights, gay and lesbian rights, the rights of commercial sex workers, et cetera. Based on a conference on sexual rights within the context of human rights that took place in Kenya.
Article 19, the International Centre Against Censorship, www.article19.org. International human rights organization dedicated to freedom of expression. Article 19 also works on African media freedom issues.
Index on Censorship, www.indexoncensorship.org. Organization that promotes freedom of expression. Extensive website providing up-to-date information on violations of free expression around the world. Also includes a blog and a magazine.
Keep in mind that many organizations focused on defending human rights publish reports and analyses, including:
African Centre for Democracy and Human Rights Studies, www.acdhrs.org. An international NGO established to support the AU’s African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. Website includes full-text documents, posters, reports, and so forth.
Amnesty International, www.amnesty.org. Click on a country to see reports by country as well as annual reports.
Human Rights Watch Africa, www.hrw.org/en/africa. Independent organization dedicated to defending and protecting human rights. Extensive website which includes news on current human rights abuses, full-text reports and other publications, as well as a newsletter.
While it has always been an integral part of any research project to evaluate the sources to be considered for a paper, the growth of digital information technology has raised the need for evaluation and assessment to a new level. Considering the sheer amount of information on the internet and the ease with which it can be posted, careful evaluation of the information one encounters is essential. Many of the same criteria one would apply when assessing a print resource are relevant for online resources as well, although in many instances on a different scale.
• Many college and university libraries have websites with helpful tips on how to evaluate internet resources.
• Africa South of the Sahara, www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/guide.html, includes a link to “Evaluating Web Resources,” www-sul.stanford.edu/depts/ssrg/africa/evalu.html, which provides access to online articles discussing evaluation strategies.
• Particularly helpful is “Evaluating Internet Research Sources,” by Robert Harris, Nov. 22. 2010, www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm. In this article, the author discusses:
• The differences between various forms of information (i.e., facts, opinions, stories, interpretations, statistics)
• How to look for information on websites’ authors (including title, position, organizational affiliation), date of publication/website creation, and author’s contact information
• Evidence of quality control or peer review
• Credibility and signs of lack of credibility (anonymity, lack of quality control, bad grammar, misspelled words)
• Accuracy and currency of a website
• Comprehensiveness of information
• Objectivity, fairness
• Worldview of author
• Source documentation
Remember:
• If you use another person’s thoughts, ideas, expressions, or images, you need to credit that author for his or her original work. Failure to do so is considered plagiarism.
• As you document the sources of information you use in your papers, apply a citation style consistently. Copies of major style manuals, such as the APA (American Psychological Association) manual, the MLA (Modern Language Association) manual, or The Chicago Manual of Style, are available in every library. The Chicago Manual of Style exists in electronic format, and many libraries provide access to that version. Be sure to ask your instructor which style to use.