LibGuides: African History: Primary Sources

What is a Primary Source?

Primary sources are firsthand accounts of history. Some examples of primary sources include:

Government Documents
Letters
Diaries and Journals
Oral Histories
Photographs
Films
Maps
Other Historical Records

Primary Sources

Africa Focus: Sights and Sounds of a Continent
A collection of 3000 slides, 500 photographs, and 50 hours of sounds from 45 different countries, maintained by the University of Wisconsin Libraries.
African Digital Research Repositories
A list of digital repositories in Africa, compiled by the International African Institute at University of London.
African Online Digital Library. ( AODL )
AODL provides access to tens of thousands of cultural heritage materials from and about African countries and communities.
Africa South of the Sahara
Selected online resources, maintained by Stanford University Libraries.
Confidential Print: Africa, 1834-1966
Official British Documents from the National Archives, UK.
Herskovits Library of African Studies Digital Collections
Digitized materials from the Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University, the largest Africana collection in the United States.
Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs, 1860-1960
Digital collection of hundreds of photographs of East African life and how it changed over time, collected by Northwestern University.
Maps of Africa (16th – Early 20th Century)
A digital collection of 113 maps of Africa collected by the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University.
Ross Archive of African Images
Approximately 5000 pictures of African art published prior to 1921.
UNESCO General History of Africa
Over three decades worth of work of 230 historians and specialists resulting in an 8 volume publication on the history of Africa. These volumes are freely accessible online, as well as studies and documents used for the publication.
World Digital Library
49 African nations are represented in the World Digital Library's collections. The WDL is a collaboration of the U.S. Library of Congress, and UNESCO, to make primary materials from nations across the world easily accessible.

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