African Studies: Free online resources

Africa at LSE is a platform for the latest expert analysis on African political, social and economic affairs, placing the continent at the heart of contemporary global debates. Multidisciplinary in scope, the blog provides accessible yet critical commentary and analysis from academics, practitioners and policymakers to enhance public understandings of the continent.

Africa Writes is the Royal African Society’s literature festival. Each festival showcases established and emerging talent from the African continent and its diaspora in what is now the UK’s biggest celebration of contemporary African writing taking place over an exciting summer weekend. The festival features book launches, readings, author appearances, panel discussions, youth and children’s workshops, and other activities

AfriSpeak launched in April 2015, is a blog, which provides a platform for information sharing and discussions for those individuals interested in entrenching democratic principles in Africa. All areas of democracy (Africa’s democracy) applicable to Africa are covered, both international (global and continental) and national. Those encouraged to make submissions include students, researchers, international and national civil servants, civic society, political commentators and politicians, including anyone with a keen interest in discourse on African democracy. AfriSpeak encourages information sharing amongst Africans, diaspora, and anyone else who is interested in democratic values.

The ASCL Africanist Blog is written by scholars and other staff members of the African Studies Centre Leiden. The ASCL Professors, members of the Collaborative Research Groups and project researchers blog about their research, fieldwork, conferences, new publications and teaching experiences. They may also share their view on a development in society from an Africanist perspective.

News and views on African publishing and books from the Africa Books Collective.

The Africa Oxford Initiative (AfOx) is a cross-university platform for all things Africa in Oxford. The overarching vision of AfOx is to make Africa a strategic priority for the University of Oxford, while also building equitable research collaborations between researchers and academics from African institutions and the University of Oxford. Throughout the year AfOx hosts several events and workshops about Africa-focussed research with speakers from diverse and varied academic disciplines. The AfOx podcast series has been introduced for the global AfOx community to be able to tune into our events

News and analysis from the BBC's Focus on Africa. The Africa Today podcast is published from Monday to Friday. It contains the day's top African stories.

Podcasts inspired by African voices.

Africa Past and Present is a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. Launched in 2008 at Michigan State University by historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb, it is the longest-running African studies podcast in the world. Monthly episodes feature interviews with scholars and practitioners from a wide range of academic disciplines and perspectives. Our mission is to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences and to do so in a down-to-earth and informed manner.

The African Studies Association of the United Kingdom was founded in 1963 and is the national subject association for Africanists within the academic community. The objects of ASAUK as defined in its statutes are “to advance African Studies, particularly in the United Kingdom, by providing facilities for the interchange of information and ideas and the co-ordination of activities”

We are a membership organisation that provides opportunities for people to connect, celebrate and engage critically with a wide range of topics and ideas about Africa today. Through our events, publications and digital channels we share insight, instigate debate and facilitate mutual understanding between the UK and Africa. We amplify African voices and interests in academia, business, politics, the arts and education, reaching a network of more than one million people globally.

Is a forum for librarians, archivists and others concerned with African studies materials in libraries and archives in the United Kingdom.

Guides to the British Library's printed books, journals and newspapers published all over the world, in European and African languages as well as to manuscripts and archives, sound recordings, maps and stamps, some film, visual material and sheet music.

The International African Institute (IAI, https://www.internationalafricaninstitute.org) in collaboration with AfricarXiv (https://info.africarxiv.org) present an interactive map of African digital research literature repositories. This drew from IAI’s earlier work from 2016 onwards to identify and list Africa-based institutional repositories that focused on identifying repositories based in African university libraries. Our earlier resources are available at https://www.internationalafricaninstitute.org/repositories.
The interactive map extends the work of the IAI to include organizational, governmental and international repositories. It also maps the interactions between research repositories. In this dataset, we focus on institutional repositories for scholarly works, as defined by Wikipedia contributors (March 2020).

The African Film Database is a collaborative digital project that seeks to create a catalog of films from and about the continent of Africa. As a prolific and constantly evolving field, the study of African film also becomes a point of entry into the history of colonialism and decolonization, artistic and literary emergences, spaces of resistance, innovative cinematic practices, and global conditions of production and distribution.

The dossiers deal with topical issues in African Studies and are usually published to coincide with a conference or event or with recent developments in Africa. They appear on average three or four times a year. A web dossier typically consists of an introduction to the subject, a selection of titles - both books and articles - from the collection of the ASCL Library and annotated links to electronic resources and relevant websites. Titles are linked directly to the corresponding records in the online catalogue, which provides abstracts and lending information

A structured vocabulary of more than 13000 English terms in the field of African studies, the African Studies Thesaurus is developed and maintained by staff at the library of the African Studies Centre Leiden. It is used for indexing and retrieving material in the library collection and is directly linked to the catalogue.

Among CODESRIA’s main objectives is the collection and dissemination of research information for use by the scientific community primarily in Africa but also elsewhere. The Council seeks to achieve this
objective by building-up and disseminating information relating to research, research training and publishing activities through its Documentation and Information Centre (CODICE).

The GIGA regional libraries publish online bibliographies quarterly on current issues and countries

A digital library of primary materials from countries and cultures around the world.