Newspapers and other online news sources from the 17th – 21st centuries: Africa

The Cooperative Africana Materials Project (CAMP) promotes the preservation of publications and archives concerning the nearly fifty nations of Sub-Saharan Africa and collects newspapers as well as other materials such as journals, government publications, personal and corporate archives, and the personal papers of scholars and government leaders. The Bodleian is a member of CAMP and can borrow microfilms from CAMP holdings.

The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were a time of great change for Africa. In East Africa, this time witnessed the growth of decolonization as independence movements swelled, and local, autonomous self-governance took hold throughout the region. This period was also punctuated by famine, drought, political uprisings, border disputes, and war as countries worked to navigate the post-colonial landscape.
The East African Newspapers collection provides insight into this region during this critical time, featuring key newspapers from the region from the 1940s to the mid 2010s. This collection includes over 800,000 pages total from three titles: Daily Nation (Kenya), The Ethiopian Herald, and The Monitor (Uganda).

[Not in Oxford but readers registered with the British Library can have remote access. This may be temporarily disrupted following the cyberattack on the BL in Nov 2023.]

An online collection provides more than 60 searchable African newspapers published in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Featuring English and foreign-language titles from Angola, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

African Newspapers offers unparalleled coverage of the issues and events that shaped the continent and its peoples between 1800 and 1922.

Through eyewitness reporting, editorials, legislative updates, letters, poetry, advertisements, matrimony and death notices, this unique collection chronicles the evolution of cultures and countries across Sub-Saharan Africa during a time of drastic change. From repercussions of the Atlantic slave trade, life under colonial rule and the results of the Berlin Conference to the emergence of Black journalism, the Zulu Wars and the rejection of Western imperialism, these newspapers provide a wide range of viewpoints on diverse cultures. Key publications as the East African Standard, Mombasa Times & Uganda Argus (Kenya), Leselinyana la Lesutho (Lesotho), Central African Times (Malawi), Beira Post (Mozambique), Lagos Standard (Nigeria), Mafeking Mail and Protectorate Guardian (South Africa), Sierra Leone Weekly News (Sierra Leone), Uganda Herald (Uganda), Buluwayo Chronicle (Zimbabwe) and more than 50 others.

The Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS) Daily Report has been the United States' principal record of political and historical open source intelligence for nearly 70 years.

FBIS collections relevant for African studies:
Middle East and North Africa, 1974–1987
Sub-Saharan Africa, 1974–1980 and Africa, 1987–1996

The original mission of the FBIS was to monitor, record, transcribe, and translate intercepted radio broadcasts from foreign governments, official news services, and clandestine broadcasts from occupied territories. FBIS Daily Reports, 1974–1996 constitutes a unique archive of transcripts of foreign broadcasts and news that provides insight into the second half of the 20th century; many of these materials are firsthand reports of events as they occurred.

FBIS Daily Reports, 1974–1996 consist of translated broadcasts, news agency transmissions, newspapers, periodicals, and government statements from nations around the globe. These media sources were monitored in their languages of origin, translated into English, and issued by an agency of the US government.