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Archives in Africa: an Overview with Examples of Recent Initiatives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 April 2022

David C. Sutton
David C. Sutton*
Affiliation:
University of Reading Library; Diasporic Literary Archives Network
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Extract

There are between 195 and 200 countries in the world (depending upon whether or not certain controversial cases are included), of which 54 are in Africa. All of these countries have some sort of archives service in one or more institutions, and there are usually around 195 countries represented in the membership of the International Council on Archives (ICA). The archival collections which are universally held are governmental archives. Every country with membership of ICA has an archives service which collects and preserves records of national government, in part or in whole. A great majority of ICA member countries (but not all) also hold archives of local, municipal or regional government, as well as collections of parliamentary papers (which are generally regarded as distinct from papers of government).

Type
Research Article
Information
African Research and Documentation , Volume 133: Papers from SCOLMA Conference 2018: Things come together? Literary archives from, in and for Africa, University of Birmingham, 10 September, 2018 , 2018 , pp. 3 - 13
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 2018

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References

Notes

1 Diallo, Hamidou (2016): ‘De l'expérience de collecte d'archives privees au Burkina Faso’. Comma 2015-1, pp. 21-24 (p. 21).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Delva, Jean-Pierre (2016): ‘Un autre regard sur les archives en Afrique’. Comma 2015-1, pp. 113-118 (p. 117).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Nyandwi, Nicodème (2016): ‘La situation des archives au Burundi, des origines à nos jours.’ Comma 2015-1, pp. 25-38 (pp. 36-37).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 See http://www.historicalpapers.wits.ac.za and https://www.wits.ac.za/about-wits/central-records-and-archives/collections/private-collections (both accessed 24 October 2018).

5 See http://www.nelm.org.za (accessed 24 October 2018).

6 See http://www.diasporicarchives.com (accessed 24 October 2018).

7 See http://paton.ukzn.ac.za/Homepage.aspx (accessed 24 October 2018).

8 Sutton, David C. (2017): ‘Literary archives in Namibia: progress made and lessons learned’, keynote address at the ESARBICA 24th General Conference, Lilongwe, 9 August 2017.Google Scholar

9 Mweso, Clement (2018): ‘Taking aim at archival practice: an analysis of structural and institutional processes that affect preservation, availability and access to literary archives in Malawi’, paper given at the SCOLMA Conference 2018, Birmingham, 10 September 2018.Google Scholar

10 Kauaria, Veno V. and Sutton, David C. (2018): ‘Namibian literary archives: new beginnings and a possible African model’, in The future of literary archives: diasporic and dispersed collections at risk, ed. by Sutton, David C. with Livingstone, Ann. Leeds: ARC Humanities Press, pp. 65-74 (p. 65).Google Scholar