West Africa Magazine as anHistorical Archive, 1917-1997

Extract

For a long time, indeed as long as I can recall in my many years working for the magazine West Africa, I have been struck by how many writers, researchers, and students preparing theses for masters degrees or doctorates found incredible use for the material in the magazine. It was brought home to me vividly when reviewing a book called The World and Nigeria by the late Suzanne Cronje; I was astonished by the hundreds of footnotes referring to items in West Africa. It is true the book referred particularly to the period of the civil war, when I know myself that the magazine took its responsibilities as a paper of record very seriously, running almost throughout a ‘war diary’ chronicling the day by day happenings in the war, albeit largely from the federal side, distilled from a mixture of Nigerian newspapers, news agency material and other special sources.