This tab lists our selection of useful electronic databases for African Studies. Some may require your Cambridge login, especially if you're not on campus. These have been categorised as:
For a comprehensive list of online resources available to you, searchable by subject and keyword, please see the eresources & ejournals LibGuide.
Recommendations for improving this page are welcome - email us this link with your thoughts at afr@lib.cam.ac.uk.
We've done our best to list relevant databases by country and region below. Please email us at afr@lib.cam.ac.uk if you have a recommendation!
Benin
Digital Benin (Open Access): shows Benin objects in one unique space accompanied by information that in certain cases had only partially been available to the public (i.e., internal museum data) or available in a dispersed form.
Ethiopia
South Africa
Digital Innovation South Africa (Open Access): a freely accessible online scholarly resource focusing on the socio-political history of South Africa, particularly the struggle for freedom during the period from 1950 to the first democratic elections in 1994, providing a wealth of material on this fascinating period of the country’s history.
GALA (Open Access): Founded in 1997 as an archive, the GALA Queer Archive (GALA) is a catalyst for the production, preservation and dissemination of information about the history, culture and contemporary experiences of LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer) people in South Africa. Today GALA is the custodian of over 200 organisational and personal archival collections dating back to the 1940s. Download the collection guide to view the archive.
Nelson Mandela (UK Web Archive - Legal Deposit Terminal Required for most): This collection of websites was curated by staff at the British Library following the death of Nelson Mandela on 5 December 2013.
Rand Daily Mail, 1902-1985 (Cambridge login): Quintessential reporting on South Africa from the Boer Wars to the apartheid era.
Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa (Cambridge login): This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region.
Diaspora and Foreign Countries
African Diaspora (Cambridge login): With a focus on communities in the Caribbean, Brazil, India, United Kingdom, and France, the collection includes digitized primary source documents from 1860 to the present.
Black Newspaper Collection (Cambridge login): Ten Historical African American newspapers in the U.S. covering the period 1893-2010
Enslavement, Resistance and Abolition - Black Cultural Archives (Open Access): The topic of enslavement is most often told through the lens of British debates around abolishing the slave trade, without the input of narratives of the enslaved people themselves. This timeline, stretching from the first British slave trading voyages through to abolition and emancipation, highlights the personal experiences of the enslaved African people, and their actions as agents in their own liberation.
Horn of Africa
The Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) - (Open Access): a comprehensive resource for the 1,000+ miracle stories written about and the 2,500+ images painted of the Virgin Mary in these African countries, and preserved in Geʿez between 1300 and the present.
North Africa
West Africa
Freedom Narratives (Open Access): focuses on the enforced migration of "Atlantic Africans," that is enslaved Africans in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade, through an examination of biographical accounts of individuals born in West Africa who were enslaved from the 16th to the 19th century.
Africabib.org - (open access) : bibliographic database consisting of approx. 225,000 African studies publications
Africa Bibliography (Raven login) : includes monographs, chapters, articles, and pamphlets published in English, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Swahili, Spanish & Afrikaans.
Africa Yearbook Online (Raven login): covers major domestic political developments, the foreign policy and socio-economic trends in sub-Sahara Africa – all related to developments in one calendar year.
African Digital Research Repositories (Open Access): list of known repositories within the African continent compiled by the International African Institute as a service to African studies research and scholarship.
African History - Oxford Research Encyclopedia (Raven login): provides in-depth overviews of the major areas of research.
African Journals Online (Mostly Open Access): the world's largest and preeminent platform of African-published scholarly journals. AJOL is a Non-Profit Organisation that (since 1998) works to increase global & continental online access, awareness, quality & use of African-published, peer-reviewed research. Currently more than 150,000 articles are open access.
African Studies Abstracts Online (Open Access): quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the ASC library (Leiden)
African Studies Companion Online (Raven login): contains over 1800 entries covering guides and resources for African languages, Africa cartography and maps, African film, African studies journals, magazines and newsletters, media guides and news sources for Africa, the African press, African studies library collections worldwide, national archives in Africa, centers of African studies and African studies programs worldwide, awards and prizes in African studies, and a wealth of other subjects.
African Studies Monographs (Open Acess): ASM is Kyoto University's quarterly African Studies Journal - here you'll find writing about:
Historical Papers Research Archive (Open Access): one of the most comprehensive public archives in Southern Africa, with over 3400 collections. We are the official repository of the South African Institute of Race Relations, and the Anglican Church in Southern Africa. Over and above we have in our custody collections which we received from trade unions, political parties, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), women's organisations, church bodies, as well as records of political trials and the personal papers of individuals, many of which have shaped South Africa's past and present.
PARC (Portal for African Research Collections) is the new meta-catalogue for the Africana collections at the research location Basel. For the first time, the collections of the five Basel heritage institutions Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Mission 21, Museum der Kulturen Basel, Swiss TPH and the University of Basel are searchable in a single catalogue. This facilitates access to the collections regardless of location. In addition to bibliographic and archival collections, ethnographic objects, photographs, posters, films/videos, sound recordings and digital collections (incl. audio-visual media) can also be found.
ACRAH Bibliographies (Open Access): These bibliographies are an English-language resource for people investigating issues of race and ethnicity in art and visual culture.
African Digital Heritage (Open Access): a Nairobi based, non profit organization working to encourage a more critical, holistic and knowledge-based approach to digital solutions within African heritage.
African Literature - Columbia University: Incredibly curated list of African Literature resources.
African Music Library (Open Access): They are documenting all music made in Africa, artist metadata, instruments, books, and articles that reference Music in Africa with a focus on data.
African Writers Series (Raven login): This online edition includes over 250 volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose, including works by Chinua Achebe, Ama Ata Aidoo, Steve Biko, Buchi Emecheta, Nadine Gordimer, Bessie Head, Doris Lessing, Nelson Mandela, Dambudzo Marechera, Christopher Okigbo, Okot p'Bitek and Tayeb Salih.
Al-Mandumah Database for Arabic resources (Raven login): provides access to a series of databases with full-text content of Arabic scientific conferences, dissertations and academic journals from 1921 to present day. Cambridge is trialing this database until June 25th 2023, we do apologise if it's discontinued after that.
AODL (Open Access): free universal access to cultural heritage materials from and about African countries and communities. Including digitized photographs, videos, archival documents, maps, interviews and oral histories in numerous African languages.
ArtStor (Raven login): Database of digital images & accompanying scholarly information for use in art history and other humanistic fields of learning including the related social sciences.
Black Authors Database, 1556-1922 (Raven login): Works by authors of African or African-American descent with a fascinating look at the creative efforts of black authors over three centuries. Compiled by the curators of the acclaimed Afro-Americana Imprints collection. Subjects include:
Digital Benin (Open Access): shows Benin objects in one unique space accompanied by information that in certain cases had only partially been available to the public (i.e., internal museum data) or available in a dispersed form.
Digital Library of the Caribbean (dLOC): Collates a wide variety of digitised materials from across the Caribbean and beyond.
Digital Innovation South Africa (Open Access): a freely accessible online scholarly resource focusing on the socio-political history of South Africa, particularly the struggle for freedom during the period from 1950 to the first democratic elections in 1994, providing a wealth of material on this fascinating period of the country’s history.
eHRAF Archaeology (Raven login): online database covering the prehistory of a sample of archaeological traditions around the world.
eHRAF World Cultures (Raven login): ethnographic collections covering all aspects of cultural and social life.
Enslavement, Resistance and Abolition - Black Cultural Archives (Open Access): The topic of enslavement is most often told through the lens of British debates around abolishing the slave trade, without the input of narratives of the enslaved people themselves. This timeline, stretching from the first British slave trading voyages through to abolition and emancipation, highlights the personal experiences of the enslaved African people, and their actions as agents in their own liberation.
Ethnologue Languages of the World (Raven login): Search for and discover languages from across the globe. Fun to play around with!
Freedom Narratives (Open Access): focuses on the enforced migration of "Atlantic Africans," that is enslaved Africans in the Atlantic world during the era of the slave trade, through an examination of biographical accounts of individuals born in West Africa who were enslaved from the 16th to the 19th century.
Frobenius-Institut: Ethiopia database - Search ethnographies, photographs, objects, written legacies, films, bibliography, researchers and discussions (Frankfurt)
GALA (Open Access): Founded in 1997 as an archive, the GALA Queer Archive (GALA) is a catalyst for the production, preservation and dissemination of information about the history, culture and contemporary experiences of LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, Queer) people in South Africa. Today GALA is the custodian of over 200 organisational and personal archival collections dating back to the 1940s. Download the collection guide to view the archive.
Monographs on African Artists (Open Access): This bibliography is limited to substantive monographs and exhibition catalogs about 20th-21st century African artists. Focusing on a single artist, these texts are usually written by a scholar or critic who has conducted art historical research on the artist and/or who has gathered for publication a wide range of images of the artist's work.
PARC (Portal for African Research Collections) is the new meta-catalogue for the Africana collections at the research location Basel. For the first time, the collections of the five Basel heritage institutions Basler Afrika Bibliographien, Mission 21, Museum der Kulturen Basel, Swiss TPH and the University of Basel are searchable in a single catalogue. This facilitates access to the collections regardless of location. In addition to bibliographic and archival collections, ethnographic objects, photographs, posters, films/videos, sound recordings and digital collections (incl. audio-visual media) can also be found.
The Princeton Ethiopian, Eritrean, and Egyptian Miracles of Mary (PEMM) - (Open Access): a comprehensive resource for the 1,000+ miracle stories written about and the 2,500+ images painted of the Virgin Mary in these African countries, and preserved in Geʿez between 1300 and the present.
Stolen Tools (Open Access): Stolen tools is an anti-racist journal dedicated to centring the voices of racialised minorities within health inequalities research. The journal aims to provide a creative platform for diverse racialised voices to be emotionally expressive about racism rooted in academia, challenge their self-censorship in research and share knowledge in a way which is understandable by a diverse range of voices: not just academics.
Struggles for Freedom: Southern Africa (Raven login): This collection focuses on the complex and varied liberation struggles in the region, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. It brings together materials from various archives and libraries throughout the world documenting colonial rule, dispersion of exiles, international intervention, and the worldwide networks that supported successive generations of resistance within the region.
Transition (Raven login): is a unique forum for the freshest, most compelling ideas from and about the black world. Since its founding in Uganda in 1961, the magazine has kept apace of the rapid transformation of the African Diaspora and has remained a leading forum of intellectual debate. Transition is a publication of the Hutchins Center at Harvard University, edited by Alejandro de la Fuente and published three times annually.
UCL's Legacies of British Slavery Database and Portal (Open Access): Browse their database and commercial, cultural, historical, imperial, physical and political legacies, as well as estates and maps.
World Heritage Sites : Africa (Raven login): serves researchers in African studies, anthropology, archaeology, architecture, art history, Diaspora studies, folklore and literature, geography, and history, as well as those focused on geomatics, advanced visual and spatial technologies, historic preservation, and urban planning.
Africa Confidential (Raven login): one of the longest-established specialist publications on Africa, with a considerable reputation for being first with in-depth news and analysis on significant political, economic and security developments across the continent.
African Activist Archive (Open Access): The African Activist Archive is preserving and making available online the records of activism in the United States to support the struggles of African peoples against colonialism, apartheid, and social injustice from the 1950s through the 1990s. Here you'll find pamphlets, newsletters, leaflets, buttons, posters, T-shirts, photographs, and audio and video recording, as well as personal remembrances and interviews with activists an international directory of collections deposited in libraries and archives.
African Newspapers, the British Library Collection (Raven login): Nearly 60 African historical newspapers from the nineteenth century.
Black Newspaper Collection (Raven login): Ten Historical African American newspapers in the U.S. covering the period 1893-2010
Rand Daily Mail, 1902-1985 (Raven login): Quintessential reporting on South Africa from the Boer Wars to the apartheid era.
World Newspaper Archive: African Newspaper Series 1 1800-1922: (Raven login)
World Newspaper Archive: African Newspaper Series 2 1835-1925: (Raven login)
Encyclopedia of the Qu'ran (Raven login) : qur’ānic terms, concepts, personalities, place names, cultural history and exegesis
Mundus (Internet Archive) : Gateway to Missionary collections in the UK.
World Religion Database (WRD) - Raven login: This contains detailed statistics on religious affiliation for every country of the world. It provides information from country censuses as well as best estimates for every religion to offer a definitive picture of religion and non-religion in the past, present, and future.