African History and Culture

African archives and collections are scattered across thousands of websites, difficult to find and search—and the content is at risk of disappearing.

African History and Culture brings unified, cross-searchable access to these materials. To date, we have identified, indexed, and made searchable more than 600,000 documents from archives, libraries, museums, research organizations, and cultural institutions around the world.

Our aim is to return to Africa control over its archival riches worldwide—and to make it easy for African scholars to find and access expressions of their own heritage in Western collections.

With African History and Culture, you can…

1. Support digitization. Subscribing to African History and Culture supports further digitization. We use ten percent of sales for new projects to bring African archives online. We anticipate digitizing 50,000 pages of rare and endangered materials with these funds.

2. Support digital repatriation. Access to African History and Culture is free for African institutions and HBCUs, thanks to the support of non-African subscribers. African scholars worldwide can more easily find and access expressions of their heritage in Western collections.

3. Contribute your own content. Institutions and users around the world are encouraged to upload their own content with the platform’s free and easy tool. It’s a simple way to publish and share your historical and cultural treasures in a safe, permanent home.

“I have never come across as indispensable and comprehensive a digital resource … a historian’s dream archive.” — Dr. Siyabonga Njica, Smuts Research Fellow, University of Cambridge