INASP Links & Resources
RESOURCES:  
Africa-specific: Major gateways

Aequatoria Book Bank Online (ABBOL)
A new project (currently still under construction) from the Centre Aequatoria in the Congo Democratic Republic, which will provide an electronic library from which Africanists, students, and scholars in sub-Saharan Africa will be able to access important scientific and scholarly publications free of charge. http://www.abbol.com/

Africa Goes Digital, African Content on CD-ROM and the Web
A new Web site from the Nairobi-based Project for Information Access and Connectivity (PIAC), which aims to be complementary to another PIAC site Wired for Information: Putting the Internet to Good Use in Africa. It provides a compendium of African information sources in digital formats, grouped by broad subject areas and mostly covering the social sciences and the humanities. A short evaluation is provided for each site, and Web sites that have particularly good links pages are highlighted. http://www.piac.org/digital/indexnoframes.html

Africa Guide - Maps and Atlases
An extensive 12-page descriptive list of African maps available from Mapsworldwide-UK. Covers road maps, general maps, individual country maps, specialist maps, and wall maps. When selected the link will take you directly to the relevant page in the Mapswordwide site where you will find prices and ordering information.  http://www.africaguide.com/shop/maps.htm 

Africa Research Central
Maintained by Kathryn Green and Susan Tschabrun, this is a clearinghouse of African primary resources, in particular to repositories such as archives, libraries and museums with important collections on African primary sources. http://www.africa-research.org/  

Africa South of the Sahara-Selected Internet Resources
Developed and maintained by Karen Fung, Stanford University, this is rich source of information about Internet resources on Africa; select by topic or by region. All entries are annotated, and this is one of the very best starting-off points for African studies Web resources. http://www-sul.stanford.edu./depts/ssrg/africa/guide.html

Africabib
Maintained by David Bullwinkle at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, this site provides free access to two African studies databases: (i) Africana Periodical Literature Bibliographic Database, indexing over 28,000 articles from over 250 English language African studies journals, and (ii) African Women's Bibliographic Database, which contains over 21,000 citations from 1986 to the present. http://www.AfricaBib.org/

African Studies WWW-University of Pennsylvania African Studies Programme
Together with the Stanford site above, this is one of the most comprehensive African studies sites with an impressive number of resources, including the section `Africa Web Links: An Annotated Resources List'. Maintained by Ali B. Ali-Dinar. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/AS.html

African Writers Series
A new Web site from Heinemann's dedicated to the celebrated 'African Writers Series', and launched to coincide with the series 40th anniversary year. However, this is more than a publisher's commercial site: while it provides access to full information about all titles in the series (and online ordering facilities), there are also sections offering biographical profiles of the writers as well as links providing contextual background information on African countries. While the information for the latter is very basic for the most part, a useful feature is the inclusion of links for more background information on each country in Microsoft's Encarta Africana. There is also information about public appearances of African writers and, in the near future, Heinemann's plans to put up author interviews, downloadable first pages, academic comment, and special sections for teachers, journalists, and rights customers.
http://www.africanwriters.com 

A-Z of African Studies on the Internet
Maintained by Peter Limb, now Africana librarian at Michigan State University Library, this is a handy annotated guide, frequently updated and constantly expanded, to a very large number of Africa-related Web sites and many online academic discussion groups and mailing lists.  http://www.lib.msu.edu/limb/a-z/az.html 

Bisharat!
A language, technology, and development initiative designed to promote the use of African languages in sustainable development, combining this with research, advocacy, and networking relating to the use of African languages, in software and Web content. The site provides a number of annotated links to other sites on African languages, online dictionaries for African languages, and software and resources for the study of African languages. http://www.bisharat.net/ 

Center for Electronic Resources in African Studies (CERAS)
The University of Iowa's Center for Electronic Resources in African Studies is a "virtual" space for creating, disseminating and accessing scholarly electronic resources in text, multimedia, and interactive format to support students and faculty, as well as other scholars nationally and internationally. Among its projects are the Electronic Journal of Africana Bibliography, an online Dogon dictionary, the University of Iowa Art and Life in Africa Online project, the African Peace Information Locator, the journal Baobab (dedicated to the study of African expressive culture), and the Arts of Central Africa course Web site. Future projects include the development of interactive journals on African studies and on African art and culture topics, digitizing of African literary works, and digitizing a selection of important (non-copyrighted) international documents pertaining to Africa.
http://sdrc.lib.uiowa.edu/ceras/ 

Columbia University Libraries-African Studies Internet Resources
Columbia’s extensive site is, together with the Stanford and University of Pennsylvania WWWs (see above), a good starting point for searching for relevant sites and Internet resources on Africa-specific topics and countries. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/

Contemporary African Database
Hosted by the Africa Centre in central London, this database is an ambitious, continuously growing, participatory online project designed to provide easily accessible and current information concerning prominent Africans and African organizations. At this time (April 2002) you can browse or search for 10,289 people in the Expert Africa database, which is a who's who of prominent Africans currently living or who have died since 1950, covering all disciplines and all fields of endeavour. You can also browse by categories or by countries. Institution Africa, a directory of African institutions, including governments, pan-African bodies, NGOs, and significant businesses, will become available later in 2002, and Chronology Africa, a chronology of important events and dates in the contemporary African calendar, will follow in 2003. A final objective is for Expert Africa to eventually become a skills database of Africans inside and outside the continent. http://www.africaexpert.org/ 

GDNET Africa 
A new regional portal for the continent from the Global Development Network (GDN), whose objective it is to facilitate the creation and sharing of knowledge for development. The African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) is its partner in Africa. The new Web site allows visitors to access news from network members, to keep informed about business opportunities, meetings and seminars, and regional training opportunities. An online regional information newsletter is also on offer. http://www.gdnet.org/africa/index.html 

H-Africa Network
(Humanities & Social Sciences Online-Michigan State University) Part of the family of electronic discussion groups sponsored by the H-Net (Humanities-On-line) network, encouraging interdisciplinary discussion of African's history and culture and African studies in general. http://www.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/

Index on Africa
Sponsored by the Norwegian Council for Africa, this site provide an extensive range of topic-specific listings, as well as many country-specific WWWs. http://www.afrika.no/  

International Directory of African Studies Scholars
Maintained by Joe Caruso at Columbia University Libraries, this is an online, regularly updated, international directory of individuals involved in African studies. Submit your own entry if you are an African studies scholar. http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/indiv/africa/cuvl/directory.html

SANREM West Africa Annotated Bibliographical Database
Produced by the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program (SANREM CRSP), this is a fully searchable annotated bibliographical database on food security and development in the West African Sahel region. At this time the database contains over 600 bibliographic records in English and French, covering journal articles, book chapters, dissertations, papers in collections and conference proceedings, as well as a significant amount of grey and elusive literature.
http://www.oird.vt.edu/sanremcrsp/index.html 

Smithsonian Natural History Web: African Voices
This marvellous interactive site presents a virtual exhibition “that examines the diversity, dynamism, and global influences of Africa's peoples and cultures over time in the realms of family, work, community, and the natural environment.” It features video interactives and sound stations (which require a plug-in) that provide selections from contemporary interviews, literature, proverbs, prayers, folk tales, songs, and oral epics. http://www.mnh.si.edu/africanvoices/

The Webbook of African Language Resources
Hosted by the African Studies Center at Michigan State University and the African Languages Teachers Association, this is a useful site providing information about resources that are available for the teaching and study of African languages. http://www.isp.msu.edu/AfrLang/hiermenu.html 

This page was last updated on: 07 July 2003 © International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP) 1998-2003.