Contemporary African States

The Library of Congress has sought to collect materials that reflect the political, economic, social, and technological developments in contemporary sub-Saharan Africa. Materials published in Africa during the last thirty years offer scholars of contemporary African states unparalleled resources for study at the Library. Publishers include government ministries, government printing offices, research institutes, banks, nongovernmental organizations, commercial publishers, courts, university departments, and libraries.

In its various reading rooms, the Library of Congress offers information in such diverse formats as multivolume encyclopedias, sound recordings, books, computer disks, press releases, and government documents. For example, in the Newspaper and Current Periodical Room, the Library receives newspapers from capital cities of all the African states and from many major African cities as well. Approximately 6,000 current Africana periodicals arrive regularly, providing scholars with timely information.

Researchers are offered a wealth of national, provincial, and municipal documents issued by African governments, which, in many countries serve as the principal publishers. Materials from national governments range from presidential speeches, tourist brochures, annual reports of government agencies or ministries, statistical abstracts, and budgets to broad policy statements or multivolume, long-range development plans. The Library selectively acquires provincial or state and municipal publications, which often prove invaluable for researchers studying local community government and living conditions. For example, the Nairobi City Commission (formerly called the City Council) issues Minutes of Proceedings of the Commission for various time periods that include reports from city committees, such as the Housing Development Committee, the Education and Social Services Committee, and the Public Health Committee, as well as information about government contracts.

Eritrea is the newest sub-Saharan African country to be recognized as a sovereign nation, which it was as of May 24, 1991. The production of the official map Eritrea: National Map (1995) illustrates the importance accorded by a new nation to establishing its national boundaries. Serving equally important needs, The State of Eritrea: A Satellite Image Map (1994?) was issued by the Eritrean Ministry of Energy, Mines, and Water Resources based on fourteen electronic images from a U.S. Landsat satellite, 1985-89. The maps monitor seasonal changes in vegetation, and record geological features, mountains, deserts, reefs, and the courses of streams and rivers. (Courtesy Embassy of the State of Eritrea) (Geography and Map Division)

By using more than one format to present information, governments reach a wider audience. For example, Réunion has produced the video Budget 90, in which a government official explains specific aspects of the 1990 budget. To assist in aids education, the Malawi aids Control Programme has produced Tinkanena: A Film about aids for Std 7 + 8 (1992).

Besides the videos described above, the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division has additional resources helpful to the student of contemporary Africa. For example, the video Talking Back, described on its container as "Voices from Southern Africa" (1994), features interviews with development workers and others concerning multiparty elections and World Bank and International Monetary Fund economic solutions. Recordings of television news programs such as Nightline and its June 13, 1990, broadcast Liberia Civil War also offer unique combinations of research material.

Photographs issued by Photo Information, Côte d'Ivoire (1959), present typical scenes of rural tranquility or small town bustle which may be found throughout the African continent. Taken in the northern part of Côte d'Ivoire, the photo information shot above depicts an informal group of men ranging in age talking under a baobab, a tree common to the Sahel region. Shown at right is a busy traditional market day in Agbouille, Côte d'Ivoire. (Prints and Photographs Division).

A department within the Library of Congress, the Law Library has extensive collections of laws, regulations, gazettes, constitutions, international agreements, and unofficial legal material such as compilations of laws, digests, dictionaries, and encyclopedias for African countries. African law is generally defined as customary (traditional), colonial (based on the legal system of the former colonial power, if any), or sovereign. All of these types are represented in the Library's collections. Usually, laws, announcements, and decisions pertaining to government agencies are published in official gazettes or, in francophone countries, journaux officiels. The Library's gazette collections are excellent.

The depth and continued growth of the Law Library's holdings are remarkable. The Republic of South Africa, for instance, held its first democratic elections in which all of its citizens could participate in April 1994. Many use this date to mark the beginning of a new era, with the disassembly of the apartheid system.

As of December 1997, the Law Library had added 117 monographs published from 1994 through 1997 concerning South African law to its collections. Also as part of a continuing effort to document trends in legal theory and revisions to established systems, the Library acquired the two-volume report of the Malawi Legal and Judicial Reform Task Force (1996) and maintains a subscription to the Annual Report of the Women and Law in Southern Africa Research Project, published in Harare, Zimbabwe.

In many countries anti-apartheid activists and sympathizers launched numerous solidarity campaigns to provide moral and material support to the liberation of South Africa and Namibia. Posters were issued to gain support for these movements. (African Section Pamphlet Collection, African and Middle Eastern Division)

While treaties themselves are located in the Law Library, collections of papers housed in the Manuscript Division document African diplomatic history and twentieth-century U.S.-African relations. The papers of American diplomats offer the opportunity to study the development of official links between African nations and the United States. For example, the papers of Ambassadors Hugh and Mabel Smythe number more than 34,000 items and include materials from Mabel Smythe's service as U.S. ambassador in Cameroon. Bequeathed to the Library in 1984, the papers (1925-82) of Rayford W. Logan (1897-1982), a historian and educator, include correspondence, diaries, and other materials documenting his interests and involvement in the Pan-African movement of the 1920s and 1930s and his meetings with African leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana and Nnamdi Azikiwe of Nigeria. Materials in the Bayard Rustin papers (1942-87, most dated 1963-80) concern Rustin's visits to West Africa in the 1950s when this civil rights leader and social reformer helped organize nonviolent resistance campaigns against colonialism and nuclear weapons. They recount his observations on the elections in Zimbabwe and reveal his interest in issues affecting Ethiopian refugees in Somalia and Sudan.

Letters from the records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1920-68, which number more than 41,000 items, exemplify the importance of the links between African leaders and students and the African American community as well as the American labor movement. (Manuscript Division)

Extensive holdings of materials produced by nongovernmental and international organizations may be found in various divisions of the Library. Some are in the General Collections; others are housed in the African Section's Pamphlet Collection or dispersed to custodial divisions according to their format. For example, African Development Indicators, issued annually by the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, is available in a print edition and on a computer disk. Archives and collections of organizations such as the Records of the American Committee on Africa, consisting of fifty-one microfilm reels housed in the Manuscript Division of which forty-five are correspondence and subject files on South Africa, 1952-85, document the roles of these organizations in African affairs.

Interest in Africa has increased markedly since 1960, with a resultant increase in the number of publications about the continent. In the case of U.S. government publications, for example, The United States and Sub-Saharan Africa: Guide to U.S. Official Documents and Government-Sponsored Publications on Africa, 1785-1975 (1978), which covered the entire continent, cited 8,827 U.S. government publications published during a 190-year period. Its sequel, covering only five years, 1976-80, and only sub-Saharan Africa, listed 5,047 items.

With its vast, multimedia, multilingual Africana collections, the Library of Congress offers researchers unequaled opportunities to study contemporary sub- Saharan Africa. Knowledge of law, diplomacy, and government can be pursued through the materials that make up the Library's holdings.