Africa: Getting Started with Research

A carefully selected and very thorough collection of links to useful web sites for information on a wide variety of topics for all the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Can be browsed by country or by topic.

The catalog of the African Studies Center Library at the University of Leiden (Holland) is your entry to a database of articles in journals as well as books. Full text is not available, but many of the journals cited are in the BU Libraries’ collection. Check the catalog and the ejournals locator.
Also check out their Web Dossiers. These are informative essays with excellent bibliographies on topics such as Darfur, poverty reduction and African cinema.

Afrobarometer is a pan-African research network that conducts public attitude surveys on democracy, governance, economic conditions, and related issues in more than 35 countries in Africa.

This database does not provide full-text, but many of the journals cited are in the BU Libraries’ collection.

Online version of the SIL International’s 16th edition of Ethnologue: Languages of the World Bibliography. The online bibliography contains a subset of over 29,000 citations from the more than 40,000 publications representing 75 years of SIL International’s language research in over 2,700 languages. The Country Index and Language, Name Index searches are particularly useful.

The Country Studies Series (Library of Congress) presents a description and analysis of the historical setting and the social, economic, political, and national security systems and institutions of countries throughout the world. Not all African countries are covered.