Africa Past & Present

Africa Past and Present is a podcast about history, culture, and politics in Africa and the diaspora. The show highlights interesting and significant people, ideas, and discussions in African Studies from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Our mission is to broaden the availability and accessibility of cutting-edge knowledge relating to African experiences and to do so in a down-to-earth and informed manner. Shows feature interviews with eminent scholars and persons, commentary on current events, and issues and debates of relevance to Africans at home and abroad.

African Online Digital Library

The African Online Digital Library (AODL) is a portal to multimedia collections about Africa. MATRIX, working in cooperation with the African Studies Center at Michigan State University, is partnering with universities and cultural heritage organizations in Africa to build this resource. Plans are underway to add digital tools in order to enable scholars to work with and add to these materials. Individuals and organizations interested in contributing to the African Online Digital Library are invited to contact us.

Archive of Malian Photography

Archive of Malian Photography provides access to preserved & digitized collections of five important photographers in Mali. 
Since 2011, our collaborative team of US and Malian conservators has been cleaning, scanning, cataloging, and rehousing circa 100,000 photographic negatives from the archives of Mamadou Cissé, Adama Kouyaté, Abdourahmane Sakaly, Malick Sidibé, and Tijani Sitou for long-term preservation and access.

Spanning the 1940s-90s, this collection reveals changes and continuities in political and cultural practices, social trends, and photographic production in Mali during the twentieth century.

While these materials have undergone several review processes, additional revision is expected as the collection grows and distribution images are edited to reflect the original aesthetic. Please contact us if you notice duplications, inconsistencies, or inaccuracies.

MSU Africana Library Collection

The Africana Collection of the MSU Libraries is one of the largest in the United States, having been built up since 1960 to support broad faculty and graduate student involvement in research and development projects on the continent. In recent decades, MSU program about Africa has been consistently rated among the top one or two in the country in both the number of faculty involved and the number of doctoral dissertations produced. The Library's commitment to this world area is reflected in the employment of two full-time professional African Studies librarians, who continue to build one of the top five collections in the country. Librarians also provide reference assistance and instruction to a wide range of faculty and students at MSU and from around the globe.

The Library collection of roughly 270,000 books, journals, maps, films, archives, and microform units and online resources covers all areas and disciplines. Online resources on Africa are one of the best in the country and include cutting-edge digital libraries and archives, full-text journal suites from Africa, and MSU digital projects. Across the collections, there is particular emphasis on history, politics, economics, culture, education, languages, health, and other fields of sub-Saharan African. The collection has special emphasis in the priority countries of Nigeria, Ethiopia/Eritrea, South Africa, the Sahel region of West Africa, Tanzania, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Library materials from all sub-Saharan African countries are collected at a high level, including materials in all African and other languages and across all historical periods. In addition to comprehensive holdings in the Main, circulating collection, the Libraries also boasts significant Africana Special Collections and there are substantial special and audio-visual collections. One such collection is the African Studies Interview Series. The MSU Libraries' collection development policy on Africa is outlined in the Collection Development Policy.