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.

Africa (September
1997) is an example of the helpful, widely distributed low-cost
maps issued by the Central Intelligence Agency (cia) of
the U.S. government. The CIA produces maps regularly to
reflect changes in geographical names and boundaries. As
government documents, they are not protected by copyright
and are therefore popular for use and reproduction by others.
(Geography
and Map Division)
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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.
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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)
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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.
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.

This aerial view of downtown
Nairobi (ca. 1985), the capital of Kenya, dispels the
misconception that life in sub-Saharan Africa is lived solely
in rural, underdeveloped areas. The major cities of African
countries look similar to those found anywhere, and have
many of the same problems -- one being rush hour traffic
congestion, which sometimes occurs four, not just two times
a day as in the United States. (Photo courtesy of the
Embassy of Kenya) (African Section Pamphlet Collection,
African and Middle
Eastern Division)
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A souvenir program from the first
inaugural ceremonies of President William Richard Tolbert
Jr., twentieth president (1971-80) of the Republic of
Liberia, is an example of the rare political ephemera available
to the researcher at the Library.
(African Section Pamphlet Collection,
African and Middle
Eastern Division)
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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.
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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)
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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.
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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)
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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.
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