Guide to African newspapers and newspapers on Africa

African Newspapers

The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) recently conducted an assessment of African newspapers online. CRL’s survey found that only a fraction of African newspaper titles are currently available online. Of an estimated 1,300 titles in circulation throughout Africa, CRL found only 484 titles with some form of active online presence. See the detailed report.

Online access via:

• AllAfrica aggregates and produces 2000 news items daily from over 130 African news organizations, they operate from Cape Town, Dakar, Lagos, Monrovia, Nairobi and Washington DC.
• Others are Panapress and Afrol News
• Nordic Africa
  Institute’s “A Guide to Africa on the Internet” under the headings links sorted by subject “News and media” or sorted by country or region.
• Stanford: African Newspapers by Country
• Stanford: African Newspapers continent-wide
• World-newspapers -> Africa
• African newspapers, part of the Readex World Newspaper Archive, a full-text digital collection of historical African newspapers (1800-1922)

Adresses and Links in printed books:

• Africa south of the Sahara 2012, 41st ed., London : Routledge (Europa regional surveys of the world); has country entries with a section on “The Press”.
• The African studies companion : a guide to information sources. / Zell, Hans M.. – 4th rev.and expanded ed. – Lochcarron, Scotland : Zell 2008; chapter 10 “News Sources for Africa”, p.299 and chapter 11 “The African Press”, pp. 306-357. A fifth edition is announced by Brill for Sept. 2012.

Further guides to African newspapers:

• Uppsala’s Studying Africa Guide, pp. 18, 34, 39
• ASC Leiden
• News & Information Services on Africa, Columbia
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• Frankfurt’s “Zeitungen” in German

 African Newspapers in German libraries:

• DFG-special subject collection (Sondersammelgebiet) on “Foreign Newspapers” is located at the State Library in Berlin – Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The collection is indexed in the OPAC (Online-Katalog der Staatsbibliothek) and the German national union catalogue of periodicals (Zeitschriftendatenbank). The Zeitungsinformationssystem (ZEFYS) provides access to digitized historical newspapers and further online ressources, e.g. on Kenya.