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Where Should Research Be Done?

Most historians invited to discuss African history at the African Studies Association conference live and work in the United States. However most African specialists emphasise the need for Africa to be the primary source for research.

Although the Internet, universities and libraries in the west provide access to information on the continent, Africa itself contains the archives and the oral informants essential to the reconstruction of history. Therefore, travelling to the continent is an imperative.

"You cannot do African history from outside...Many of us travel there every summer to do our fieldwork. Many of our archives are there. Many of our oral informants cannot move to America. The epicentre of African history remains in the continent."
Professor Atieno Adhiambo, Rice University, Houston, Texas.

ISSUES IN FIELDWORK
Equally, being based in Africa may not necessarily be an advantage - research work and establishing contact with oral informants may not be easily achieved.

"There are also other constraints that work against us. We may be very close to our sources but funding is a problem, time is a problem…

For historians in Africa, teaching loads are very high. In the USA teachers teach four hours a week. In Africa, there are eighteen hours of teaching a week and very little time for research."
Dr Edmund Mazibuko, Rutgers University, New Jersey.

PUBLISHING AND TEACHING IN AFRICA
Historians working in Africa are faced with vast problems. Teaching and university resources are overstretched. Another constraint is the lack of publishing possibilities for historians based in Africa. In the west, the publishing business is broad, competitive and varied.

"The problem is when you are based in Africa, it's even harder to get the breakthrough from over there, when all publishing houses are out here."
Professor Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri.

"If you go to lecture halls in most African countries, there are old articles, textbooks. And large class sizes are also a problem. Colleagues may be engaged in some research of some kind besides their teaching. But they don't go further, in terms of publishing articles.

What I'd like to see for the future is if there could be more links between colleagues that are overseas and those that are in Africa…It would help our brothers in Africa in terms of publishing articles jointly with people here."
Professor Edmund Mazibuko, Rutgers University, New Jersey.

GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT
African governments prefer to invest resources on projects that will ensure economic growth. History is not seen as a subject that enables people to obtain jobs. Neither is it seen as a potential avenue for the development of the nation. Therefore, funding is diverted to other fields, such as the sciences.

The lack of resources affects historians who struggle to make their careers economically viable.

"Considering the severe economic problems that African countries are experiencing now, the primary concern is how they're going to make a living. Unfortunately, that's why a lot of us are in the US and in Britain right now, because we realise that we cannot make a living as historians on the continent."
Professor Sylvia Ojukutu-Macauley, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri.

AFRICAN ARCHIVES
Another point of concern is the condition of the archive centres in Africa. These are noticeably under-funded. Professor Arthur Abrahams offers a sorry example of what goes on at some of the archive centres he has visited in Sierra Leone.

"There is no electricity and there are no photocopying machines. The documents are kept in poor conditions. Humidity is destroying most of these documents.

So there are two options, you either sit there and spend all your time copying word for word, or you pay off some of the attendants to turn their eyes away and then rip off the documents and take them. So, actually, the size of the archive is shrinking all the time."
Professor Arthur Abrahams, Virginia State University, Petersburg, Virginia.

To hear this discussion, listen to the 'Talkabout History' programme on The Future of African History