Databases
Subscribed and free databases, Nordic research repositories, library catalogues.
Africa-specific databases we subscribe to
Combination of several databases, providing access to more than 4 million records - some with full-text links.
Topics: politics, history, economics, business, mining, natural sciences, environment, development, social issues, anthropology, literature, language, law, music, tourism etc.
Sources: books, periodicals and magazines articles, radio and television broadcasts, newspapers, pamphlets, maps, reports, theses, music recordings etc.
Coverage: From the 19th century to the present.
Access options for full contents
- Remotely?: Yes, for certain users
- At NAI premises on wifi: No
- At NAI premises on desktop computers: Yes
Searchable in AfricaLit Plus?
- Yes, with limitations. While outside of NAI you need to be signed in to see results.
Privacy policy including information about cookies
External link, opens in new window.
Digital platform for African e-books for online reading.
NAI has a subscription on their Samir Amin
External link. (70+ titles) and Social sciences External link. (1300+ titles) collections. Titles in English and French.
Access:
(Formerly: South African Press Association, SAPA.)
Full-text news reports covering South African and African news. The database covers the period 1998 - 31 March 2015 and from November 2015 onwards.
Access:
Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.
Online edition of the Heinemann series of modern African literature, published 1946-2003. Including 250 volumes of fiction, poetry, drama and non-fictional prose.
Access:
Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.
Aggregates and distributes news from 140+ African news organizations and own reporters. Top news, latest news, country and regional news, business, sports and various topics.
Archives include millions of articles from 1996 onwards, and the website comes in an English version as well as a French, reflecting also the language of the news sources.
Access:
- Current news (up to two years old) are free and accessible to anyone. This includes their RSS feeds through which you can keep up to date on specific countries, regions or topics.
- Archived news are available for subscribers. NAI has an institutional subscription. This includes an advanced search interface through which you can search on keyword, publisher country, category and date.
Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.
Hosted at Centre for Research Libraries (CRL) in USA, CAMP External link. promotes the preservation of publications and archives concerning the nearly fifty nations of Sub-Saharan Africa. The digital and microform collections form a large pool of historical, political, linguistic, economic, and geographical data and primary source materials that are not available elsewhere.
Access:
- Anyone can browse the records of the CAMP digital collection External link.. At NAI premises digitized contents can be accessed in full External link..
- Microfilms can be ordered as interlibrary loans through the NAI library. Print and microfilmed materials from the main CRL catalogue External link. can be suggested for digitization instead of interlibrary loan requests.
CRL's privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.
Peer-reviewed bibliographies. Short introductions followed by listing of annotated citations. Regularly updated. We subscribe to two subject areas, both including a few hundred articles/topics each:
Access options for full contents
- Remotely?: Not currently
- At NAI premises on wifi: No
- At NAI premises on desktop computers: Yes
Searchable in AfricaLit Plus?
- Yes
Privacy policy including information about cookies External link.
Peer-reviewed, regularly updated encyclopedia. We subscribe to the subject area African history, which includes close to 400 articles.
Access options for full contents
- Remotely?: Not currently
- At NAI premises on wifi: No
- At NAI premises on desktop computers: Yes
Searchable in AfricaLit Plus?
- No
Privacy policy including information about cookies External link.
More than 3 million newspaper and periodical articles within Social sciences, Politics, Economy and more. Searchable through keywords and topics, articles viewable as pdfs. Focused mainly on southern Africa.
Access:
Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.
76 collections, 20K+ objects, 190K+ pages focusing on the liberation struggles in Southern Africa, with an emphasis on Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. More info on JSTOR website External link, opens in new window..
Access:
Privacy policy including information about cookies External link, opens in new window.
Free Africa-specific databases
AfricaBib External link, opens in new window.
Five bibliographic databases in one: Africana Periodical Literature, African Women, Women Travelers, Explorers and Missionaries to Africa: 1763-2004, Islam in contemporary Sub-Saharan Africa, and Kenya Coast.
ASKIA - Access to Scientific Knowledge in Africa External link, opens in new window.
United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's federated search portal for scientific and socio-economic information on Africa from several different sources - including Open Access literature, commercial databases, online journals, (UN)ECA publications, etc.
Connecting Africa External link, opens in new window.
A service that provides access to African research information and materials produced in the Netherlands and elsewhere.
IlissAfrica - Internet Library Sub-Saharan Africa External link, opens in new window.
Find literature, internet resources, contacts and further information concerning African Studies,
Noovell External link, opens in new window.
Global news aggregator with a focus on politics and current affairs. In English. Specific section for Africa and also subpages for each country.
Publishing, Books & Reading in Sub-Saharan Africa : A Critical Bibliography External link, opens in new window.
An online version of the book with the same title.
Current research on Africa in the Nordic countries
Nordic countries each have national portals for academic research published. The repositories contain a mix of references and open access fulltexts.
Denmark
Nora – National Open Research Analysis
Presently there is no single entry point for recent Danish academic output. The Danish Agency for Higher Education and Science is reviewing possibilities to establish an overview of the results of Danish research. The previous Forskningsdatabas External link. has a list of research output repositories in Denmark that can be searched individually for Africa related research. If you have access to Scopus database, it is possible to combine search on country name/Africa and affiliation country within social sciences.
Finland
Research.fi
Research.fi contains information on the Finnish research system, publications by Finnish organizations, projects funded by public and private research funders, and statistical information on the development of research resources and impact. The service is planned to be extended to research data and other data sets in the future.
Direct search:
- Publications with search term Africa, within social sciences External link, opens in new window.
(sorted to the most recent titles on the top of the hitlist. Change to other relevant geographical areas like Namibia for other records. It is possible to search on open access publications only)
Iceland
Opin vísindi
The institutional repository of several universities on Iceland hold peer reviewed articles and dissertations open access. It is possible to search with combined search terms as well as to limit search results according to year etc.
Direct search:
- Publications with the search terms Africa OR Guinea Bissau OR Tanzania External link, opens in new window.
(change to other relevant geographical areas like Nigeria etc. for other result lists)
Skemman
Skemman is a collective digital repository for publications until 2016 for universities on Iceland. Skemman contains both full text as well as references and it is possible to search and browse.
Direct search:
Norway
CRISTIN Current Research Information System In Norway
Collective database for academic output in Norway.
Direct search:
- Publications with search term Africa in the title from 2021 and onwards External link, opens in new window.
(change to other relevant geographical areas like Nigeria etc for other records. The search results for several search terms in a row is unreliable.)
Sweden
Swepub
Swepub contains references to research publications registered in at present approximately 40 of the Swedish universities and of other authority publication databases.
Direct search:
- Social sciences publications with country names or Africa in the record, 2020—2022 External link, opens in new window.
(it is not possible to select open access publications only. For a more narrow list, search on a single country name.)
Free general databases
DART-Europe E-theses Portal External link, opens in new window.
Search electronically published open access dissertations and theses from hundreds of European universities.
Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) External link, opens in new window.
Search and browse peer reviewed, scholarly open access books.
Doria External link, opens in new window.
Multi-institutional repository maintained by National Library of Finland.
forskningsdatabasen.dk External link, opens in new window.
The Danish national research database.
The Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) External link, opens in new window.
Search for full text theses and dissertations in the NDLTD Catalog.
NORA External link, opens in new window.
Norwegian open research archives
Nordicom databases on Nordic media research
The NCOM 1975-2006 database contains some 40.000 references to nordic media research publications. The succcessor NCOM continues from 2006/2007 including four different data types: nordic media researchers, research institutions, research projects and research publications.
- NCOM 1975-2006: http://www.statsbiblioteket.dk/nordicom External link, opens in new window.
- NCOM [2006/2007-]: http://nordicom.statsbiblioteket.dk External link, opens in new window.
OAPEN Library External link, opens in new window.
Freely accessible academic books, mainly in the area of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Open Knowledge Repository External link, opens in new window.
The World Bank’s official open access repository for its research outputs and knowledge products, among others reports, journal articles, serial publications, working papers etc.
Population Index External link, opens in new window.
Abstracts of demographic literature published in the period 1986–2000.
The Swedish Media Database (SMDB) External link, opens in new window.
Search TV and radio broadcasts, documentary films and much more, some of them with an African focus. Researchers can order materials from the SMDB and access the material either at the National Library in Stockholm or as an interlibrary loan on DVD at a university library. SMDB is only available in Swedish.
SwePub External link, opens in new window.
Academic publications at Swedish universities. Search among scholarly articles, conference papers and dissertations etc.
UNBISNET External link, opens in new window.
United Nations Bibliographic Information System. References to UN documents and publications, articles and books about the UN, speeches of the General Assembly from 1983-, voting records and more.
Library catalogues
Libraries and archives. From Africa south of the Sahara. Selected internet resources ed. by Karen Fung, Stanford University Libraries & Academic Information Resources. http://library.stanford.edu/africa-south-sahara/browse-topic/libraries-archives External link, opens in new window.
Uppsala University Library.
General search tool: http://ub.uu.se External link.
Library catalogue (DISA) only: https://disaweb.ub.uu.se External link, opens in new window.
Libris. Union catalogue of Swedish libraries.
http://libris.kb.se/ External link, opens in new window.
bibliotek.dk. Locate books and journals at Danish libraries.
http://bibliotek.dk/eng External link, opens in new window.
BIBSYS. Union catalogue of Norwegian libraries.
https://bibsys-almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/search?vid=BIBSYS&lang=no_NO External link.
Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS).
https://www.diis.dk/en/diis/kommunikation/library External link, opens in new window.
The National Library of Finland (Helsinki University Library). Finnish library catalogues, databases and online resources. http://www.nationallibrary.fi/ External link, opens in new window.
Gegnir. Union catalogue of Icelandic libraries.
https://leitir.is/primo-explore/search?sortby=rank&vid=GEGNIR&lang=en_US External link, opens in new window.
African Studies Centre Catalogue. Search the library collection of ASC, Leiden, The Netherlands; social and economic development, political and constitutional developments, as well as anthropology, sociology, religion, law, education, contemporary history and literature.
https://catalogue.leidenuniv.nl/primo-explore/search?vid=UBL_V1&search_scope=lib_asc&sortby=rank&tab=leiden&lang=en_US&mode=simple External link, opens in new window.
BCEA, the Portuguese Central Library of African Studies.
https://bcea.cei.iscte-iul.pt/en/catalog/ External link, opens in new window.
Bibliotèque nationale de France with several catalogues to search.
http://www.bnf.fr/ External link, opens in new window.
British Library. With Explore the British Library you can search items from the main catalogue of nearly 57 million records. https://explore.bl.uk/ External link, opens in new window.
Clark Library, MLibrary - Stephen S. Clark Library, MLibrary, Univ. of Michigan, for Maps and Government Information. https://www.lib.umich.edu/clark-library External link, opens in new window.
IDS/BLDS. British Library for Development Studies at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), Brighton, UK. Library catalogue and other resources on economic and social change in developing countries. http://blds.ids.ac.uk/search-the-collection External link, opens in new window.
The Library Network catalogue, serving the World Bank Group and IMF.
https://library.worldbankimflib.org/ External link, opens in new window.
Library of Congress.
https://catalog.loc.gov/ External link, opens in new window.
NU Libraries Searchcat. Catalogue of the Northwestern University Libraries. Search special NU Databases, Africana Conference Paper Index and the Africana Vertical File Index. https://search.library.northwestern.edu External link, opens in new window.
School of Oriental and African Studies.
https://library.soas.ac.uk/ External link, opens in new window.
University library of Mainz / The Library of the Department of Anthropology and African Studies.
http://opac.ub.uni-mainz.de/ External link, opens in new window.
University of Vienna, African and Middle Eastern Studies Library / African Studies Holding 1991-.
https://usearch.univie.ac.at/primo-explore/search?vid=UWI&lang=en_US External link, opens in new window.
WorldCat (OCLC). Cross search a database of over 1 billion books, music, videos, articles and other items in more than 10,000 libraries worldwide.
https://www.worldcat.org/ External link, opens in new window.