Celebrating Africa in UCT Libraries

Exhibition at the Africa Month Public Symposium

What a wonderful opportunity it was to showcase our Special Collections at the Baxter Theatre as part of the Africa Month Public Symposium on Friday 10 May 2019. #WeAreAfrica

Focus on the San of Southern Africa

Courtesy of UCT Special Collections

We are proud to share three significant archival collections representing the proud culture of historic and contemporary linguistic research into the indigenous languages of South Africa. Discover more in the archives. Visit our finding aids

‡Khomani San – Hugh Brody Collection

This largely audio-visual archive is the product of 15 years of work with the Khomani San of the southern Kgalagadi, including 140 hours of original ï¬lm, maps, GIS databases, family trees and transcripts of oral history collected in three diï¬erent languages. This project was undertaken to help ï¬le a land claim, won in 1999, and continued with a series of oral history, mapping and ï¬lm projects that took place up to 2012.

William Bleek & Lucy Lloyd Collection

William Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, both devoted linguists of the indigenous communities in South Africa, are represented in signiï¬cant and renowned collections in our archival holdings. Their work endures in the form of handwritten notes, paper, cue-card dictionary boxes and vocabulary cards.

Westphal Collection

In 1990, following the death of African Languages Professor Westphal, Special Collections took custody of his collection, which explored the inï¬uences of historic migration lines of Bantu and San people in Southern Africa and inter-tribal relationships on language through interviews recorded during research trips from 1953 to 1971.

Celebrating Africa around the Library

Students welcomed exam treats to warm hearts & minds

Exams treats to warm hearts & minds

Students look at Africa month 2019 flags in Chancellor Oppenheimer Library

African flags from every country

New Books from African Authors

Data for Africa

Digital Library Services held a twitter campaign on Open Data initiatives across the continent. Follow @DigitalUCT

Data Africa (https://t.co/rfkA4e8I3S) is an open data visualization platform designed to provide information for research and development, such as agriculture, climate, poverty and child health across 13 countries in Africa South of the Sahara. #WeAreAfrica #AfricaMonth2019
— UCT Digital Library (@DigitalUct) May 28, 2019

Our spotlight on #WeAreAfrica data initiatives is on @DataFirstAtUCT, a research data service dedicated to giving open access to data from South Africa and other African countries. See: https://t.co/SwZeWR0GvV #AfricaMonth2019
— UCT Digital Library (@DigitalUct) May 8, 2019

Data is only valuable when it is being used. Ghana's Open Data Initiative is a government platform to ensure public accessibility of all data collected, subject to ensuring the privacy rights of individuals. See: https://t.co/vDfOq9J3mT #WeAreAfrica #AfricaMonth2019
— UCT Digital Library (@DigitalUct) May 10, 2019