CUL - Main Content

***Requires registration.  A repository of geographic data on Africa, historical and contemporary, using WorldMap open software. The site offers the possibilities of free access to the software and collaborative projects.

This web site --under construction--includes continental and coastline maps--with potential for regional, country, and local areas, various graphs, and numerical data. "The purpose of the African Marine Atlas is to identify, collect and organize available geospatial datasets into an atlas of environmental themes for Africa..."

A geostatistical study first produced in 2008 by a team of researchers at SEDET--Université Paris Diderot for AFD and revised by OECD scholars.
--See also, Africapolis.org (2019): interactive maps & data

The website features information about the collection in Boston and a small set of "Zoomifyer" online maps. These digital images were produced in collaboration with the Digital Imaging Group at Harvard College Library, Cambridge, Massachusetts. "The AFRITERRA Foundation is a non-profit Cartographic Library and Archive assembling and preserving the original rare maps of Africa [c. 1480 A.D.--1900 A.D.] in a definitive place for education and interpretation."

"The maps in this gallery reflect the development of European knowledge of African geography from 1562 through 1940. They are reproduced with the permission of the New York Public Library and the British Library." See also: Home page of the web site.

"...The map displays information in several ways: color-coding of territories reflects political changes; symbols show conflicts as isolated events; bar graphs give demographic and economic data, and labels show country names. Users may click on the diamonds in the bottom center to reveal or hide these features. Timeline controls on the bottom-right advance or reverse the chronology. The polygonal keys expand when the mouse is placed over them and can be dragged to any location on the map to match colors with those on the key. For the period after 1960, the labels also contain bar graphs showing changes in population and per capita GDP over time."

"The MAEASaM project is working to identify and document endangered archaeological heritage sites across eight African countries, [Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Senegal, Sudan, Tanzania, & Zimbabwe] dated from the Palaeolithic/Early Stone Age to the 20th century, then share this information to help protect them. Using a combination of remote sensing, records-based research and selective archaeological surveys, the team is building comprehensive and up-to-date records of site types and distributions, which will be made available in an open access Arches geospatial relational database tailored for different interest groups and stakeholders."
--Resources: maps and videos on digitization
--MAEASaM newsletter

At this site, one can read online or download the data. There are full text summaries, map images, and analytical reports. See also, the French version.

Gallica is an open access digital library which includes a wide selection of downloadable, online travellers' accounts, colonial documents, ***maps, illustrations and other images, and publications, including journals, covering the entire African continent ...and other parts of the world.

This web page provides access to detailed lists of holdings organized by publication date, location, and title.

"The CBOLD project was started in 1994 by Larry Hyman and John Lowe to produce in Berkeley a lexicographic database to support and enhance the theoretical, descriptive, and historical linguistic study of the languages in the important Bantu family."  

"The Morocco project is a collaborative effort between Cornell University and institutions in Morocco and Spain to improve the understanding of the geodynamics of the western Mediterranean (Alboran) region and the intracontinental development of the Atlas system, using geophysical and geological methods. On these pages you will find information about the research conducted including abstracts and figures (and maps) from recent investigations." See also, the larger Cornell GIS web site which includes several pages on research on the Middle East and North Africa, plus new and old maps.

"'A volunteer-run project'...The Decolonial Atlas is a growing collection of maps which, in some way, help us to challenge our relationships with the land, people, and state. It’s based on the premise that cartography is not as objective as we’re made to believe."

For each country in Africa, there is a listing and description of languages, and a map of languages.

Select a country = Sélectionner un pays: This "retrieval tool" is the latest offering on the FAO website. It consists of summarized presentations for each country around the world, including maps and tables, with detailed information on the environment and the economy based on FAO research.

Last update in December 2008: A website with basic geographical information, maps, some statistics, etc."The Atlas of the Gambia project is a public education project aimed at providing authoritative data and statistics on biophysical, social, cultural and economic dimensions of life in the Gambia."

Select locations in Africa: "When major disaster strikes anywhere in the world, HOT rallies a huge network of volunteers to create, online, the maps that enable responders to reach those in need...Or, assists people to create their own maps for socio-economic development and disaster preparedness."
--See especially: Community Development--Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda ; and, Disaster Mapping--Central African Republic; Ebola in West Africa; Ivory Coast; Somalia.

A searchable online collection of twenty maps of Liberia from various sources, including the American Colonization Society, 'organized in 1817 to resettle free black Americans in West Africa.'

Commercial site: search for maps of Africa.

This colorful site offers an online abridged world atlas and interactive features.

"This site features digital copies of 113 antique maps of Africa and accompanying text dating from the mid 16th Century to the early 20th Century. All scanned maps are authentic and originally collected by the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University."

Selected maps of data on poverty, environment, and other development issues in Africa and the rest of the world. "SEDAC is one of the Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) in the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. SEDAC focuses on human interactions in the environment."

"The maps --578 images-- from the Norwich Collection of Maps of Africa and Its Islands as well as the maps from the Antiquarian Maps Collection relating to Africa can be viewed online."

An app displaying comparative sizes of countries and continents, as a corrective to the widespread use of the Mercator projection map of the world.
--See also: "The True Size of Africa" by Kai Krause.

A searchable digital map collection based on the bibliography Maps of Africa to 1900: A Checklist of Maps in Atlases and Geographical Journals in the Collections of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (By Thomas J. Bassett & Yvette Scheven, Urbana: Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 2000).

An inventory list of volcanoes and volcano study programs, with photographs and maps.

A collection of bright, pastel-colored maps of the continent and individual countries since 19th century onwards (colonial territories and post-colonial era)...based on standard historical sources and other African map websites.

A set of basic political boundary maps of countries, regional divisions, cities, population figures, and a few other basic statistical indicators.
--See also: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency's GNS above.