This issue of the Focus on Global Resources newsletter highlights sources for research on Sub-Saharan Africa, featuring the recently released World Newspaper Archive collection of digitized African newspapers from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These newspapers, drawn from CRL’s own collections, include many titles not found elsewhere that survive today only due to the prescience and efforts of members of the Cooperative Africana Microform Project. CRL’s James Simon explores the new research based on these titles, demonstrating the perennial value of this collection.

Ariel Marcus’s survey of CRL collections on 19th-century Christian missionary work in Africa reminds us of the impact of the precursors of colonial regimes in the region. For example, Mr. Marcus points out that the London Missionary Society first sent the legendary explorer David Livingstone to South Africa in 1840.

— Bernard F. Reilly, Jr.