--- title: African Studies description: African studies examines the history, cultures, politics, and economies of the African continent. Learners will analyze pre-colonial societies, colonial impacts, and contemporary developments to understand Africa's diverse regional dynamics and global influence. category: humanities subcategory: area-studies difficulty: beginner, intermediate, advanced url: /subject/african-studies --- # African Studies African studies examines the history, cultures, politics, and economies of the African continent. Learners will analyze pre-colonial societies, colonial impacts, and contemporary developments to understand Africa's diverse regional dynamics and global influence. ## Available Resources 4 Books • 4 Websites ## Websites ### 1. BBC Africa BBC's dedicated Africa news portal offering daily reporting on politics, economics, conflict, and culture across the continent, plus archival features and analysis pieces useful for building a current, journalistic understanding of African affairs. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.bbc.com/news/world/africa **Tags:** africa, news, current-events, journalism, area-studies ### 2. H-Africa Network A scholarly network and mailing list run by H-Net connecting historians and Africanist researchers, sharing conference announcements, book reviews, syllabi, and job postings that support academic work in African history and studies. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://networks.h-net.org/h-africa **Tags:** africa, history, academia, research, area-studies ### 3. Africa Is a Country An independent online magazine publishing essays and commentary on African politics, culture, and media from African and diaspora writers, offering critical perspectives that challenge mainstream Western coverage of the continent. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://africasacountry.com/ **Tags:** africa, politics, culture, media, area-studies ### 4. africanstudies.org AfricanStudies.org is a resource hub for African studies, offering curated content such as scholarly articles, teaching materials, bibliographies, and links to journals, organizations, and events. It serves as a gateway to research and learning about Africa across disciplines. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://africanstudies.org **Tags:** websites, humanities-social-sciences, area-studies ## Podcasts ### 1. The Africa Report **Author:** The Africa Report Talking Africa is brought to you by The Africa Report. Conversations from the continent. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://www.theafricareport.com **Tags:** africa, podcast, politics, current-events, area-studies ### 2. Ufahamu Africa **Author:** Kim Yi Dionne and Rachel Beatty Riedl Ufahamu Africa is a podcast about life and politics on the African continent, co-hosted by Kim Yi Dionne, professor of political science at the University of California, Riverside, and Rachel Beatty Riedl, professor of government at Cornell University. Each Saturday, a new episode highlights what is happening in the news, followed by an interview with a diverse thinker or innovator who is deeply ingrained in the life, culture, and politics of the continent. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://ufahamuafrica.buzzsprout.com **Tags:** africa, podcast, politics, academia, area-studies ### 3. Africa Past & Present **Author:** Peter Alegi, Peter Limb Michigan State University podcast launched in 2008 by historians Peter Alegi and Peter Limb, featuring interviews with scholars about recent research on African history, culture, and politics. Gives listeners accessible entry points into current debates in African studies. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** en-US | **Price:** Free **Link:** https://afripod.aodl.org/ **Tags:** african-history, african-studies, african-politics, decolonization, scholar-interviews ## Books ### 1. Africa: A Biography **Author:** John Reader A sweeping natural and human history of the African continent, tracing geology, evolution, ecology, and the rise of human societies across millennia to explain how environment has shaped Africa's peoples and civilizations. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0140266755?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, area-studies ### 2. Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave **Author:** Zora Neale Hurston Hurston's account, based on 1927–1931 interviews, of Cudjo Lewis, one of the last survivors of the transatlantic slave trade, carried to Alabama on the Clotilda. Published in 2018, it shows how oral testimony becomes ethnography and why Hurston kept Lewis's own dialect. **Difficulty:** Beginner | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0008368031?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** ethnography, oral-history, transatlantic-slave-trade, african-american-history, cultural-anthropology ### 3. How Europe Underdeveloped Africa **Author:** Walter Rodney A foundational work of dependency theory arguing that European colonialism and the slave trade systematically extracted wealth from Africa, deliberately stunting its economic development rather than modernizing it, as colonial narratives claimed. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/1788731182?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, area-studies ### 4. The State of Africa **Author:** Martin Meredith A comprehensive narrative history of sub-Saharan Africa since independence, covering the continent's leaders, coups, wars, and economic struggles from the 1950s through the early 2000s, written for a general audience. **Difficulty:** Intermediate | **Language:** English | **Price:** Paid **Link:** https://www.amazon.com/dp/0743232224?tag=edmonddante07-20 **Tags:** books, humanities-social-sciences, area-studies --- *This content is part of Dantes.io - Your Treasure Map to Knowledge* *Curated by humans at Dantes.io. Personal study use welcome; republishing this curation requires permission (team@dantes.io).* View this page online: https://dantes.io/subject/african-studies