To understand the economic situations in various regions of Africa, and to understand the continent's place in the current world economy, it is important to understand its economic history. Some of the selected resources in this section cover African economic development going back to the colonial period, while others cover national, regional, and global issues in the continent since the beginning of the 20th century. The focus here is on titles that introduce general topics, such as economic development by region, labor and policy.
The Library of Congress holds many more titles on the history of particular industries, such as mining and agriculture. To expand your research, please search the Library's catalog or see the Search the Library's Catalog page of this guide which will help you find more materials on these topics. Databases that contain articles and other resources on historical topics as well as other Library Collections that could be useful are listed on this page as well.
The following titles link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to additional online content are included when available.
The following links go to online guides about Library of Congress collections.
Listed here are databases for researching African economic history. Some are specific to business while others like newspapers, can be used for general research as well as for economic history. Try searching by historic events, industries, companies, and countries.
The subscription resources marked with a padlock are available to researchers on-site at the Library of Congress. If you are unable to visit the Library, you may be able to access these resources through your local public or academic library.
E-books are available digitally at the the Library of Congress either through our in-house repository STACKS or through subscription databases such as Taylor & Francis eBooks, Springer-Link and others. Free open source e-books may also be available.
These are websites related to the economic history of Africa.