CAMEROON-FRANCE
A group of university researchers from Cameroon and France working on some historical findings on the French colonial past in Africa say they are facing challenging tasks going through poorly organised local archives to establish some historical truths in their findings.
“Carrying out research work with analogue archive systems and libraries that still operate in many institutions in Africa is very challenging. You must piece together sources from a wide range of depositories, most of which are incomplete,” Professor Willibroad Dze-Ngwa, the founding president of the Heritage Higher Institute for Peace and Development Studies, Yaounde, and leader of the research team in Cameroon, told University World News.
The researchers from the Heritage Higher Institute for Peace and Development Studies, working in collaboration with others from the University of Dschang and the University of Maroua in Cameroon, and the University of Artois in Arras, France, are digging into the French diplomatic archives and those of local authorities to determine the role France played in the nationalist opposition struggles in Cameroon from 1945-71, he said.
The team of eight Cameroonians and seven French researchers has been granted access to sensitive private and public archives in both Cameroon and France.
A ‘Herculean’ task
“For two years (2023-24), we have been criss-crossing many countries, visiting every available archive, interviewing reliable informants, digging into military, diplomatic, public and private archives of great personalities just to establish facts and figures of this piece of history. A Herculean task indeed, but the 15-man team is standing to the challenge,” Dze-Ngwa said.
Their research is in response to a promise by French President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to Cameroon in July 2022 to permit history researchers from both countries to work together, investigating the past and establish “responsibilities”, Al Jazeera reported on 26 July 2022.
As in Cameroon, French authorities admit that France’s colonial past in French-speaking African countries brought ‘tragic’ moments and thus agreed to open their archives to establish the historical truth.
On 9 November 2021, Al Jazeera reported that research was already yielding fruit in some African countries, with France handing back some colonial treasures. In Benin, for example, 26 treasures that were looted during the colonial period were returned. Benin’s President Patrice Talon and Minister of Culture Jean-Michel Abimbola travelled to Paris to bring home the artefacts that were snatched by French forces 130 years before.
Poorly organised archives a hassle
The researchers in Cameroon, as in other French-speaking countries, deal with the same challenges where archives are concerned.
Dze-Ngwa said: “We need action research beyond our frontiers. While we carry out this work, the very challenging task we face as researchers is the difficulty of going through poorly organised local archives. Some facts about the French war against nationalists in Cameroon, for example, are missing, making it difficult to establish the complete picture.”
Experts say the absence of adequate investments and adapted infrastructure makes the research process in Africa cumbersome. Apart from the poor preservation of local archives in many African countries, the research support systems are weak, impacting the quality of results. Professor Mathias Eric Owona Nguini, a socio-political scientist at the University of Yaounde II, told University World News that, due to the poor support systems researchers are forced to carry huge administrative burdens. “Some research governance and regulatory systems are cumbersome. It’s hard to have a career in research in such an environment.”
Unlike in developed countries, where research work has been facilitated by digitalisation of data and archival information, most archives and libraries in Africa today are filled with material recorded in analogue format and the traditional or analogue librarians and archivists are those who still carry out the tasks of acquiring, organising and preserving the print documents and helping readers to locate the information they need, according to an article titled ‘Archival research in Africa’ published in the journal African Affairs in January 2017.
It notes that archival research in Africa remains a highly personalised and ‘analogue’ process. This is especially true for historians of the post-colonial period, who often find that state repositories contain few or no records from the years after independence.
Universities instrumental
Academics and researchers say Africa’s rich archive ecosystem has the potential to drive transformative research and enrich academia. Unfortunately, most institutions on the continent lack the technical and logistically enabling environment for archival records management. They are calling for the digitalisation of archives, and training of more professionals, with African universities playing a frontline role.
“University authorities have made proposals to the government for the digitalisation and management of a central archive system by academic experts. Our proposal is still under revision, and hopefully, this will be done,” Professor Maurice Aurélien Sosso, former rector of the University of Yaoundé I, said.
He said that, in most local institutions in African countries, librarians and archivists are not up to the task. “We need trained experts at university level with expertise in information technology, organisation and preservation of documents, digitisation of records and archives resources in line with new technological trends,” Sosso said.
University institutions can reach and serve more research-based communities by supporting an archival component within its educational mission, he added.
Missing data, neglected material
As in many African countries, Cameroon’s archive system is managed by the state. Due to the involvement of three colonial powers in Cameroon, the national archives in Yaounde and Buea are excellent sources of the colonial history of West Africa, allowing for a simultaneous analysis of German, French, and British files.
However, experts say most state-owned archives on the continent are poorly managed. Many are in a deplorable state, lacking important historical data. “Most of the state-managed archives are poorly managed with lots of missing historical information and data,” Owona Nguini said. Sources of post-colonial African history are found increasingly outside of state archives due to the opaque or unsystematic modes of administration in the decades after independence.
According to university authorities, the transition from paper records to digital records management has been embraced and adopted globally with its fragmented array of successes and challenges. Africa must follow suit to bridge the gaps in the quality of service delivery and improve and facilitate the work of researchers.
“The digitisation process is the way forward. It will enable improved access to information sources, and the preservation and dissemination of information on time and as required,” Sosso said.
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