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Africa Commons: Black South African Magazines

Africa Commons: Black South African Magazines

The first and only digital collection of magazines created for Black audiences in Africa from 1937 to 1973.

Black South African Magazines brings together over 50,000 pages of extremely rare, yet historically significant magazines, written and targeted specifically for Black African audiences. Developed in partnership with Sabinet, the materials have been sourced from African libraries. Despite their broad cultural and historical value, the magazines exist in just a few physical locations and have not been digitized before.

Much of the content was created by a new generation of Black journalists, writers and artists. The magazines were hugely popular, and were packed with investigative journalism, photography, fiction, reviews, biographies, fashion, lifestyle, advertisements, and more. Many of them were syndicated across the continent and contained content specifically developed for the African English-speaking world, so they provide a view of Black society across all of Africa. – Publisher