Materialities of Oral Cultures in East Africa: An Online Symposium, 12 March 2026
Join us for a symposium organised by ALMEDA postdoctoral fellow, Gloria Ajami Makokha, on the ‘Materialities of Oral Cultures in East Africa’.
La revue malienne _Sankoré_ pourrait être considérée comme reflétant un processus de valorisation des langues et littératures africaines dans le cadre du projet de décolonisation des années 1970. Sankoré – une revue de vulgarisation scientifique avec, entre autres, des sections consacrées aux nouvelles, légendes, proverbes, poèmes, devinettes, est un produit initial de l’Institut Ahmed Baba de Tombouctou et publié au cours de cette décennie avec le soutien de l’Institut des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (ISH). À travers des exemplaires récupérés en juin 2024 avec l’aide des archivistes et des stagiaires de l’ISH, on peut retracer les débuts de Sankoré en français, avec de courtes sections traduites en bambara (n° 2, 1973) ou en tamasheq (n° 5, 1974), jusqu’à des numéros entièrement en bambara par exemple en 1976 (n° 9, 1976).
The Malian magazine _Sankoré_ could be viewed as an attempt to valorize African languages and literatures as part of decolonization agenda of the 1970s. Sankoré – a popular science journal with some sections dedicated to short stories, legends, proverbs, poems, riddles, is a product of the Ahmed Baba Institute in Timbuktu and was published in the 1970s with the support of the Institut des Sciences Humaines de Bamako (ISH). From some of the copies retrieved this June 2024 together with archivists and interns at the ISH, one can trace the beginnings of Sankoré in French, with short sections translated in Bambara (No 2, 1973) or Tamasheq (No 5, 1974), to issues fully in Bambara for example by 1976 (No 9, 1976).

Join us for a symposium organised by ALMEDA postdoctoral fellow, Gloria Ajami Makokha, on the ‘Materialities of Oral Cultures in East Africa’.
We are delighted to announce that AfLIA (African Library and Information Associations and Institutions) and ALMEDA have formalised a collaboration in which ALMEDA will create an online course for AfLIA members titled ‘From Collections to Data Publications: a workflow for Librarians and Archivists’. The course aims to train librarians and…
Ashleigh Harris has a new ALMEDA pamphlet reflecting on the problems and potentials of AI in and for the field of African Literary Studies. Harris will be participating at the Charting New Territory: Digital Humanities and AI in African Studies organised by Frédérick Madore, Vincent Hiribarren in Hanover in February,…
The ALMEDA project is committed to a broad multilingual framework, not only to ensure excellent and substantial multilingual inclusion across as many African languages as possible (see our work with literary lexicons), but also to provide data on African literature’s global movements and circulation in non-African languages. To this purpose,…