Conference Papers (UNL)

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Strong local archives/ library content: A mirror of society
(University of Namibia, 2015) Namhila, Ellen N.
Africa continues to be depicted in literature as a marginal contributor to world’s knowledge, “silent”, “voiceless”, yet the continent is host to rare and irreplaceable precolonial manuscripts in its Libraries and Archives. The National Archives of Namibia (NAN) houses remarkable and original handwritten work with high cultural, historical and genealogical research value, written before the formal colonization of the country. These manuscripts and records are largely unknown and under-researched and this perpetuates the knowledge gap in the existing scholarly work that contributes to shaping what is known about Namibia and its people. This paper describes pre-colonial writing in Namibia. It urges scholars to utilize these pre-colonial documents, records and manuscripts as valuable research resources for cultural, genealogy and local history.