V
Sample search strategies

Evaluating success and relevancy ratings

Sample search strategy 1
Sample search strategy 2
Sample search strategy 3
Sample search strategy 4
Sample search strategy 5
Sample search strategy 6
Sample search strategy 7

This section offers a small range of sample search strategies, some chosen deliberately because their search topics look fairly challenging. Five of them were picked up from postings to the H-Africa list http://www2.h-net.msu.edu/~africa/ (see entry 1823 in the African Studies Companion) and the ALCASA list of the Africana Librarians Council (entry 1819). It should be noted that the postings were not requests for sources of information available on the Web, but requests seeking any kind of information, including print, archival, electronic, online or database resources. However, to the best of my knowledge, none of the queries elicited responses. Two other queries relate to enquiries I received from people seeking information on some specific Africa-related topics.

All the searches were conducted to retrieve relevant and high-quality information on the Web only, using Google only, no other search engines. Google search strategies are shown for each question, and results are evaluated in terms of their relevance, with a success rate score shown for each. All search terms refer to searches in Google Web Search unless otherwise indicated, and are all in lower case as Google is not case-sensitive (see Important points to remember – and the dos and the don’ts). For search strategies that resulted in a very large number of results, or large number of initial results, I have examined only the first 50 results, and which I describe as “top results”.

The searches were conducted during June and July 2004, and the results may be marginally different – possibly with a higher success and relevancy rating – when conducted at the time of publication of this guide or any time thereafter.

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Evaluating success and relevancy ratings

The sample search strategies are listed in order of success/relevancy ratings, which range from a poor 20% to a near maximum 95%. A low 20% – 40% rating indicates a generally unsuccessful search, or one that was only moderately successful and lead to a small number of online resources relevant to the query. A success rating of around 50% – 75% indicates search results that are quite good, or at the very least a good starting point for further research, but this would also need to embrace print and archival resources and subscription-based online databases. A score of 80% or more reflects excellent search results, retrieving many high-quality online resources.

It should perhaps be added that the views expressed here about “quality” are entirely subjective, and it is also possible that alternative Web search strategies could lead to better results for some of these search examples.

As indicated by their high scores, Google does very well for some types of searches. For those in which it does not score well, perhaps one thing is strikingly demonstrated: Google may be a wonderful thing, but the information sought is not necessarily out there on the Web; there is a continuing need to consult print and archival resources, online library catalogues, and numerous information-rich online databases which are readily accessible in academic libraries, but which are not indexed by the Googlebots.

Google and other search engines can quickly deal with popular, short queries such as “spiderman 2”, “tour de france” or “andy roddick”, to use three search queries that according to Google Zeitgeist http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html were among the top 10 gaining queries for the week ending July 5, 2004. However, it is quite another matter tracking down relevant and reliable online information for academic research – such as, for example, the role and status of women in Ethiopia during the period of the Italian fascist invasion of 1935 (as used in one of the examples below). This is not, of course, to suggest that Google is not capable of taking on advanced searches for more obscure or highly specialized information, or of aiding complex lines of enquiry, but one must always be aware of Google’s limitations.

With the enormous amount of information on the Web, which is growing daily and by the minute, retrieving information is likely to become more and more overwhelming, despite clever search engines like Google and their constantly improving page ranking algorithms and sophisticated retrieval and sort mechanisms. Practically every search nowadays will produce enormous results, and it will become more and more time-consuming to evaluate the results and separate the wheat from the chaff. There are clearly limits to the time anyone has to assess the results, and it is no good having blind faith in the Web, and Google, expecting the information you seek to be somewhere out there in cyberspace, and trying to guess the keywords that are likely to appear on relevant pages, when in fact the information is simply not there. Instead of spending hours on aimless or fruitless searches you will do much better to consult reference librarians or African studies subject librarians at your institution. Google can never replace their skills, and they can guide you to relevant online and print resources, whether for simple enquiries or to assist in complex research tasks.

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Sample search strategy 1

Topic/Query:
Seeking information and literature references on the role and status of women in Ethiopia and Eritrea when Mussolini’s army invaded in 1935.

Search terms:
women ethiopia eritrea italian invasion
ethiopia italian invasion women status
Both the above search terms retrieved several thousand pages. Most of the top results in the first search led to background information on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border dispute, Eritrean women soldiers, the culture of war and how it has affected women during the Eritrea – Ethiopian war, the status of women in contemporary Ethiopia and Eritrea, and some references to women in power during the early history of Ethiopia. The second search retrieved far too many results on Ethiopia, Eritrea, the Italian invasion, quotes from Mussolini speeches, etc., but little on the status of women.

A very broad search
women ethiopia
generated 1.2 million results!

italian invasion ethiopia women
or
women italian invasion ethiopia
both retrieved over 14,000 results, and while there were some reasonably relevant results on the status of women in the top results, there was nothing directly relevant, although

women's history ethiopia eritrea
fared slightly better.

A search including the word “Abyssinia”
abyssinia ethiopia women italian invasion
found some interesting results, albeit none directly relevant, for example an editorial, “Italy’s Conquest”, by Marcus Garvey (then President-General of the Universal Negro Improvement Association) in The Black Man issue of July/August 1936 http://www.marcusgarvey.com/np4.htm, and an exchange of correspondence between Garvey and Una Brown on the topic of the Italian conquest, and Garvey’s criticism of Emperor Haile Selassie. http://www.marcusgarvey.com/np11.htm. The results also led to links of various booksellers’ online catalogues, for example that of the (London) Africa Book Centre  http://www.africabookcentre.com/acatalog/Online_Catalogue_Ethiopia_86.html, offering several titles on the history of Abyssinia and Ethiopia, some of which might well contain relevant background.

Similar searches in Google Groups displayed some postings on the soc.culture.ethiopia Usenet group, including a Focus on Ethiopia Newsletter, but most postings are on women’s legal status, rights and equality in contemporary Ethiopia or in the 1980s and 1990s.

Most of the top Web Search results using the above search terms will eventually lead to references to the work of Richard Pankhurst, a leading historian of Ethiopia, and his wife Rita Pankhurst, and that of Richard Pankhurst’s mother, Sylvia Pankhurst (1882 – 1960), a socialist feminist and prominent suffragette, who lived in Ethiopia for many years and was editor of New Times and Ethiopia News, 1936 – 1956, and the Ethiopia Observer, 1956 – 1960. During the period from 1936 to 1960 she was involved in a vociferous campaign on behalf of Ethiopia.

For example, there is a complete bibliography of Richard Pankhurst, whose many books and articles also include papers on Ethiopian women, e.g. The Ethiopian Woman in Former Times: An Anthology Prepared for the International Women's Year Anniversary Exhibition at Revolution Square, Addis Ababa, and “The Role of Women in Ethiopian Economic, Social and Cultural Life: From the Middle Ages to the time of TJ Wodros” in R. Pankhurst, Ahmed Zekaria and Taddese Beyene, eds. Proceedings of the First National Conference of Ethiopian Studies, Addis Ababa. However, both these and other papers are only citations from the Pankhurst bibliography and are not accessible online; a search for book items in a library online catalogue would in fact have retrieved citations much more quickly. There is a limited amount of material that is accessible online – for example, extracts from Richard Pankhurst’s A History of Early Twentieth Century Ethiopia http://www.civicwebs.com/cwvlib/africa/ethiopia/pankhurst/early_20th_cent_
ethiopia_3.htm.

Alternative search terms:
Switching to search terms that include the name “Pankhurst”
pankhurst ethiopia women
or
pankhurst ethiopia women italian invasion
reduced the results sharply, and at the same time led to some resources that look more promising and might contain material of relevance – for example, Papers of, and relating to Sylvia Pankhurst, a repository accessible at the UK Genesis database “Developing Access to Women’s History Sources in the British Isles” at http://www.genesis.ac.uk/archive.jsp?typeofsearch=i&term=notimpl&highlight=
1&pk=1023; these include Sylvia Pankhurst’s papers and articles on a wide range of social and political topics, including the status of women, fascism, the League of Nations, Abyssinia and Ethiopia.

It also retrieved information about the Estelle Sylvia Pankhurst Archives for 1863 – 1960 at the International Institute of Social History in the Netherlands at http://www.iisg.nl/archives/gias/p/10765900.html, commercially available as Women, Suffrage, and Politics: The Papers of Sylvia Pankhurst, 1882 – 1960 from the Internationaal Instituut Voor Sociale Geschiedenis, Amsterdam from the specialist microform publisher Adam Matthew Publications (1994, 37 reels) http://www.adam-matthew-publications.co.uk/collect/p290.htm and

http://www.adam-matthew-publications.co.uk/collect/p291.htm. Moreover, the top results in the search also led to holdings information of this archive in a number of libraries, e.g. the microform collections “Women's Lives and Politics in the Cornell University Library” at http://www.library.cornell.edu/olinuris/ref/women.html.

Success/relevance rating: 20%

Sample search strategy 2

Topic/Query:
Doing research [and seeking more information] on the Miss Namibia pageant as a lens for cultural/national identity.

Note: responses to this question posted on the ALCASA list provided suggestions of some print and CD-ROM resources, including material contained in the NISC’s African Studies Database (see entry 114 in the African Studies Companion), but no freely accessible Web resources. A search in the combined NISC Africa-Wide:NiPAD database (now also incorporating their Southern African studies databases) would have retrieved 8 citations, most of them short articles from popular magazines.

Search terms:
namibia beauty contests cultural identity
namibia pageants cultural identity
“miss namiba” contest pageants
This retrieved, among others, the Miss Namibia official Web site http://www.missnamibia.com.na/ with profiles of past winners. Also found pages on other beauty contests and pageants, links to other commercial pageant-related sites, some articles and news items from The Namibian daily newspaper http://www.namibian.com.na/, but not a great deal else, apart from two items that might be of some relevance: an article by Aleksandar Bošković  “Images of Women in Anthropology and Popular Culture” published in Etnolog, Glasnik Slovenskega etnografskega muzeja 11 (Ljubljana, 2001) http://www.gape.org/sasa/outofafria.htm; and an online article from Afrol.com, “Beauty Contests inSouthern Africa Evolve New Image”, at http://www.afrol.com/News2002/sadc002_beauty_contests.htm.

Alternative search terms:
“miss namibia”
On its own, or with the same extra search terms added above, led to a link to “How to Become Miss Namibia”, an amusing short piece – dripping with sarcasm! – by Nghumbilemoya ya Ndakomani on the Community pages of The Namibian newspaper http://community.namibian.com.na/WebX?50@13.zujra3klfcD.0@.3041865b, which has some relevance to the topic. There are also several links to earlier short articles in The Namibian about Miss Namibia contests, with biographical profiles of past winners, together with a few references to the contest in newsgroups, and links to several African pageants Web sites.

"miss namibia " site:na
Restricted to the na (Namibia) domain, this search generated almost 300 results, but most are short news reports and links to the contest on Namibian portal sites.

A search in Google Image Search
“miss namibia”
produced, not surprisingly, quite a large number of results, mostly photographs, leading to links of popular and “glamour” sites, sites with profiles of contestants or past winners, the sites of Miss Namibia and Miss Universe contests, etc. However, there is very little here that could be considered to be of much relevance (bear in mind though that an images search on another topic, for example on an African ethnic group, could well generate far better results, see Google Image Search examples).

In Google Groups
“miss namibia”
found 33 links to postings on the topic in newsgroups, but all are of very limited interest. (Note: even with the terms in quotation marks, and as Google is not case-sensitive, it will also pick up links that contain phrases with the two words “miss nambia” – for example, “… you will miss Namibia's best …”).

In Google News
“miss namibia” or “miss namibia” contest
produced two recent (2004) items from The Namibian, a letter to the editor from a reader critical of one of the 2004 contestant’s pious pronouncements about her interest in charity work, and the contestant’s subsequent reply putting her case. Could possibly be of some relevance.

Alternative search terms:
Broader searches such as
namibia women cultural identity
nambia gender national identity
did not retrieve any results that could be considered to be directly relevant.

Success/relevance rating: 25%

Sample search strategy 3

Topic/Query:
“Does anybody know of any recent studies on taxes, tax systems and tax policies in Sub-Saharan Africa (general or for individual countries)? There seems to be some literature on South Africa but not very much on the rest of the continent.”

Search terms:
tax policies taxation Africa
This search retrieved a huge number of hits, a total of 188,000, because the key words are all fairly common. Among the top results there were, as anticipated, quite a large number of links to references, resources or books relating to taxation in South Africa. However, for the purpose of this search results analysis, I ignored these, and concentrated on studies on taxes and tax systems in other countries of Africa, but without searching for the same terms under individual African countries, e.g. tax policies taxation botswana, etc., which would be very time-consuming.

One relevant result was the Web site of Fiscal Reform in Support of Trade Liberalization Network and its online library resources on tax policy and analysis at http://www.fiscalreform.net/library/library_tax_policy.htm. This site offers a whole range of online papers on taxation, taxing systems, tax revenue, etc., in, among other countries, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa Tanzania, Uganda, and sub-Saharan Africa in general, all with full-text access.

Top results also led to the work on tax systems in Africa by Lise Rakner, Research Director at the Chr. Michelsen Institute in Norway http://www.cmi.no/staff/staff.cfm?staffid=20 and her Taxation, Aid and Democracy Project - The Evolution of Tax Systems in Namibia, Tanzania and Uganda http://www.cmi.no/research/tax/index.cfm, which in turn directs you to the final report about this project at http://www.cmi.no/research/tax/TADFinalReport04.pdf.

The same author also cropped up again in other results, notably as the author of a paper presented at an Institute of Development Studies (IDS, University of Sussex) taxation seminar held in October 2002 on “Taxation Perspectives: A Democratic Approach to Public Finance in Developing Countries”. The Rakner paper,

“Accountability Through Tax Reforms? The Case of Sub-Saharan Africa” can be accessed as a full text document at http://www.ids.ac.uk/gdr/cfs/activities/Rakner-Gloppen.pdf.

The above IDS seminar also included papers on various aspects of taxation in Africa – for example, “Decentralization and Local Revenue in Africa” by James Wunsch, and other papers from a panel on “Taxation in Africa”, which were pertinent to this query.

Other results included a collection of papers on “Property Tax Issues in Africa” available at the World Bank site
http://www1.worldbank.org/wbiep/decentralization/afrlib/Afproptx.htm.

Alternative search terms:
tax systems africa

The top results led to Library of Congress and OCLC WorldCat listings of library holdings of some relevant book titles, the same Rakner and World Bank papers mentioned above, and some references to South African sites and Internet documents. Among the top results there was also a link to Thomson Corporation tax research products, including the IBFD [International Bureau of Fiscal Documentation] Africa Tax Systemsservice
http://www.riahome.com/estore/detail.asp?ID=WAFR&SITE=/taxresearch/
checkpoint/allandareaproducts.asp,  
which documents the taxation systems of virtually every country in Africa (with the exception of South Africa, which is covered in a separate online service). However, this is a subscription-based product, and could only be accessed by authorized library users at libraries and institutions who subscribe to the service.

The alternative search found one relevant paper, “Tax Policy in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Role of Excise Taxation”, by Bruce Bolnick and Jonathan Haughton of the Harvard Institute for International Development, published as African Economic Policy Discussion Paper no. 2, July 1998 http://www.eagerproject.com/discussion2.shtml. Significantly, it also retrieved an International Monetary Fund (IMF) working paper published in 1997, entitled “Tax Effort in Sub-Saharan Africa”, by Janet Gale Stotsky and A. Wolde Mariam for which it provides full text access at the ELDIS site http://www.eldis.org/static/DOC4795.htm. It is significant because the Google search, albeit indirectly, led to this major, freely accessible gateway to a wide range of information on development issues, hosted by the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex. A quick search of the ELDIS database for "taxation africa" found 45 papers, most of which are highly appropriate. Sample searches on ELDIS for articles on taxation in individual African countries were also successful, and for many countries it found three or more full-text articles.

Other alternative search terms:
tax policy documents Africa
This search didn’t find much of relevance, except for some material on South African tax legislation, a number of links to World Bank publications, and a document containing summaries of tax legislation in Ghana, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda, published in The International Journal of Not-for-Profit Law vol. 2, issue 4
http://www.icnl.org/journal/vol2iss4/cr_Subsaharan.htm.

fiscal constitutions africa
or
fiscal constitutions tax systems africa
These somewhat broader terms led, as the top result, to the very useful Summaries of Fiscal Constitutions in Africa, by Joachim Wehner, published by Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA) Africa Budget Project in December 2000 http://www.idasact.org.za/bis/Default%20Documents/AFLI_country_
summaries.doc. Some other publications from IDASA’s Budget Information Service may also be at least partially relevant.

The search also retrieved two articles covering taxation topics in Nigeria: “Fiscal Federalism. The Nigerian Experience” by Ayodele Jimoh www.uneca.org/eca_resources/Meetings_Events/ ESPD/fiscal/Papers/formatted_jimoh.pdf and “Productivity of the Nigerian Tax System: 1970-1990” by Ademola Ariyo www.aercafrica.org/DOCUMENTS/RP67.PDF.

The top level domains of the above two results in turn led to Web sites where additional resources of relevance might well be available: those of the United Nations Economic Commission in Africa in Addis Ababa, and the Africa Economic Research Consortium in Nairobi, who have an extensive publishing programme of research and working papers.

Success/relevance rating: 50%

Although “recent studies” in the query were fairly broadly interpreted to mean studies published within the last five years or so, the above results are quite good. They are certainly a good starting point. However, any serious researcher on the topic would also need to undertake literature searches of print material, online catalogue searches, and of (subscription-based) online services, databases and indexes of legal documents.

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Sample search strategy 4

Topic/Query:
“I’m trying to purchase a copy of Nnamdi Azikiwe's book Renascent Africa, if possible in a first edition, which I understand was originally published by the author in 1937. Can you help?”

This is the classic work by African visionary and pan-Africanist Nnamdi Azikiwe (1904 – 1996), founder of the University of Nigeria in Nsukka and first President of independent Nigeria from 1963 to 1966, in which he sets out his philosophy of a united Nigeria and a renascent Africa – the transitional period between the old Africa and the future – and which was first published in Accra in 1937.

Search terms:
azikiwe “renascent africa”
This search retrieved 75 results (without the quotation marks, marginally more), and included biographical profiles of Azikiwe, sources of critical commentary on the book, listings of this title in bibliographies and course lists, links to other books written by Nnamdi Azikiwe, and more. Among the top results it also led to information about library holdings listed in the OCLC’s WorldCat http://www.worldcatlibraries.org/wcpa/ow/3c739d431bb9acd4.html, for the Frank Cass 1968 facsimile reprint edition, as well as the Negro Universities Press reprint edition of 1969.

Also among the top results, it found an original first edition, in good condition, on offer from a specialist Africana bookseller at http://www.greatepicbooks.com/epics/february99.html with a price tag of $50. As this vendor’s catalogue listing goes back to 1999, the book may of course have been sold by now. However, the search also found pages from the excellent Advance Book Exchange

http://www.abetitles1.com/Title/2348520/Renascent+Africa.html, offering the Frank Cass and Negro Universities Press reprint editions (at prices ranging from $49.95 to $146) from three US and UK antiquarian dealers, as well as the original edition “Rebound ex library copy”, currently (July 2004) offered for $95.81 from UK Twickenham Bookseller Anthony C. Hall, with a link to this bookseller’s Web site at http://www.abebooks.com/home/ACHALLBOOKS/.

Additionally the search retrieved two Amazon.com listings for the Greenwood/Negro Universities Press reprint editions.

Success/relevance rating: 85%

While, surprisingly, no current editions of this title would appear to be in print (not even from a Nigerian publisher), the search did very quickly track down second-hand copies of the book available from several vendors, including copies of the first edition. Indeed, Google and the Web are excellent for hunting down difficult to obtain or rare books, including rare Africana available from a large number of specialist vendors.

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Sample search strategy 5

Topic/Query:
“I’m seeking information on solar cooking and heating in Africa as a basis to introduce solar cookers in Burkina Faso.”

Search terms:
solar heaters cookers africa
africa solar heaters cookers
or
solar cookers cooking africa
The first two searches retrieved over 7,800 results. Among the top ten results the search led to the Solar Cooking Archives,http://solarcooking.org/, an immensely rich resource with a huge number of links, some providing more general and technical information, but also listing a large number of reports from African countries. In addition to two articles on solar cooking activities in Burkina Faso, there are articles about solar cooking projects in Egypt, Ethiopia, Gambia, Kenya, Lesotho, Mali, Madagascar, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Moreover, the site also offers an International Directory of Solar Cooking Promoters http://solarcooking.org/directory.asp, listed by country of activity, as well as a directory of Solar Cooking Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) http://solarcooking.org/contacts.htm.

Other top results for this search found Web sites devoted to Solar Energy Manufacturers in South Africa

http://energy.sourceguides.com/businesses/byGeo/byC/SouthAfrica/byP/solar/
byB/mfg/mfg.shtml; Solar Cooker Resources http://journeytoforever.org/sc_link.html; an excellent Peace Corps site on Solar Cookers in West Africa and Around the World with yet more links to additional sources http://peacecorps.mtu.edu/gk.htm; and the Solar Cooking Design Guidehttp://www.ncalifblackengineers.org/Global%20Village/scd.htm, hosted by  the International Committee of the Northern California Council of Black Professional Engineers (NCCBPE), who are currently developing mechanisms for African American engineers to establish technical links with partners in Africa. One of the projects involves the use of solar energy to improve the quality of rural life in Africa. The guide includes a useful Solar Cooker Design Contest for Students, and a Solar Cooker Design Contest for Villagers.

Another pertinent result was a 7-page technical report from the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) on a Solar Cooker Field Test in South Africa
http://www.gtz.de/energie/download/solar_cooker_fieldtest.pdf.

Alternative search terms:
solar thermal energy africa
Results here included publications from the Intermediate Technology Development Group, including a helpful article on Solar Thermal Energy
http://www.itdg.org/html/technical_enquiries/docs/solar_thermal_energy.pdf.

This search also led to the Nairobi-based African Energy Policy Research Network (AFREPEN) http://www.afrepren.org/, a programme on energy, environment and sustainable development, which has published over 300 working papers on sustainable energy development.

Other alternative search terms:
One could have refined the search, if necessary, to include the same subject search terms but instead of “Africa” use “West Africa” or individual country names, e.g.
solar cookers cooking burkina faso
The above search terms generated links to many relevant sites and resources, including that of the Solar Household Energy Inc – Solar Cooking for Economic Development and Environmental Relief project
http://www.she-inc.org/gchallenge.htm, and an article first published in SCI Review in December 2000, “CooKit Use and Marketing Taught in Burkina Faso”, by Wietske A. Jongbloed http://www.she-inc.org/article.php?id=3.

Another relevant organization is Solar Cookers International (SCI) http://www.edc-cu.org/, a non-profit organization established in 1987 in Sacramento, California, which has conducted workshops in many African countries, including Burkina Faso, see e.g.  http://www.edc-cu.org/pdf/Solar%20Cookers%20International.pdf

Importantly, the search terms also led to the Web site, CV and publications of Damiel M. Kammen

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~kammen/danscv.pdf, Director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL) at the University California Berkeley, who has written extensively on renewable energy, technology transfer, and solar cookers, for example his Solar Cooking for Developing Nations (1991) or the Solar Cookbook. Less Wood, Less Smoke, Better Health (with M. Nditu, Nairobi: Academy Science Publishers, 1996). Most of his more recent articles are freely accessible in PDF format at http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~rael/papers.html.

In Google Groups
solar heaters cookers africa
turned up only a handful of results, but
solar cookers africa
was much better with over 170 results, including a good number of highly relevant postings – for example, 12 postings in a discussion thread on the use of solar box cookers in West Africa on the sci.environment group, and some relevant postings in others newsgroups such as alt.energy.renewable or bit.listserv.devel-l.

In Google Image Search
solar cookers africa
retrieved only 10 results, mostly from solarcooking.org. (see above), and this is due to the fact that Google Image Search searches the text relating to images. However, dropping the word “Africa” and typing  in
solar cooker
it found over 1,300 images. And, using the plural form,
solar cookers 
it retrieved over 500 results, which, for reasons which I cannot explain, seem to be slightly better in terms of relevance for this particular sample search. There were rich pickings here, including photographs, drawings with technical specifications, and other material, although not necessarily related to use of solar cookers in Africa. However, among the top 50 results it led to a photograph from the Sonnenenergie für Westafrika e.V Web site at http://www.solar-afrika.de/indexNS.html, a German development organization supporting solar energy self-help projects in West Africa whose Web site offers links and resources to many of their projects in Africa, including solar cooking projects in Burkina Faso.

Success/relevance rating: 90%

Sample search strategy 6

Topic/Query:
“We are producing a couple of training manuals re human rights violations … we are looking for an African cartoonist or illustrator who knows how to make illustrations that have some reference to a manual style text and, at the same time, is light hearted in tone and style.”

First a word about choosing search terms for this query: while cartoonists, illustrators and graphic designers can all be considered to be “artists”, it is not advisable here to include the word “artists” because it is too broad a term, and will lead to many Web sites devoted to African art, databases of African artists, such as Africancolours.net http://www.africancolours.net/, African Crafts Online http://africancraft.com, profiles of African artists at the very useful The Short Century. Independence and Liberation  Movements in Africa 1945-1994 http://www.hkw.de/deutsch/kultur/2001/tsc/kuenstler.html (based on an exhibition), or the extensive database of African artists’ portfolios at the South African art.co.za site at http://art.co.za/. However, these are all primarily databases of African artists who are painters, sculptors, textile designers, etc., rather than cartoonists or book illustrators.

Search terms:
cartoonists illustrators africa
generated almost 600 results, while the addition of an extra term
cartoonists cartooning illustrators africa
actually reduced the results to just 282.

Ideally, one is looking for databases or directories with entries about African cartoonists and illustrators, and with some examples of their work.

Accordingly, alternative search terms might also include the terms “directory” or “database” (see Alternative search terms below).

For South Africa it is relatively easy, and the above search led to two online databases that offer profiles of the work of illustrators in South Africa. One, Sparx Media, is at http://www.illustrators.co.za/ and the other is South African Cartoonists & Illustrators at http://www.cartoonist.co.za/. (All the artists can be contacted through these Web sites.)  It also found an Italian site devoted to humour and satire http://www.fanofunny.com/links/cartoonists03.html, which has profiles of five African cartoonists.

Another good source retrieved, The Cartoonists Rights Network International (CRN), has affiliates in several African countries, http://www.cartoon-crn.com/filial.htm, although only Morocco and Zimbabwe actually have pages at this time, the rest still being “under construction”. This in turn led to the work of Moroccan and Zimbabwean cartoonists and book illustrators – for example, Tony Namate in Zimbabwe, who is well known for his witty and courageous cartoons in the Daily News until it was closed down by the Mugabe regime under the notorious Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act, and currently works as a freelancer, producing cartoons for The Standard and Zimbabwe Independent newspapers. A story about him can be found at the CRN site at http://www.cartoon crn.com/crn_zimbabwe.htm, and examples of the work he has done for several NGO publishers, such as WildNet Africa, can be viewed at http://wildnetafrica.co.za/cites/info/cites_cartoons_01.html.

Although it took quite a bit of scrolling, this search also led to two African cartoonists who have their own Web sites, offering galleries of their work. One is Godfrey Mwampembwa (aka “GADO”), cartoonist of the Daily Nation in Kenya, who has done cartoons on HIV/Aids, freedom of the press, gender issues, globalization, and more. His Web site is at http://www.gadonet.com/. The other is Tayo Fatunla, whose cartoons regularly appeared in the (now defunct) weekly West Africa magazine, but who has also done extensive work for many of the top Nigerian newspapers, including the Guardian (Lagos). His Web site is at http://www.tayofatunla.com/.

Significantly, the above search also retrieved links to a few articles on cartooning in Africa, e.g. “Laying Cartooning on the Line in Africa”, published on the Web site of the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) http://www.wacc.org.uk/modules.php?name=News&file=print&sid=390. While this article is not an address source or directory, it mentions a dozen or so political cartoonists by name, who can then be tracked down – assuming Web sites or Internet documents exist – by searches for individual names (enclosing names in double quotation marks). For example, such searches found a fairly large number of Web pages and references to one of South Africa’s top cartoonists, Jonathan Zapiro; Kenyan cartoonist and book illustrator, Terry Hirst; Frank Odoi, the Ghanaian cartoonist and comic-book illustrator working and living in Kenya; and James Gayo, one of Tanzania's most prominent cartoonists and the creator of a well-known comic strip. The links and sources indicated in the WACC article also led to a highly relevant book title, Comics with an Attitude: A Guide to the Use of Comics in Development Information, by Leif Packalén and Frank Odoi, published by the Department for International Development Co-operation of the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The links section of this online book led, in turn, to the excellent Finnish Web site on comics http://www.worldcomics.fi/, which includes sections on “African Food-related comics”, with examples of the work of Frank Odoi and Katti Ka-Batembo from Tanzania, and “Tanzanian Grassroots Comics” with cartoons by a number of Tanzanian NGO activists.

Finally, the above search terms found various directory listings, including freelancers, albeit mostly in South Africa, and mostly designers (including those active in Web design), such as the Ananzi directory listing at http://www.ananzi.co.za/catalog/ArtsandCulture/GraphicDesign/.

The search terms
cartoonists illustrators Africa –site:za
eliminated many of the South African sites, although it still picked up South African .com sites

Alternative search terms:
cartoonists illustrators africa directory
cartoonists illustrators africa database
These two search strategies, searching for both content and the form, retrieved far too many results because “directory”, “directories”, “database”, or “databases” are common words. The search including the word “database” was marginally better and did find one relevant resource among the top results, the Contemporary African Database, developed by the Africa Centre in London as a participatory online project, and which is at  http://people.africadatabase.org/en/n/cat/374/. This includes 12 entries for African cartoonists, most with some profile or biographical information.

cartooning africa
This retrieved the same WACC article mentioned above, together with another interesting paper “Cartooning in Nigeria: Paradigmatic Traditions”, by Tejumola Olaniyan, which appeared in the first issue of the online journal Ijele: Art eJournal of the African World in 2000 http://www.ijele.com/ijele/vol1.1/olaniyan.html. Additionally it found some links to cartooning in South Africa, but very little else that could be considered relevant.

Surprisingly, the search (conducted in June 2004) did notfind links to John A. Lent’s new book Cartooning in Africa, published by the Hampton Press in April 2004, presumably because the Hampton Press Inc.’s Web site is still under construction, although the book is actually listed on several Internet booksellers’ Web sites, including those of vendors in Germany and Norway.  Incidentally, none of search terms used above retrieved details about the earlier title edited by John Lent, Comic Art in Africa, Asia, Australia and Latin America: A Comprehensive International Bibliography(Greenwood Press, 1966).

cartoonists book illustrators africa 
cartoonists book illustrators directory africa
Both of these searches found more than 3,000 results. The problem here is that both searches displayed many irrelevant entries because the word “book” is included, whereas
cartoonists "book illustrators" africa
which treats “book illustrators” as one unit, and reduced them to just 54, although the results were not very inspiring.

“book illustrators” africa
This search generated 1,700 results, but only the first 50 or so results were of some relevance and most were links to South African sites. However, it also retrieved some references to articles and news items from the Bellagio Publishing Network Newsletter, especially items on the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, which in 1999 focused on children’s book illustrators in Africa, for example, a report by Rachel Wiggans.“Amabhuku – African Illustrators at Bologna Children's Book Fair, April 1999” in BPN Newsletter no. 25, http://www.bellagiopublishingnetwork.org/newsletter25/wiggans2.htm. While this report focuses on the more specialist area of children’s book illustrators, it mentions various artists by name, and more information about them can be tracked down by searches under their individual names, as described for the WACC article mentioned above. For example, there are about 30 Web references to the work of African children’s book illustrator Baba Wagu Diakite.

book illustrators africa
or
+book +illustrators +africa
retrieved some useful links among the top 20 results or so, including links to illustrators’ portfolios, albeit mostly South African again, such as The Illustrators Portfolio http://www.illustrators.co.za/, the most extensive online listing of book illustrators in South Africa. It also displayed a link to a searchable database from the International Network for the Availability of Scientific Publications (INASP), The Book Chain in Anglophone Africa http://www.inasp.info/pubs/bookchain/ that contains a few entries of illustrators’ professional associations in Africa, such as the Ghana Association of Book Designers and Illustrators.

graphic artists book illustrators africa
retrieved far too many hits, while
graphic artists “book illustrators” africa
again treating “book illustrators” as one unit, was marginally better, but still had far too many results because “graphic artists” can be found on thousands of Web pages. However, it did lead to a source that is highly pertinent, the online version of the Publishers Association of South Africa’s Freelancers Directory containing 51 entries http://publishsa.co.za/cgi-bin/db/db.cgi?db=freelance&uid=default&view_records
=1&Name=*, with full contact information.

Using a phrase, for example
"list of african book illustrators"
generated zero results, as did
"directory of african book illustrators",
while 
“directory of african artists”
was more successful, albeit retrieving far too many off-topic hits.

illustrators africa
produced results of some relevance, but also retrieved links to several irritating and misleading sites, such as a http://www.marketingtool.com/channel/illustrator/b.455.g.19015.html, which is headed South Africa Illustrators Directory – but has no entries! And if you click on to Central African Illustrators Directory http://www.marketingtool.com/channel/illustrator/b.455.g.11662.html it again displays a page that says “No items found”. Even worse is the Biz Directory: it looks highly promising at first sight as it offers a sub-menu “Illustration: Africa” for all the countries of Africa, but all it displays on every country page is the words “results found”, which in fact are zero results, apart from the same three links to other search engines and directories where it suggests information might be found http://www.biz-directory.org/dir/966/2.php. For example, under the Illustration – Ghana pages it asks, ”Having trouble finding Illustration?” Clicking this link,
http://www.search-online.org/keyword/illustration.html, led to yet more completely useless results!

Searching in Google Image Search for
cartoonists africa
or in other combinations, was not very successful, largely because Google Image Search searches the text relating to images and hence generated only a small number of results. However, the first result did lead to the splendid Lambiek Comiclopedia http://www.lambiek.net/artists/, an illustrated online compendium of over 5,000 international comic artists with biographies and artwork examples. It is searchable by name of artist. Browsing the A–Z list of artists is also possible, and you could probably recognize African names from this list. However, a better approach is to search by entering a country name into the search box of this database, as the country name will be identified in most cases as part of the profile information. For example, it found 35 entries for South Africa, 4 cartoonists from Nigeria, 10 for Kenya, 7 for Tanzania, and 1 each from Ghana and Senegal.

Success/relevance rating: 85%

There are some rich resources here. This is a good example of a Google search for which many of the initial results will not be very relevant, but with a bit of experimenting and scrolling through Google’s results pages, using different approaches in formulating search queries, and different combinations of search terms and/or their order, will eventually lead to Web resources that are very relevant.

Sample search strategy 7

Topic/Query:
Seeking current information on child soldiers in Africa.

Search terms:
child soldiers africa
children armed conflict africa
Both the above search terms retrieved good results, though the first one is marginally better. The top two links in the first search terms led to The Children and Armed Conflict Unit, a joint project of the Children’s Legal Centre and the Human Rights Centre at the University of Essex http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/. Its “Issues and Themes: Child Soldiers” pages at http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/themes/child_soldiers/default.htm

offer free access to a very large number of articles, analysis, briefing papers and press reports on child soldiers (primarily in Africa but also elsewhere), together with links to international protocols and UN Security Council resolutions, regional agreements, and more. It also offers more general information on child rights and children and war, and has many links to related sites http://www.essex.ac.uk/armedcon/links/child_soldiers/default.html.

As this is such a marvellously rich resource one could probably end the search right there and then.

However, among the next 20 or so results there were equally good pickings, among them:
An extensive overview and report from ReliefWeb, “The Use of Children as Soldiers in Africa. A country analysis of child recruitment and participation in armed conflict”, http://www.reliefweb.int/library/documents/chilsold.htm, assessing the extent of the military recruitment of African children and their use as soldiers in armed conflict, including a country-by-country analysis. Also available on Relief Web is a UN Children’s Fund document (January 2004) “Child Soldiers: West & Central Africa Region” http://www.reliefweb.int/w/rwb.nsf/0/236aa4477584e02385256e13006da23a?
OpenDocument.

An Amnesty International report “Childhood Denied: Child Soldiers in Africa” (June 2004)

http://web.amnesty.org/pages/childsoldiers-africanchild-eng, and further current reports on the same topic can be found on the Amnesty site.

A recent BBC news story “No Respite for Congo's Child Soldiers” (September 2003) http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/3093622.stm.

“Child Soldiers Resources” on the Web site of Andrew Vachss, a US attorney, writer and consultant,

http://www.vachss.com/help_text/child_soldiers.html, with links to articles and press reports from major US media, plus a useful directory of international organizations and coalitions (with full address details and links to Web sites) involved in campaigns against the use of child soldiers.

Publications, reports and press releases from the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers http://www.child-soldiers.org/, an organization working to prevent the recruitment and use of children as soldiers, to secure their demobilisation and to ensure their rehabilitation and reintegration into society. The sub-Saharan Africa section of its “Child Soldiers an Overview” is at http://www.child-soldiers.org/cs/childsoldiers.nsf/0/
c654714db75e84f880256ae50045e5c1?OpenDocument#Sub-Saharan%20Africa, and the site also offers a large number of resources and access to a newsletter.

There is full-text access to a couple of monographs published by the South Africa-based Institute for Security Studies, Child Soldiers in Southern Africa (1999), by Miguel A Mausse and Daniel Nina. http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/Monographs/No37/Contents.html, and an earlier title in the same monograph series, Using Children in Armed Conflict: A Legitimate African Tradition? Criminalising Recruitment of Child Soldiers (1998) by T.W. Bennett, http://www.iss.co.za/Pubs/Monographs/No32/Contents.html

Full-text access to a World Bank Africa Region Working Paper Series Child Soldiers: Preventing, Demobilizing and Reintegrating by Beth Verhey (November 2001) http://www.worldbank.org/afr/wps/wp23.htm.

Information about the Children in Armed Conflict in AfricaINTERACT project, funded by the United Nations University and the Norwegian and Canadian governments, which is intended to stop the practice of using children in war by conducting an extensive survey of the problem of child soldiers in Africa
http://www.unu.edu/p&g/conflict/children-armedconflict.html

Extracts from an article from the UN publication Africa Recovery, vol.15  no. 33, October 2001, (and part of special feature: “Protecting Africa's Children”) “The Road from Soldier Back to Child. Demobilization and rehabilitation are only the first steps.” http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol15no3/153chil2.htm

The search found a great deal more, and scrolling through the first 200 or so results revealed many other sources and Internet documents on the topic.

In Google Groups the same search terms
child soldiers africa
found a fairly substantial number of relevant postings on the topic.

Google News (as at July 2004) retrieved 380 recent press stories and reports from around the world, most of which are pertinent.

Google Image Search found 115 results, most of them relevant and mostly photographs of child soldiers, groups of demobilized children, or other images relating to stories and articles about child soldiers in Africa and whose URLs, in turn, led to yet more possible sources.

Success/relevance rating: 95%

I would be most reluctant to give any Google search a 100% success rating, but this one comes very close. While it is, admittedly, a fairly simple enquiry, it is the kind of search that, because of its subject matter – i.e. it is an important, highly topical, and current issue of concern – it is ideally suited to Google, and retrieved remarkably good results, finding a large number of high-quality Web sites and resources in a few seconds.

 ^top

For example: 

good versus bad
Winner: good (1,833,000,000 results) 
Loser: bad (79,600,000 results) 

Hans Zell versus Homer Simpson
Winner: Homer Simpson (566,000 results)
Loser: Hans Zell (56,900 results) 

Chinua Achebe versus Wole Soyinka
Winner: Chinua Achebe (52,300 results) 
Loser: Wole Soyinka (48,700 results)
However, interestingly, if both these names are entered with double 
quotation marks,  “Wole Soyinka” with 43,200 results just edges 
“Chinua Achebe” with 42,500 results. 

 ^top

Using Google for African Studies Research is  published as an adjunct  to The African Studies Companion: A Guide to Information Sources New 4th edition 2006 now published

 

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