The ''Dictionary of African Biography'' is a six-volume

biographical dictionary A biographical dictionary is a type of encyclopedic dictionary limited to biographical information. Many attempt to cover the major personalities of a country (with limitations, such as living persons only, in ''Who's Who'', or deceased people onl ...

, published by

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

. Published in 2012, the editors-in-chief are Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and

Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is an American literary critic, professor, historian, and filmmaker, who serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African Amer ...

, both of the

W. E. B. Du Bois Institute The W. E. B. Du Bois Research Institute, formerly the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research, is part of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research located at Harvard University. Its main work is ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. The print version of the dictionary has 2,100 entries covering the whole of the continent of

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

, from 1490 BC to today; entries continue to be added online.

Awards

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members a ...

Booklist Editors' Choice: Reference Sources (2012)

References

External links

Dictionary of African Biography
from Oxford
Oxford African American Studies Center
(online version) Biographical dictionaries Books about Africa {{ref-book-stub