Recent Activities:
The weakness of the project in the late 1980s and in 1990s was its uneven functioning with national committees based solely in Europe, namely Denmark and U.K. The committees of Ghana and Israel (also of the Sudan and Norway) had by then ceased to be active. Between 1986-1997 all FHA volumes were prepared and published by the British Committee which alone continued to be active, and the Project virtually stopped to be an international project and turned into a British enterprise.
Since 1997, when the direction of the project returned to the country of its original inspiration, the new International Director has been trying to revive the FHA project as an International project, to evaluate and improve its organization and its external relations. Efforts have been made to increase the number of new national committees, especially in the European countries with huge collections of African historical sources and in Sub-Saharan Africa itself. National committees were set up in Belgium, Portugal, Russia and Slovakia.
Since 2000 efforts have been made to improve the International dimension of the project by
holding meetings of the chairs of the national committees of the FONTES HISTORIAE
AFRICANAE Project and invited African scholars to exchange information about activities
and priorities, examine the state of documentation and to formulate plans for publication, and by organising international seminars and colloquia in Africa. The first FHA meeting took place in Bratislava, Slovak Republic. However, to enable African scholars to participate,
all the following meetings took place in Africa. These meetings have proved to be extremely
valuable in the promotion of awareness of the project among African scholars, in facilitating African participation and the exchange of information about activities and priorities.
Meetings and Colloquia organised under the auspices of the UAI and the FHA Project
- Bratislava, Slovakia, chateau Budmerice, September, 2000, topic: FONTES HISTORIAE AFRICANAE Project : Retrospect and Prospect.
- University of Legon, Ghana, January 2002, topic FONTES HISTORIAE AFRICANAE : Prospects and Challenges for the Future
- Université Cheick Anta Diop, Dakar, Senegal, 2004, topic Patrimoine et sources historiques en Afrique
- Université Abdou Moumouni, Niamey, Niger, 2007, topic Les manuscrits africains, arabes et ajamis, comme sources historiques un Afrique
- Timbuktu, Mali- a meeting with invited African scholars from Senegal (CODESRIA),Mali, Niger and Ghana
- Sokoto, Nigeria, 2010, topic ARABIC MANUSCRIPTS IN WEST AFRICA: THEIR PRESERVATION AND PUBLICATION
- International Conference on Sources for African History in African languages written in Arabic (Ajami) African and Arab scripts was held in Maputo, Mozambique, 16-18 april 2012.
- International Colloquium of Representatives of National Committees at the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, from 5th to 6th December 2016.
- The international conference entitled The Sources for African History: rethinking the methods, challenges and opportunities, organized on Beit al-Hikma, The Tunisian Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts in Tunis-Carthage, Tunisia, from 6th to 8th April 2023