Our Project

Too often, African women’s participation and perspectives have been dismissed from historical narratives around decolonization and post-colonial social struggles.

The Projet Archives des Femmes du Mali (PAF) preserves thousands of endangered papers and photographs belonging to a generation of Malian women who undertook anti-colonial activism in the 1950s and feminist social reform projects in the following decades.

Stocked in private homes, storage rooms, and granaries, much of this material is exceptionally vulnerable to physical damage. Our project aims to preserve this material by collecting, archiving and digitizing it.

Our Collections

The collections of the eight women we have surveyed and/or collected to date reveal the deep investment of Malian women activists in projects for social justice and human rights.

An important body of material relates specifically to Muslim associations. Another significant cluster forms around the interface between international groups and women's organizations in Mali, as well as Malian women's internationalism. Other materials include outreach to rural women in the context of environmental initiatives and adult literacy in Mali's national languages.

Lastly, the photographic portion of the collection depicts a rich list of subjects, such as pictures of Malian griots on tour to announce independence.

Our partners and funders

Centre National d'Information et de Documentation sur la Femme et l'Enfant (CNDIFE) Bamako, Mali. CNDIFE, our main partner, is a public research library and documentation center that is part of the Ministry for the Promotion of Women, Children, and the Family. CNDIFE provides logistical and human resources as we store, catalogue, archive and digitize the physical materials collected from their owners. CNDIFE has also hosted several PAF public events.

Modern Endangered Archives Program (MEAP) University of California, Los Angeles, USA. MEAP is a UCLA Library granting program funded by Arcadia. MEAP aims to digitize and make accessible endangered archival materials from the 20th and 21st Centuries, including print, photographic, film, audio, ephemeral, and born digital objects. MEAP provides the funding for our digitization effort, and will host the full digitized collection.

For 2023-24, we are supported by a Public Diplomacy Grant from the United States Embassy in Mali. The funds support further archival digitization, as well as training several University of Bamako students in archival research methods and public history writing.