Official documents from Africa

The Nordic Africa Institute library's collection of official documents can be located in the library catalogue, AfricaLit. 'Official documents' is the keyword used for the material.

• Search directly in AfricaLit's special search form for Official documents / Government publications.

The library has collected important web sites that contain different types of official documents in the link collection A Guide to Africa on the Internet. Browse the links or use the web site search feature. Use 'official documents' as a keyword.

• Search official documents in A Guide to Africa on the Internet.
• Search statistics in A Guide to Africa on the Internet.
• Search banks in A Guide to Africa on the Internet.

Official documents, or government publications, comprise all publications produced under the official auspices of legislative bodies, decision-making and judicial organs, civil service departments, courts of law, independent institutions, committees, people in authority, etc.

These publications are essential to social scientific studies on Africa as they are principle information sources for economic, legal, government and political data and are considered to be scientific tools of lasting value. There are constitutions, censuses, development plans, budgets, economic reports, diverse statistics, and much more.

Authorities with the important task of disseminating basic decision-making data are choosing with greater frequency to make their official documents available on the internet. The range, however, is still uneven, and while some states offer a rich collection of official documents in full text, there are other countries that supply only a limited number of official documents in summarized form.