webGuinea
Archives Nationales Publiques

David C. Conrad

SUNY-Oswego

Archival Research in Guinea-Conakry

History in Africa. A Journal of Method.
African Studies Association. Vol. 20, 1993, pp.368-78

There has been an effective movement afoot in the Republic of Guinea to improve the climate of study and research for local and foreign scholars alike. The most obvious physical evidence of this is the dramatically improved archival facility in Conakry. In April 1991 les Archives Nationales de Guinée began moving into an entirely new, specially constructed building next to the Ministère de la Jeunesse, des Arts, de la Culture et des Sports. By the summer of 1992, the lengthy process of settling into the building's 1600 square meters appeared to be complete.
This is a modem, well-equipped facility, organized and administered by trained Guinean archivists who are appropriately concerned with preservation of resources. A tour of some of the main archival storage areas revealed a large collection of bound, well-preserved documents. According to the Associate-Director, Seydouba Cissé, there are five such climate-controlled rooms, containing a total of 5,000 meters of metal shelving. According to the personnel list there are two conservators on the staff. At their disposal is a studio for restoration and a room for cleaning books and documents 1. There is also a microfilm room (I did not have time to examine this collection), and a microfilm reading machine. In the summer of 1992 photocopying was readily available at a reasonable price per page. The card catalog in the air-conditioned reading room was in fairly good order, though some student mémoires (see below) were filed under categories inconsistent with their titles.
One of the archival collections will be of particular interest for scholars of the Sékou Touré era, because it is reserved for documents from various government ministries for the past thirty years. Earlier documents include a register of legal decrees and ordinances for the colonies of the Rivières du Sud from 1720 to 1935. Volumes labeled J.O. (Journal Officiel) contain colonial gazettes from 1966 to 1958 for all the former French West African territories, including Sénégal, Côte d'Ivoire, Guinea, Dahomey, Togo, Upper Volta, and the French Sudan.
General correspondence of the lieutenant governors and governors general for Afrique Occidentale Française is available for the period from 1890 to 1958. There are also collections of maps, photographs, and newspapers for that period. Another section includes general dossiers d'affairs, addressing political issues, economics, military policy, Islam, public works, agriculture, water and forests, and cattle breeding.
A potentially useful body of information exists in the Mémoires de diplôme of students graduating from the universities of Conakry and Kankan. The National Archives collection of memoires from the University of Conakry mainly includes those from 1973 to 1978, but the rate of production is large, so even five years' worth is significant. Following is a list of titles from four categories in the card catalog. One of those not included is a section labeled “Sciences Juridiques,” containing 67 titles. (Call numbers follow the titles):

Histoire

Lettres Modernes

“Linguistique” In addition to those listed here, there were 39 linguistic studies categorized under “Philosophie-Math” with the “Linguistique” card following those entries. Among the miscellaneous entries following the “Linguistique” designation were several titles not listed here, related to political and revolutionary themes of the PDG.

Sociologie-Ethnologie Géographie- Climatologie

Many of these were written under the influence of Sekou Toure's “cultural revolution.” Of those I looked at, several begin with quotations from Toure's speeches and/or laudatory explanations of how the President inspired the choice of topic. Ansoumane Camara is one who offers both, and his choice of' a quotation at the beginning of his literary study of' a Sunjata episode exemplifies the trend of the time:

Tout ce qui a eté légué par nos ancêtres à la génération actuelle doit être revalorisé pour que la jeunesse qui monte connaisse des richesses plus grandissantes et aille plus rapidement au bonheur ambitionne par tout le peuple. —Ahmed Sékou Touré: Revolution Culturelle (Tome XVII). 2

Toure's ideological influence on these students and the resulting bias regarding choice and treatment of topic is evident in another thesis, in which Amadou Diallo rejoices that since Guinea's independence, the national party had vigorously attacked “les sciences mystifiées.” Diallo's concluding call for the destruction of the relics and sites of traditional occult practices is only one of many elements in the student mémoires suggesting avenues of research in various disciplines. In this case, for example, it would be interesting to know if such a statement was written with genuine and enduring conviction, or mainly to draw attention to the student's own suitability for a position in Toure's government:

Détruire les fétiches, abattre les arbres sacrés, faire planer une peur salutaire dans la conscience du sorcier, transformer la structure socio-économique du village, voilà les tâches auxquelles le Parti-Etat de Guinée s'est attelé pour débarrasser le pays des facteurs nocifs de la mystification.
Le tout soutenu par une gigantesque Révolution Culturelle Socialiste. Prêt pour la Révolution 3

The national library is said to contain mémoires from 1968 to 1980, which would account for some of those not presently held at the national archives. I did not see these myself, but a report on the Bibliothèque Nationale by Lawrence S. Fein of the USIS in Abidjan indicates that the government eventually intends to restore it:

The Bibliothèque Nationale occupies space on the second floor of an old and ramshackle colonial building, and is completely non-functioning. There are no files, records, phones, typewriters, etc. The director, Mme. Bah, noted that although the BN exists, en principe, it has had no support from the government. She said that a Guinean ministerial delegation is currently visiting China, and was going to propose that the Chinese assist Guinea in constructing a national library.
The BN is a U.N. depository, but it has no means to store or access the materials; cartons and heaps of U.N. documents were piled against the walls. Rusted and twisted metal catalog trays and dirty and mildewed cards were strewn about. Rickety (and empty) bookcases lined a hallway. Several bookcases stood in one room, some with a few books in them; other books were scattered over the floor. In another room hundreds of university theses and memoires lay in dust-covered and moldy heaps two and three feet high 4.
Another place that might yield copies of mémoires is the Bibliothèque Universitaire Université de Conakry, formerly the Institut Polytechnique Gamal Abdel Nasser). This has not had an operating budget since 1984 (the last year of the Sékou Touré government), and it relies chiefly on donations for its resources. Fein reported that in the book catalog he found no entries later than 1957-58, but he said the cards in the mimolres catalog were more recent, typed on card stock, with the latest dates in the mid-1970s 5. There are small departmental libraries in the various faculties. The one I saw in the history department would not be useful for most outside researchers.

Lawrence Fein reported on another facility that might be useful to researchers, CEDUST (Centre de Documentation Universitaire, Scientifique et Technique):

CEDUST ... provides scientific and technical materials, books, journals, etc. to researchers, faculty, students and technical personnel. At present it has branches (“antennes”) in three regional centers and has plans to open a fourth. Tle collection, books and monographs, is maintained on a computerized database.... A Philips PC with floppy disk drive and CD-ROM capacity is on order. They have already received CD-ROM disks of a French bibliographical database, Search (?). Most materials are technical in nature, but some general works, including USIS-supplied Nouveaux Horizons titles, are also kept. Backfiles of scientific journals are maintained. Microfiche is also used, and there is a reader but not a reader-printer. CEDUST also has a video library and production unit including minicams, tape duplication facilities, etc. 6

The following lists of other theses by Guinean university students provide an idea of the topics covered in mémoires not listed in the card catalog at the national archives. Most of these titles involve Mande groups, but other peoples of Guinea are well represented, usually by students native to the areas and cultures in question. Many of those listed below are not now in the collection at the national archives, so researchers should not count heavily on finding the ones they want (though they might be among those in the piles reported by Fein at the national library). Colleagues at both universities candidly remarked that the works have been “pas bien conservé.” 7 One mémoire I have seen that is not in the archives is Joel Maxim Millimono's “Les relations historiques entre le Toron et le Konia: des origines au XIXe siècle” (1989) 8. It is 56 pages in length, with a one-page French-Kissi lexicon (twenty items), and a bibliography that mainly reflects the lack of access Guinean students have to published scholarly literature. The nine secondary sources listed are mostly so general or off the subject in question (e.g., C.A. Diop's L'Afrique précoloniale, Ki-Zerbo's Histoire de l'Afrique noire, Balandier's La vie quotidienne au rovaume du Congo,) that they could hardly have contributed much to what the student derived from original research (Millimono did have access to at least one volume of Person's Samori, plus a Person article on Kissi stone sculpture in the Bulletin de l'IFAN ) 9. The bibliography also cites six previously written inetwn'res from the saine school and eight oral informants between seventy and ninety years of' age. It is the local research and testimony, combined with the fact that students were usually investigating their own cultures, that lends genuine value to these works.
They do contain information that is no longer available—if it ever was—to foreign researchers.
Requests for research authorization in Guinea-Conakry requires a written request in advance, with CV, location and description of research, to Dr. Mamadou Kodiougou Diallo, Vice-Recteur de la Recherche, Université de Conakry, B.P. 1147, Conakry, Guinea. In exchange for research authorization, researchers are expected to accept the assistance of a university student interested in particular research topics who could accompany them in their project work.

Repertoire des thèmes défendus au département d'histoire de l'Université de Conakry sur le pays Mandingues

Thèmes de memoire relatifs au Manding traités à l'Université de Kankan (1989-91)

Notes
1. Seydouba Cissé, “Présentation Générale des Archives Nationales,” Conakry. Archives Nationales du Guinée. Unpublished memo, 1992.
2. Ansoumana Camara, “Etude littéraire de la légende de Manden Mori.” University of Conakry, 1979.
3. Amadou Diallo, “Le mythe du sorcier dans la société traditionnelle guinéenne,” University of Kankan, 1975, 100. The concluding slogan ‘Prêt pour la révolution’ was common in these mémoires.
4. Lawrence S. Fein, RLO, USIS Abidjan. Memorandum to Louise Bedichek, PAO, USIS Conakry, 24-25 May 1990.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. These lists were graciously prepared by Professor Seydou Magassouba of the Department of History, University of Conakry, and by the late Professor Ouo-Ouo Pivi of Philosophy/Ethnology, University of Kankan, at the kind behest of Mamadou Sadialiou Bah, Vice-Rector in charge of research at the University of Kankan.
8. Photocopy collected by Tim Geysbeek in Conakry, October, 1990.
9. The lack of recent bibliographical material, of course, underlines the urgent need for the funding of books and periodicals for Guinean universities and libraries.

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