Bouctou: An Africana Magazine for Teachers and Students
The vision behind Bouctou is to create an accessible and appealing online resource for the K-12 classroom by providing informative articles, scholarly research and engaging commentary, and to support the curriculum by contributing quality Africa-focused resources and material. Bouctou issues will also contain a student corner with activities and lesson ideas for students that are aimed to excite and inspire them to further explore the African world.
The Gold Road Interactive Map
Inspired by the success of the Silk Road as an educational model, Africa Access president Brenda Randolph envisioned the Gold Road as a strategy to teach about medieval West Africa. In 2018 Africa Access and the Center for African Studies at Howard University invited Dr. David Conrad, an expert on the region, to assist with the development of this concept. In 2020, the Gold Road website launched with the technical assistance of Balance Studio and the financial support of private donors and the African Studies Center at Boston University. Central to the development of the site have been Dr. Vanessa Oyugi, Dr. Elsa Wiehe and Ania Uneo. The Gold Road website highlights people, places, landscapes, architecture and trade items related to medieval West Africa. Gold, the region’s most valuable resource, moved along regional and trans-Saharan routes reaching as far north as France. The Gold Road invites users to explore hundreds of topics related to the empires and their role in global history.
Discover Africa in the World
In 2007 Africa Access created the workshop, Discover Ethiopia and Eritrea in Washington, DC. This workshop became the blueprint for Discover Africa in the World which was launched as a website in 2020 in partnership with the Center for African Studies at Howard University. The website reveals Africa-related sites in regions beyond the continent of Africa.
Children’s Africana Book Awards
Africa Access president Brenda Randolph founded the Children’s Africana Book Awards (CABA) in 1991 in collaboration with the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association. The awards are presented annually to the authors and illustrators of the best children’s and young adult books on Africa published or republished in the U.S.
African Studies Outreach Council
Africa Access has collaborated with the Outreach Council of the African Studies Association since the 1980s. The ASA Outreach Council promotes the teaching of Africa in K-16 classrooms, collaborates on an annual teacher workshop, and produces teacher resources for the proliferation of responsible teaching of area studies in U.S. schools.