My views, therefore, will be severe on any project that ostensibly claims to be about African culture and history but is really the projection of Europe on and in Africa. To be fair to the editors and writers of the Encarta I have examined the project from an Afrocentric point-of-view, that is, from the standpoint of the agency of African people and the centrality of Africa in its own story. In this respect, it is little more than the sum total of the numerous articles, some clearly dated, and audio visuals presented in the encyclopedia, a grab bag of cultural and historical artifacts. Encarta Africana is more like a collection of documents from someone's attic, put together without any real order, organization, or objective. What cannot be bought and therefore is missing, although it is essential for a project purporting to be comprehensive on the African world, is an accurate and rational point-of-view. But these are features that can be bought for the price of money.
Thus, Encarta Africana was chosen as the name of the present project.Īmong the impressive features of the interactive encyclopedia are articles, audio clips, videos, and virtual tours. Du Bois, the Microsoft Encarta Africana project was embroiled in controversy with Ghana over the name itself. Originally conceived as a completion to the famed project, Encyclopedia Africana, devised by Kwame Nkrumah and W. and Kwame Appiah, would have been able to deliver a much more polished product, both technologically and scholarly. One would have thought that with a reported three millions dollars, the editors, Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Encarta Africana announces itself as the "comprehensive encyclopedia of black history and culture with authoritative content," but it is far from comprehensive or authoritative, and worse, has numerous inaccuracies and incomplete articles. The issue is far more complex than the choice of words however, the choice of terms does signal how this project was poorly conceptualized. "African slaves or enslaved Africans?" that is the question that has caused so much African controversy around Microsoft's Encarta Africana. Microsoft Encarta Africana edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
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