Skip to content

Research Desk

Research Desk — new ideas tried here first

Begin your research here.

A curated starting point into the Abantu Archives catalogue, grouped by theme rather than country. This page also serves as our testing ground — new layouts and features often appear here before they roll out across the rest of the site. For the full searchable record set with citations and permalinks, use the Collection Explorer.

Student mode: show only records with a full write-up → How to use this archive →
For teachers & student researchers

Resources for Teachers & Students

Downloadable, printable source packs built from the Abantu Archives collection — designed for ZIMSEC Heritage Studies (Forms 1–4) and O/A-Level History coursework, including independently citable School-Based Project research. Built for offline use first, since most schools researching this material do not have reliable internet access.

Source Pack · Pilot

Federation to UDI, 1953–1965

Eighteen catalogued sources spanning the formation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland to Southern Rhodesia’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence — official Federation publications, memoirs of its two Prime Ministers, founding nationalist texts, and regional context. Each entry includes a contextual note, a ready-to-use citation, and its archive accession number.

18 sources · 5 pages · PDF
↓ Download (PDF)
This is our first pack. More are planned, covering other periods and themes in the collection — including a closer look at the “Nationalism, Liberation & Education” theme above.

Help us build this

This page is a test — we’d like it to grow into a real resource shaped by the teachers and researchers who actually use it. Suggest a source, flag a correction, or propose a topic for the next pack.

Get in touch →
Testing ground — new this week

Explore Connections

A first look at something we’re building toward: a living, interconnected archive where people, places, events, and records all link to each other — click through in any direction. This is a small proof of concept, not the full picture yet. Pick a starting point below.

Choose a starting point above to begin.