Regionalization of Africa as a Controlled Vocabulary for Data Analysis

These regions provide a basic geographic understanding of the continent and its peoples from perspectives rooted in African and African diaspora history. The centers on a geographic hierarchy that divides Africa into six broad regions that are sub-divided into 34 subregions, including major offshore islands.AfricanRegions.org is helpful for researching and teaching this continent’s complex history in broad, regional terms. This regionalization is created from primary sources and the scholarly literature following rigorous academic standards. They are primarily devised as a neutral guide to the continent with labels that are easy to input and translate for database construction and historical reconstruction. The intention is to avoid terms that might be confused with ethnolinguistic groups, the jargon of slave traders, colonial places, modern countries, and other perspectives. As a controlled vocabulary, regional categories can consolidate, link, and display larger datasets about people, events, and places in African and African diaspora history, which derive from archival collections, digitized primary sources, scholarly analysis, and other multimedia. The regional data was created in collaboration with Karl Grossner, Technical Director of the World Historical Gazetteer whgazetteer.org. The interactive teaching resource www.AfricanRegions.org displays these regions for educational purposes.