Genealogical research in Africa rarely begins with a single, searchable database. Records exist — but they are scattered across mission churches, colonial-era administrative files, customary land registries, and the memories of living elders.
Knowing where to look, and in what order, is half the work. The other half is knowing what each source can and cannot tell you.
Four places we start
Mission and church registers often hold the earliest written baptism, marriage, and burial records in a community. Colonial administrative archives — tax rolls, court files, employment records — can place an ancestor in a specific time and place. Customary and land records document inheritance and belonging. And oral history fills the gaps that paper never recorded.
No single source is complete. A baptism register might confirm a date but not a place; a land record might fix a family to a district but say nothing of names. Read together, and cross-checked against one another, they begin to form a picture none could give alone.
Working with the gaps
Some records were never created. Others were lost, or were never centralised in the first place. We are upfront about this from the start: part of good research is knowing where the trail can realistically lead before the work begins — and being honest when a line reaches a documented limit.
