Safeguarding Colonial Plantation Records of Malawi (EAP1167)

Aims and objectives

The pilot project seeks to locate and safeguard plantation records during the colonial period. These records are located in various tea, and tobacco plantations. The main activities will be to locate the records, develop an inventory and digitise samples of the records. At the end of the project, a one day workshop will be conducted to disseminate the results of the project with various stakeholders especially the farm owners. The project will be done in a period of 40 days covering targeted plantations in southern and central region of Malawi.

The project will:

  • selected very old administrative and operational plantation records will be digitised as samples
  • identified records will be organised and relocated to a more conducive environment if it will discovered that the records are not properly stored at the estates.
  • an inventory of the records will be developed
  • copies of the digitised samples will be made available to the British Library
  • a written survey report will be developed and presented to the British Library, which will describe the content, volumes and feasibility of digitising the identified the collection.

Outcomes

A survey of the collection was carried out as part of the project. It is in the form of an Excel inventory.

The records copied by this project have been catalogued as: