The Verba Africana series publishes video recording of oral performances, on CDRom's, DVD’s and the Internet, for documentation, research, and the e-learning of African oral languages and literatures. The video recording of African oral genres, such as poems, songs and tales, is integrated into the presentation of relevant aspects, such as language, form, content, performance, literary, social and historical context. The videos and the accompanying material allow researchers and the interested public to approach oral literary productions as ‘total event’ distributed in several 'layers' (short information and full articles).   

The technical support is offered by the ITC of Leiden University. Ideation and Coordination of Verba Africana: dr. Daniela Merolla, African Literatures, African Languages and Cultures, Leiden University.  

There are 5 volumes of Verba Africana at the moment. The video documentation and the accompanying materials are available on the Internet through the Portal and the webpage located on the Leiden University Web. See:

  Verba Africana PORTAL

(Only a few video fragments of the first two volumes are available on the Internet. We hope to be able to add all video's soon. The video fragments of the other volumes are available)

The Video Documentation offers audio-video recording with subtitles (trascription and translation). It presents examples of documentation collected by researchers and students during their fieldwork. We hope to be able to offer professional video recordings in the future.  

The volumes are free and intended for education and research. African Libraries can obtain the volumes on request and free of charges.  

Verba Africana is presently integrated in the project "Multimedia Research and Documentation of African Oral Genres: Connecting Diasporas and Local Audiences"  coordinated by Daniela Merolla and Jan Jansen (Leiden University) and funded by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific research (NWO). The project takes place at Leiden University in cooperation with the African Departments of partner universities in Europe and Africa.