About this book:

*Cartographies of Knowledge* offers a comprehensive history of Africa’s contributions to geographic thought, positioning the continent as an active subject in the creation of spatial knowledge rather than a mere object of external mapping. The book spans from antiquity to the digital age, exploring how diverse African societies—from the Nile Valley and the Sahel to the Swahili coast—developed sophisticated navigational and cartographic systems. These practices include not only physical manuscripts and charts, such as Islamic geographies and Omani-Swahili pilot books, but also "spoken maps" found in oral poetry, toponyms, and memory boards like the Luba *lukasa*. By expanding the definition of cartography to include ritual paths, mental itineraries, and cosmological diagrams, the text reveals how indigenous knowledge structured trade, pilgrimage, and social order long before European contact.

The narrative shifts to the era of colonial encounter, examining the tense intersections between European surveyors and African expertise. It details how imperial powers utilized the "chains of triangles" through military and missionary surveys to partition the continent during the Scramble for Africa, often imposing arbitrary borders that ignored existing social and ecological realities. However, the book highlights a persistent tradition of "counter-cartographies," where African leaders, intellectuals, and resistance movements utilized both traditional and modern mapping techniques to assert sovereignty and reclaim territory. This historical arc demonstrates that mapping has always been a political instrument used both to enforce colonial discipline and to facilitate anti-colonial liberation.

In the modern era, the book explores the institutionalization of cartography through post-independence national agencies and the subsequent digital revolution. The rise of smartphones, drones, and open-source data platforms like OpenStreetMap has democratized the creation of geographic information, allowing for community-led initiatives in informal settlements and environmental conservation. These tools have shifted the power to map into the hands of ordinary citizens, enabling them to address contemporary challenges such as urban planning, resource management, and climate change adaptation. Throughout these transitions, the book emphasizes the ongoing importance of local agency in navigating a rapidly changing digital landscape.

The final chapters address the ethical and methodological imperatives of decolonizing cartography. This process involves reclaiming indigenous place names, integrating traditional ecological knowledge with high-tech GIS systems, and ensuring that communities maintain sovereignty over their own data. By documenting the move from extractive imperial surveys to participatory, inclusive mapping, *Cartographies of Knowledge* argues for a future where African spatial thought is recognized as a vital, evolving discipline. Ultimately, the book presents Africa’s geographic history as a dense palimpsest of memory and innovation, where the map serves as a dynamic site of cultural expression, political struggle, and self-determination.

What You'll Find Inside:

• African peoples have actively produced, curated, and contested geographic knowledge from ancient to modern times, positioning them as subjects of mapping rather than merely objects.
• The book expands the definition of 'map' to include oral traditions, mental maps, ritual paths, memory boards, and other non-European cartographic forms that organize spatial knowledge for practical use.
• Islamic scholarship played a central role in African cartographic traditions, with Arabic-language geographies, travelogues, and manuscript traditions embedding African places within transregional worlds of learning and commerce.
• European colonial mapping functioned as an instrument of power through boundary-making and resource extraction, but also generated African counter-cartographies of resistance and sovereignty.
• Contemporary digital mapping technologies like GPS, drones, and open data have democratized certain forms of geographic knowledge while introducing new asymmetries in who can see and be seen.

Who's It For:

This book is intended for scholars and students of African history, geography, anthropology, and cartography, particularly those interested in decolonizing knowledge systems and indigenous mapping traditions. It will also benefit researchers studying the intersection of power, culture, and spatial knowledge, as well as readers concerned with how mapping practices have shaped African historical trajectories from precolonial societies through colonialism to the digital age.