The African proverbs project and after

Abstract

The Pew Charitable Trusts financed the African Proverbs Project with Dr Stan Nussbaum as co-ordinator, for three years (1993–1996). He assembled a number of scholars who had collected and studied proverbs. The purpose of the Project was to encourage further work of collecting, studying and publishing proverbs. It organised international and interdisciplinary symposia and embarked on three types of publications. One kind of publication was the African Proverbs Series, with Prof. John Mbiti as editor. Five volumes were published in 1997, each with proverbs from respectively Ethiopia, Uganda, Lesotho, Burkina Faso and Ghana. Their size ranged from 584 to 1 497 proverbs in African languages, with translations into English or French. Another set of publications with the Rev. Joshua Kudadjie as editor, covered proverbs for preaching and teaching purposes. Three volumes have come from Malawi, Ghana and Liberia. The Project also published an annotated bibliography by Prof. Wolfgang Mieder. The report from one of the symposia appeared in 1997. The third manner of publication is in the form of a CD-ROM edited by Dr Stan Nussbaum and published in 1996. This is a very comprehensive collection and source of material that includes, inter alia, books from the Project, some 28 000 proverbs, a bibliography with 1 000 items, summaries and extracts from published collections, and a language survey of work on proverbs. The Project has generated both local and international interest in African paremiography and paremiology. Four academic institutions in South Africa, Kenya, Ghana and the Ivory Coast, with links to others in Africa, Europe and America, are continuing this work on proverbs.

Keywords: african proverbs project, african proverbs series, proverb, paremiography, paremiology