African mapping traditions shaped colonial era maps

European explorers and soldier-surveyors relied on indigenous mapping practices to navigate and document the African continent during the colonial era.

Historians and researchers are identifying how African guides, interpreters, and merchants provided the primary geographical data used by Europeans to create early maps. While these traditions were often oral or temporary, such as drawing routes in the sand, they provided essential information for travelers.

For example, more than a third of Henri Duveyrier’s 1861 map of the Sahara relied on information from local sources. Military officers used this local knowledge to identify trade routes and locate leaders. Some explorers, such as Louis-Gustave Binger, recorded plans of towns drawn on the ground by interpreters. Other explorers used local information to debunk geographical myths, such as the non-existent Kong Mountains.

These local contributions accounted for 65 per cent of the routes on Jean-Baptiste Marchand’s map of the region between the Niger River and the Gulf of Guinea. The use of African mapping sparked internal debates among European geographers. Some cartographers refused to include local data because it did not meet their standards for scientific measurement. Others included it as dashed lines to indicate information based on hearsay.

Furthermore, some blank spaces on these maps were not the result of unknown territory but rather the refusal of African authorities to grant travel permits to Europeans. These hybrid maps, which combined European and African data, were later used at the Berlin Africa Conference of 1884-85 to divide the continent into colonies.