Category:F. van der Kraaij Collection

This category contains photographs of West and North Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Libya, Mali, Morocco, Niger, Senegal, Togo, and Tunisia) over the years 1972-1987 by the Dutch economist Fred P. M. van der Kraaij donated to the African Studies Centre Leiden (ASC Leiden) and Wikimedia Commons in 2017. The collection includes a few thousand photographs. His related PhD thesis on the economy of Liberia is: Van der Kraaij, F.P.M. (1983). The open door policy of Liberia: an economic history of modern Liberia. Doctoral thesis, Tilburg University, Volume 1 and Volume 2 (Links to PDF full text). research.tilburguniversity.edu, pure.uvt.nl. Ubersee-Museum Bremen.

This category contains photographs of 11 countries in North and West Africa including Benin (known as Dahomey until 1975), Burkina Faso (known as Upper Volta until 1985), Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo in West Africa and Libya, Morocco and Tunisia in North Africa. The collection was donated to the African Studies Centre Leiden and Wikimedia Commons in 2017 by the Dutch economist Fred P. M. van der Kraaij (born 1946) and includes here more than 1400 photographs - originally taken as slides (‘diapositives’ in French), and scanned and converted by the ASC Leiden.

In 1972, Fred van der Kraaij embarked on a study trip in the drought-stricken Sahel which brought him to Senegal, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. His study focused on Roman Catholic missionaries as a catalyst of economic and social development in the four Sahelian countries. During his return trip to the Netherlands he traveled through Libya and Tunisia (1972). The following year he and his newlywed wife Eisjen Schaaf visited Morocco. In 1975, he signed a contract with the government of Liberia which employed him as a lecturer in economics at the University of Liberia in Monrovia. He combined teaching with research during his years in Liberia, 1975-1980, including one year in the eastern city of Harper, capital of Maryland County. For research purposes he traveled to every corner of the country, visiting rubber plantations and iron ore mines, interviewing managers and speaking to workers.

From 1980 till 1991 he lived and worked in the Western Sahel with his wife and three small children (Upper Volta / Burkina Faso, 1980-84; Mali, 1984-87; and Senegal, 1987-91). Employed by the Dutch government he worked as a program officer in a rural development project, co-financed by the World Bank and the government of the Netherlands (1980-84), traveling all over Upper Volta - as the country was called until 1985 - to monitor and evaluate micro-projects. In 1984 he moved to Ségou, in neighboring Mali, where he had been appointed advisor to the Director-General of the Office du Niger, a parastatal and the country’s most important rice producer. In late 1985 he switched to the Ministry of Planning in Bamako, Mali, advising on the identification, selection and planning of EU-funded projects, financed by the European Commission. Eighteen months later he moved with his family to Dakar, Senegal, where he worked at the Dutch Embassy, overseeing rural development projects in Senegal, Cape Verde, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Mauritania and Mali (1987-1991). From 1991 till his retirement in 2011 Fred van der Kraaij worked in The Hague, the Netherlands, as a Senior Evaluator of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ independent evaluation unit (IOB).

The photographs presented here were taken in the 1970-1990 period, hence preceding the digital era. In those days, a roll of film contained 36 images. To have a film developed was quite cumbersome in the West African countries where I lived. First of all, the film had to be sent to Europe, and it could easily take one month before the developed film returned (by mail!) and its contents could be seen. This is in sharp contrast with today’s handling of a digital camera which allows to take hundreds of images and to make within minutes a selection of the best.

In my opinion, taking pictures is equivalent to making notes. One could also say that the two actions are complementary – whereas the well-known adage which says that A picture is worth a thousand words is absolutely true. The fact that I did not take pictures as a tourist but as a person who was residing in the countries where I was photographing certainly was a great advantage. I was never considered an outsider and I could always shoot without any restraints, as is obvious when looking at my pictures of the ceremonial war dances in Half Graway, Liberia, in 1978 or the famous scene of the hanging of the Harper Seven, also in Liberia, in 1979.

As time has passed, some images have increased in value as I was recording history, e.g., when photographing the visit of US president Jimmy Carter to Liberia in 1978 and the 1980 visit of Pope John Paul II to Ouagadougou in what was then called Upper Volta, nowadays Burkina Faso. The importance of these images has even increased as these historic visits have left few or no traces on the nowadays so omnipresent and rich internet. Likewise, the civil wars in Liberia have destroyed many buildings in the capital Monrovia. All images presented here show the pre-war situation. It is worth mentioning that among the photographs shown there are rare images like, e.g., the photo of an important, historic monument erected for Liberian President William Tubman in the early 1950s which stood on the premises of the University of Liberia in Monrovia but which, unfortunately, got lost during the back-to-back wars (1989-97; 1999-2003).

Three interlinked themes run through the images shown here: people, housing and economic activities. People: because I’ve always been fascinated by people, I find every person beautiful and unique. Housing: because the constructions people live in and their places of worship including traditional huts, mosques and other buildings, modern houses and prestigious mansions vary considerably and are worth studying and admiring. Last but not least, being an economist myself, I am particularly interested in economic activities in both the traditional and in the modern economy. The regions and countries covered and the time frame – the oldest photos were taken in the early 1970s, hence more than half a century ago - provided ample opportunity for unique shooting.

Fred P.M. van der Kraaij, 29 July 2022

• A photographic sample

• Usage of these images on Wikimedia projects, main namespace (articles) only.

• Descriptions of the images are provided in at least one of the official languages of the relevant countries and in any case in English and in Dutch. These official languages are, according to Wikipedia articles in English and French, Benin: French, Burkina Faso: French (Mòoré, Fula and Dioula not available here), Liberia: English, Libya: Arabic, Mali: French, Morocco: Arabic (Berber/Tamazight not available here), Senegal: French, Wolof (not available here) and Togo: French.
• However, for practical reasons (the uploader of the present images does not know Arabic) file names are in French or in English and not in Arabic.
• The descriptions, depicted places and dates in Arabic have been produced by machine translation (Google Translate) without expert correction and might accordingly contain errors.

• Locations in Africa in the F. van der Kraaij Collection. Search for images by location.
• List of donated image files of the F. van der Kraaij Collection with Petscan, updated 11 February 2022

• Copyright has been settled under Wikimedia OTRS ticket number 2017120110006751
• Copyright template:FvdKraaij

• around 1920 map of Liberia, from Maugham, Reginald Charles Fulke, The Republic of Liberia, London : George Allen & Unwin, Ltd.; New York : C. Scribner's sons, 1920, https://archive.org/details/republicofliberi00maug/page/n330/mode/1up?view=theater

TBD = To Be Done
The images are ordered below in three ways: 1. by country in certain years, 2. by event, and 3. by origin from 28 minus 4 numbered slide boxes. (Boxes 17-18, and 22-23 are private and excluded here.) These orderings overlap only partially, so that there are images from slide boxes which are not (yet) included in a selection (category) by country. TBD - to be done.

• Mossi plateau, Burkina Faso refers below to the geological formation extending over several administrative regions of Burkina Faso, Région du Centre, Centre-Nord, Centre-Est, Centre-Ouest and Nord (Yatenga) as well as Plateau-Central Region.

The uploader of the present images, Hansmuller (talk) 13:39, 22 April 2022 (UTC)

For use in an Excel spreadsheet on upload:
Metadata column containing the photo filenames, say: "ASC Leiden - F. van der Kraaij Collection - 06 or so - "&Num2&" - "&Desc2&" - "&Loc2&" - "&Date2
Metadata column containing the multilingual description, also for the location and the date: "{{fr|1="&Fr2&"}}{{en|1="&En2&"}}{{nl|1="&Nl2&"}}"