The Fontes Historiae Africanae is a project adopted by the International Academic Union in 1964, having been originally sponsored by the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. The first director of the project was the well-known Czech historian Professor Ivan Hrbek. By 1972 pressure of other committments forced him to give up the task and direction of the project was taken over by Professor John Hunwick of the University of Ghana on 3 January 1973.

As its title implies, the Fontes project is concerned with source materials for the history of Africa. The basic concept is the publication of written source materials in their original languages with full apparatus criticus with parallel translations into either English or French accompanied by scholarly annotation and introduction. In this way it is envisaged that material currently inaccessible or difficult of access would be made available to the scholarly world at large.