The Africana Collection of the MSU Libraries is one of the largest in the United States, having been built up since 1960 to support broad faculty and graduate student involvement in research and development projects on the continent. In recent decades, MSU program about Africa has been consistently rated among the top one or two in the country in both the number of faculty involved and the number of doctoral dissertations produced. The MSU Libraries' collection development policy on Africa is outlined in the Collection Development Policy.
An integral part of MSU Libraries' Africana collections are its Special Collection, which help to make one of the world's largest Africana collections also some of the more unique and valuable for academic research.