Quantitative Technique: A Missing Gap in Africa’s Contemporary Historiography

Abstract

Historiography, as a technique of writing history is a combination of art and the sciences. The over – ridding objective is to present history with commitment to truth and objectivity. To achieve this, the African historians working on Africa rely on a number of sources. However, in their presentation, they have over – used the traditional conservative historical method, which is a combination of the narrative and unit analysis with focus on qualitative technique.
Over the years, the qualitative approach has become the norm in African historical research. This trend still persist unbroken till today. The position of this study is that the over – reliance on qualitative approach to the utter neglect and apparent under – use of quantitative method has created a missing gap in historical research. This is because contemporary burning issues in Africa can no longer be adequately understood and addressed without the use of innovative multidisciplinary mix, integrating politico – economic social, institutional sectors with quantitative analysis, in order to achieve an evidence based research for the solution of Africa’s multifaceted challenges.