This article offers an overview of the IsiXhosa Intellectual Traditions Digital Archive, which hosts digitized texts and images of early isiXhosa newspapers and books from 1870-1914. The archive offers new opportunities for a range of research across multiple fields, and responds to debates around the importance of African intellectual traditions and their indigenous language sources in generating African social sciences which is contextually relevant. We outline the content and context of these materials and offer qualitative and quantitative details with the aim of providing an overview for interested scholars and a reference for those using the archive.