It is easy to think of nineteenth-century Africa as a colonial space contested by European powers with their political, economic, and scientific agendas. Furthermore, the historiography of events such as the Scramble for Africa sometimes reinforces the idea of a powerless continent partitioned by imperial states. If, on the one hand, we cannot deny the force and arbitrariness of colonial violence, on the other hand, History has long disregarded the ways in which African peoples resisted. This eurocentric bias is noticeable in the History of Sciences, which has frequently associated scientific expeditions in Africa with an idealized image that highlights ideals of courage, adventure, and pioneering spirit. Even today, it is possible to find the results achieved by naturalists described as discoveries made by extraordinary individuals. Only recently has academic research begun to distance itself from this understanding by re-evaluating the narratives written by travellers and realising that the science practised in the field in the nineteenth century was deeply collaborative. In the field, naturalists depended on networks of individuals who contributed through activities such as river navigation, moving through forests, searching for shelter, communicating with the local population, and the scientific work of collecting, identifying, and preparing specimens.