Despite being an obsessive Oswald fan this one slipped me by, but apparently Africa Before Dark was shown in Germany at the Bonn Silent Film Festival last year. You can see a frame from the cartoon in this PDF (page 18) and it seems it's a 35mm print with German intertitles.

http://www.schaufenster-...741672/937453/939627.pdf 

I'm excited! I'm going to do a few searches to see if I can find out some more info about when and where it was found.

I've found a German article, but I can't read German and the internet translation was pretty dodgy. However, the general gist of the story seems to be that Africa Before Dark, along with some other films, was found was found in a family's basement. Apparently their grandfather once operated a cinema which went bust during the depression and it seems these films were left in the basement since 1929! Happily it seems the films are now being preserved by the Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt.

http://www.op-online.de/...fem-happyend-797902.html 

Pretty lucky that one of the films happened to be a lost Oswald!

Wow! This is such big news.

I wonder if Disney is going to try to get a hold of this film.

Another lost-and-found Oswald cartoon! [ozzie]

Makes you wonder how much other seemingly lost gems are hiding in private basements or giant libraries.

And I'm glad that the films in the basement didn't disintegrate or, even worse, combust.

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Mister Bighead, it seems that Disney do indeed have a copy of this film now. The article below reveals that Africa Before Dark was shown at a special screening at Disneyland last month.

http://www.laughingplace...oswald-the-lucky-rabbit/ 

http://www.op-online.de/lokales/nachrichten/langen/spurensuche-filmreifem-happyend-797902.html

German-speaking member here, the summary is pretty accurate. The film museum in Frankfurt is part of the German Film Institute which is specialized in film preservation.
A quick web search shows that "Africa before Dark" was also shown at a different film festival in September 2014, in Munich . Totally slipped my attention.

With the addition of Hungry hobos and Africa Before Dark, have 16 of the original 26 been found ?

Hope the owners of the print of "Africa Before Dark", didn't ask for a $$$ price range from Disney like the last few film collectors did.

Lynn, don't forget it was revealed last Christmas that an almost complete copy of Empty Socks was found in Norway, bringing the total to 17 located Disney Oswald shorts (which have been publicly announced – I'm hoping there could be more out there).

hum, Poor Papa is also has been reported of survivng, I think David Gerstein said something along those lines



But I recall Tom Stathes saying probably at the time of discovery of Empty Socks that the number of missing Disney Oswald might be down to 2-3 at end of this year.