I am chatting online, via zoom, with Zeinab Badawi, the Khartoum-born doyenne of British broadcasting and President of London University’s School of African and Oriental Studies.
We are discussing her book – AN AFRICAN HISTORY OF AFRICA FROM THE DAWN OF HUMANITY TO INDEPENDENCE – which became an instant bestseller when it was published in the UK last year and has been shortlisted for the Nero Book Prize (the winner will be announced on March 5th).
“Everyone is originally from Africa and this book is therefore for everyone,” is its bold opening line.
Badawi proceeds to inform her audience that: “Until 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, all humans were dark-skinned. Pale complexions, fair hair and light-coloured irises only evolved as humans migrated beyond Africa and adapted to different climates, which over time led to the varied racial characteristics we see today.
“Our lineage, Homo, and our place in it, is the subject of much study, conjecture and disagreement. There is growing evidence that archaic humans originated in different parts of Africa.
“However, what we can say with absolute certainty is that 99 per cent of our evolutionary history occurred on the continent. Everyone today is either African or the descendant of an African migrant.”
I say that I can imagine white supremacists (some Trump fans, for example) being absolutely outraged by this claim that even they have black ancestors.
She chuckles and adds that creationists who are wedded to the Biblical Adam and Eve tale are as unwilling to accept Africa as the cradle of all humankind as they are to accept Charles Darwin’s insistence that we are all descended from primates.
But after a couple of centuries of often heated scientific and religious rows about the origins of species and races, “the debate,” she says, “is settled”.
Naysayers are now massively outnumbered. “The Chinese were,” she says, “the last to capitulate, in 2016, and concede that they too originated in Africa.”
Badawi visited over 30 countries to research this book, an easily digestible masterpiece that provides us with numerous panoramic glimpses into the kaleidoscopic history of the oldest inhabited continent on earth.
Like an especially eloquent griot, she takes us on a series of fascinating guided tours around Maghreb and sub-Saharan countries.
We are educated about wars and defeats and victories and ancient civilizations and mediaeval superpowers and the Eastern Arabic and Transatlantic slave trades.
We hear about Great Zimbabwe, a sprawling stone complex and archaeological site so advanced that Cecil Rhodes and his settler successors not only refused to credit bygone Shona natives with its construction but punished academics who dared to do so.
This dishonesty, Badawi says, was driven by a determination to establish the “empty land” myth that nothing existed in Africa until white folks arrived.
We are told about artefacts that were stolen from Great Zimbabwe, Benin and elsewhere, then shipped off to foreign museums and private collections.
Badawi clearly relishes the task of introducing her readers to a colourful cast of larger-than-life characters:
Icons, villains, movers, shakers, victims, visionaries, sophisticates, resistors, designers, intellectuals, designers, disruptors, saints, liberators, female warriors, Jews, Christians, Muslims, animists plus numerous pharaohs and other legendary royals.
Asked to name her favourites, she doesn’t hesitate:
Piankhi (a principled 8th century BCE Kushite monarch), Mansa Musa (a Malian potentate who bestrode a three-decade segment of the Middle Ages like a colossus) and Yaa Asantewaa (a formidable Ghanaian queen mother).
“Piankhi was Sudanese and very morally upright. When he defeated the princes of Egypt, he was offered their women as spoils of war. And he said ‘no,’…
She also has a soft spot for Mansa Musa, reckoned to have been the richest individual to have ever lived and worth an estimated $430 billion in today’s terms.
Best known for his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324-25, Mansa Musa set off with 12,000 followers, 600 silk-clad servants and countless camels. On the way back, he stopped in Cairo and spent so much money and gave away so much gold that its price plummeted for more than a decade, losing 25 per cent of its value globally.
Badawi says that she particularly likes this story “because it shows how Africa, even in the medieval period, was plugged into the global economy…
“He proves that it simply isn’t true that there are people who stand on the sidelines of history and those who make it. At a time when Europe was suffering from the Black Death, he had a flourishing kingdom.”
Mansa Musa also established centres of learning, imported scholars and transformed his domain into what Badawi describes as “a really buzzy place” that housed a great library (in Timbuktu) and attracted the attention of Abraham Cresques, a famous Catalan cartographer (Mansa Musa was one of only five big personalities depicted on his 1375 map of the world).
Yaa Asantewaa also won Badawi’s admiration for feistily rejecting British colonial rule despite being elderly and for shaming Asante men into helping her raise a 20,000-strong army to fight the invaders.
“She kept them at bay with a siege in 1900 that lasted seven long months. And she was one step ahead of the Brits, having hidden the sacred golden stool they wanted.
“She transcended her community’s significance, not just for the Asante, but for all Ghanaians. And it is not surprising that Kwame Nkrumah honoured her as a national heroine when Independence came in 1957 and featured her on postage stamps, coins and so on.”
And so, I ask, what has dwelling on the past taught you about the present and the future? What conclusions have you drawn about Africa’s current reality?
“The colonial legacy dealt Africa a bad hand culturally and economically. But African rulers have made a bad hand worse, in many cases. And I would like them to embrace good governance, address corruption and so on. We need to say ‘we are where we are and we have to make the best of it and try to turn the tide.’”
As for the future, she has a lot of faith in Africa’s youngsters and thinks that the African Union should actively encourage a Pan African approach to the teaching of history. Her book is already being used in schools and she’s writing a version for 8-11 year olds.
Her parting shot is a wistful observation, being that thanks to problems caused by poor political leadership – poverty, religious extremism, ethnic militias, criminal gangs, etc – “the fortunes of the Sahel have changed so much since the glorious days of Mansa Musa.”
THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN AFRICA REPORT MAGAZINE (www.theafricareport.com).
![[OPINION] Sam Nujoma, enthusiastically celebrated in Nigeria - Owei Lakemfa](/media/k2/items/cache/4c68f6f20b396db88c00b4c9acdb4696_Generic.jpg)
![[OPINION] The History Woman - Donu Kogbara](/media/k2/items/cache/c4feded7dd9bb26b84aa06d4b265f336_Generic.jpg)
