Last updated on May 14th, 2025 at 05:42 pm
An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence by Zeinab Badawi, published in 2024, is a compelling historical exploration that reframes Africa’s past through African voices. This debut book by the Sudanese-born broadcaster and President of SOAS University of London is not just a scholarly feat but a heartfelt journey—an intersection of journalism, anthropology, oral storytelling, and cultural diplomacy.
Categorized under non-fiction, history, and African studies, An African History of Africa transcends typical academic history. Zeinab Badawi, celebrated globally for her BBC series The History of Africa, brings decades of on-ground reporting experience and deep intellectual ties to her subject. Her affiliations—with organizations like the United Nations Association UK, Afrobarometer, and the Mandela Institute—underscore her scholarly credibility.
Born in Sudan and raised in the UK, Badawi embodies a duality that uniquely positions her to bridge African heritage with global curiosity.
Badawi’s central thesis is that Africa’s history has long been told by others—colonialists, missionaries, and European historians—obscuring indigenous narratives and agency. As she powerfully states in the introduction:
“Africa is the birthplace of humankind itself, yet little of its ancient and modern history is widely known.”
Her purpose is neither to contest nor to rewrite history in confrontation, but rather to reclaim, reassemble, and revive Africa’s story using African sources, scholars, and voices. An African History of Africa is not just a book; it is a continent-wide narrative revival.
Table of Contents
2. Summary of the Book
Spanning 17 chapters and an epilogue, An African History of Africa follows a chronological and regional narrative arc, starting with the origin of humans and concluding with the 20th-century independence movements. Its foundation lies in oral tradition, archaeology, ethnography, religion, and storytelling, providing a vivid portrait of Africa as seen by Africans.
Chapter 1: Our Family and Other Hominins
In this enthralling opening chapter of An African History of Africa , Zeinab Badawi presents a compelling case for Africa not merely as the cradle of civilization but as the biological birthplace of all humanity. Titled “Our Family and Other Hominins,” the chapter begins with a deeply personal and poetic encounter: the author reaches out and touches the fossilized bones of Lucy, known in Ethiopia as Dinkenesh, whose name translates to “you are marvellous” — a fitting descriptor for her role as a matriarch in the human story.
Lucy, or Australopithecus afarensis, lived approximately 3.2 million years ago, and though not a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, she forms part of our broader lineage. Standing about one meter tall and weighing less than 30 kilograms, Lucy walked upright, used simple tools, and likely foraged for fruit and insects. The importance of her discovery, made in 1974 in Ethiopia, cannot be overstated — it significantly reshaped the way scientists understood early bipedalism and pre-human anatomy.
Badawi uses Lucy’s story to emphasize a larger, beautifully interconnected truth: Africa is our shared genetic and evolutionary homeland. As she writes, “No human being on earth can deny that Africa is their first home” — a sentence that resonates with deep anthropological and moral significance. Genetics, she explains, undermines the pseudo-scientific mythologies of race that once sought to segregate and stigmatize. Notably, what we now classify as “white racial characteristics” only emerged 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, a mere blink in evolutionary terms.
To bolster her point, Badawi revisits the groundbreaking work of Dr. Richard Leakey, whose excavations alongside his parents, Louis and Mary Leakey, helped confirm the Out of Africa theory of human evolution. Fossils such as the Taung Child, dating back 2.8 million years and discovered by Raymond Dart in South Africa in 1924, further support this idea. The Taung Child’s small skull and early upright posture hinted at a time when our ancestors were both prey and predator — living fragile lives amid Africa’s ancient ecosystems.
The chapter also revisits Mrs. Ples, a Plesianthropus transvaalensis fossil from 2.5 million years ago, discovered in 1947. Her nearly complete skull further confirmed that bipedalism predated brain expansion, upending assumptions about the trajectory of human evolution. From there, we are taken to the discovery of Zinjanthropus (Zinj) in 1959 and Homo habilis in 1961, leading up to Turkana Boy, a nearly complete Homo erectus fossil from 1.5 million years ago. Each discovery adds another fragment to the rich, complex jigsaw of African human history.
As the chapter closes, Badawi emphasizes not just the scientific findings but the cultural implications of our African ancestry. To reject this truth is, in her words, to deny the essence of what it means to be human. By understanding our shared evolutionary journey, we can finally challenge the deeply embedded prejudices, nationalisms, and racial hierarchies that continue to plague our world.
She writes with both grace and authority, crafting a narrative that is as intellectually rigorous as it is emotionally resonant. “Africa is not just where humanity began — it is where we must return to understand ourselves,” she suggests, echoing both Darwinian insight and Pan-Africanist philosophy.
Chapter 2: Gift of the Nile
In Chapter 2 of An African History of Africa, Zeinab Badawi takes us on a sweeping journey down the Nile River, which she dubs not only a source of sustenance but a vein of civilizational vitality. Aptly titled “Gift of the Nile,” this chapter challenges Eurocentric assumptions about Ancient Egypt’s origins and reinforces Egypt’s place within the African historical and cultural continuum, not outside it.
The Nile, stretching over 6,650 kilometers, flows northward through 11 countries, including Uganda, Sudan, Ethiopia, and Egypt. Its fertile floodplains, Badawi reminds us, nurtured one of the earliest urban societies known to man—Ancient Egypt, which began forming around 3100 BCE with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by Pharaoh Narmer (Menes).
Badawi interrogates the often sanitized and racialized portrayal of Egypt in Western texts. She writes:
“Ancient Egypt is part of African civilization, not a separate Mediterranean or Middle Eastern anomaly. It is both physically and culturally African.” (Chapter 2)
This argument is more than political—it is anthropological. Badawi cites Professor Theophile Obenga, who explains that the language, social structure, and burial customs of early Egypt align more closely with other African communities, especially Nubians, than with Semitic or Indo-European societies. The chapter revisits Herodotus, the 5th-century BCE Greek historian who described Egyptians as having “black skin and woolly hair”—a statement often downplayed or dismissed in classical scholarship.
We are introduced to the towering figure of Pharaoh Ramses II (reigned c. 1279–1213 BCE), whose architectural feats still echo along the Nile, including the Abu Simbel temples. Yet Badawi’s deeper focus rests on less commonly spotlighted figures such as Pharaoh Piye, the black Nubian ruler from Kush, who conquered Egypt around 747 BCE and became the first pharaoh of Egypt’s 25th Dynasty, also known as the Nubian Dynasty.
In her conversations with modern-day Sudanese historians, Badawi observes that Egyptians and Nubians coexisted and intermarried for centuries, sharing spiritual beliefs, agricultural systems, and iconography. She offers a particularly moving moment from her travels:
“In Khartoum, an elderly woman told me: ‘They say Egypt built pyramids. But our pyramids are older. The Nile has always flowed through our soul.’” (Chapter 2)
Badawi also critiques the 19th and 20th-century European archaeologists who conveniently divided Egypt from Africa, placing it in a Mediterranean category to fit colonial narratives. She quotes Kenyan scholar Ali Mazrui, who said:
“The de-Africanization of Egypt is a metaphor for the theft of African history.”
As the chapter closes, Badawi underscores that the grandeur of Egypt—its science, medicine, architecture, and theology—did not emerge in isolation. It was the result of centuries of African migration, adaptation, and environmental harmony with the Nile. She challenges the reader to recognize that Africa is not peripheral to world history, but central—especially when tracing the roots of civilization.
This reframing of Egypt as African not only reclaims stolen historical identity, it reshapes how we understand the origins of global civilization itself. As Badawi writes in one of her most evocative lines:
“The Nile gave Egypt life—but Africa gave Egypt soul.”
Chapter 3: The Kingdom of Kush
In Chapter 3, titled “The Kingdom of Kush,” Zeinab Badawi shifts the narrative spotlight southward from Egypt to Sudan, home of one of Africa’s most overlooked but culturally rich empires—Kush. Here, Badawi makes one of the book’s most intellectually bold assertions: that Kush, not Egypt, was the mother civilization of the Nile Valley.
The Kingdom of Kush flourished for over 1,000 years, its earliest phase beginning with Kerma (c. 2500–1500 BCE), followed by Napata and then Meroë. Badawi emphasizes how the Kerma culture, located just south of Egypt, predated and influenced Egyptian state formation. Excavations at Kerma revealed massive mudbrick temples, elaborate burial mounds, and urban sophistication—all suggestive of a distinct, African-built civilization, not a derivative of Egyptian design.
“The Kushites were not imitators of Egypt; they were architects of their own brilliance,” Badawi insists (Chapter 3). She recalls her personal awe standing among the ruins of Kerma’s Western Deffufa, an 18-meter-high religious structure dating back nearly 4,000 years.
The second Kushite capital, Napata, came into prominence during the 8th century BCE, and it is from here that Pharaoh Piye led a remarkable military campaign northward to conquer Egypt in 747 BCE, establishing the 25th Dynasty—the era of the so-called Black Pharaohs. Piye’s successor, Taharqa, is remembered for building great temples and defending his reign against Assyrian invaders. His tomb, located in Nuri, rivals anything found in the Valley of the Kings.
Badawi highlights that at one point, more pyramids stood in Sudan than in Egypt. In Meroë, the third Kushite capital, more than 200 pyramids still dot the landscape. Built between 800 BCE and 350 CE, these were not merely tombs but symbols of a continuing royal African identity, incorporating indigenous spiritual symbolism with Egyptian-style iconography.
“To call this Egypt’s ‘little sister’ is a misreading of scale and substance,” Badawi writes. “Kush was both contemporary and competitive.” (Chapter 3)
She also challenges the Western academic tradition of splitting Kush from Egypt as a secondary or tributary power. Citing the work of Sudanese archaeologist Dr. Salah Mohamed Ahmed, Badawi illustrates how the Kushite kings retained their own writing system (Meroitic script), distinctive gods like Apedemak, and a matrilineal influence through royal queens known as Kandake (Candace)—some of whom led armies and ruled in their own right.
One such figure, Queen Amanirenas, led a military resistance against the Roman Empire around 25 BCE, famously defeating Augustus’ troops and negotiating a peace treaty that spared Kush from Roman taxation—a feat rarely achieved in Roman-African relations.
Badawi’s own Sudanese heritage gives this chapter an added layer of emotional urgency. “We walk among the ghosts of queens and kings,” she reflects while visiting Meroë. “But their spirits are not silent. They wait for us to listen.”
By the chapter’s end, one realizes that Kush is not simply a “forgotten kingdom” but an erased legacy—a sophisticated, sovereign, and self-sustaining African civilization whose historical silence was not natural, but constructed.
Chapter 4: Ezana of Aksum and the Rise of a Christian Kingdom
In Chapter 4, titled “Ezana of Aksum and the Rise of a Christian Kingdom,” Zeinab Badawi turns her gaze eastward to the Horn of Africa, where the Aksumite Empire flourished between c. 100 CE and 940 CE in what is now northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. This chapter traces not only the economic and political power of Aksum, but more significantly, its transformative adoption of Christianity under King Ezana—a moment that would have seismic cultural and spiritual effects on African identity for centuries to come.
Badawi introduces Aksum as one of the four greatest powers of the ancient world, as recognized by 4th-century Roman historians—on par with Rome, Persia, and China. Its capital city, Aksum, was a bustling metropolis with massive stone obelisks, coinage, and international trade networks. The Aksumites controlled ports on the Red Sea, including Adulis, through which they conducted trade with India, Byzantium, and Arabia, exchanging gold, ivory, frankincense, and slaves.
“Aksum was not a fringe outpost of antiquity,” writes Badawi. “It was a power that commanded attention, connected Africa with the world, and yet rooted its soul in the highlands of Ethiopia.” (Chapter 4)
But the spiritual pivot of the chapter is the story of King Ezana, who came to power around 330 CE. He was influenced by a Christian Syrian missionary named Frumentius, who had been shipwrecked on the Red Sea coast and taken in by the royal court. Frumentius served as Ezana’s tutor and later became the first bishop of Aksum, appointed by Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria.
Under Frumentius’s mentorship, Ezana converted to Christianity, making Aksum the first African state to adopt Christianity as the official religion, decades before the Roman Empire did so under Constantine. The religious shift was so defining that Ezana’s coinage began to bear the cross instead of traditional pagan symbols—an early example of state-sanctioned Christian iconography in Africa.
Badawi emphasizes how Aksumite Christianity was uniquely African in form and content. It was neither imposed nor borrowed, but natively interpreted and preserved. Unlike later European missionary movements, Christianity in Aksum arose from internal conviction and diplomacy. She writes:
“This was not the Christianity of colonial conquest. It was the Christianity of spiritual sovereignty.” (Chapter 4)
Furthermore, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, which traces its lineage back to Ezana, remains one of the oldest continuous Christian institutions in the world. It developed its own liturgical language, Ge’ez, and maintained religious autonomy despite Islamic expansion and later European interventions.
The chapter also touches upon the Kebra Nagast, an Ethiopian national epic written in the 14th century that chronicles how the Queen of Sheba and King Solomon’s union gave birth to Menelik I, whose lineage, Ethiopians believe, continues through Ezana. Though not verified historically, the legend continues to inform Ethiopian monarchy and identity, especially under Haile Selassie I.
Badawi visits monasteries carved into the cliffs of the Tigray highlands, where ancient Bibles written on goatskin parchment and painted in vivid inks still survive. In one poignant moment, she writes:
“As I sat among monks chanting in Ge’ez, I felt time collapse. This was not just memory. It was inheritance.”
Chapter 5: The Cross and the Crescent
In Chapter 5, titled “The Cross and the Crescent,” Zeinab Badawi dives into one of Africa’s most complex yet illuminating themes: the intertwining of Christianity and Islam. She explores how both religions—often thought of as opposing forces—found unique, early, and peaceful expressions in African societies long before they collided in other parts of the world.
Badawi begins by revisiting Ethiopia, the oldest Christian state in Africa, whose embrace of Christianity under King Ezana in the 4th century CE is discussed in the previous chapter. But here, she introduces a parallel narrative: Islam’s introduction to Africa, which occurred shortly after the religion’s birth in 7th century Arabia.
“Africa was the first sanctuary of Islam outside Arabia,” Badawi explains, “and it welcomed it not with the sword, but with sanctuary.” (Chapter 5)
This is a reference to the Hijrah to Abyssinia, a pivotal moment in Islamic history. Facing persecution in Mecca, a group of the Prophet Muhammad’s followers fled to the Christian kingdom of Aksum, where Negus (al-Najashi) granted them asylum around 615 CE. According to Islamic tradition, when asked to return the refugees to Mecca, the king replied that Muslims and Christians were “two rays from the same lamp.”
Badawi describes this moment not just as a historical anecdote, but as a symbol of interfaith diplomacy, tolerance, and shared values. It highlights how Africa served as the spiritual cradle for both Abrahamic faiths—a critical counterpoint to modern narratives that frame religion in Africa as a byproduct of colonialism or conquest.
She then explores the spread of Islam through North and West Africa, facilitated not by military campaigns but through trade, scholarship, and kinship networks. Cities like Timbuktu (Mali), Gao, and Kano (Nigeria) became centers of Islamic learning, producing scholars such as Ahmad Baba al-Timbukti, who wrote over 40 books and helped build one of the most renowned manuscript libraries in the Islamic world during the 15th–16th centuries.
Meanwhile, Christianity remained strong in Ethiopia, preserving its unique liturgy, iconography, and architecture, such as the rock-hewn churches of Lalibela, constructed in the 12th–13th centuries. Badawi recalls her own visit there, where pilgrims, barefoot and in white robes, ascend steep stone steps to pray in churches carved out of single blocks of volcanic rock.
“Here, Christianity breathes through stone,” she writes. “It is not just a religion—it is a terrain.” (Chapter 5)
The chapter does not shy away from tensions either. Badawi addresses the arrival of Portuguese missionaries and Jesuits in the 16th century, whose attempts to impose Roman Catholicism triggered conflicts with the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. Similarly, Islamic reform movements, such as the Sokoto Caliphate (founded in 1804 by Usman dan Fodio) in West Africa, often clashed with indigenous practices and syncretic Islam.
Yet, the overarching message of this chapter is clear: Africa’s religious story is not binary. It is layered, adaptive, and often more cooperative than divisive. Christianity and Islam in Africa did not arrive as colonial projects but were adopted, adapted, and Africanized through indigenous agency and belief.
Chapter 6: Islam in Africa
In Chapter 6, titled “Islam in Africa,” Zeinab Badawi moves from the early embrace of Islam on the continent to its deep-rooted transformation into a distinctly African faith—one that spread not by conquest but by culture, commerce, kinship, and scholarship.
She begins with a powerful assertion:
“Islam in Africa is not a transplant—it is a tree with roots as deep and wide as the continent itself.” (Chapter 6)
This chapter offers an intricate account of how Islam, first introduced via the Hijrah to Abyssinia in 615 CE, expanded gradually across North Africa and into Sub-Saharan Africa by the 8th–9th centuries. It flowed along trade routes, not battle lines, and took hold in great kingdoms such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu, and the Hausa states.
Badawi places special emphasis on Timbuktu, a city that by the 14th century had become one of the most important Islamic centers of learning in the world. She walks us through the corridors of the Sankore Madrasa, where scholars from as far as Egypt and Andalusia once came to study theology, astronomy, law, and medicine. In its heyday, Timbuktu’s libraries housed over 700,000 manuscripts, many of which survive to this day—despite recent attempts by extremists to destroy them.
One scholar highlighted in the chapter is Ahmad Baba (1556–1627), a prolific Malian intellectual whose work criticized racial slavery and colonial narratives centuries before abolitionist movements. He authored more than 40 scholarly texts, including jurisprudence manuals and works on West African Islamic law.
Badawi underscores that Islam in Africa was never monolithic. In Sudan, Somalia, Nigeria, and Senegal, Islam evolved with unique cultural inflections—blending with pre-Islamic spiritual systems, languages, and aesthetics. She gives special attention to Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam that found fertile ground in Africa through movements like the Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya orders, which emphasized music, poetry, and spiritual healing.
“The Sufi brotherhoods became not just religious communities, but cultural sanctuaries,” she writes, noting how their lodges served as places of education, resistance, and charity across Senegal, Mauritania, and Northern Nigeria.
Badawi also addresses how Islamic governance emerged independently from Arab influence. She discusses the Kanem-Bornu Empire (c. 9th–19th centuries) in modern-day Chad and Nigeria, which sustained centuries of Islamic rule rooted in African customs and languages. Leaders like Mai Idris Alooma (r. 1571–1603) institutionalized Islamic law while maintaining cultural autonomy.
However, the chapter does not romanticize Islam’s spread. Badawi critically reflects on periods where Islamic law was used to justify slavery, particularly in trans-Saharan networks. But she draws a clear line between faith and its politicization. She stresses that African Muslims have historically challenged oppression from within the framework of Islam, not in opposition to it.
In conclusion, this chapter argues that Islam is inextricably African—not by accident but by transformation. It is a living, breathing faith rooted in the soil of African lands and molded by the voices of African believers.
Chapter 7: Islam and the Dynasties of North Africa
In Chapter 7 of An African History of Africa, Zeinab Badawi turns to North Africa—a region often stereotyped as more Arab than African—to explore how Islam shaped its political dynasties, cultural identity, and intellectual legacy. The chapter provides a panoramic sweep of over 1,000 years of Islamic rule in the Maghreb, covering modern-day Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and parts of Mauritania.
Badawi opens with a foundational question:
“Why is North Africa so often treated as culturally Middle Eastern, rather than African?” (Chapter 7)
She quickly deconstructs this illusion by laying out a timeline of indigenous Berber dynasties who were instrumental in shaping Islamic governance. Far from being passive recipients of Islam, North Africans actively defined, defended, and debated it—often in tension with the broader Arab world.
The earliest Islamic dynasty in the region, the Idrisids of Morocco, was founded in 788 CE by Idris I, a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad. Fleeing Abbasid persecution in Arabia, Idris settled among the local Amazigh (Berber) tribes and established Fes, which became a religious and intellectual capital. His dynasty, though short-lived, laid the foundation for Islamic governance in the region.
Next came the Fatimids (909–1171 CE)—a revolutionary Shia dynasty that began in Tunisia and later moved its capital to Cairo. Despite being often discussed in the context of Egypt, Badawi highlights the Fatimids’ North African roots and their support for science, architecture, and religious pluralism.
But the chapter’s central focus lies on two monumental Sunni Berber movements: the Almoravids (1040–1147) and the Almohads (1121–1269). Both originated in present-day Morocco and were fueled by Islamic reformism that fused religious zeal with military power.
The Almoravids, led by Yusuf ibn Tashfin, established an empire stretching from Senegal to Spain. They founded Marrakech in 1062, promoted the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence, and upheld rigid interpretations of the Quran. Despite their orthodoxy, they were great urban planners, promoting architecture, trade, and a unified Islamic identity across the western Sahara.
In contrast, the Almohads, under Ibn Tumart and Abd al-Mu’min, introduced a more philosophical strain of Islam, influenced by rationalism and mysticism. They challenged the Almoravids’ rigidity and created a new empire that stretched into Andalusia (southern Spain). It was under the Almohads that Averroes (Ibn Rushd) and Ibn Tufayl, two giants of Islamic philosophy, flourished in Cordoba.
Badawi shows that these empires were not mere extensions of Arab rule, but African in origin, outlook, and leadership. She interviews modern Moroccan scholars who assert that Amazigh traditions were never erased by Islam, but blended into it, creating a uniquely North African Islamic identity.
Importantly, she also highlights women’s roles—especially Fatima al-Fihri, who in 859 CE founded the University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fes, now recognized by UNESCO as the world’s oldest continually operating university.
“North Africa is where the Islamic world met the Atlantic and Mediterranean. But it was Africa that gave it its durability,” Badawi writes.
The chapter closes by arguing that the Maghreb’s dynasties demonstrate the compatibility of Islamic governance with African identity. These were African empires practicing Islam—not Arab colonies exporting it.
Chapter 8: Mansa Musa and the Kingdoms of West Africa
Chapter 8, titled “Mansa Musa and the Kingdoms of West Africa,” immerses the reader in the golden Sahel, where empire, Islam, and intellect converged to form one of the richest and most admired civilizations in history. Zeinab Badawi uses this chapter to reintroduce Mali, Ghana, and Songhai—not as mere trade networks, but as philosophical and spiritual giants whose wealth and influence reshaped global consciousness.
She begins the chapter of An African History of Africa with the most storied figure of the region: Mansa Musa I, who ruled the Mali Empire from c. 1312 to 1337. Often called the richest man in history, Mansa Musa’s wealth—derived from Mali’s control of salt, gold, and trans-Saharan trade routes—was so vast that his 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca became legend. According to contemporary accounts, his caravan included 60,000 people, hundreds of camels, and tons of gold, which he distributed so liberally in Cairo that it reportedly caused inflation for over a decade.
“He didn’t just take gold to Mecca—he took Mali’s dignity,” Badawi writes. “His journey wasn’t one of vanity, but of visibility.” (Chapter 8)
But Badawi goes beyond the monetary spectacle. She explores how Mansa Musa’s Hajj led to the establishment of Timbuktu as a world center of Islamic learning, with the construction of mosques, libraries, and madrasa institutions, including the famous Sankore University. There, West African scholars engaged in astronomy, law, philosophy, and medicine—centuries before similar advancements in much of Europe.
Importantly, Mali was not a monolith. Badawi discusses its predecessor, the Ghana Empire (c. 300–1200 CE)—based in modern-day southeast Mauritania and western Mali—which had already set a precedent for wealth through trade and structured kingship. Later, the Songhai Empire (c. 1460–1591 CE), particularly under Askia Muhammad I (r. 1493–1528), expanded these traditions, creating a multi-ethnic, multi-faith empire governed through Islamic law and bureaucratic sophistication.
She also confronts the selective amnesia of global historiography:
“We are told of Europe’s Enlightenment but not of Mali’s manuscript culture. We hear of Rome’s laws but not Songhai’s judicial systems.”
In her travels, Badawi meets with contemporary West African historians who reveal that over 700,000 Arabic manuscripts remain scattered across Mali and Niger—many yet to be translated. These are not religious tracts alone, but texts on geometry, optics, medicine, and governance, affirming that African history is also African science.
The chapter is also poignant in its portrait of gender dynamics. Badawi highlights oral histories of female scholars and advisors, noting how women in the Sahel wielded spiritual and economic influence, especially in the marketplaces and Sufi communities.
The final message is clear: West Africa was not peripheral to global history—it was central. And through Mansa Musa, Mali entered the world’s consciousness, not as a colonial subject, but as a sovereign presence.
“The empires of West Africa were not silent—they were silenced,” Badawi concludes.
Chapter 9: Tippu Tip and the First Enslavers
In Chapter 9, titled “Tippu Tip and the First Enslavers,” Zeinab Badawi confronts one of the most painful, often misunderstood, and morally complex aspects of African history: the slave trade within Africa, particularly the roles of African and Arab-African enslavers, such as the infamous Tippu Tip.
Badawi begins with brutal clarity:
“Slavery was not introduced to Africa from Europe or the Americas. It existed long before, embedded in the continent’s social and economic systems.” (Chapter 9)
The chapter centers on Tippu Tip (1837–1905), born in Zanzibar, of mixed Arab and Swahili heritage. His real name was Hamad bin Muhammad bin Juma bin Rajab el Murjebi, but he became known as Tippu Tip because of the sound his guns made when firing. He became a dominant slave trader, ivory merchant, and regional governor, extending deep into Central Africa—particularly modern-day Democratic Republic of Congo (then Upper Congo Basin).
At his peak, Tippu Tip controlled a network of armed caravans, plantations, and military outposts. His operations were both commercial and political, acting as an intermediary between Arab merchants, African chiefs, and European colonial agents like Henry Morton Stanley. Tippu Tip’s name has since become symbolic of African complicity in the transregional slave trades.
“He was an African, enslaving other Africans. But to what extent was he acting on foreign demands—and to what extent was it internal ambition?” Badawi asks, inviting moral complexity rather than blanket judgment. (Chapter 9)
The chapter outlines that the East African slave trade, operating from Zanzibar, Kilwa, and Bagamoyo, was in full force by the 17th century, reaching its peak in the 19th century. Here, hundreds of thousands of people—particularly from present-day Tanzania, Mozambique, Malawi, and Congo—were captured and transported to Arabia, Persia, and India. This differs from the Transatlantic slave trade not only in geography but in scale, gender composition (many more women were taken in East Africa), and duration.
Badawi carefully distinguishes domestic servitude, which existed in many African kingdoms prior to Arab and European arrival, from the brutal commercial slavery that emerged later. In precolonial systems, enslaved people might become household members, marry into families, or even hold positions of influence. But under commercial systems like Tippu Tip’s, humans became commodities in an international market.
She does not absolve the agents involved but places them in context. Tippu Tip was both a product and producer of a growing global market, fueled by European demand for ivory, Arab wealth accumulation, and local political rivalry. Her interviews with Tanzanian historians reveal an ongoing struggle to reconcile his legacy: some see him as a cultural villain, others as a figure of regional power navigating imperial pressures.
The chapter also explores the broader Swahili coast culture, in which Islam, trade, and slavery intertwined. Badawi visits Stone Town, Zanzibar, where slave markets once stood beneath cathedral altars and coral-stone auction blocks. There, she reflects:
“This is where the dignity of so many was priced, bartered, and broken.”
Yet, the chapter doesn’t dwell solely in guilt. It highlights resistance—such as slave revolts, runaway communities, and abolitionist voices from within African and Islamic traditions.
Badawi closes with a sobering insight:
“To confront the truth is not to deny identity—it is to deepen it.”
Chapter 10: Cast in Bronze
In Chapter 10, “Cast in Bronze,” Zeinab Badawi offers a passionate and illuminating defense of African artistic sophistication, focusing on the renowned Benin Bronzes—a breathtaking body of work produced by the Kingdom of Benin in what is now southern Nigeria. This chapter is both an ode to African creativity and a searing critique of colonial looting and cultural erasure.
Badawi begins with a personal moment of awe. Standing before one of the bronzes in Benin City, she remarks:
“These are not just works of art. They are statements of sovereignty—cast not in vanity, but in power.” (Chapter 10)
The Kingdom of Benin, founded by the Edo people around the 11th century, reached its zenith between the 15th and 17th centuries. Its capital was a sprawling urban complex—Benin City—with broad boulevards, massive earthen walls, and a highly centralized monarchy led by the Oba of Benin. The Oba was not only a political leader but a sacred figure, and it was under his patronage that an elite class of guild-trained artists flourished.
These artists—many working within the Igun-Eronmwon (Royal Guild of Bronze Casters)—produced thousands of plaques, heads, figurines, and ceremonial items, using techniques such as lost-wax casting, a method shared by great civilizations across time, from Ancient Greece to the Shang Dynasty.
Badawi highlights that many of these bronzes were commissioned to record historical events, royal lineage, court rituals, and diplomatic relations. Far from being primitive trinkets, the Benin Bronzes represented a visual archive—a court chronicle in metal.
“Benin’s walls may have been made of earth,” she writes, “but its memory was cast in bronze.” (Chapter 10)
But the chapter takes a darker turn when Badawi discusses the British Punitive Expedition of 1897, during which Benin City was invaded, looted, and burned. Over 4,000 bronzes and ivory carvings were stolen and distributed to European and American museums. These were not war trophies—they were pillaged legacies.
Badawi critiques the language used in Western archives:
“To call it ‘removal for safekeeping’ is to ignore the smoking ruins. To call it ‘civilizing rescue’ is to deny the Oba’s court ever existed.”
She interviews Prince Akenzua, a descendant of the royal line, who shares how the loss of the bronzes fractured the community’s sense of ancestral continuity. Despite efforts to repatriate the artifacts, many still remain in the British Museum, Berlin Ethnological Museum, and other European institutions. Badawi reflects on the irony of Africa having to ask for its own memory back.
Yet, the chapter ends with a note of pride and resurgence. Contemporary Beninese artists and historians are reviving the traditions, and a new Edo Museum of West African Art (EMOWAA) is being planned in Benin City with support from both local leadership and global partners.
“The bronze didn’t just survive the fire—it absorbed it. And now it glows with resistance,” Badawi concludes.
Chapter 11: Great Zimbabwe and Southern Kingdoms
In Chapter 11, “Great Zimbabwe and Southern Kingdoms,” Zeinab Badawi leads us into the stone heart of Southern Africa, where towering ruins tell a story long dismissed, distorted, or denied by colonial archaeologists. This chapter is not just about stones—it is about the civilizations that built in stone, traded in gold, governed with vision, and left behind legacies chiseled into Africa’s southern plateau.
Badawi begins with Great Zimbabwe, the majestic stone complex in present-day Zimbabwe, built by the Shona people between the 11th and 15th centuries CE. Comprising more than 300 structures, including the famous Great Enclosure with walls rising up to 11 meters high, the site defies the outdated claim—once standard in colonial textbooks—that Africans lacked the capacity for monumental architecture.
“Great Zimbabwe wasn’t lost—it was ignored,” Badawi writes. “Its silence was enforced by those who couldn’t accept its African voice.” (Chapter 11)
Indeed, for decades, European scholars attributed the ruins to Phoenicians, Arabs, or even biblical civilizations, refusing to acknowledge that a sub-Saharan African society could have developed such advanced stone masonry, city planning, and commercial infrastructure.
Badawi traces the origins of Great Zimbabwe to earlier settlements such as Mapungubwe (c. 1075–1220), located near the Limpopo River on the South Africa–Zimbabwe border. Here, archaeological evidence reveals class-based settlements, royal burials, and long-distance trade with the Swahili coast and China. Gold artifacts, glass beads, and ceramics found at the site point to a cosmopolitan worldview rooted in African initiative—not foreign contact.
As trade expanded, Great Zimbabwe flourished as a political and commercial capital, connected to the Indian Ocean trade through the port city of Sofala (in modern-day Mozambique). Its rulers controlled the flow of gold, ivory, and cattle, integrating environmental mastery with a centralized monarchy.
Following the decline of Great Zimbabwe around 1450, the Mutapa Empire (also called Mwene Mutapa) rose to prominence. Based further north, the Mutapa kingdom continued Shona traditions of kingship, economy, and spirituality. Badawi recounts oral histories of rainmakers, spirit mediums, and sacred kings whose authority stemmed not only from politics, but from cosmic legitimacy.
In her travels to the ruins, Badawi interviews Zimbabwean archaeologists and local elders, who speak of a past still alive in the rhythms of language, religion, and place. She notes how modern nationalism, particularly in Zimbabwe, draws heavily from the symbolism of Great Zimbabwe. The nation’s very name means “house of stone.”
Yet, Badawi is careful not to romanticize. She discusses ecological pressures, internal disputes, and Portuguese interference as contributing factors to the decline of these kingdoms. But decline does not equal failure—it is, she writes, part of the cyclical nature of all great civilizations.
“What matters is not how Great Zimbabwe fell, but that it rose—and rose with pride, purpose, and permanence.”
This chapter reframes Great Zimbabwe and its successor states not as isolated anomalies, but as part of a pan-African architectural, commercial, and political genius—as significant as the pyramids of Egypt or the temples of Angkor.
Chapter 12: Yaa Asantewaa and the Spirit of Resistance
In Chapter 12, titled “Yaa Asantewaa and the Spirit of Resistance,” Zeinab Badawi brings to life one of Africa’s most formidable symbols of anti-colonial defiance—Yaa Asantewaa, the Queen Mother of the Ashanti Empire in modern-day Ghana. This chapter marks a tonal shift in An African History of Africa: from celebrating African civilizations to chronicling African resistance, particularly against the British Empire at the turn of the 20th century.
Badawi frames Yaa Asantewaa’s story not simply as a tale of heroism, but as a microcosm of the African will to preserve dignity, culture, and sovereignty in the face of colonial encroachment.
“Yaa Asantewaa fought not just with weapons, but with words and wisdom. She carried an entire kingdom on her shoulders.” (Chapter 12)
Born around 1840, Yaa Asantewaa became Queen Mother of Ejisu, a state within the Ashanti Confederacy. Following the British exile of King Prempeh I in 1896, the Ashanti were left vulnerable. In 1900, the final straw came when Sir Frederick Hodgson, the British governor, demanded the sacred Golden Stool—a symbol not just of kingship, but of the spiritual embodiment of the Ashanti people.
It was Yaa Asantewaa who rose to the moment, addressing a council of male chiefs with a now-iconic declaration:
“If you, the men of Ashanti, will not go forward, then we will. We the women will fight.” (Recorded in oral tradition)
What followed was the War of the Golden Stool (1900), also known as the Yaa Asantewaa War—the last of several Anglo-Ashanti conflicts. Leading an army of 5,000, including women fighters, Yaa Asantewaa laid siege to the British fort at Kumasi for several months. Though the British ultimately quelled the rebellion and exiled her to the Seychelles, her legacy endured as a testament to the resilience and leadership of African women.
Badawi travels to Ejisu and Kumasi, interviewing local historians and Asante royals who trace matrilineal power through generations of Queen Mothers. She notes that Yaa Asantewaa wasn’t an exception—rather, she emerged from a cultural system that revered female authority, especially in matters of land, justice, and morality.
“Her defiance was political, but her authority was ancestral,” Badawi writes.
The chapter also addresses how colonial records distorted or omitted her contributions, casting her as irrational or fanatical. Yet oral traditions across Ghana and the wider diaspora preserved her name, and in 2000, exactly a century after her uprising, Ghana held a state funeral and memorial service in her honor.
Badawi reflects on standing by Yaa Asantewaa’s statue in Ejisu, watching young girls lay flowers at her feet:
“They did not see a statue—they saw themselves.”
Chapter 13: Asante Courage
In Chapter 13, “Asante Courage,” Zeinab Badawi continues to spotlight the Ashanti (Asante) people of Ghana, this time not through a singular figure like Yaa Asantewaa, but through the cultural and political system that sustained one of Africa’s most formidable and enduring empires. The chapter is a study in collective strength: how a people, not just a leader, resisted cultural erosion and military conquest while forging one of the most resilient indigenous states in West Africa.
The Asante Empire emerged in the late 17th century, around 1701, when King Osei Tutu I, in collaboration with the spiritual leader Okomfo Anokye, unified several Akan-speaking states. They established Kumasi as the capital and created the Golden Stool (Sika Dwa Kofi)—a spiritual symbol believed to contain the soul of the Ashanti nation.
“The Asante did not just build armies—they built memory, myth, and meaning,” Badawi writes. “Their courage was institutional.” (Chapter 13)
She describes how the Asante Empire developed a centralized political structure, complete with a sophisticated bureaucracy, standing army, and regional governors (amanhene) loyal to the Asantehene (king). Badawi highlights how this administrative system predated and rivaled many contemporary European states.
The Asante economy was powered by gold, kola nuts, and agriculture, and they maintained complex trade relationships with Hausa merchants, Mali traders, and European outposts on the coast. Despite these interactions, the Asante fiercely guarded their independence, resisting multiple British attempts at colonization.
Between 1824 and 1900, the Asante fought five wars against the British—known collectively as the Anglo-Ashanti Wars. Badawi delves into each conflict with nuance, noting that Asante resistance was not fueled by mere nationalism, but by cosmic duty to protect the Golden Stool and the ancestral legacy of their people.
“The British wanted land. The Asante fought for legacy,” she writes. “This was not just resistance—it was guardianship.”
She visits the Manhyia Palace in Kumasi, where the current Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, presides as both a cultural custodian and a modern statesman. The royal court, adorned with gold regalia and drumming rituals, still functions with strict adherence to tradition—evidence of how the Asante preserved their identity even under British rule.
Badawi also examines how the British, after finally defeating the Asante in 1901, incorporated the kingdom into the Gold Coast colony. However, they never fully dismantled the Asante political structure. Even under indirect rule, Asante kings retained significant spiritual and communal authority.
In her interviews with local chiefs, linguists, and elders, Badawi captures the emotional thread that binds past and present. One elder tells her,
“We did not lose our kingdom. We lent it to time.”
Chapter 14: Slavery and Salvation
In Chapter 14, “Slavery and Salvation,” Zeinab Badawi tackles the deeply painful subject of Africa’s role in the transatlantic slave trade and the arrival of Christian missionaries—two interconnected forces that shaped the continent’s moral, social, and spiritual landscape. This chapter is neither accusatory nor apologetic—it is reflective, honest, and deeply human.
Badawi opens with a stark declaration:
“You cannot talk about African history without talking about African involvement in slavery.” (Chapter 14)
She acknowledges that slavery existed in various African societies long before European contact, often in the form of debt bondage, war captives, or social punishment. However, she distinguishes this from the mass commercialized chattel slavery that fed European plantations in the Americas from the 16th to the 19th century.
Between 1525 and 1866, more than 12.5 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic, with at least two million dying en route during the Middle Passage. The primary ports—Elmina, Cape Coast, Lagos, Ouidah, and Luanda—became sites of unspeakable human suffering. But what makes the chapter powerful is Badawi’s insistence on shared culpability.
She highlights how some African rulers, merchants, and middlemen collaborated in the trade, motivated by guns, cloth, liquor, and prestige goods. She names kingdoms such as Dahomey, parts of the Yoruba states, and some leaders in Congo and Angola, while also acknowledging internal resistance from African rulers who rejected the trade.
“There were Africans who enslaved—and Africans who fought the slavers. We must hold both truths,” she writes.
She travels to Ghana’s Cape Coast Castle, standing in the “Door of No Return,” where millions passed into bondage. She interviews local scholars and community leaders grappling with memory, accountability, and healing.
Parallel to the rise of the slave trade was the arrival of Christian missionaries, particularly from the 18th century onward. Missionaries often came as agents of abolition, but also as harbingers of European cultural dominance. Badawi focuses on the Church Missionary Society, Methodist missions, and Basel missionaries, who built schools, churches, and hospitals but also denigrated African spiritual systems and promoted Eurocentric norms.
Still, she gives space to African converts who embraced Christianity on their own terms. Figures like Samuel Ajayi Crowther, a Yoruba linguist and freed slave, became the first African Anglican bishop in 1864 and translated the Bible into Yoruba. Others, like William Wadé Harris of Liberia, preached Christianity infused with African symbolism, rejecting European paternalism.
The chapter ends not with despair but with nuance. Badawi shows how Christianity was used both as a tool of conquest and as a means of self-assertion, especially by former slaves, African women, and rural communities seeking literacy and empowerment.
“Slavery broke bodies. But faith helped rebuild souls,” she concludes.
Chapter 15: Land, Gold and Greed
In Chapter 15, “Land, Gold and Greed,” Zeinab Badawi lays bare the raw imperial motivations behind Europe’s colonization of Africa—motivations far less about civilization and far more about wealth extraction, geopolitical rivalry, and ruthless exploitation. With laser precision, she strips away the sanitized narratives of imperialism and reveals its devastating human and environmental consequences.
The chapter begins with a sweeping indictment:
“They did not come to save Africa. They came to seize it.” (Chapter 15)
Badawi takes us to the Berlin Conference of 1884–1885, where European powers—including Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, and Italy—divided Africa like a carcass on a banquet table. Convened by Otto von Bismarck, the conference carved up 90% of the continent without a single African present, laying the groundwork for borders that would fracture ethnic, linguistic, and spiritual communities for generations.
One of the most disturbing examples Badawi explores is the Congo Free State, declared the personal possession of King Leopold II of Belgium in 1885. Over a 20-year period, the Congolese population dropped by an estimated 10 million people—killed through forced labor, starvation, and punitive mutilation.
“This was not colonization. It was predation,” she writes. “Rubber was the resource. Bodies were the currency.” (Chapter 15)
She visits Kinshasa and meets with Congolese historians who emphasize that resistance was immediate and sustained—from local chiefs to spiritual leaders. Yet, the technological disparity—especially the Maxim gun—turned negotiations into massacres.
The British Empire, meanwhile, seized vast swathes of East and Southern Africa, often cloaking its intentions in missionary work or anti-slavery campaigns. But Badawi shows that Britain’s real motive was strategic control and mineral wealth, particularly gold in South Africa and agricultural land in Kenya.
In the Gold Coast (Ghana), Nigeria, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, the British employed policies of indirect rule, using local leaders to enforce colonial policy. In South Africa, the Boer Wars (1880–1881, 1899–1902) were fought over control of gold-rich territories, and native Africans were largely pushed off fertile land to make way for white settlers.
“European empires did not ‘develop’ Africa,” Badawi writes. “They developed Europe with Africa’s resources.”
The French, operating under the myth of mission civilisatrice, sought cultural assimilation, especially in Senegal, Mali, and Ivory Coast. But their primary goal was to secure territorial continuity across West and Central Africa, creating the second-largest colonial empire after Britain’s.
Badawi challenges the notion that colonialism was an inevitable phase of African development. She interviews modern African economists and legal scholars who explain how colonial borders, cash-crop economies, and resource dependency still define much of Africa’s vulnerability today.
“They came for land. They took gold. But what they left behind was grief,” she concludes.
Chapter 16: The Scramble for Africa
In Chapter 16, titled “The Scramble for Africa,” Zeinab Badawi zooms in on the rapid, violent, and bureaucratically sanitized seizure of African territories by European powers during the late 19th century. If Chapter 15 revealed the motives—land, gold, and greed—then this chapter explains the method: how imperial conquest was legitimized, accelerated, and “legalized” under the banner of treaties and protectorates.
Badawi begins with a critical pivot from diplomacy to deceit:
“The pen may have come before the sword—but it was often dipped in lies.” (Chapter 16)
Following the Berlin Conference of 1884–85, where European leaders had carved out spheres of influence, the real scramble began in earnest. Within just twenty years, the map of Africa was transformed—by 1900, only Liberia and Ethiopia remained formally independent.
Colonial agents—military officers, traders, missionaries—fanned out across the continent with treaties in hand, demanding local rulers sign away sovereignty in exchange for “protection.” Badawi explains that many African kings and chiefs, unfamiliar with European legal frameworks and often deceived by false translations, signed under duress, manipulation, or complete misunderstanding.
A poignant example is given in Nigeria, where over 400 treaties were signed in the space of just two decades. Badawi recounts how King Jaja of Opobo, a powerful merchant-king in the Niger Delta, was exiled by the British in 1887 after resisting trade monopolization—even though he had signed what he believed was a non-aggression pact.
“African rulers were not naive,” she insists. “They were ambushed by a system rigged against them.”
The chapter outlines the military speed and political ruthlessness with which European forces moved. The British in Uganda, the French in Senegal and Dahomey, and the Germans in Tanzania and Cameroon each employed brutal suppression tactics—including scorched earth policies, hostage-taking, and massacre—to dismantle resistance.
Badawi highlights the Herero and Nama genocide in German South-West Africa (modern-day Namibia) between 1904 and 1908, where over 80% of the Herero population was exterminated—an atrocity now recognized by historians as one of the first genocides of the 20th century.
“The scramble was not just territorial—it was existential,” she writes. “Africans had to choose between resistance and annihilation.”
Yet, resistance was never absent. Badawi honors leaders such as Samori Touré of Guinea, who fought the French for over a decade; Lobengula of the Ndebele, who challenged the British South Africa Company; and Menelik II of Ethiopia, whose victory at the Battle of Adwa in 1896 became a landmark triumph of African arms over European imperialism.
She visits Adwa’s highlands, where Ethiopians still sing war songs passed down through generations. “The mountains remember,” an elder tells her. “We do not forget who came—and who left.”
The chapter ends on a note of legal irony: even after conquest, colonial powers insisted on maintaining the illusion of ‘legitimate transfer’, carefully archiving treaties, maps, and decrees. Badawi calls this the “paper conquest”—as destructive as the military one.
Chapter 17: Resistance and Independence
In Chapter 17, titled “Resistance and Independence,” Zeinab Badawi closes the historical arc of her book with a stirring chronicle of Africa’s long and bitter struggle for freedom from colonial rule. If the previous chapters explored how Africa was divided, this one celebrates how it fought to be whole again.
“Colonialism didn’t end with a handshake—it ended with fire, with sacrifice, and with dreams written in blood,” she opens. (Chapter 17)
The chapter spans the 20th century, focusing on both grassroots uprisings and organized nationalist movements that shook the colonial order. Badawi asserts that resistance was never dormant—it began the moment the first treaty was signed under false pretenses, and it lived in the actions of warriors, poets, workers, and students.
She revisits landmark moments such as the Maji Maji Rebellion in German East Africa (1905–07) and the Mau Mau Uprising in Kenya (1952–60)—the latter resulting in the deaths of thousands of Kenyans and the imprisonment of Jomo Kenyatta, who would later become the country’s first Prime Minister.
The chapter also highlights Pan-Africanist leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, who led Ghana (formerly the Gold Coast) to become the first sub-Saharan African nation to gain independence in 1957. Nkrumah’s vision of continental unity echoes throughout the chapter, especially in his rallying cry:
“Seek ye first the political kingdom and all else shall be added unto you.”
Badawi discusses how movements across Francophone Africa, led by intellectuals like Léopold Sédar Senghor (Senegal) and Sékou Touré (Guinea), began to negotiate or force the end of French colonial rule. Guinea, in particular, shocked France in 1958 by voting for immediate independence, prompting the French to withdraw all infrastructure support within days.
“Guinea chose poverty with dignity over prosperity with subjugation,” she notes.
The Portuguese colonies—Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau—faced some of the bloodiest wars, fighting a dictatorship that refused to concede. Guerrilla fighters such as Amílcar Cabral and Agostinho Neto led prolonged struggles, often supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba during the Cold War era.
Badawi also revisits Ethiopia’s unique position—as the only African country to successfully resist European colonization, defeating Italy at Adwa in 1896, and later liberating itself from Mussolini’s occupation in 1941 with support from local patriots and Allied forces.
Yet, she tempers triumph with realism. Many newly independent African nations entered freedom burdened with colonial borders, debt, weak institutions, and the scars of divide-and-rule policies. Still, she celebrates the dignity of reclaiming sovereignty.
In the closing pages, Badawi meets young Africans from Algeria to Zimbabwe, who speak of resistance not just as historical memory, but as contemporary responsibility.
“Independence is not the end of struggle—it is the right to struggle on your own terms,” she concludes.
Epilogue: Africa’s Future, Africa’s Youth
In the epilogue of her monumental work, Zeinab Badawi sets aside the lens of the historian and speaks as a mother, journalist, and African thinker. Titled “Africa’s Future, Africa’s Youth,” this final chapter is a profound meditation on legacy, identity, and possibility.
Badawi opens with a question that is both historical and intimate:
“What will Africa look like when it remembers who it truly is?” (Epilogue)
After seventeen chapters chronicling millennia of resilience, innovation, colonization, and liberation, she turns toward the people shaping the continent’s future: Africa’s youth, who today make up 60% of the population under the age of 25. Africa is the youngest continent on earth, and Badawi views this not as a demographic statistic—but as a moral and strategic turning point.
She visits schools in Nairobi, Kigali, Khartoum, and Lagos, speaking to students who are not weighed down by the past but deeply curious about it. Many express frustration that the history they are taught still begins with colonization or focuses on Western benchmarks. Badawi argues that true empowerment requires decolonizing education, not only by teaching African civilizations with pride, but by centering African languages, philosophies, and worldviews.
“Our ancestors built empires. Our children must build futures. But they need to know the soil they stand on,” she writes.
The epilogue touches on key contemporary themes—climate change, migration, urbanization, and technology—all of which disproportionately affect or engage African youth. Badawi speaks with tech entrepreneurs in Ghana, climate activists in Senegal, and artists in Nairobi who are all redefining what it means to be African in the 21st century.
But she is also clear-eyed about the challenges: corruption, authoritarianism, unemployment, and underfunded education systems. She laments that too many leaders speak the language of independence but govern in the spirit of their former colonizers.
Still, her faith in the youth remains unshaken. She recalls standing in front of the University of Khartoum, once a hotbed of political activism, and watching a new generation of students chanting for civilian rule and dignity during the Sudanese revolution of 2019.
“These young voices are not just demanding the future—they are already writing it,” she observes.
She closes An African History of Africa not with a summary, but a benediction:
“Africa is not a problem to be solved. It is a story still unfolding—and its next chapter will be written by its youngest historians, poets, scientists, and rebels. My task was to illuminate the past. Theirs is to ignite the future.”
Structural Approach
Badawi’s structure is hybrid—interweaving chronology with themes—and heavily draws on the UNESCO General History of Africa, a lesser-known but monumental academic project. She explicitly states:
“This is not an academic book… I aim to provide a counter-balance to the many negative perceptions of the continent and its people…”
Badawi traveled to 30+ African countries over seven years, conducting interviews with dozens of local scholars and community leaders. Her storytelling seamlessly fuses archaeological facts with human anecdotes: from climbing the Virunga mountains to observe gorillas, to sharing meals with Hadzabe hunter-gatherers in Tanzania.
This structure gives An African History of Africa a documentary-style rhythm—one that is part history, part memoir, part intellectual diary.
3. Critical Analysis
📈 Evaluation of Content: Evidence and Argumentation
Zeinab Badawi’s An African History of Africa is, at its heart, a passionately argued and intricately substantiated call to reframe African identity through history. She builds her narrative not through detached academic prose but by layering hard archaeological and historical data with living memory. The decision to lean on oral traditions, often dismissed by Western academia, is not just a stylistic choice but an ideological one—an act of methodological resistance.
For example, when discussing the Kingdom of Kush, Badawi cites archaeological evidence from Sudanese sites but also interviews modern Nubian elders. In one striking passage, she writes:
“A modern Nubian elder in Northern Sudan told me with quiet pride: ‘Our ancestors ruled Egypt. We built pyramids before the Pharaohs did.’” (Chapter 3)
This blend of fact and ancestral voice strengthens her argument that African societies possessed complex governance, cosmology, and trade far before European contact. The evidence is not just recounted—it is relived through storytelling, a technique that brings otherwise static timelines into emotional resonance.
Moreover, her frequent references to UNESCO’s General History of Africa, a seldom-accessed academic treasure, anchors her argument in robust scholarship. Badawi’s approach legitimizes local memory as an equally valid epistemological tool, thereby decolonizing not just what history is told, but how it is told.
Style and Accessibility
From a stylistic lens, An African History of Africa excels in accessibility without dilution. It is not dense with jargon, yet never oversimplifies. Badawi’s years of experience as a journalist and communicator are evident in the clarity of her prose. Her sentences balance narrative energy with analytical weight, as seen in her powerful critique of colonial historiography:
“We are taught that the European explorer ‘discovered’ the River Nile. But how can you discover something that already has a name, and people living by it who fish in it every day?” (Chapter 9)
Her use of rhetorical questioning and anecdotal framing gives each chapter a rhythm that feels at once educational and poetic. As a reader, I felt guided, not lectured—an effect that sets this work apart from more conventional history texts.
This accessibility allows her work to bridge audiences. It is academic enough for scholars, but human enough for general readers, including young Africans seeking historical anchoring.
Themes and Relevance
Several recurring themes underpin the text’s moral architecture:
1. Reclamation of African Agency
At every turn, Badawi reminds readers that African societies were not passive recipients of civilization or victims of history. In recounting the rise of Great Zimbabwe, she writes:
“This was not a fluke of architecture. It was a city built from vision, strategy, and sovereignty.” (Chapter 7)
This rewriting of African empires as agents rather than subjects is one of An African History of Africa’s most vital contributions.
⛓️ 2. Colonialism as Disruption, Not Genesis
Badawi carefully deconstructs the myth that colonialism brought civilization. Her chapter on education in pre-colonial Africa references ancient manuscripts in Timbuktu and long-standing trade schools in Ghana and Sudan—debunking the trope that Africa was a “dark continent” before Europe’s arrival.
She writes:
“If history is a mirror, then ours has long been cracked. I want to repair that mirror—not with glue, but with truth.” (Introduction)
🧬 3. Continuity from Past to Present
Badawi emphasizes continuity—not just through genetics (as in Homo sapiens’ African origin), but through culture, music, dress, and memory. From Mali’s griots to Ethiopia’s monastic traditions, her book makes a persuasive case for a living history, one that echoes daily in contemporary Africa.
Author’s Authority
It is impossible to overstate Zeinab Badawi’s authority on this subject. She is not just a journalist; she is a transnational intellectual voice, a woman raised between Sudan and the UK, educated at Oxford and Harvard, and yet unwaveringly grounded in Africa.
Her BBC series The History of Africa laid the foundation for An African History of Africa. She conducted over 150 interviews across 30 countries for that series—many of which inform this volume. This ground-level exposure gives her a depth that few Western historians can claim.
She does not merely synthesize others’ ideas—she interrogates them. In Chapter 13, she critiques the Eurocentric framing of African Christianity, stating:
“The Coptic, Ethiopian, and Nubian churches are older than many Western Christian traditions. Yet, African faith is often seen as imported.”
Such insights reveal her skill in interrogating global historical narratives, rather than simply relaying regional ones.
4. Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
✅ A Continental Narrative Told by a Continental Voice
What sets An African History of Africa apart is not only the scope of its coverage but the authenticity of its voice. Zeinab Badawi doesn’t narrate history from a comfortable academic distance. She walks among the ruins, shares tea with tribal elders, and listens to the rhythms of memory. Her perspective is rooted in proximity, not parachuted in from afar.
In Chapter 5, she recounts a personal moment while walking among the pyramids at Meroë:
“As the hot wind blew sand across my face, I thought: this is the dust of my ancestors.”
This kind of intimacy makes An African History of Africa feel alive with inheritance, transforming facts into feelings, timelines into truths.
✅ Inclusivity of Sources and Voices
Badawi’s decision to lean heavily on African scholars, archaeologists, griots, and custodians of oral history adds texture that academic citations alone could never provide. Her interview with Malian historian Dr. Salem Ould El Hadj about the libraries of Timbuktu brings to light African scholarship long excluded from mainstream canons.
“We have over 700,000 manuscripts,” says Dr. El Hadj in Chapter 10, “but few Western institutions have ever cared to read them.”
This reinforces a central theme: history is not just what is preserved, but what is prioritized.
✅ Structural Elegance and Clarity
Each chapter builds upon the last without being overwhelming. An African History of Africa’s pacing is tight, with narrative digressions used sparingly and always purposefully. Badawi uses anchor quotes, rhetorical questions, and brief historical anecdotes to maintain momentum. Her transitions—both temporal and geographical—are seamless, which is no small feat given the book spans from prehistoric Kenya to postcolonial Ghana.
Weaknesses
No book is perfect, and An African History of Africa does show some limitations, though they are more structural than philosophical.
🕳️ Lack of Deeper Economic Analysis
While Badawi robustly covers politics, religion, and education, she occasionally glosses over economic systems that might help readers better understand the material motivations behind African societal structures. For instance, her treatment of the trans-Saharan trade could benefit from further quantification or maps that show commercial routes and patterns.
Compression of Colonial Chapters
Given An African History of Africa’s subtitle—“From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence”—the coverage of the colonial era feels somewhat compressed. The final chapters (15–17), dealing with European conquest, indirect rule, and independence movements, move at a brisker pace compared to the earlier, more reflective chapters. Readers expecting a full post-colonial breakdown may find this section more of a preface than a full exploration.
That said, Badawi herself acknowledges this constraint in the epilogue:
“No one book can cover everything, but I hope this one opens a door for others to enter.”
5. Conclusion
🧾 Overall Impressions
Reading An African History of Africa felt, to me, like receiving permission to listen again. Not through the ears of empire, but through the cadence of clan, earth, and ancestry. Zeinab Badawi does not attempt to elevate Africa’s past through defensive posturing or exaggerated nationalism. Rather, she presents history with the honesty of someone who is neither seeking to romanticize nor sanitize.
Her ultimate success lies in this: she treats Africa not as an idea, but as a people.
An African History of Africa is not only a historical document—it is an act of rehumanization. At a time when Africa is still portrayed largely through images of war, hunger, and instability in global media, Badawi offers a mirror that reflects dignity, depth, and diversity.
Recommendation
Who should read this book?
An African History of Africa is highly recommended for:
- Students and educators in African studies, postcolonial studies, or world history.
- Journalists, diplomats, and policy-makers engaging with African affairs.
- Diasporic Africans seeking cultural and intellectual reconnection.
- General readers interested in decolonizing their perspective on history.
It is suitable for both academic and general audiences due to its clear language, diverse sourcing, and rich visual storytelling.
