Hosted by Faisal Al Yafai
Featuring Zeinab Badawi
Produced by Finbar Anderson
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For Zeinab Badawi, too many histories of Africa start with the arrival and growth of European empires on the continent and, as a result, those histories miss incredible stories. In her book, “An African History of Africa,” she tries to “emphasize Africa’s earlier history, because I think that’s the history that people don’t know much about,” she tells New Lines’ Faisal Al Yafai on The Lede.
Badawi and Al Yafai discuss some of the fascinating, colorful characters who populate her book, from recent controversies around the historiography of Cleopatra, to Mansa Musa – the wealthiest man who ever lived – through to Shaka Zulu in the 19th century.
“There’s nobody on Earth today who [can] say that Africa is not their mother continent.”
Badawi, a broadcast journalist with more than four decades of experience, was inspired to write her book after producing a nine-part television series, “The History of Africa,” for the BBC. “My book is called ‘An African History of Africa,’ and it’s called an African history because I use predominantly African historians, archaeologists, anthropologists,” says Badawi. “They are steeped in their regional country’s history and they are aware of these oral traditions and they incorporate that into their work and often they’ll speak the vernacular languages.”
For Badawi, this lack of attention to scholarship by African historians has fundamentally shaped the scholarship of the continent to date – to its detriment. “A lot of Africa’s history is written from Western perspectives, and I think you miss something in the telling if you don’t include indigenous voices,” she says.
Badawi and Al Yafai discuss the development of African identity, the fascinating historical records held in the Great Library of Timbuktu, and what the future holds for Africa’s youth.
Badawi maintains the book is for everyone – after all, as she says, “there’s nobody on Earth today who [can] say that Africa is not their mother continent.” Nevertheless, she says, “For me, it wasn’t enough to narrate the history. I also wanted to give a history of hope. I think anybody reading it who is African or of African descent will take something a little bit extra from it than the non-African reader.”