[Music] hello and welcome to full disclosure a podcast project conceived exclusively to allow me to spend more time than I'd ever get on the radio with interesting people and interesting books and this week um Zay abwi it's it's it's a book it's an interesting book that is hard to separate from the interesting person I speak of an African history of Africa from the dawn of humanity to Independence so a nice easy project yes I mean it's quite a substantial book but when I saw somebody had written a history of the world in about the same size I thought okay Zaya keep quiet and just get on with it although I mean it covers pretty much the birth of humanity right through to the end of aarth so I me chronologically there's quite a lot there's quite a lot to do it's is a grand sweep um I mean yes it is a bit superficial in some ways but look I just saw it as a kind of starter and the reader should hopefully take away the fact that there is a lot of history in Africa which has been occluded as I said and hopefully their appeti to learn more will be stimulated so that was the main objective why you so the book really found me as opposed to me finding the book obviously I am somebody of African Heritage I was born in the Sudan I've lived in the UK since I was two nearly three years of age so I've always straddled Both Worlds and I think therefore I felt I was well placed to bring the voice of the continent of my birth to a wider audience both to an African audience but also to a European and Western Audience by Dent of having a foot in each Camp um you've talked about having a hyphenated identity haven't you that's what you're referring to there yes I am somebody of dual Heritage and I'm equally happy to be described as British or as sudin or indeed British Sudanese and I think that that is the way a lot of people of um mixed Heritage really see themselves you know you don't have to have the crude test that Norman tbit set decades ago the cricket test you've got to decide if India or Jamaica are playing England which side are you on in fact my children I have four children two sons and two daughters when I first gave the film cartoon to watch which is about the 19th century colonial struggle the battle between the mahadi and general Gordon um at one point they looked at me with great alarm and said Mommy which side should we be on cuz their father is British white British so I think you know and I just said neither and um you know you don't have to pin your nail your colors to one mask I don't think um well you you mentioned moving here just just before your third birthday I presume you can't remember much before that uh being born in car not at all the only memory I have is when we left and my maternal grandmother was obviously hugging us goodbye and I thought why on Earth is this woman squeezing me so hard I'm about to you know feel like I'm breaking and of course it was because I was the youngest of four children at the time and my grandmother knew that my parents were embarking on this new phase in their lives by moving to the UK my father was already in London by then and we were joining him what why what what was the reason behind the me so my my father uh was cuz he's no longer alive a great Patriot um and he left Sudan very reluctantly he was involved in pre-independence politics in the Sudan but at the time of Independence in 1956 he was um one of the least significant parties so he decided to go into journalism then and became um a senior journalist had a was an editor of a newspaper and then when there was a military coup in the late 1950s press freedoms were not stripped overnight it was a gradual process so by the early 60s he saw that he couldn't really operate freely anymore and managed to get a job in London so he wasn't formally exiled but he he felt quite constrained so she wasn't in personal danger he just he just didn't fancy the terms and conditions that were coming into play it might have transpired that he might have been um but he left and we joined him and then a few years later with the fall of the military regime he did flirt with the idea of going back um but by then my mother felt she was quite settled we were all in British schools by then and um she persuaded him to stay and I think it was it was always something that rankled with my father because as I said he was a great Patriot he'd been imprisoned during the British colonial era for his demonstrations and his activities um so he felt that he always perhaps had a role to play in building Sudan and that was in a sense denied him but he always maintained very deep contact with the country and we all inherited that from him so we've never really been I've never really been deracinated in any way so although I don't remember living in the Sudan as a small child I do remember regular holidays going back and this attachment to Sudan and the continent of Africa through the love of my parents which is why I dedicated in my book both to both of them um I I was struck by your great-grandfather as well by bab bedri and and uh so mean amateur psychology would suggest that that that whether you knew him or not that was quite a formative branch on your family tree I think so so my great-grandfather by way of background uh was the pioneer of female education in the Sudan he started a girl school at the turn of the last century he could he thought himself why is it that only my boys have the benefit of an education so he set up a school in the courtyard of his home and the British authorities in power at the time said shake bakid this is not wise because a lot of the neighborhood the community were rather opposed to this they saw it as you know an emancipation of women and goodness what might it lead to but he persisted in the teeth of this opposition and so education for girls became the family business we set up schools and there's a Women's University in the capital which attracts girls from Sudan all over the country as well as further a field from other parts of Africa and indeed even as far away as India its medium of instruction is English um but sadly of course with the terrible War that's going on in the Sudan now everything is is shut down and my family have all fled to Cairo but yes my great-grandfather was a great Visionary and and you know James I I often find it quite difficult to reconcile The View which many people have that um people from Muslim backgrounds if they're women um that there's something inimical in Islam to girls getting an education so I grew up with great aunts and aunts with phds from Western universities and you know grandmothers and great aunts who could read and write beautifully and so this idea you know that we've seen with campaigners like Malala you a in Pakistan being denied an education just because of her gender is something we just don't understand in in our extended family so um when did you realize that that was not the universal experience I think that living in the UK um and being exposed to other communities from um Muslim countries south Asia particularly um that it wasn't always the case and you know I hear sometimes um about young women from Muslim backgrounds who would be expected to marry young and not go to university and so on for us it was the other way around why aren't you going to University to have um a higher education so something that I just took for granted growing up I saw that actually that wasn't the case for many young women from a Muslim background so so journalism politics education all of these factors are in the mix before you're even in in primary school was was was the dinner table at home a sort of fee place was was was everything up for discussion yes I think so we were very aware my my father was always and my mother very engaged in current affairs and were very aware we were always very aware of the world outside so a lot of my British friends were brought up on Radio 4 um we were brought up on the BBC World Service you know I danced to the tune Lily Bolero all the time it was one of my you know earliest childhood memories my father always and my mother listening to the BBC World Service so I think that has set me on a path whereby news and current affairs and just wanting to know about the globe has always been second nature to me it it it makes sense of your subsequent career as well doesn't it certainly the sort of lat the more recent stages of it because you've taken the path back to BBC world and and in a way that not many other broadcasters who' achieved great prominence on domestic stations have done you you you so clearly in in the back of your mind even when you were presenting Channel 4 News you you were conscious of of the world service and the TV equivalent of it I I think so I think that's right James although actually from the age of three to about 16 I always wanted to be a doctor there are lots of doctors in our family my mother's brother at the time was studying um for his medicine in the UK and lived at the top of the house in an attic and I'd go up the stairs and look at his skeleton and his anatomy books and I'd say uncle Aziz I'm going to become a doctor like you when I grow up so it's not until quite late in fact when I in my late teens mid teens that I realized that I was perhaps a bit too squeamish to embark on a career was that the reason you realized what it was going to involve not not not not fiberglass skeleton very carefully going to be real things so so what would you like at primary school then what sort of student what sort of I sense that the expectations for for for the badab children would have been quite high they were quite high and you know we were always um praised if we came back with a good report and admonished if we hadn't um I was State School educated right from the get-go and um so but I think there was an expectation in the family that I was going to go into med and I have um countless first cousins and uncles who did embark on that career I think it was always you know a little bit like a lot of countries um in emerging Nations where you know stem subjects are really even to this day really valued and if you're going to contribute to society wherever it may be become a doctor or an engineer and so on so perhaps it was with some disappointment that I changed um at a levels and decided to go down a different path but I was never really sure that I was going to become um a broadcast journalist it kind of just sort of happened okay well we'll get to that so you chose your A Levels then based on what you found most interesting rather than what would best equip you for yes notional career including Russian I think yes I did history Latin and Russian at a levels I've always liked languages and I always liked Russian literature for some inexplicable reason I I as in my early teens fell in love with too and Dusty and it's not inexplicable they're pretty good they are great yes I know but I I had the ambition perhaps I went further that I wanted to read them in the original language so I loved Crime and Punishment and uh toll stoies The Death of Ivan elich I just liked I mean I love British English literature I love Dickens Jane Austin and all the rest of it but I did there was just something about the Russ psyche that interested me so I did what was then a Russian O Level and then carried on with Russian a level it's very Rusty now am I Russian but I still retain um a great interest you you've always had one one foot in academ really or or or there or thereabouts I think you did Masters when you were first working as a journalist and and you're now the president of soas while still working as a broadcaster you you've managed to ride both horses for most of your life I think that's that's probably true I mean I I read PP at Oxford University and then after Oxford I did these languages I said then I went into television and when I became a presenter for the first ITV night news I I was very happy to do that because it gave me the chance to um do an MA a masters at soas at London University and so I would read the news at night stay up all night finish at 8 and Scurry off to soas at 9:00 a.m. for my first lecture desperately trying to keep awake and then I'd go to the library cuz I was working I was quite well off and there were no computers really in those days so I'd photocopy all my sources that I needed from the Fantastic library at soas and then I'd go home to sleep and do that for a week and then on the week that I wasn't working I'd write my essays so I was very very disciplined and in fact they let me do it as a full-time student which strictly speaking they shouldn't have but I managed to persuade them and I was very glad because I was rewarded with the distinction so and you so you found you essentially found more hours in the day than most people were living according to I did I did and and I enjoyed it and it's funny you know here I am years later in 2021 when I was appointed president of soas which is a huge privilege um was it learning for learning sake then because most people at that stage their career is up and running it's going pretty well that they would focus almost exclusively on advancement and and you you really felt the need almost the hunger for for learning is that fair I think that's fair I think it wasn't a means to an end was it really it was no it wasn't a means to an end really I suppose the study of the languages would help in in you know in your work although I never actually worked in Russia in the Soviet Union for as a broadcast journalist and I speak Arabic fluently which is my mother tongue um I say English is my first language Arabic is my mother tongue um and I've never been based as a correspondent in the Middle East but Arabic certainly has been super useful as in my career did did you never fancy a foreign posting or so um I was quite you know I I presented the news as a studio person then when I had children it was quite difficult to be posted abroad I think that um people often say to me oh how did you have children and manage your career well I did have to make some some concessions to having four children in in Fairly rapid succession and you know being posted in a bureau abroad would not have worked at all but you don't doesn't feel like a an absence or a missed opportunity um not really not really I don't think because I've always reported gone out but just not been posted abroad but I've always reported from abroad or conducted interviews in in other countries so um no and and you know I made a massive TV history series 20 45 minute films about the history of Africa I went to more than 30 countries part of which the research I've used in my book and it was at Oxford that you got the the was it a bug a broadcasting bug I I wasn't aware of the Oxford University broadcasting Society yes I mean yes it existed um a little bit we would do Hospital radio for example um for obviously for patients um but I can't say that I really you know didn't contribute to the charwell magazine as it as it was then it just um after I the languages I just thought well you know what I'm interested in news and current affairs I'm interested in the world I've got these languages so it seems to me that my skill set perhaps suits broadcast journalism and I just got an ITV traineeship very easily and yeah people often say to me oh how do you get into television but you know it was 100 years ago and I got into television and it's very different now I'm not sure I could now because you have to be so technically astute you weren't a show off though I don't know I hope not you didn't have that craving for attention or camera or not really actually the the the job I applied for was was more of a research post um it was for uh ITV trainee ship as a researcher in documentaries and it was only the um the managers at Yorkshire TV said to me we'd like you to do screen test so um and I said oh I thought I was doing something else and they said look are you interested in a job or not with us so I was like okay I'll take whatever's going so so PPE um Russian history and Latin I appreciate you're speaking Arabic at home and you're very conscious of of your dual Heritage yeah but no indication yet really of of of of where you are now this this fascination with an African history of Africa the the absence of an African history of Africa in the cannon and and and the personal engagement with the entire continent really yes um I think that's a very good point no it I think this book found me in a way because I embarked on a TV series to bring the history of Africa to a wider audience and every time I interviewed dozens and dozens of historians anthropologists archaeologists who were African and every time I'd arrive late because the traffic would be awful in various African locations but they were always very gracious to a man and woman and I would always have to tear myself away from the end of each interview and I thought to myself you know what these marvelous African Scholars just seems to me that they're really starved of a global platform because they knew always was making the series for BBC world and this happened all the time that I thought there must be a message somebody's trying to tell me something here that these people would like wider dissemination of their work so that's why I thought it was incumbent on me to try to bring their stories their perspectives of their own histories to a wider audience so that was why I decided to write the book but why I decided to make the TV series again just happened by accident I was in the offices of the then deputy director general of UNESCO the United Nations education scientific and cultural organization in Paris wonderful man called get out Chena Ethiopian and as I was having a cup of tea with him I saw in the bookcase behind him a series of volumes called the general history of Africa and I said get out you what are those and he said oh it was a project undertaken by UNESCO at the behest of the newly independent African leaders they said look we've colonized our countries we want to decolonize our history so UNESCO facilitated this exercise scoured the continent of Africa for the best historians and they compiled volume after volume of Africa's history written by for the most part Africans Scholars so that's when I thought now wouldn't this be wonderful to bring the spirit of this project to television and then after as I was making the TV series I thought how can I do justice to all these interviews I've done because you appreciate in television a lot of stuff hits The Cutting Room floor so I thought let me expand on what they've said using their perspectives and hence the book an African history of Africa and and how how I mean let me ask you a couple of questions that may be crash how do you decolonize a history in which colonialism is a crucial part well first of all you go back to a pre-colonial period and that's um crucial which is why I don't actually get to the transatlantic slave trade until chapter 14 out of 18 chapters so that's the first point to show that actually Africa did have a history before the Europeans arrived and started recording it another way of looking at Africa in through um a pre-colonial lens is to to look at sources which Western historians often don't use and that is sources from great Arab Scholars like Ahmed al- mcrey who was an Egyptian historian a medieval Egyptian historian who wrote marvelous histories um of Africa I use him as a bit of a source in the chapter about the Marley Empire and also you access a history by by looking at different sources such as oral tradition which African historians will often do because these have often been overlooked by Western historians who tend to focus on written sources so oral tradition will bring up bits of African history of which you may not be aware or different bring you different perspectives even dance musicology archaeology so I would say that's how you bring a different history of Africa that shifts from the more usual interpretation we've had by Western historians the africanists who are by and large European um I I I was struck well I was daunted reading it by and and you've daunted me again then just drawing on all of those different strands of of influence and Source material I in some ways I'm surprised you ever got started because the task in front of you is so immense and and you've had to obviously focus in and and and jettison and and decide what you were going to do it I wonder if it could have happened the book without the television series I wonder whether that actually gave you the sort of editor's eye I think that's a very very good point because the TV series took me the best part of seven years going to more than 30 African countries and I had to sift through a great deal of material there of course for a TV series you are governed by the visuals you know what is good to look at in terms of monuments and so on but that wasn't a a bad way of actually uh stripping down the immense amount of material obviously and trying and also the TV and trying to you know select also for the TV series I had to be certain that I tried in so far I get to give a good Regional representation of Africa north south east west and central Africa the five regions so again I had to think about that and that held me in good stead for the book I also had to try to make sure in as far as I could that there was a good gender balance and as far as I can try to um feminize history because there is a tendency to take the H his in history a bit too seriously and history and this is not just a problem with Africa it is all histories do tend to focus more on male figures so wherever I could in the TV series and it's reflected in the book I try and focus on female characters but I think you're right it would have been interesting if I had embarked on the book without having had the benefit of thinking about what material to use for the TV series or not I mean the the series as I said was years and the book was about two and a half three years cuz obviously I had to add a lot more research so the Endeavor really is the best part of a decade and it's in a sense it's an odd undertaking for a journalist because the the day job is very much the now obviously you need an understanding of History sometimes to make sense of what's happening now but this is not journalism this is history yeah I mean I hope it is history it's obviously not an academic book it's for the General reader and I'm sure that academics who were steeped in African history will find it perhaps a bit too superficial and perhaps lacking in scholarly rigor but I didn't set out to write a book for africanists and African historians it is for the general reader because it is the general reader and viewer for the TV series whose um ideas and perceptions of Africa I felt needed challenging the most um let let me pause you there because that that that I mean it's one of the central as you say one of the central points of the book that what are these General because I was embarrassed at times by there a wonderful Nigerian comedian British Nigerian comedian who goes to places like Ben Nevis and lake windir and renames them and gives them African names as if to say this is what you did you know and I hadn't I hadn't already clocked that but that that's I think some of what you're alluding to just this this remarkable distorted lens through which westerners view the African continent as something that somehow if it no longer belongs to them then it owes its existence to them somehow yes no I think that I think that's very very right that um you know there is a tendency for uh European historians and missionaries and explorers to believe that Africa's history really started with the presence of the Europeans when they started recording it and naming certain things but everything that has a name you know had a had an African name before that so um and you do see now particularly in southern Africa the renaming you know Yan smutz International Airport becomes Oliver Tambo International Airport in South Africa and so on and so forth and I think that's right and you know rodesia named after cesil rhods um when you had black majority rule became Zimbabwe so um these kinds of um you know they're not just symbolic they are they are important but I mean we're also we're talking about respected historians as well who who who fell into this trap if that's the right way of putting it or who who who who worked and wrote from this perspective it it the more you discover the more one discovers about African history from an African perspective the harder it becomes to understand how how the status quo could have come about I know it is very very surprising I mean I must say that there are many good africanists that is British and other European historians working in the field whove written fine books but there are also many who do see Africa through through a eurocentric or Western Centric lens and perhaps Focus as the British 19th century Explorer Richard Burton did on uh the more unsavory aspects of African culture then like cannibalism for example Richard Burton Sir Richard Burton the Explorer thought when he visited benine in the um 19th century thought was the singularly most interesting and significant aspect ECT of the benine Kingdom which of course is part of Nigeria not the Republic of benine Hugh Trevor Roper writing in his book Christian Europe in 1963 I mean this is an academic who was still active When I Was An undergraduate at Oxford uh said there was no history in Africa um apart from the irrelevant uh gations of um tribes in picturesque but unimportant corners of the globe and there never was any his to speak of or any civilization then in 1969 he doubled down on his views and said that that what he said also applied to ancient Egypt and um Ethiopia and North Africa that's almost unbelievable it is almost unbelievable but you know this is I mean he was discredited later with the hoax over the Adolf Hitler Diaries you know but he was um s Hua the late historian was seen as a very eminent historian and you you know that kind of view I think has sort of proved remarkably persistent that Africa has been told it doesn't have any history or what it has has been denigrated or written by Outsiders and I do think James that Africa is probably unique in the world um I think that people may may see um Asian civilization westerners may see Asian civilization as not being Superior to theirs but they will Accord Asia a civilization um whereas Africa I think is really infantilized and is seen as having um no civilization that's worthy of respect and and how captured by that were you before you started working on the history of Africa so I think for me it always you Sudan where I was born was always a very good example of that because today I mean look at it it's conflict ridden with this awful War that's killed 13,000 uh people 8.6 million displaced 25 million people you know food insecure 5 million on the brink of famine and it's a country which people would just you know denigrate and say this is a a country which is this is all it's ever been but I knew it was more than that because as a as a child I knew that we had these amazing pyramids and temples and so Sudan was not always the way we see it today and so I think therefore I was very aware that there was more to Africa's story than just the you know terrible suffering that we see today I mean there are a thousand pyramids in Sudan about 300 have preserved their super structure there are marvelous temples it was in the 8th Century BCE as I uh write in my book it was a regional superpower the kings of kush governed Egypt for the best part of a century in the 7eventh and eth centuries BCE Before Common Era um you know one of its Kings is recorded in the Bible etc etc and yet nobody really knows very much about this great civilization so so the people you speak to the the the the the the academics in particular um at whose feet you sit at times don't you really that they've been pursuing this independent of the outside world this has been a a self-contained academic Mission and and your your role or you see part of your role is to is to show them bring them to a wider audience absolutely I mean do they want a wider audience does it does it animate them much I think they do want a wide audience because everybody I interviewed was so generous with their time and was were so Keen to talk to me about their particular area of expertise I remember one professor at the University of laka in Zambia who when I said to him look I think it's better if I interview you outside because your office is a bit dark and I mean honestly the process James of him locking up his office it was as though it was Fort Knox that bore all you know loads of treasures and so on and when you looked around his room what was it it was just a desk with piles of documents shelves stacked with books that represented this professor's lifetime of study Precious Precious materials to him that he didn't want anybody to go into his office to obtain and you know it it would just really I I found it very poignant yes that his his academic work and research was so important to him that he would guard it so assiduously and so I just felt as somebody who'd worked in the media for many decades and I hope have honed some communication skills and can distill complex complex um issues and try and um present them in a very simple way and perhaps in the book in a very simple Stark way but you know I'm used to speaking in a very simple way through my television career because you don't have the luxury of going back to read something you have to speak with great clarity straight off so I because you know some of the academic material I read was very dense the general history of Africa volumes by UNESCO are my sort of compass and inspiration and I use those a lot in the book um but they it is like wading through thick porridge and most people won't read it um so so I felt it felt Duty bound to yes bring try and simplify their message and put it into the book it it struck me that I think I read that 90% of of we mentioned treasure in the context of the academics collections but but in terms of more traditional treasure in terms of artifacts I think I think I read that 90% was outside Africa sitting in places like the British Museum and elsewhere so it it struck me that in terms of the material treasure it's all outside Africa and yet in terms of the intang well in terms of the history the intellectual rigor of the history it's all in Africa and you're trying to build a bridge between those two worlds that's such a wonderful thought James I actually I you've put it so well you're absolutely right that Africa is the repository of this genuine I say genuine because I think that African historians do bring something that's a bit different from the africanists when they are telling their own story because they can interpret it better they bring a different flavor to it even the way they speak about it they speak the vernacular languages they are aware of the oral tradition they grew up with these stories so you're absolutely right Africa is the repository of this knowledge and yet the material evidence of it as you say quite rightly the result of a 2017 study commissioned by the French government the selwin saw um report the seavo sa report um said that at least 90% of African artifacts and treasures are held outside of the continent and of course that's all very Central to the restitution debate we have now it's also doubly depressing because if there were to be a silver lining to the appropriation of artifacts then it would be a broader understanding of the the context from which they'd been taken but of course another but the central point of the book is that there isn't a bro so how's that happen how have we ended up with corridors full of looted treasure and no real understanding of the civilizations from which it came I mean I think that's very I think that's very very true I mean there are I mean obviously if you go to the British museum there are marvelous experts there who will tell you about the um you know Queen Ida bust which is the most famous of the benane bronzes and that is kept at the British museum I went to the Benin City National Museum in in Benin in southern Nigeria and they have a copy of the bust there and I spoke to the obber that's the king of the um benine Kingdom and he said look I'd love to have them come back and not all of them he said because he's a former Nigerian ambassador to Italy so he understands the importance of cultural heritage acting as ambassadors as it were so he said I'd like to have some of them back but I'd like some of them to stay out there just to speak of the fact that we are we had this Kingdom that produced these marvelous uh objects so I think I mean there there is an attempt I suppose to try and explain where these Treasures came from at the ashmolean Museum and British museum and so on but I I do think there's a strong case to repatriate a lot of them and and and it helps people understand their own history because the first line of the book references the fact that every single one of us every human comes from Africa is is is Out of Africa so I'd like the way from a marketing point of view you point out that really everyone in the world should read this book even you blonde blue eyes Jam that everyone in the world is this book is relevant to the origin story of everybody in the world ever yeah you're an African export James yes um but but but I mean the the the the the value to to people in Africa of the property that we're talking about tell tell me a bit about that how how would it how would it what would it enhance what would it what would African people get from repatriation from repatriation of the objects and I mean I think they would be able to visit these marvelous emblems and examples of their past um but also they are more than art because they are the you know they historic um MOS also because you know the the benine bronzes the war reliefs will also depict battles Portuguese soldiers are depicted on some of these reliefs which give you an idea of the relationship between the people of banin and the Portuguese who did fight as mercenaries at times for the obber the king of benine but I think that hopefully it would excite Africans on their continent to want to learn more about these civilizations because I think I was rather taken back by the fact that even Africans themselves on the continent know very little about their history I wandered around Lagos University and spoke to the brightest and the best of in Nigeria asked them what they knew about their history they said uh well the slave Coast was along our Coast here um Nigeria was formed in 1914 and I said anything else and they sort of drew a blank you know and even my own mother when I asked her about the pyramids in Sudan she couldn't really tell you very much about the history she'd seen them but I do think that Africans themselves should understand that they have a marvelous history that predates the transatlantic slave trade um is that a consequence of colonial is that an eraser I think it is partly um a result of as I said the emphasis on postc Colonial history by European writers but also the most influential African diaspora in the world is the African-American diaspora and they obviously arrived in the United States uh their their ancestors did as enslaved people and so I think when African-Americans or black Americans some choose choose to call themselves that start their history with slavery and yes and often they do yes um I think that that reinforces the idea that the history of Africans begins with the transatlantic slave trade and obviously you see in Hollywood and in you know popular fiction the slave narrative the slavery narrative has very much dominated uh this and there's much less although this is changing a bit I was about to say this will change even more because the the book is full of Amazing Stories well I hope so I mean you already have seen Queen and Jinga who I've mentioned the queen of the indongo who lived in the 16th and 17th centuries in part of what's modern day Angola her story was um dramatized by Jada pinkit Smith and you know on Netflix um half a dozen or so episodes I think so you are beginning to see that uh interest although it's always been there with the Harlem Renaissance movement whereby in the 1920s African-American intellectuals began to see Africa as um you know the the continent of their home and their Homeland and how it had these wonderful civilizations including the ancient Egyptian civilizations and they said that these Kings the Pharaoh were black Africans which has caused some issues with modern day Egyptians but I think there's always been that link but it needs more emphasis why is it I mean I look at a map and in fact I look at the map in the book and you sort of think what it looks like how can these be countries how can these be borders they look like they've been drawn with rulers and of course they were completely drawn with rulers so when you mentioned Asian history Asian Heritage in in the context in a comparison to African it it Str me that I don't think of Asian history I think of Chinese history or Indian history or Tibetan history perhaps but African history is different it is homogeneous and in in a sense in in a contrast to other continents so of course every region every country today has its own history and every country's development will have its own you know they'll have their own blueprint but having said that I think you are right that there is something about Africa which does allow you to talk about it continent wide and that is the experience of I think colonialism has been fairly uniform across the continent it was worse in some places some countries had to fight bloody wars in order to get their independence although I have to say most of Africa acquired its independence relatively peacefully with you know Civil Disobedience campaigns and so on but I think there is that unity and in when Nelson Mandela was released from prison in 1990 I think it was 1991 before he became president the first country or one of the first countries he visited was Algeria in the far north of the continent so there you have somebody going from the bottom of Africa the southern tip to the north to thank the algerians for their support during their partake struggle and that I think is a a very good example of how Africa you can talk about Africa as a continent because that experience and mean even Ethiopia which was never formerly colonized did fight massive battles against the British and the Italians and was occupied by the Italians during the second world war resulting in highly cass's Exile so even the Ethiopians are not above that you know that experience and Liberia which was not formerly colonized and was set up as a country for liberated emancipated African-American slaves was in Haw to very strong Western corporate interest so again it wasn't completely sovereign so I think you're right it's a very astute comment you make you think about China and India but you will talk about Africa I only got it from your book don't compliment me for this at all you taught me this um what what then what what what were the moments when you were researching it and and obviously you can't separate the uh the new book from the television series from the history of Africa what were the things that you could not believe when you discovered them or when you learned more about them you could not believe were more weren't more widely known the sort of you know the the stories the people the the individuals that in in a even moderately balanced Universe would have had the same prominence as a as a Henry VII or as a as a you know Roman legion yeah I mean there were several but I I suppose Queen kaha who um was born in what would be Algeria Today is really I don't like to use the word Warrior but we do use the word the term Warrior Queen and she lived in the 600s and she was the Berber queen or amazig as they prefer to be known who fought the Arab Invasion the Arab Muslim invasion in North Africa and she managed to you know get a huge following and went into battle hair flowing and so on and I do wonder why she isn't as well known as bodia yes and or queen Zenobia of Palmyra in um in Syria so Queen Boda of the iini tribe that would be the first century yeah Common Era just check up on that and queen Zenobia third century and so you know kahen is the 7th Century she should be well known she's known across North Africa as a real symbol of um you know strong she's a real feminist symbol and an icon of strong female leadership and resistance so I'd like her to be better known I think Queen and Jinga also should be well known she died in her early 80s and fought the Portuguese and kept them at Bay in a most remarkable way um I think of the Pharaoh it would be I mean tutin kman was very insignificant really didn't do anything for ancient Egypt Queen hatch UPS would be um my choice somebody who was a prolific Builder and many of The Monuments in ancient Egypt were built at her behest and also she was a very astute U manager of of her country's economy and really swelled the Royal coffers and governed as a pharaoh so there are there are many people really who I think should be better known just as we talk about Henry VII I mean one African president said to me look Zab I could actually tell you the name of British medieval English medieval kings better than I can tell you about African ones so it sums a lot up that doesn't it it does sum a lot up yes I mean he's now in his 80s but it is interesting and I think that's true for many African um intellectuals I think shakaz Zulu people have known may know him because of the film in which Michael Kane starred in the 60s Zulu um I think he was a very very you know fascinating character I think people know about cile roads but they don't know about the king who he was opposing lob and Gula everybody knows about cesil rhods but the the African protagonists are always just relegated to not even secondary whatever yeah I mean what what did you let yourself dream then as you as you've become immersed in this history do you let yourself dream about dissemination do do you do you do you imagine what Milestones on the road to a broader understanding will look like is it is it being taught in schools is it young people or not I'd love it I'd love it to and I don't want to flatter myself but I would love um particularly younger people in Africa and outside Africa to read this book because I hope I've written it in an accessible style it is a bit compendium like but I suppose that's a bit inevitable when you try to ever Grand I'm going to pick you up on something I'm going I'm going to pick you up on you've done this two or three times in the interview where I I've heard you repeat language from a review that was not enormously positive and and I only mention it because it's your first book isn't it yes it is so screw them you don't need to you don't need to accommodate these criticisms or or even kind of apologize for them it's not true it's not true it's a it's it's a how could the book not be what does compendium like even mean it's a huge collection of information of course if if you're a snarky book reviewer looking for a line you're going to come up with a word but you don't need to refer back to it to it being simple simple means comprehensible and compendium means means packed with information thank you that's kind of you thank you yes I mean I would like young people particularly on the continent and outside to read this book because they are the future really and I would hope that young non-africans don't carry on to a new generation the misperceptions and the stereotypes of Africans being outside of history that there's this idea that there are those who make history and those who stand on the sidelines I.E that those are the Africans or people to whom things happen exactly exactly and the Africans I would love them to know that they have a marvelous history and that they should be encouraged to learn more about it and I would hope that that would influence the way they see present and will try to shape their own future and there will be many more great figures like the ones that we've read in history brave men and women who resisted um the Unspeakable Horrors that were inflicted upon them because that's very important particularly in the transatlantic slave trade chapter I wanted to show that Africans were not just downtrodden wretches who put up with the State of Affairs that was in inflicted upon them they always resisted I mentioned the women of endere a small wallow Village in um what is today senagal who heard of Arab and slavers coming their way to take them to be concubines or domestic servants to the Arab families in North Africa because of course the north the Arabs took over large parts of North Africa and they decided that they would rather die by mass suicide than live a life of enslavement so you know that's just one story of how the Africans were never robbed of agency even in the most cruel um conditions and I think that's that's the message I'd like and if you I think it was Kanye West who said something not long ago about not being able to understand how people had gone along with it and he would have so if someone you know one of the most prominent africanamerican and people on the planet can display ignorance of what you've just described on such a grand scale that the importance of the mission is pretty clear to see but um back to you then so we mentioned two things earlier the first was that you're not a showoff you were never driven by um sort of box ticking type ambition I want to be this I want to be that I want to present that program you you've always sort of followed a a course of curiosity career-wise and also your journalism has always sat alongside broader interests that whether academic or or or or otherwise has this changed you has this work changed you I think the book has changed me actually because I feel even more now that my role as I said right at the outset I've always straddled Two Worlds and I think that as somebody of African descent who lives comfortably in Europe and Britain is my home and has always been my home I feel that I do have to use my access to the West as it were living in the Western World to try to put the issues of Africans as high up the agenda as I can and to put them on the table otherwise Africans are on the menu and I I do still see that there are a lot of injustices and unfairness in the world which deal the Africans a bad hand a legacy and I do feel that I know it's you know a bit corny to say you have to use your voice on behalf of those but it was madin orright who said there's a the the late former US Secretary of State who said there's a place in he hell particularly reserve for women who don't help other women I would adapt that and say there's a place also for people who black people or people of African descent who do not try to use their position to help or to promote the cause of black people or people of African descent because wherever you look in the world they really are at the bottom of the pile still you know the black you are the more likely you are to be in the lower socioeconomic rungs not always but often the case and so I do think it's changed me in that way and I think it's I've always been quite a pan-africanist but I think it's made me more of a pan-africanist and that is the area in which I think I would like to focus my energies what would that involve so I was going to ask about what what achievable goals are at the top of your list but but I don't need to cuz you just said you're going to focus your energies on something quite broad what what will that involve what will that look like I think more advocacy on behalf of Africa be it through telling the histories like this um I don't know maybe embark on another book of some description um but really just to be an advocate because I think that you can counter prejudices and stereotypes of Africa by looking at its history so if you take a country like Marley today and you just see that it's been subject to these coups and there's been a whole Spate of coups in West Africa and you say oh it's the usual coup War famine syndrome that we've seen in Africa I think if as I explain in a chapter in the book that Marley actually was you know part of an amazing Empire the Marley Empire and one of its rulers manam Musa in the 1200s um was uh so rich that he probably is the richest individual to have ever period lived in history I mean his wealth could be estimated at about 430 odd billion US dollars today and he spel spent so lavishly on the way back from a pilgrimage in Cairo that the price of gold plunged by 25% for 7even years so the idea that Africa kind of existed outside the global economy it shows you that you know in the 1200s under the rule of this one king it was part of the global economy and so when you know that perhaps you won't just relegate Marley today to just being a you know backward a Backwater um so I'm hoping that you know you've got to jump on the train right from the beginning of the journey and not try to jump on it when it's you know been careering down the same path and trying to change the Juggernaut and and that's why I think history is not just about telling the past it's also a history of hope uh it's a beautiful train it's an incredible journey but it's also a beautiful train an African history of Africa from the dawn of humanity to independence by zanab badawi is out now Zab thank you thank you [Music]