A much needed, and enthusiastically rendered account of the history of Africa as seen through the eyes of Africans. Badawi, a native of Sudan, and now a renowned British journalist, visited more than 30 countries and spoke to experts of history in each of them. Unsurprisingly, there are kingdoms and nations and developments that are shockingly extensive and successful. Many of them thrived while Europeans slogged through the thousand years of the Dark Ages. It is a lovely flip on which continent is the Dark one.
The book opens with the archaeological evidence demonstrating that all humans are immigrants from Africa. Unfortunately, to cover hundreds of thousands of years of history, Badawi relies primarily on the tried and true formula of recounting the names of leaders, their dates of leadership, extent of their kingdoms, and visits to their largest and most impressive extant buildings. One example, to put things into perspective, are the pyramids and rulers of Ancient Egypt. Egypt, Badawi wants to be certain her readers know, is in Africa.
Unfortunately, lauded thought the book is, and deserves to be for its anti-colonial perspective, it is my least favorite kind of approach to history: names and dates. Eventually, I fell victim to Africa’s TseTse flies, bearers of sleeping sickness.