RUTH AYLETT admires the blunt honesty with which a woman’s experience is recorded, but detects the unexamined privilege that underlies it
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Africa, but not as you know it
BOB NEWLAND applauds a demonstration of the existence of a substantial African history that contributed much to world development long before European colonialism
africa
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An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence
Zeinab Badawi, WH Allen, £25
ZEINAB BADAWI, reflecting today’s widely recognised view, begins this amazing story: “Everyone is originally from Africa and this book is therefore for everyone.”
She spent eight years touring Africa, researching this mammoth project. Her purpose was to write an “accessible and relatively comprehensive history of Africa” which, unlike that of most people’s experience which began with the arrival of Europeans, “reflected the continent’s rich history told by Africans themselves.”
The scene is set by a detailed exploration of several phases of man’s development on the African continent to arrive at today’s Homo sapiens-sapiens. This encompasses the first large-scale movements of populations of which there have been so many since.
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