The 12 Books of Christmas | Zeinab Badawi on an African History of Africa
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Whether you're looking to sell your car right now or just whenever feels right, go to Carvana.com and sell your car the convenient way. Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Leila Ismail. Our seventh pick of the year is an event we staged in April with award-winning broadcaster, journalist, and filmmaker Zainab Badawi.

She was live on stage earlier this year to talk about her debut history book, An African History of Africa, From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence. It is a fascinating history of Africa told through the voices of Africans themselves. Joining her to discuss it all is historian and broadcaster Kate Williams. Thank you.

Well, hello, everyone. So great to see you here on this sunny evening. Finally, we have a summer. And I'm Professor Kate Williams, and I'm so thrilled to be here with Zainab Bidari, whose book has been blowing my mind as soon as I received a copy of it. She is totally incredible. I don't know where she finds the time. She clearly has three clones of herself dashing all around the country and the world.

She's an award-winning broadcaster, journalist, filmmaker. She's making a lot of films. She's interviewed some of the world's most notable personalities, politicians on BBC Heart Talk and hosting global questions on BBC World and BBC News Channel. And she's president of SOAS. I mean, that's absolutely amazing because I work at a university and I know how much work it is to run them. And her first book, which we'll be discussing the themes of tonight, is this amazing An African History of Africa, which has...

is fantastically a Sunday Times number one bestseller and Radio 4 Book of the Week, and it totally deserves it. It's an absolutely sensational book. Those of you who haven't yet managed to grab a copy will have some at the end, Zainab's going to be signing them, and it is so gripping and so readable, and I haven't been able to put it down. And I'm so admiring of the huge synthesis involved

one huge continent, history from the beginning of time to now, all in, well, really comparatively, just over 400 pages, which is an unbelievable job. I mean, you must have started out with a manuscript of about a million zillion words and had to reduce it somewhat. It's just so rich.

Thank you very much indeed, Kate, and good evening to all of you. It's wonderful to see all of you. Thank you for coming along this evening, and Kate, thank you for your kind words. As a professor who's written about ten books on history, I feel that I'm walking in the footsteps of people like you. So...

Yes, it is quite daunting, isn't it, when you say I'm going to write a history of Africa. But when I thought about it, I came across a book on the bookshelves that said A History of the World, and it was a bit thinner than mine. So I said, OK, keep quiet, Zainab, you can do this. But yes, I mean, people will say you didn't do this, you didn't do that. But I hope I've given, I mean, I had three objectives, really, to give a broad sweep, an overview of the continent's history, north, south, east, west, central Africa.

and to provide an African perspective, i.e. the work of African scholars, and hopefully to excite the reader to want to know more about the particular aspects that in

that interested them most. It's so exciting and I just love the last line you mention. Talk about the youth of Africa, how the average age in Japan is 49, in the United Kingdom it's 41, and in Africa, in the continent, it's 19, isn't it? And this huge youth energy of Africa, the future, and you say that your final line is that the youth will have more knowledge about their magnificent history and it is a magnificent history, absolutely incredible history, and yet...

so often in the past, not just in the 19th century in the age of colonialism, it has been dismissed and overlooked. I mean, it is, you quote, Hugh Trevor Roper, who, Professor of History at Oxford, a great scholar in so many ways and seen as so integral to history, and he wrote in 1965, "There is only the history of the Europeans in Africa

The rest is largely darkness, and darkness is not a subject for history. I mean, shocking, but pervasive, that dismissive and racist attitude. I mean, it's extraordinary to think that when Hugh Trevor Roper, the late Hugh Trevor Roper, was still part of the academic body at Oxford University when I was an undergraduate there.

you know, it's not that long ago. Okay, I'm no spring chicken, but... Still lecturing, still talking to undergraduates. Exactly. And so it just shows you that this is something which has really proved remarkably, you know, persistent. I mean, I think that nobody would really venture to say something as ridiculous as that now, but I think that there's nothing that's really gone into the vacuum. People may not want to denigrate Africa's history, but

But for me, I found that there was a vacuum, pre-colonial particularly. The colonial era is relatively well covered, and even from the presence of the Europeans, because that's what Hugh Trevor-Ober said, there's no real history in Africa before the arrival of the Europeans. And the reason why people say that is because there's so much emphasis on the written word, that history is only history if it's written and documented. Now, Africa did write, but not always,

But just because Africans didn't always write their history, it didn't mean they didn't record it. They recorded it in different ways. You know, oral tradition is very important. Archaeology can tell us a lot. You know, music, dance, and so on. So that is why I...

wanted to use African scholars as my sources because they do draw on these things. They're living in these regions, these countries, and they don't just rely on the usual European sources that a lot of historians do. They also look at other written sources

Arabic, Persian, and so on. So it gives you a richer picture. But as one professor said to me in the book, you cannot understand African history if you exclude the African scholar.

from the debate. And that's what I found so impressive and powerful about the book. You give credit and you talk about the ideas of so many great professors, historians. I love the young female professor you go on a tour of Alexandria with and she talks all about Cleopatra and you have an African aspect of Cleopatra which we'll get onto in a little bit. And it's so powerful when so many of these scholars are sort of

overlooked and I do find in a lot of history books people tend not to do shout outs to the professors and they put it in the acknowledgement so this extraordinary generosity here and I just find so interesting reading their perspectives on the history on the monarchy on colonialism and you ask them these tough questions it's

Fascinating, in the questions about colonialism, you say there's people who say that colonialism did have an economic improvement, and they all say absolutely not. There was no benefit. Very interesting. I mean, I traveled to more than 30 African countries and spoke to dozens and dozens and dozens of historians and other experts, archaeologists, paleontologists, and so on.

And I mean, you know, I didn't really want to get drawn into the culture wars. Was colonialism good? Was colonialism bad? I mean, that's not really a debate that particularly interested me. But yes, you're right that there was complete unanimity amongst the African scholars that on balance, you know, colonialism, wherever it is, seeks to subjugate colonialism.

and it disenfranchises, and so therefore they all said that it wasn't really a good thing. But I don't, as I say, really look at that. I mean, it's 18 chapters. I don't get to the transatlantic slave trade or chapter 14, so I try to do as much as I could of the pre-colonial history. But you're right, Kate, that in a way the book found me because it could have been called, instead of an African history, it could have been...

no problem, it doesn't matter, because everywhere I arrived to talk to these historians, I was always late because of the traffic or whatever. And they were all to a man and a woman so generous with their time. They say, no problem, it doesn't matter. And I'd have to tear myself away from them. And it made me think, you know, these are...

really brilliant minds who'd be at home in any senior common room in any university in the world, but clearly these African intellectuals had been starved of some kind of international platform. And I just thought, well, okay, with my international work and profile in the UK,

I could ventilate their scholarship. So I see myself really as an intercessor between them and the reader. And you're such a brilliant writer. I mean, you say you went to 30 countries. I mean, my mind is blown by your air miles. 34. Your air miles must be absolute madness. You've been everywhere. And the way you write about it, when you write about where you went to the...

column in Cabo Verde where the slaves were sold, this white column and that's a very early slave and it's just so moving and all these places that you've been, you went to the pyramids of Sudan, you've been all over

Part of this was for your 20-part documentary series, which is on YouTube. It was on BBC World, on YouTube now if you didn't manage to catch it. You showed us these in such detail and also for your research as well. You have been everywhere and the way you describe it is so evocative.

Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I wanted to really, you know, experience Africa's history because for me, history doesn't just explain the past. It also informs the present and shapes the future. So I really wanted to, you know...

the relics of that history. I mean, I don't think we should judge history by who builds the best monuments or whatever, but there are monuments to see, you know, Great Zimbabwe built in the 11th century, which is the largest sprawling stone complex

in outside ancient Egypt. You know, remarkable. People didn't believe it could have been built by the Africans. So there is so much to see. I mean, it's such a beautiful continent. And so, yeah, I wanted to try to do it justice. And so...

And so what you really show us, and this is a great quote I think from page eight, "Africa is certainly where the human story began. We are an African animal, an African species who colonized the world at different times in different ways. No human being on earth can deny that Africa is their first home." And I think there is still denial of that.

There's a bit of denial. I mean, yeah, you know, everybody here, you're either African of African descent or you're an African export. So, you know, everybody is.

There is a bit of pushback. I think I mentioned in the book the most prominent example was Peking Man, who was discovered in 1929, a skull. The Chinese paleontologists were very, very keen to try to show that the Chinese people were descended from Peking Man, or human beings, Homo sapiens sapiens were descended from Peking.

this chap in China. And they only abandoned these efforts in this century, quite early on. And then of course you've got some of the conservative creationist Christians in the deep south in America who perish the thought that they emerged from Africa. But I think scientifically the debate is settled.

human beings did emerge from Africa. Of that, there's no question. - And it's the cradle of civilization. And I mean, I didn't realize that there's only what we, gorillas, you go and see the gorillas in Rwanda, which I also did as well, and they are amazing. But 1.75 of our DNA is all we diverge from a gorilla.

I mean, that's just incredible. Less than 2%. So really, Darwin, the first, talking about evolution, just pushes Africa to the forefront. It's a fascinating irony, isn't it, that a time when colonialism was most oppressing Africa was a time when scholarship was realising it was the cradle of humanity.

Absolutely. I mean, you know, I wanted to start the book there. I thought about it and anybody who picks up might think, you know, why has she started about, you know, paleontologists and that kind of thing? But I just really did want to impress upon everybody that this is a book for everybody because, you know, go back...

Well, I mean, Homo sapiens sapiens, that's us modern humans, started leaving the continent of Africa between 90,000 to 60,000 years ago, which is not really that long ago. And, you know, up until between 8,000 to 12,000 years ago, everybody was dark-skinned, which is not really that long ago either.

you know, racial differences only, physical features only change, hair color, irises and so on as people are climatized to their new habitats. So I wanted to start it there because I just thought

I want everybody to really see Africans as part of the family of humankind and that they are part of it. And in some way, I know it sounds a bit pathetic, but sort of try to build bridges and to try to counter the notion of racism and so on that we see today. - And it's fascinating that paler skin would have emerged as humans moved and adapted themselves to different climates.

- I mean, absolutely. You know, we, so, I mean, broadly speaking, we, modern humans really were formed as we are today about 200,000 years ago by about,

90,000 years ago we had inhabited all of Africa, we're about a million people by then living in communities of about 150. And then as I said between 60 to 90,000 years ago people started to migrate from the continent of Africa first to the Arabian Peninsula and then to Europe and Asia.

where they encountered other hominins, you know, people like Neanderthals and so on, which is why Eurasians still have some residual, very small, maximum of about 3.5%, 4%. That's, you know, total maximum.

of residual Neanderthal and so on. And other Native Americans, South Americans have other hominins as well in their DNA. But we bred everybody into extinction. We don't quite know why. But that's the story of humankind that I start with. I think it's quite interesting, at least it was for me, to just look at the dates.

I mean, there's still a lot of debate. It's like a massive jigsaw puzzle that maybe 600 pieces and we've probably got about 30. But...

most of the evidence points to the east of Africa, although now there is growing evidence that maybe people developed in different parts of Africa at the same time, particularly in the north. I mean, my mind is totally, I mean, I envy all the places you went, but my mind was totally blown that you went to see the real bones of Dinkanesh or Lucy. You actually saw them.

Yeah, yeah, no, I did. And thank you, Kate, for calling her Dinkanesh first before Lucy, because that's how she's referred to in Ethiopia. I can't believe you saw that. By her Amharic name. Yeah, I mean, I hate to disappoint people. If you do go to the National Museum in Addis Ababa, you will see a kind of, you know, skeleton, because that's what was so remarkable about Lucy. 40% of her skeleton was found, which is...

quite a lot, but it's just a replica because the real bones are kept under lock and key in a special, you know, climatically controlled room. But I was taken, I even touched her bones. Yeah, I know. So Lucy lived about 3.2 million years ago. And in fact, she's not actually, we didn't descend from her line, but she's sort of part of our common lineage. And she's just captured everybody's imagination, I think, because the song Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds was playing on the

Camp Radio when she was discovered in Herar in Eastern Ethiopia. So she's 3.2 million years old. And the way that she lived was a foraging life, maybe taking eggs and reptiles. She did, yeah. I mean, she's sort of about a meter tall and she...

But, you know, she looked more ape-like than modern humans. But she would have sharpened tools. She was bipedal. By that we mean she walked on two legs. She wasn't habitually bipedal, but she would have used sharpened twigs to go into termites' nests and to kill small animals, and she would have foraged and so on. And she would have slept in a tree.

for safety. So it's perhaps a bit ironic that peril lay in her refuge because she probably died falling off a tree. Oh no. Poor Lucy. Dean Kinesh. This episode is sponsored by NetSuite.

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The worst death in the book is the early Egyptian king who was mauled by a hippo. Oh, yes, King Nama. Yes, perhaps not the most dignified death. And so it's fascinating when you say that a former African president said to you that he knew the medieval kings of England better than he knew the sort of prehistoric...

pre-16th century kings of his own country. And you really spotlight so many fascinating medieval era and pre-medieval monarchs and rulers. Tell us about some of them. Who are your favourites? I mean, there are so many. I don't know where I would start. So many. I mean, look, I was born in the Sudan, although I've lived in England since I was two years of age. So forgive me for a bit of bias. So I suppose I would choose the kings of Cush and the queens of Cush.

Kush was a kingdom in ancient Sudan, various stages, but the one I focus on is in the period of the 8th and 7th century BCE, before Common Era, when the kings of Kush were really a regional superpower, not only in Africa, part of Africa that they were in,

which of course borders Egypt. They governed Egypt for the best part of a century, but they were also a power in Asia and protected the princes of Byblos and the King Hizaiqa of Judea and so on. So I think I liked...

I liked the kings of Kush because people don't really know about this kingdom and it was, you know, really such a significant one. So they got what marvellous kings like Taharqo and so on. Taharqo actually features in the Bible named as a king of Ethiopia, which is a bit of a misnomer because there's a modern day country called Ethiopia, but this is really northern Sudan always, you know, what became Sudan. It was in that part, it wasn't in the Ethiopian bit.

And the queens of Cush, unlike many women in ancient societies, had a very powerful role to play, like Queen Amanirense, who fought the Romans in 30 BCE, because by now the Romans were governing Egypt, and she actually went into battle with her sons and lost an eye fighting the Romans, and forced them in the end to sign a peace treaty with them in 22 BCE.

and they were known as candicas. And when we saw the revolution in Sudan in April 2019 to remove Umar al-Bashir from power, women were very much in the vanguard of those protests and they were dubbed candicas. So you see there how the ancient name of the ancient queens of Northern Sudan became revived in this revolution. - And you've seen her pyramid.

Yeah, I've seen Queen Amani Renance and Amani Shehito's pyramids absolutely in the royal city of Meroe. I mean, Sudan has got a thousand pyramids. There are about a hundred in Egypt. The ones in Sudan are much smaller and they didn't always bury inside the pyramid. They bury in a tomb adjacent to the pyramid.

About 250 have preserved their superstructure. The others you can just see, you know, the basic remnants on the ground. But yeah, that many pyramids. And there's still quite a good collection of them that you can see. And you have a fascinating chapter on Kush history, on Sudan. Because as you say, there are some parts of African history that are getting more and more known. But Sudan has been very much overlooked.

I mean, completely. I do muse on why that's the case. So Sudan obviously borders Egypt, and I think there has been a tendency in the ancient world, and probably also in the modern era, where it's been eclipsed by its more glittering northern neighbour, ancient Egypt,

But Dr. Shadia Taha, the Sudanese archaeologist who is actually teaching currently at Cambridge University, tells me that the two cultures learned from each other. Sudan wasn't just an offshoot, northern Sudan, of what was going on in ancient Egypt. And also, when the kings of Kush governed Egypt, they're often referred to by the Egyptians as the Nubians.

But Nubia wasn't even in use in those days. There are Nubians in Sudan and in Egypt. And I think for a lot of people, it can kind of make it seem as though they were Egyptian Nubians, whereas actually they only ever came from what has always been northern Sudan. And this was the period of history.

that the Harlem Renaissance, you know, the African Americans in the 1920s and 30s, really focused on as they were struggling to emancipate themselves and to get their civic rights and so on. You know, this became, this period of history became Afrocentricity for them when, you know, these

Black kings and queens had this thriving civilization, and it became very, very important for the intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance.

to assert themselves and say, look, you know, we've had these great civilizations. It's led to an argument between them and the Egyptians, as we saw last year when Adele James, the black British actress, was cast by Jada Pinkett Smith as Cleopatra. And they said, how could you have somebody of dual heritage

portray the part of Cleopatra. Cleopatra, it's true, was of Greek Macedonian origins and wouldn't have looked, you know, like Adele James. So I think there is a bit of resistance, I think, even to this day, for various reasons which I delve into, to sort of see ancient Egypt as a part from the rest of Africa. And I don't buy that really because...

Ancient Egypt has always been part of Africa, and if you visit it, you know, you'll see that its greatest monuments, apart from the pyramids, Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, and so on, very far south, a thousand kilometers from the Mediterranean coast.

you know, going towards the border with Egypt. That's where, you know, that's where they buried themselves, the Valley of the Kings, that's where the Karnak Temple is in modern-day Luxor. This Abu Simbel is practically on the North Sudanese-Egyptian border. So very much part of Africa, not the Mediterranean coast. So this idea that Egypt is something separate is something that I think, for me, is not right.

Ancient Egypt was and always will be part of African history. Absolutely. And you have this marvellous chapter, The Gift of the Nile on Egypt, reminding us that if the Nile floods, then all the crops come and the monarch does well. If it doesn't, the monarch's in trouble. And why...

And that's very powerful how Egypt is often separated from the rest of Africa. And in the achievements of Egypt, as you say, they were one of the first to use calendars, that their achievements are separated and set totally apart. And that's something that goes right back to Napoleon in Egypt.

Yeah, I mean, there was Egyptomania and so on, you know, but it's always been the Romans were interested in Egypt and its art and so on. But I think, yes, this idea has persisted and...

I think that we need to redefine what we mean by an African. It's not that the ancient Egyptians or the Egyptians even today, and of course they mixed with the Arabs once the Arabs conquered Egypt in the 640s common era. But the ancient Egyptians at various times, the pharaohs would have had...

you know, different appearances. So we have to redefine what we think of as an African. I mean, you know, we shouldn't have this idea of what an African looks like or how they should sound and so on. And as you so brilliantly say, if you look at what the African research on Egypt is and what the African scholars about Egypt say,

It's very different. And this really is flagged up with Cleopatra, one of the most powerful images that we have of Egypt, this powerful queen who's captured the imaginations of Europeans. And yet so often she's seen by the European mind in the Roman way, as a temptress, as a sort of drama queen. And we forget that she was a great... She introduced the coinage. She was a great illustrator.

a great bureaucrat and a very powerful queen. And that's something that, you know, you're really looking into, how when you look at Cleopatra in terms of African scholarship, it's a completely different view of her. I mean, you know, Dr Bahia Shaheen at Alexandria University, who I was talking to about Cleopatra and was...

given me a lot of my information. You know, she was a great scholar. She was fluent in 10 languages. She was one of the few in the Ptolemies, they were the Ptolemies by then, in the Ptolemaic dynasty who actually wrote and spoke ancient Egyptian fluently. She was, you know, very well-educated

briefed and studied geography and mathematics and science and surrounded herself with intellectuals. I mean, I have to say the Ptolemies were a particularly bloodthirsty lot. Oh, yes. Always killing one another. Always killing one another, yes, including Cleopatra was quite bloodthirsty herself. But this idea of the seductress, as Bahia says to me, you know, the busts and the kind of, you know, reliefs that we have of her show that she wasn't...

what you would describe as a conventional beauty is what she did or whatever a conventional beauty is. It's fascinating, isn't it? That when she met Caesar, she was very young, only 21 and most likely had never had any experience at all because she was married to her very younger brother and they'd fallen out and he was a

middle-aged man, he had a lot of affairs, all kinds of affairs with the officers' wives. I mean, I'm not sure that they were all consensual. And yet she's the one who's seen as seducing him. And, you know, the reason why Egypt was taken over by the Romans was because of the deals made by her predecessors. So she stayed it off for as long as she could. But yet we have this, you know, of her giving in and a tragic queen led by the heart and all this kind of thing. And, you know, she, you know, fought against

fought against Roman, the Roman Empire as hard as, and as well as she could. No one else would have been better. I think it just shows you, you know, obviously accounts were slanted. You know, the Romans wrote about her and, um,

Shakespeare for his Antony Cleopatra play also used these as their sources. But it does just show you the question of whose history is it? And that's very pervasive throughout the whole book is whose history is it? Later on, when I look at Southern Africa, there's King Shaka of the Zulus.

If you read stuff about him by a lot of Western historians, he's depicted as this despot, really bloodthirsty. There's one account of him killing a woman who was heavily pregnant and slitting open her stomach and so on. You talk to Zulu historians like Tulay Simpson. I think he was Cambridge University educated too. And he'll say to you, well,

We've got a slightly different account on Mangasutu Butelezi, who despite his checkered past, the late prince of the Zulus, his mother, Princess Ngogo, was a very famous oral historian in the Zulu culture.

gave me their account of how they saw Shaka Zulu. And it's very important to have these perspectives because otherwise we're just getting perspectives from people in whose, it would have been in their interest to depict a lot of people as, you know, savage or backward or hadn't developed the land, you know, the myth of the empty land in Southern Africa,

the settlers arrived and, you know, made it flourish and so on. So one has got to guard against these kind of biased accounts. And it is fascinating when you say that maybe the African king that most people might be able to name would be Tutankhamun. And he was very minor in Egyptian history. And so goodness knows what was in the graves of those who were, what was in Hatshepsut or what was in Ramesses, you know, and

Because he had some good stuff, but he was a very small... Very, very small. I mean, you know, if you say to most people, name me an African king, they'll usually say Tutankhamen.

And then they'd be hard-pressed to give him a date. And then they'd probably say, but was he really African? So, you know, that I think is, generally speaking, what most people would say. But yeah, I mean, he became king at nine. And the only significant thing about him was his father, King Akhenaten, had attacked...

ancient Egyptians, you know, ways of religion. Some people claim that his father, Akhenaten, was the first monotheist. So the court was very relieved when Akhenaten died in Tutankhamen, came on the throne, and because he was so young, he was malleable, so they could resort, you know, revert to their old ways of worship. And then he died in his late teens.

And that was it, really. It's just we found his tomb was found because it was buried behind other tombs. And so it hadn't been plundered like the others. But yes, his fame far outstrips his historic significance. I mean, he was just a footnote, really, in ancient Egyptian history. Queen Hatshepsut.

is much more significant. But anyway. And you write so well on all the queens and the matrilineal and how many of the queens become very powerful because you can guarantee the bloodline if it's a queen, can't you? Yeah. I mean, one of my favourites is Yaa Asantewaa. I mean, what an image of... What a character. What a character. I just love it that she says to the men, come on, let's get to it. Yeah, yeah. She's an incredible figure, isn't she? She was. Yeah, she was. So Yaa Asantewaa was a member of the Asante royal family in what is today Ghana. Yeah.

And so she was born around the mid 19th century. And when the British went in and defeated the Asante in 1879, I think anyway, their first foray, she was so affronted by this and admonished the men because they were kind of like, okay, we give up. And she said, how could you, you men of Asante, where's your courage?

and she said you know you've got to fight otherwise you can swap your loincloths for my undergarments and so she managed to raise an army of 20,000 and got her rifle and said I've not loaded this gun for nothing and actually was seen you know fighting and she was in her late 60s

which by those, you know, in those days was, you know, fairly elderly. And she fought very valiantly against the British and it was, you know, months long fight. It's known as the Ya Asantewaa War in Ghana, but in Britain it's called the War of the Golden Stool.

because the golden stool is what the kings of the Asante, the Asantahini, the king of kings, is not enthroned, he's installed on this golden stool, which when the kingdom was founded in the early 1700s, the people of Asante were told if this golden stool is ever, if you're ever defeated and the stool is taken away, it's the spirit of the Asante and your kingdom will just perish.

So even though Yaa Asantewaa was defeated in the end in that war, she was one step ahead because she took the golden stool and got people to hide it in a forest. And so when the British in victory said, bring us the golden stool...

it was nowhere to be found. Some accounts say a fake one was presented to them. So even though she'd been defeated, the symbol, the spirit, the soul of the Asante kingdom still lived because of her. But sadly, she was sent into exile in the Seychelles with King Prempeh I, who was already there, and she died in 1920. But, you know, when Kwame Nkrumah became the first

of a newly independent Ghana. It was the Gold Coast. He called it Ghana in 1957. He made her a santiwa, although she was a santi and he wasn't a santi, but he made her a symbol for the whole nation of Ghana. You know, she featured on postage stamps

There's a Yaa Asante Waa secondary school for girls which tries to inspire young women in Ghana. So she's become a real national icon for all Ghanaians, irrespective of whether they're Asante or not.

And I mean, it is amazing that she hid the golden stool in the forest. Absolutely not. Because the governor, he wants to sit on it, didn't he? Which would be anathema. And I'm sure he just wanted he wants to bring it back and give it give it to Queen Victoria as a present. So she was hiding it in the forest. I just love it. And there are so many great figures, great resistant figures. But tell us a bit about an incredible figure who I read about but didn't realize was your great grandfather. Yeah.

I seem a bit biased again here, didn't I? I put it in the footnotes that he was my great-grandfather. Look, he, so he, Sheikh Babi Qadbadri, was, the reason I put him in, in one of the later chapters, is he fought with the Mahadi against General Gordon, and it is the only written account, because he wrote in Arabic, obviously, the northern Sudanese, like me, are,

because of the influence of the Arabs, the arrival of the Arabs over a certain number of centuries. My mother tongue is Arabic and so he wrote in Arabic.

It's the only Sudanese account of that particular war. So I mention him because he was a follower of the Mahadi. And it was a very, very significant victory in 1885, you know, the Battle of Khartoum, the Siege of Khartoum, when General Charles Gordon was defeated.

and it was seen as a huge, the victory reverberated around Africa because there was a lot of nationalism by then. Because until 1870, funnily enough, most of Africa was nominally at least in African hands, but when you had the Berlin Conference of 1884, '85,

That's when the European powers started, you know, just arbitrary lines and naming countries and divvying it up. So his victory against Gordon in 1885 came at a very critical time in Africa's history. And that's why I decided to include him. But yes, he was a remarkable man. He died in 1954 at the age of, in his mid-90s.

But he was also well known because he was the pioneer of female education in Sudan. So at the turn of the last century, once the Brits were there, he decided he wanted to see girls educated. Up until then, there were only schools for boys. So he set an example with his own children. So I grew up with great aunts and grandmothers who were all literate and great aunts with PhDs from Western universities and aunts and so on.

So I think, you know, you could say, yeah, female education is a family business in a way. And so I grew up with these very powerful female role models, thanks to my great grandfather. So he was given an OBE, in fact, by the governor general in 1949. And he said, oh, well...

Tell Mr Churchill I fought against him in the Battle of Omdurman, but I won't hold that against him. And he took it. But, I mean, and that's when the British avenged the death of Gordon and it became a British, you know, a British colony.

You write so powerfully about the effect of World War I and World War II on the independence movements. I mean, my mind is blown by the amazing synthesis and all the scholarship and all the research. I just don't know how you've done it, but the way in which you write your chapter about independence movements and so many independence movements that you...

tell us all about, which is incredible. But World War I and World War II had a real effect on the independence movements. Absolutely. I mean, people like David Olusoga have written very well about the role of British soldiers in World War, of Africans in World War I or Black Britons, World War I and World War II.

So, I mean, I really look at Africa. I don't look at outside of Africa. But what happened was that in both wars, not only Africans who fought with the British, but also Senegalese who'd fought with the French, you know, they'd fought side by side with their fellow soldiers.

white European soldiers. And then when they went back to say, for example, Kenya, the white soldiers were rewarded with lots of land and the British soldiers were, the African soldiers were given nothing, including Barack Obama's grandfather.

who became a member of the Mau Mau because he had fought in the, he had gone into, in the war for the British and then found that he had nothing. So he became very, you know, embittered by that. So yes, it stiffened the resolve of the nationalists, those two wars. They really did. It started with,

with the First World War and then with the Second World War. And there were other things happening in the world, you know, India, the jewel in the crown of the empire, got its independence in '47, wasn't it? - Yeah.

you know, various other things. America became fairly anti-imperialist and so on. But I think that what is interesting about the war, the independence, struggle for independence, is actually it has to be said that most of Africa gained its independence relatively peacefully through campaigns of civil disobedience and, you know, obviously protests and so on. But

There were some countries that really experienced the most awful violence. Algeria in the north of Africa being by far the worst. Southern Africa, obviously. South Africa didn't really get black majority rule until very recently, 30 years ago in 1994.

Those countries that became independent through violent means continued on a violent trajectory.

Use the example of Ghana, by which it was... Ghana was relatively peaceful. Peaceful protests. Yeah, and it's not really had... I mean, you know, when Jerry Rawlings came to power in the 70s, some generals and judges were executed. But, you know, by and large, compared to something like the Algerian War in the 90s, when, you know, it was a very vicious war between the 90s

the Islamic Salvation Front and others, it became, and the security forces, it was very, very vicious. Tens and tens of thousands of people were killed. So those countries that, yeah, gained their independence in a violent way, because they learned that violence was the language of political discourse. You had to fight in order to get your freedom. So that is one thing that's very, very evident.

Sorry to digress here slightly, but a lot of people say, well, can you talk about the continent of Africa as a whole? I would say that the experience of colonialism really does unify the continent.

And people say, well, Ethiopia was never colonized. And look at it, you know, it's had a lot of civil strife. It's had a lot of food insecurity. Liberia, also a country created for the emancipated African Americans, that's been relatively impoverished, had the terrible, you know, violence in the 90s and so on. So it's nothing to do with colonialism. I mean, Liberia didn't really enjoy sovereignty as such. It was very much in hock to, you know,

corporate interests like Firestone. And Ethiopia had a lot of struggles, a lot of fights and wars with the British and the Italians. It was occupied for five years under the Italians. And that's the one thing that I think unifies the whole continent. You know, when Nelson Mandela was released in February 1991, was it 1990 or 91, one or the other, 91, the first

One of the first countries he visited was Algeria, to thank them for their support during the apartheid struggle, you know, from the bottom south, southern part of Africa, all the way to the northern tip. So there is that, you know, unity, really, within the continent, I think. And the powerful effects of it, you write very powerfully about the Congo, and you write about Rwanda, and that is, I think...

I don't know how many people have also been to the, I think, superb genocide museum in Kigali. It's an example of best museum practice. And how it was characterised. You were talking to one of the ladies whose father... Louise Mushi-Kwabo, who was briefly Foreign Minister at one time. It was characterised as mindless ethnic slaughter, but it was all based in the history of colonialism. It was inevitable due to the history of colonialism.

Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, in 1899, Rwanda became a German colony. And then after Germany was defeated in the First World War, it was given to the Belgians. And both under the Germans and then afterwards under the Belgians, they favoured the Tutsis more.

But there were no ethnic differences. You could have a brother who was a Tutsi and a brother who was a Hutu. It was more an economic class designation. The Tutsis were the cattle owners and so on. But the fact that the Hutus were used almost as slave labor with the Tutsis as overseers really created the problems that we saw that came to a head finally in '94.

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And this is, it's all so powerful. And for you, you know, all this research, all this work and presenting the fantastic TV show, how has this changed your understanding of your past, your heritage, your family?

I mean, I'm very grateful. I think it has been a real eye-opener because I mean, I've been educated in the UK, you know, all my life. And I think the level of ignorance about African history, including mine actually, before I embarked on this journey, is really staggering.

It really, really is. I mean, I started writing the book because in a way, I say it's the kind of book I wish I... It sounds grand, but I wish it was a book I could have read before I started on my journeys. I mean, you know, there was not a kind of easily accessible...

that gave me an overview of the continent. It was very, you know, patchy. I used the General Histories of Africa, GHA, which was these 10 volumes compiled by UNESCO at the behest of African leaders

which were marvelous, but they're quite turgid to read and they've got lots and lots of editors, so they don't read very smoothly. So the GHA, some of you may not know, in that

period of rapid decolonization in Africa in the 1960s, the newly independent leaders of Africa, at least some of them, said, look, we've decolonized our countries. We want to decolonize our history. So they appealed to UNESCO to help them. And UNESCO said, fine, we'll do that if you pay for it. And they scoured the continent of Africa for the best archaeologists, historians, musicologists, and whatever. And they compiled volume after volume of Africa's history and

written from an African perspective, using, as I said, non-written sources like oral tradition, dance, archaeology, and so on. And that's why it was very much my inspiration, the GHA. But 10 volumes that I had to wade through wasn't easy. So I think that was the thing that I came away with, which is there has to be

something that is, I hope, written in an accessible way that shows you that Africa has got a magnificent history before the colonial era and that it had institutions and individuals who are worthy of respect. And, you know, that's...

I suppose, what I came away with. I mean, it is a magnificent history. You were saying your grandma, she didn't know much about the history, did she? That was my mother. I said, what do you know about the pyramids in Sudan? She said, oh, I saw them once upon a time. So this is an educated woman, and even she, you know, she'd struggled to give you a date as to when these pyramids were built or who built them or, you know, what you could...

you know, what she knew about them. And I think that it's patchy. It's patchy. I mean, they do derive pride from it, from their ancient past. You know, even Queen Kahina, who was this great Berber queen in the 600s,

who fought the Arabs when they invaded North Africa. And when they said to look, you know, convert to Islam or die, she told her sons, you convert so you can survive, but I will not. And they beheaded her. You know, very brave Berber queen.

So she was... A lot of people talked to me about her. The Moroccan ambassador, who was a woman at the time, said to me, oh, you must do something about Kahina. I said, tell me about her. She had like a sentence to tell me. So I had to go and do a lot of research. So she kind of knew about her, but not an awful lot. So I think that's what it is. Because, you know, Africans who've been educated in, you know, in the West or whatever, you know, we...

I'm president of SOAS and we're trying very hard in our African history to try and get sources from Africans. And we all know about the decolonize movement that started in South Africa in 2015, that you've got to have a range of perspectives. It's not about supplanting, it's about supplementing. There's some very good Western historians. Some of them are very close friends of mine.

but it's about supplementing and adding. - I'm just going to put everyone on, we're gonna come to questions soon. So start thinking about your questions. I know you're all going to be fizzing with loads of questions. So we're coming soon. So start assembling them. But it has been a personal journey for you, a personal journey of research. And so much research you've done. Now tell me, why doesn't your brother eat fish? - That's very funny.

So, yes, I mean, I said that, you know, history can't just be consigned to the past. So the ancient northern Sudanese, the Kushais, and that's the part of Sudan I'm from. Although the two river Niles run through Sudan, the Blue and the White Nile, they combine. And you've seen that? I've seen it, yes, where they combine. There's a...

part of the year where the waters just don't mix and it's like a line has been drawn between these two parts of the Nile. And then they combine at the confluence in Khartoum and continue all the way into Egypt. So of course the Nile is abundant with fish, but the ancient Kushites, the Kushites believed it was an abomination to eat fish. We don't know why, maybe because of its rotting potential. So they didn't touch it. Can you imagine this source of protein that they never touched? The ancient Egyptians did eat fish.

And to this day, the average consumption of fish in Sudan is minute compared to Egypt. And there are lots of people who don't like eating fish to this day in Sudan, including my brother. So I say to him, it must be your genetic memory at play.

And this incredible history you've written about, you've talked to all these scholars. When do you think that as we move forward and into the 21st century and Africa is a powerhouse, a powerhouse of agriculture, a powerhouse of technology, the knowledge of the past will inform the future?

I mean, look, you know, I think that you need confidence to operate as a citizen in your country or as a global citizen. And we all know, particularly living in a country like the United Kingdom, which is very attached to its history and its symbols and its identity and so on, that these are important in forging, you know, a confident nation.

And I think that for a lot of young African people, if they are aware of their great past, I mean, of course, there've been a lot of difficulties, you know, that parts of Africa, the transatlantic slave trade and then colonialism and so on, but it can't be just a picture of unrelenting misery, you know? And that's why sometimes I have issue with the African Americans because they do start their history, or at least some of them do, from slavery.

And you know, that evokes dealings in the language of racism because they are only seen as descendants of enslaved people. Whereas actually, if they go back to the parts of Africa from which they originated, they'll see they had a magnificent, marvelous past. And I do think that does help you hold your head up high. You know, Wangari Maathai, the wonderful late Kenyan Nobel Prize winning, she won the Peace Prize,

environmentalists said, you know, I met her a couple of times, very inspiring woman, you cannot enslave a mind that knows itself, that understands itself, that values itself. The three all work together. And so I do think that young Africans should be more aware, better aware of their history, wherever they are, on the continent or in the diaspora,

And through my travels, I discovered actually that they only have a patchy idea. And also, what I don't particularly support is this idea that you just want to learn about your region in Africa. You know, I'm from West Africa. I only want to know about the West African kingdoms or whatever. I don't want to know about the North, the South. I actually have a holistic approach. It's just like here in the UK. You'll know about Africa.

you know, ancient Greece and Rome, you'll say the Judeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman influence is very strong on us, and you'll claim it as part of your culture. Well, I think that there should be this Pan-African approach to history so that you...

you can all, you know, say, just as Europeans say, you know, we have European history, the Africans say we have an African history, and not just cherry-pick their particular part of it. We're nearly coming to a close now. I can't believe it. Time has just flown. I mean, you're such a fascinating speaker. So I'm just going to ask you one fun question. So give me three female rulers or queens. Anyone, just give me three.

Anyone you want. - Oh, very quickly. I suppose the Queen Njinga is very interesting. - Queen Njinga. - Congolese, yeah. She's born in, I think, 1583. She died in her 80s.

Just very quickly, why I like her. I mean, she had some issues because she did actually deal with enslaved people that she had to supply to the Portuguese, but there was that demand. But when she went to meet the Governor General of Luanda and he received her and she was dripping in all her jewellery and finery and he was sitting on a velvet chair, you know,

embroidered in gold and expected her to sit on the floor she sort of looked around and thought i'm not going to do this and told one of her tall female attendant to go on all fours and she sat on her for the whole duration of the negotiations for hours poor woman that woman at least she was level yeah so queen and jinger queen jinger we mentioned yasantiwa and he's the third

Cleopatra? Or the Queen of... I don't know. I quite like Kim Pavita, who, again, Congolese, a bit of a Joan of Arc figure. You know, she was a Christian, but she didn't like the fact that there were no African saints in the Catholic Church and, you know, kind of set up her own Antonine movement after St Anthony of Padua, which still exists to this day. And she was burnt, you know, as a heretic priest.

like Joan of Arc was. So we've got these three, we've got these three and they're all incredible figures. If they were queens now, who would be the best on social media? Oh my goodness.

I kind of think Yara Santewar would be out there. I think Yara Santewar would be, yeah. The great communicator. But then Nzinga would be. Nzinga was very, yeah, very... You know, she was in her late 40s and, pursued by Portuguese soldiers, gets to a rocky precipice and just grabs this vine and just vaults over to the other side with greater plumb. And the Portuguese who tried to do the same all just fell to their deaths. So...

um yeah I think maybe in Jenga she'd have TikToks also now she would be yeah and and you know you're in in the what is you're doing so much you're on tour you're going on doing lots of talks but after you're after this you're going to have a well-earned rest or what are you thinking what might be your next project oh I don't know thinking yeah

I mean, I've had four children and this feels like a fifth one already. And the labour was much longer. We'll see. This one's very cute. Very cute little child. And, you know, your hope for Africa for the future and, you know, the impact of history, you've touched on this, but you really do at the end give us such a powerful, powerful insight

It's a real powerful epilogue about the power of youth and the future, what a young continent Africa is and how much potential there is.

No, I mean, I think so. I mean, look, I'm not starry-eyed about, you know, Africa. There are myriad challenges and myriad problems, and nor are the people themselves there. But there is a vitality. I just got back from Lagos last week, after a week there. And, you know, the vibrancy, the entrepreneurial spirit. I mean, yes, it is a very overcrowded city and so on, but...

I would put my money on the youth because, you know, youth is about vigor, wanting to achieve, wanting to buy. And, you know, and the population will double by 2050. It's 1.4 now. By 2050, it'll be 2.8, which means a quarter of the world's workforce, its producers, its consumers, you know, will be African. And by the 21st end of this century, it'll be about 40%. So...

I mean, I don't know if I had to. I'd give Africa maybe 20 years and you start seeing that a lot of these problems that we're looking at now hopefully will be more consigned to the past. I mean, even the spate of coups in the Sahel and so on. You know, elections have become the norm. And even if they're rigged, they're much harder to rig. And they're, you know, young people with phones that can take pictures of atrocities and vote rigging and so on. So...

I think that in narrating the history of the continent and trying to tell the truth of the history as it's seen by the people themselves, I don't think you can just be a truth teller. I think you have got to give a history of hope as well.

Well, you have given this incredible history, this fantastic book. It really is wonderful. I mean, it's absolutely fascinating. Just such a labor of love, such so much work and so much research and such brilliant writing. And I've loved every page and I know you will as well. And you've been so generous with your time. Thank you so much for

for telling us so many fantastic stories and giving us so much. We've been so grateful for your wonderful research and enthusiasm. It's just been so fantastic to be here with you. It's been really wonderful. It's such a privilege for me, such an honour, and I'm just thrilled to be here. And I'm so grateful. Thank you so, so much. Thank you, Kate. Thank you.

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by myself, Leila Ismail. Make sure to stay tuned for the next episode as we look back to 2024 and select the 12 best conversations from the year.

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