Exploring African history sheds light on the rich tapestry of cultures, events, and legacies that have shaped the continent. Our carefully curated book list offers a gateway to understanding the complexities and nuances of this vital subject. Delve into our collection to uncover hidden stories, gain new perspectives, and deepen your knowledge of African history. Take the first step towards a captivating journey through time and culture by diving into these insightful reads.
There is no shortage of big tomes about Africa written by old Africa hands - those white journalists, memoirists, travel writers or novelists who know Africa better than Africans.
This genre, lampooned by Binyavanga Wainainaâs satirical essay How to Write About Africa, weaves together stories that exalt the continentâs landscape but decry its politics, that revere its wildlife but patronise its people, that use words such as âtimelessâ, âprimordialâ and âtribalâ when explaining Africaâs historical trajectories.
I believe that any history that omits the viewpoint of the people of that region misses something completely. This is particularly true of Africa. If you apply a Western lens, Western value systems, Western judgments to African history, you will not understand Africa properly.
You need the African voice: African scholars, archaeologists, historians, anthropologists must tell their own story. This is better history. Itâs not about supplanting the work of the Africanists-that is, non-African historians. Itâs about supplementing their work and bringing in an important dimension.
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History is better if it is diverse and inclusive. More importantly, you have to accord people the respect of telling their own story. By not infantilising them to the point where you have outsiders relating their own history, which is what has happened with Africa. Asians have told their own stories. Latin Americans also. There have been great historians from these regions.
This is why I was so keen to write my book An African History of Africa, and-where possible-use African sources. Iâd say 75% of the people I quote are African. As somebody born under an African sun, I felt this was very, very important. Otherwise, it would be a perpetuation of a system in which Africa has been cast as the junior partner. It felt like a subtle revolutionary action on my part, in giving Africans agency to tell their own story.
African literature is increasingly getting the acclaim it deserves. Most recently Glory by Zimbabwean NoViolet Bulawayo was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize; The Promise, by South African author Damon Galgut, won the 2021 Booker Prize and Abdulrazak Gurnah, the Tanzanian writer, won the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature. Elsewhere in fiction, African fantasy and sci-fi are increasingly making their mark. Nigerian-German author Efua Traoré talks us through the best West African fantasy for teenagers. Rosewater, by British-born Yoruba writer Tade Thompson, is a good example of Afrofuturism. One of our best sci fi books of 2019, it is set in 2066 Nigeria.
On African history, we have historian Michael Gomez of NYU recommending books on the great African empires of the medieval and early modern periods. A Fistful of Shells, a prizewinning book by Toby Green of King's College London, also covers the period before European colonialism wreaked havoc on the continent. In his book, A Man With No Title, Xavier Le Clerc tells the story of his father, who was born in extreme poverty in the mountains of Algeria and emigrated to France to give his children a better life. Nigeria is a vast, vibrant, and highly diverse country that offers endless inspiration for fiction writers. Ghana's gold coast was a magnet for Europe's nascent colonial powers right from the very early years of European expansion.
The emphasis in new African writing is away from politics towards how the individual responds to events, says South African novelist Mphuthumi Ntabeni, author of The Broken River Tent and The Wanderers. "We are connected to the spirit and it's an active connection. It's not somewhere thatâs only in the afterlife, it's here in the present as well. That, I think, is endemic across all African cultures and traditions," says Zimbabwean novelist and poet Blessing Musariri.
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The internet and digital technology are transforming not only the way African countries trade and conduct business but also how they cohere socially and politically. Graphic narratives can be a great way to learn history but they need to be both good history and good comics. That's a combination that can be hard to find. Despite their enormous variety, the countries of sub-Saharan Africa share some common challenges when it comes to politics and governance.
Featured Books on African History
Here are some of the best books that delve into the multifaceted history of Africa, offering unique perspectives and in-depth analyses.
1. An African History of Africa by Zeinab Badawi
Zeinab Badawiâs An African History of Africa is a corrective to these narratives. Ambitious in scope and refreshing in perspective, the book stretches from the origins of Homo sapiens in east Africa through to the end of apartheid in South Africa. It is informed by interviews Badawi conducted with African scholars and cultural custodians, whose expertise, observations and wisdom are threaded through the book.
Badawi is among a distinguished coterie who have the resources, networks and bona fides to pull off a work such as this. Born in Sudan and raised in England, she is best known as a broadcast journalist for Channel 4 News and the BBC. Such is her clout that in 2009 she landed an exclusive interview with then Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir when he became the first sitting head of state to be indicted for alleged war crimes by the international criminal court. Since 2021, she has served as president of Soas University of London.
This, her first book, emerged from a nine-part documentary series for BBC World News. Badawiâs opening ploy - âEveryone is originally from Africa, and this books is therefore for everyoneâ - is followed by nearly 500 pages of dense, often fascinating historical detail.
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She recounts the epic ruling lineages and dynastic rivalries of north Africa, centuries before the birth of Christ; the fraught expansion and syncretic incorporation of the Abrahamic faiths into the social fabric of the horn of Africa; the rise of the west African kingdoms that powered the global economy when Europe was reeling from the Black Death in the late middle ages; the underappreciated accomplishments of African world-building as memorialised in the majestic stone ruins of southern Africaâs hinterlands.
She pays assiduous attention to gender throughout, often pointing out the overlooked ways women have shaped the world around them. She slips into the present tense when discussing the imprint of slavery and colonialism on Africaâs development and on contemporary debates about how we reckon with the past.
But, for its many accomplishments in conveying the dynamism and diversity in Africaâs long history, this book may frustrate readers inclined to either more scholarly or more literary writing. The bookâs panoramic historical view comes at the expense of a new, original argument. Badawiâs prose is limpid without being lyrical. Even her presence on the page is fleeting. We see flashes of her experience and discoveries when researching the book but she doesnât indulge in more intimate self-revelation. The lack of a dramatic arc gives the book the feel of a compendium.
Still, I am reminded of Teju Coleâs recent novel Tremor, a meditation on how African art, culture, resources and people have shaped a western world that knows so little of Africa. The narrator asks: âHow is one to live in a way that does not cannibalise the lives of others, that does not reduce them to mascots, objects of fascination, mere terms in the logic of a dominant culture?â Badawiâs book is one answer. The very act of telling African history from an African perspective and by making this history accessible to a wide audience is an assertion of dignity and an invitation to learn more.
An African History of Africa has been a Sunday Times bestseller and was recently shortlisted for the Nero Book Award for Nonfiction. I wanted to read, but couldnât find, a grand sweep of the continentâs history over many centuries, picking up on great moments from African history. It is a celebratory book.
There is a famous 2005 essay by Binyavanga Wainaina called âHow to Write About Africa,â which mocks the many stereotypes that appear in outsidersâ portraits of the continent. He suggests subtitles include words âtimelessâ, âprimordialâ and âtribalâ. He was criticising literary travelogues and reportage, but do you find these same clichĂ©s popping up in African history books too?
Yes. Dipo Faloyin-who we will come to-was inspired to write his book Africa is Not a Country by that essay. Iâve been very aware of these stereotypes, as someone who has worked in the media for several decades now. Having been born in the Sudan, I moved to England at two, going on three. I was aware of the great monuments we had in Sudan-the pyramids and temples-and the amazing artefacts in the Sudan National Museum.
But I realised that people abroad reduced Africa to a place that was simply conflict ridden. I think I was most aware of it in 1985 during the Live Aid initiative. I was traveling around Sudan at the time making a documentary about the politics of food. There was the terrible famine in Ethiopia, I was looking at it from Sudan, and it struck me how people there were saying the government in Khartoum should be doing, X, Y or Z to help.
Then I came back to Britain, and it was all about stopping the famine âin Africaâ by rattling your tins and singing songs. I thought: the people in Sudan had rightly identified that those people who were responsible should be held accountable, not by the humanitarian activists outside the continent but by their own people and leaders. Itâs dereliction of leadership that has brought Africa to these ills. Thatâs not to say that you shouldnât embark on humanitarian assistance for crises in Africa. Look at Sudan now: Iâd be very happy if there was more humanitarian assistance going in. But there was a dissonance between how the people saw their situation and how Westerners did. Iâll come to this when we discuss the Dambisa Moyo book. So yes, Iâve been aware of this for a long time.
As president of SOAS, University of London, Iâm very glad to say that Otele is a professor of history at SOAS. She was the first woman of African descent to become a professor of history in the United Kingdom. That that only happened in 2017 says a lot. She focuses a great deal on African Europeans. Sheâs Cameroonian born, so obviously a fluent French speaker, and she looks a lot at France, Holland, and Britain. Thatâs part of what I like about this book, itâs not UK-centric, itâs Europe-wide. It shows that theories of racial inferiority were not just confined to the UK. Obviously the transatlantic slave trade was something practiced by many or several European nations. She shows there were people of African descent living in Europe right from the Roman era. She notes that North African leaders were prominent in the Roman empire, and that black Christians were welcomed by and celebrated within the medieval church.
The Romans conquered Egypt. Cleopatra was the last of the Ptolemaic pharaohs; they were defeated by Octavian around 30 BCE. Then the Romans were present in in North Africa for a long time. So a lot of the indigenous people of North Africa-the so-called âBerbers,â the Amazigh-became very involved in Roman life. And one of them, Septimius Severus, ruled. He died in Britain, but he was North African. There were a lot of Africans who rose to positions of prominence across Europe across the decades.
The theory of eugenics really took hold in the mid-19th century, which ascribed Africans inferiority simply by dint of being Africans. When you see these people rising to positions of importance, It counters that myth that Africans were not as intelligent or as skilled as Europeans. So many of the photographs that we have in the late 19th century of people of African descent show them in positions of servitude or as entertainers. Again, she counters that. She looks at the case of, you know, Sarah Baartman, who was known as âthe Hottentot Venusâ-a very derogatory title. She was paraded naked, and people just saw her as an exhibit, as something zoologically. But, interesting, Otele says that she did have some agency, that she could decide where and when she was going to be exhibited. The book is revelatory. I think everybody should read if they want to have a better understanding of the presence of Africans in Europe.
Dipo is largely addressing contemporary Africa, but he starts the book with the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885 to show how African countries only really came into being at that time-with some exceptions, like Egypt. I suppose he wants to show how the difficulties that Africa encountered were set in motion by that conference, and how Africans were excluded. Even though slavery had been ended for some decades by the time of the Berlin Conference, that didnât mean it was the end of Africaâs ills. The colonial powers were still there, carving up Africa for their own interests. So he wants to show how there has been a continuity of that unfair balance of power between Europeans and Africans. He also looks at recent history of African leaders-Idi Amin, Muammar Gaddafi, and so on.
Itâs not a history book exactly, but he picks up on the slanted way that the world looks at Africa, and he does that by focusing on the coups, the wars, the famines, and how these negative perceptions of Africa have become the whole perception. He tries to show that Africa is a varied continent of 54 countries, all with different histories, different languages, different peoples, different ethnicities. Because it is still the case that, if there is a coup in West Africa, it will stop investors investing in East Africa or Southern Africa, because they see it as all one.
I suppose this is useful as a correction for anyone learning more about African history-to push them to question assumptions they donât realise they are making. He takes the knee-jerk view of Africa and debunks it.
Yes, this is not a history book, but it is absolutely compulsory reading for anybody who wants to understand the impact that the Europeans had on Africa-particularly those of the missionaries. The colonial officers were accompanied by missionaries intent on âcivilisingâ Africa. Chinua Achebe really captures in this masterpiece the tensions of that period.
We still discuss the impact of the Christianising mission of the colonial officers in the building of institutions. Some people say, Look, it was good, the Brits came with their bookkeeping and accounts and literacy. But Achebe writes about how African values were eroded, people began to question the validity of their own value systems, and to advance they had to, essentially, become black British men and women, or black French men and women. Achebe captures all this-the rejection of African traditional beliefs and value systems-and in my view it is a book that should be read alongside the histories, because it shows how these tensions are still relevant today.
Map depicting the colonial division of Africa at the Berlin Conference
Because things literally fall apart. Their centuries-old way of living was completely challenged by these new norms. The hero ends up committing suicide. Itâs a very, very tragic story, because he felt that all he had aspired to, in the end, was reduced to nothing.
I was talking to the Vice Chancellor of Lagos University a few months ago. She was wearing her beautiful African clothes, and she said: A few decades ago, I would never have turned up like this, I would have been in my business suit, you know? Now, she said, look at the students; they are all wearing their African clothes, African hairstyles. They are rejoicing in their Africanness. They want to forge a future based on their African traditions. This book is very important. It is a historical document.
I donât know how old he would be if he were alive today. About ninety, I think. But if you think that his grandmother would have been telling him stories about life before the British, and he would have used a lot of that knowledge. He wrote the book when he was 28. So it is, in my view, a historical book in that it is based on oral tradition. And the kind of debates that historians have to this day is very much supported by this book.
I remember there was some controversy in Africa over his choosing to write in English. I wonder if there is a tension there, more generally, when Africans write about African history: Who is the intended audience? Are they writing for African readers, or to change the global reputation of Africa? Perhaps both.
Yes, I think it can be both. This is a debate that a lot of writers-not just African-face. There is this idea that you should preserve your language. NgĆ©gÄ© wa Thiongâo, the Kenyan writer, wrote in English, then switched to his native Kikuyu. So this is a debate that is often had. I think that it doesnât matter Chinua Achebe didnât write it in his native language, Igbo. It was translated into Nigerian languages, and many other languages because it is a book with international resonance. I think itâs a bit of a sterile debate. Because books can be translated.
Having said that, I do believe in the preservation of local, indigenous languages. We are seeing âfirst language attritionâ right across Africa, in Francophone, Anglophone and Lusophone countries. But I donât think Chinua Achebe writing in English distracts from his masterpiece. If anybody were to read only one book about Africa, Iâd put Things Fall Apart right at the top of my list.
What Dambisa was saying in this book is much more common currency now, but when it came out-by a Zambian economist with a PhD, whoâd worked at the World Bank-people sat up and paid attention. She put a lens on the fact that humanitarian assistance is the way that many people in the West engage with Africa, and thatâs a problem, because it exaggerates the importance of humanitarian assistance. Itâs just one small tool in a big development toolbox.
She then went further, to say: not only is aid not as significant as you think, but itâs also actually quite pernicious. I wouldnât wholeheartedly agree with that. My view, from everything Iâve read, is that some aid works. Some doesnât. But I think she had to exaggerate to make the point. I think thereâs a role for aid, but she brought out the arguments against it quite clearly.
Development aid is quite different from humanitarian aid. You know, if thereâs flood or a famine, then of course you need to send in money, food. But she was looking at development aid mostly, and she said: if you have too much assistance for health and education programmes, it absolves the leaders of these countries from spending money on these things. So they go and put lots of money into their defence budget, or they pilfer it-it lets them off the hook.
This is not good, obviously, because at the end of the day, the only thing that will make Africa develop is responsible, accountable leadership. No country in the history of the world has been developed by outsiders. Let the citizens rise and say: Weâre not being treated properly in hospitals. Whereâs the money? Youâre selling oil, youâre selling copper, where is all this money going? Thatâs what is so good about Dambisa Moyoâs book, it brought home these arguments. She gave a lot of case studies about how aid can prop up irresponsible governments, andabsolve them from having to respond to their citizens. Sometimes it also leads to duplication of efforts due to lack of coordination. Thatâs why she called the book âDead Aid,â and I think I was a useful response to what was going on at the time.
Yes, so Linda Heywood is an African American academic. I think itâs important to include the work of the African diaspora, be they in the Caribbean, Latin America, North America or Britain. This all comes under the banner of Africans telling their own history, even if Linda Heywood is disconnected from the continent of her ancestors. Itâs important to include that diaspora voice, and they bring something interesting to discussions about African history because they have the benefit of seeing both sides, or being able to relate the history of her ancestors in a way that a Western audience will understand. So I think sheâs a very important voice, along with all the fine African scholars in ...
Hereâs a summary table of the books discussed:
| Book Title | Author | Main Focus |
|---|---|---|
| An African History of Africa | Zeinab Badawi | Comprehensive history of Africa from early humans to the end of apartheid. |
| Africa is Not a Country | Dipo Faloyin | Contemporary issues and debunking stereotypes about Africa. |
| Things Fall Apart | Chinua Achebe | Impact of European colonialism and missionaries on pre-colonial Nigeria (historical fiction). |
| Dead Aid | Dambisa Moyo | Critique of humanitarian aid and its effects on African development. |
| Njinga of Angola: Africaâs Warrior Queen | Linda Heywood | Biography of Queen Njinga and the history of Angola. |
Consider exploring these books to gain a deeper understanding of African history from diverse perspectives.
A collection of covers from recommended books on African history
Further Recommendations:
- Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela: An iconic autobiography detailing Mandela's life and the struggle against apartheid.
- A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah: A harrowing account of a child soldier in Sierra Leone's civil war.
- King Leopold's Ghost by Adam Hochschild: The devastating story of Leopold II's exploitation of the Congo.