In this video, I will suggest a slightly different way of looking at African history. I am a Panafricanist and I understand the importance of our people knowing our history. As Marcus Garvey said - a people without knowledge of their history is like a tree without roots.

When we think of African history, we usually think of kingdoms and Empires. In one sense, this has been a necessary response to lies that we have been told by non-Africans. Other people have told us (and themselves) that before they came along, Africans were “savages.” They claim we were swinging on trees and living in caves. They have told us that we did not have any so-called civilisation. This is of course false, and it is important to debunk this myth. Many of our fine scholars such as Cheikh Anta Diop have done amazing work in this area. The fact is that existence of kingdoms goes back several 000’s years in Africa. The very earliest states were in Africa, in the Nile Valley. We can speak of the the Kingdoms of Kush and Kemet, Axum, Makuria, Mali, Songhay, Ghana, Kongo, Ashanti, etc.

However, by focusing so much on kingdoms to counteract this lie - I think that we have swallowed another, more subtle kind of lie. This is the idea that societies with centralised and hierarchical political power structures - such as monarchies - are more advanced and noble than those with decentralised, horizontal power structures.