It does not require a novelist to imagine the practical problems involved in studying anything. Meanwhile, the impact of structural adjustment policies on African universities, and of the Sierra Leonean civil war , meant that the institution had been starved of funds for decades.
It was in the morning. One glance made clear that no books had been bought for a very long time because there were no funds for it. Fourah Bay College is one of the oldest universities in West Africa, and its campus sits high above the old town on one of the hills that rings Freetown.
There were universities in Africa in medieval times, but this is the oldest university in West Africa. It was founded in as a theological college for young African priests, usually freshly liberated from the slave ships. During the civil war, the FBC campus saw battles between the government and the rebels. Students look down over the city and the Atlantic Ocean below, but the university remains scarred by these battles.
Many of the challenges that Freetowners face are shared elsewhere in West Africa. Many documents — some dating back to the 18th century — were destroyed. There is a small bookshop at INEP and, after one book launch that I attended, all the books on the tables outside the auditorium sold in a matter of minutes.
Well-connected colleagues try to step in where the state has disappeared, buying their own stocks of books on trips abroad. This is obviously not a solution. As a historian of West Africa, when I spend time in West African universities, I understand in a visceral and immediate way how power shapes what research is possible, and how the African past can be taught.
While publishing accelerates month by month and year by year in the global North, historians in Bissau and Freetown and in so many other places often cannot access basic research resources.
The internet is not yet a solution because of the slow connection speeds and unreliable electricity supplies that can take hold. Young people who are making decisions about their futures, and trying to find some way of earning a living, conclude that studying history is not going to put bread on the table or help them to start a family. However, the truth is that many aspects of the African past are vital to illuminating the current reality, and to understanding the challenges that both the continent and the world face as we move into the third decade of the century.
The misconception continues to condition the way that international agencies approach their work in Africa. But, of course, this approach merely replicates the idea of Africa as without history, of a continent that requires saving from the outside: by well-meaning abolitionists and missionaries in the 19th century, and by internationalists in the 21st century.
History compels us to look at the causes of things, including current problems; and many powerful internal and external actors involved in African society today would apparently prefer to avoid that consideration. In order to understand many of the challenges of contemporary Africa, a historical framework is vital. The essentialness of history is evident in three key areas. These topics are at the basis of many policy papers and research agendas related to Africa, most of which are developed without any deeper sense of the African past.
A historical perspective changes the way these questions seem, and also what answers might be effective. Its leaders are well aware of their historicity, and have often referred to the Sokoto Caliphate as their inspiration.
Sokoto rose in the Hausa states around the northern centres of Kano and Borno now the heartland of Boko Haram. Its influence quickly spread through what is now Nigeria. Meanwhile, many of the dispossessed were finding in Islam a religion to help resist inequality and the rising power of capitalism. As inequalities had grown, so had more and more people converted, drawing on the power of Islam to fight back against austerity.
It drove the uprisings in both northern and southern Nigeria, and quickly spread as far afield as what is now Mali and The Gambia. Asante in what is now Ghana and Dahomey in Benin shifted from retaining gold to exporting it, and from exporting slaves to using slave labour to develop plantation economies. Asante and Dahomey were able to resist the revolutionary waves because of their tax and fiscal base.
Tax collection for the development of the army and the state helped them prevent the rise of local militias. A strong state funded by tax was the best way of preventing disorder and revolution. Stable states with effective tax powers enjoy a long history in Africa. Those histories stand ready to help in creating stable, well-fiscalised states in the postcolonial era.
At the same time, although precolonial African history shows that models for effective states and for political stability exist, the precolonial state was often one that developed on a predatory model. Enormous divisions grew between rulers and subjects in the era of the slave trade, a model that was further entrenched in the colonial era.
African peoples learnt to have a deep distrust for the state owing to its historical role in creating predatory economic and political patterns related to the slave trade. They did not want to hand over to the state the monopoly of violence, which is a prerequisite for state success, when that violence had often been used against them.
I f internet speeds and access to published resources are some of the problems facing the research and teaching of history in many parts of Africa, in other parts of the world the issues are altogether different. Generally, they come down to prejudicial misconceptions that confirm a narrative of oppression, rather than strength and opportunity — a narrative that is increasingly at odds with the inclinations and needs of the diverse societies of the 21st century. Acheulian artefacts seldom occurred in cave sites until the end of the Earlier Stone Age from about , to , years ago , but some have been found at Sterkfontein and Swartkrans.
Most Acheulian material is found outside caves because our ancestors had not yet mastered fire. One exception appears to be Swartkrans, but the date of some 1 million years ago is controversial. Whatever the date, the controlled use of fire had certainly been mastered by the Middle Stone Age. The repeated use of caves by , years ago, the beginning of the Middle Stone Age MSA , indicates that our ancestors had developed the concept of a home base and hearths show that they could make fire.
Furthermore, tool kits included prepared cores, parallel-sided blades and triangular points. These points were hafted to make spears used to hunt large grazers such as wildebeest, hartebeest and eland.
By this time, then, our ancestors had become accomplished hunters. These early hunters are classified as archaic humans. By , years ago, they were anatomically fully modern. The degree to which their behaviour was equally modern, however, is still under investigation. Indeed, the MSA is particularly important today for this study. Fully modern human behaviour, such as abstract thought, complex politics and kinship systems, requires the use of true language. Other animals communicate, but only humans have the ability to string together sounds in unlimited combinations.
Unfortunately, archaeologists can not study directly abstract thought, kinship systems or language. This is why small artefacts are so important. Among other artefacts, compound tools, such as hafted harpoons and compound glues for hafting spear points, indicate complex thought. Evidence for these cognitive advancements comes from Sibudu Cave near Durban and Blombos Cave in the Cape both dating to about 70 years ago.
These were important steps in the cultural evolution of humanity. In addition, the widespread use of red ochre, presumably as body paint, also shows that MSA behaviour had become more human. The recent finds of decorated ochre at Blombos and decorated ostrich eggshells at Diepkloof, also in the Cape, further demonstrates this point.
By 25, years ago and the beginning of the Later Stone Age LSA , archaeological deposits contain a diagnostic tool kit that includes small scrapers and segments manufactured from fine-grained materials. By this time, LSA peoples were hunting small game with bows and poisoned arrows. Furthermore, the numerous shell middens which dot the coastline in the Cape attest to the exploitation of marine resources at different seasons. In addition to bow hunting and shellfish collection, human behaviour was recognisably modern in other ways.
Uniquely human traits such as rock art and purposeful burials with ornaments were a regular practice. In southern Africa these people were the ancestors of the San or Bushmen. San rock art has a well-earned reputation for aesthetic appeal and symbolic complexity. David Lewis-Williams and his team have been able to unravel this complexity, at least in outline, through the careful use of some 13 pages of text recorded in the late 19th century in English and the San language.
Rather than a record of daily life, the art is essentially religious. Trance images figure prominently, along with animals of power, such as eland, elephant and rhino. Overall, southern Africa probably has the largest corpus of rock art anywhere in the world, and the Drakensberg contains some of the finest. Various cave sites are also open to the public in the Cape.
The relationship between San hunter-gatherers and Khoekhoe pastoralists is the subject of current research. This question is of interest because it was the Khoekhoe who first traded cattle to the Cape Dutch in the 17th century. The main question concerns Khoekhoe origins: some believe they were local hunter-gatherers who acquired sheep and cattle, while others think they brought domestic animals with them from East Africa.
Ultimately, the answer will involve linguistic and genetic data as well as archaeology. Both San and Khoekhoe were in southern Africa when the first Bantu-speaking farmers arrived about years ago.
According to historical linguistics, the Bantu language family originated in West Africa, along the border of present day Nigeria and Cameroon. Generally, the evidence suggests that between BC and AD the ancestors of Eastern Bantu-speaking people moved out of this homeland into East and Southern Africa. These people cultivated sorghum and millets, herded cattle, sheep and goats and manufactured iron tools and copper ornaments.
As a rule these homesteads were sited near water and good soils that could be cultivated with iron hoes. Because metalworking represents a totally new technology, some archaeologists call this period the Iron Age. As agriculturalists, these farming people lived in semi-permanent homesteads comprising pole-and-daga wattle and daub houses and grain bins arranged around animal byres.
This arrangement, known as the Central Cattle Pattern, was characteristic of Eastern Bantu speakers who preferred cattle for bride wealth, traced their blood from their father, practised male hereditary leadership and had a positive attitude about the role of ancestors in daily life.
Many early religions placed a strong emphasis on female goddesses reflecting the central role of women in society. Men were primarily the hunters and gatherers. For early Africans, the family was the basic and most important social unit.
It was the family unit that owned and accessed land rather than individuals. Furthermore, land could not be bought or sold, but instead was passed down through the tradition of partible inheritance, meaning land is divided among the heirs.
Elsewhere in the world, such as in the United Kingdom for much of its history, land was passed down to the firstborn male, known as primogeniture. With partible inheritance, however, no landed aristocracy developed since every male was given an equal share rather than just the firstborn. If the family was the basic social unit in African society, it was the extended family that was the most important politically.
Tribes , consisting of groups of families united by a common ancestry and language, controlled distinct tracts of territory. Tribal groups sometimes coexisted peacefully, and other times, warred over territory. The rulers of the kingdom minted their own currency, built religious monuments, and established trading routes. The Empire of Ghana had a large capital city, markets, and a system of taxation.
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