An African History of Africa

Starred review from November 1, 2024
Badawi's aim for her first book is simple but ambitious: to provide an overview of Africa's history from the perspective of an African rather than an outsider. She establishes the centrality of Africa's presence as a driver of human history, not merely as a continent that history happens to, at the very beginning. Starting at the dawn of humanity itself--some seven million years ago, when humans on the continent first started to evolve--Badawi leads the reader from preantiquity to the twenty-first century, detailing the evolution of Africa and its 54 countries. As a work of scholarship meant for the lay reader, her work is invaluable, emphasizing the geographic, economic, and cultural factors that make Africa's historical role so complex. As she points out early on, a mere handful of African historical events have penetrated the popular consciousness. Here, the continent's innumerable societies, leaders, and periods are contextualized; the work of its own scholars is prioritized in citations. Badawi illuminates swathes of history that have gone under-researched and under-recognized, in a book that is sure to become essential.

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Starred review from December 15, 2024
An immersive and passionate history of Africa from the earliest times to the present. Africa's representation has long been riddled with stereotypes and errors indicative of widespread refusal to take its history seriously. Mainstream news coverage and cultural productions about the continent prioritize poverty, violence, and kleptocratic leaders. Badawi's dazzling book rejects these racist caricatures in favor of a "holistic" and "honest" history that treats African history and humanity in its fullness. "I aim," she writes, "to provide a counter-balance to the many negative perceptions of the continent and its people." Badawi weaves a lustrous tapestry of Africa's past that centers the African protagonists whose triumphs and defeats deserve more attention. She brings welcome attention to lesser-known figures, including women, who are difficult to locate in historical sources but who nonetheless shaped history. Famous African women leaders Hatshepsut, Cleopatra, Queen Kahina, Njinga, and Yaa Asantewaa all receive substantive treatment here. Yet Badawi also evokes less visible histories: for instance, her engrossing portrait of events in the Senegalese kingdom Nder in 1819, when women resisted an Arab slaving raid first by defending themselves with whatever weapons were on hand. When it became clear they could not defeat the slavers, they chose death, locking themselves in a village structure and setting it aflame. Badawi's account of this "heroic sacrifice" renders an indelible image of ordinary African women as historical actors. Relying on local African experts to disrupt misguided Western narratives and emphasizing Africa's history before European colonization, Badawi takes readers on a personal journey steeped in wonder and care for the continent and its peoples. Her crystalline, sometimes lighthearted writing propels the journey across every region of the continent, illuminating political, religious, and military histories and the personalities that enlivened them. This is not an academic text, as Badawi readily acknowledges. But it is a learned text, one that delivers on its promise of narrating an African history of Africa. An elegant and vibrant African history that will appeal to novices and experts alike.

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