Archival Significance
Companion volume to Ali A. Mazrui’s nine-part 1986 television documentary series of the same name, jointly produced by the BBC, PBS and Nigeria’s NTA, one of the most widely viewed documentary treatments of African history and identity produced up to that point.
Institutional Context
Published by BBC Publications, a division of BBC Enterprises, to accompany the television series’ international broadcast.
Content Summary
Traces Africa’s three overlapping heritages, indigenous, Islamic and Western, across the continent’s history, identity and politics.
Research Utility
Useful for researchers of African historiography and public history, and for tracing how Mazrui’s synthesis of the continent’s overlapping heritages shaped popular understanding of African history in the mid-1980s.
Abantu Archives Note
Held in-house.