Q&A How Africa's history shaped the modern world
💡 Which character in Born in Blackness best sums up how little is acknowledged today about Africa’s role in shaping our modern world?
I would have to say Mansa Musa, the early 15th century rule of the Mali Empire whose pilgrimage to Mecca, during which he stopped over in Cairo I argue is really the starting gun that sets of the race to modernity. Mansa Musa distributed 18 tons of gold in acts of patronage, hoping to put Mali on the map as a new global Muslim power to be reckoned with. Things didn't exactly work out that way, but his extraordinary largesse provoked a historic collapse in the price of gold that would soon light a fire in the imagination of the Portuguese, and fuel their ambitions to discover the gold's African source and initiate trade and diplomatic contacts with the continent.
💡 What’s one story you covered as a young journalist in Africa in the 1980s, that you believe we’re still seeing its impact playing out today?
I lived in Côte d'Ivoire for many years and experienced a good portion of Houphouët-Boigny's rule. During this time, I also traveled very often to Ghana, and I have always been fascinated by the different paths these two countries took after independence. This actually relates quite deeply to the book I am trying to complete now, which is about the political emancipation of Africans bunched toward the middle of the last century. I think African independence was one of the most important events anywhere in the last century, and the advent of political freedom in Africa is a lot more closely related to the conquest of citizens' rights in the same era by African Americans than most people realize.
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