General History of Africa

[1] The 1964 General Conference of UNESCO, during its 13th Session, instructed the Organization to undertake this initiative after the newly independent African Member States expressed a strong desire to reclaim their cultural identity, to rectify widespread ignorance about their Continent's history, and to break free of discriminatory prejudices.

The project also takes into consideration modern teaching tools, such as internet resources and multimedia platforms, to ensure that learning is an interactive discovery process.

The conventional reading of history also needed to be challenged to depict a more accurate picture of the African continent, of its cultural diversity, and its contribution to the general progress of humankind.

Furthermore, twelve studies and documents on related themes as well as an abridged version of the main edition in English, French, Kiswahili, Hausa and Fulfulde were published.

This work involved some of the most eminent African scholars such as Cheikh Anta Diop, Joseph Ki-Zerbo, Theophile Obenga, Ali Mazrui, Gamal Mokhtar, Bethwell A. Ogot, etc.

The main preoccupation of Phase 1 was to provide a culturally relevant perspective based on an interdisciplinary approach with a focus on the history of ideas and civilizations, societies and institutions.

This shift in perspective is reflected by the significant number of renowned African scholars who contributed to this project as members of the International Scientific Committee, editors and authors.

To tackle this task, made all the more complex and difficult by the vast range of sources and the fact that documents were widely scattered, UNESCO had to proceed in stages.

The Action Plan emphasizes the strengthening of the links between education and culture and improving the quality of pedagogical contents such as internet resources and audiovisual materials.

"[24] In the introduction to the volume, Mokhtar himself argued that "it is highly doubtful whether the inhabitants that introduced civilization into the Nile valley ever belonged to one single, pure race".

Mokhtar later added in the introduction that “It is more than probable that the African strain, black or light, is preponderant in the Ancient Egyptian, but in the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to say more”.

French professor Jean Leclant stressed the "African character of Egyptian civilization" but felt it was important to differentiate between 'race' and 'culture' and that there was no reason to rely on "outmoded studies" from Ernest Chantre, Grafton Elliot Smith, Giuseppe Sergi and Douglas Erith Derry as Diop had done.

[27] Sudanese professor Abdelgadir M. Abdalla noted that iconographic evidence showed that the "creators of the Napata culture had nothing in common with the Egyptians" and had "completely different" anatomical characteristics.

[28] He further argued that Diop's linguistic comparisons between Egyptian and Wolof were "neither convincing nor conclusive" and "it was hazardous to make too uncompromising a correlation between a language and an ethnic structure ".

[30] French professor Jean Vercoutter agreed with Diop that "the populations of the Egyptian reaches of the Nile Valley was homogenous as far as the southern extremity of the Delta" during the proto-dynastic and pre-dynastic periods.

[31] Overall, Diop's chapter was credited in the general conclusion of the 1974 symposium report by the International Scientific Committee's Rapporteur, Professor Jean Devisse,[32] as a "painstakingly researched contribution" which nevertheless led to a "real lack of balance" in the discussion among participants.

[35] The committee then decided on the "principle of heterogeneity" and that uniformity on the interpretation of historical evidence would not be imposed on any historian writing for the UNESCO General History of Africa.

Nordholdt argued that Diop's views aligned with the decolonisation efforts of the General History of Africa but he premised his arguments on outdated, racialism which classified humanity into distinct groups with a biological essence.

However, she did state that the contributors did "come to a general consensus that the Egyptians could not not have been “white" in the same way that Europeans were" and the dissemination of Diop's ideas contributed to a wider recognition that the Ancient Egypt was an African civilisation although his methods were "not considered entirely permissible by most of the other GHA historians".

[38] The committee behind the UNESCO series however expressed "serious reservations" on the methods used in the chapter by the author, as these would cause confusion for the reader by presenting them with information on both the Palaeolithic era and contemporary southern Africa at the same time.

[41] There was however one remaining "serious disagreement" on a theory presented by Samwiri Lwanga-Lunyiigo that differs from the opinion of most specialists on the field of the Bantu expansion but this had been retained for inclusion in the volume.

[44] Wilks further described the series as "a useful monument to the state of African historiography in the 1970s and 1980s", though also noted that it would have to go through a "continuous process of revision" to "retain its value as a reliable work of reference".

[45] As a result of space being taken up by this debate, the volume lacked any "discussion [...] of pre-dynastic Egypt and the settlement of the Nile valley which made possible the subsequent civilization".

[45] Brett found fault with the chapters dealing with Aksum, which had a focus that was "resolutely South Arabian Semitic" with "extremely scant attention paid to the Abyssinian region as a whole".

[45] He singled out the chapter on the hunters and food-gatherers of Southern Africa, which included a note by the committee stating that they were unhappy with the author relying on recent ethnographic material, far beyond the chronological limits of this volume, to give an idea of what life was like for these people in ancient times.

[47] He further noted that not all authors in the volume had the "breadth of vision and experience" needed for this kind of book, with some possibly receiving "insufficient editorial guidance" or conversely having "suffered excessive interference".

[48] She did however praise the book for its "genuinely continental" geographical coverage, the "excellent quality" maps and photographs, establishing both "regional [and] world linkages" and the range of "eminent scholars" who are given "sufficient space to cover their commissioned subject matter".

[48] She also sympathised with the "logistical and financial problems" of such an ambitious project which made the publication delay inevitable, but this was still "too long" given the range of quality works that historians were producing by the mid-1980s.

[49] Mann ultimately summarised the volume as "[passionate] and engaged, if dated, unwieldy and uneven" and criticised the abridged edition's lack of notes and "good bibliography".