An African history of Africa with Zeinab Badawi
On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti
WBUR
4.3 • 3.9K Ratings
🗓️ 22 January 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Everybody’s heard about Ancient Egypt. But just downriver, the kingdom of Kush was one of the most powerful states in the Nile valley. Sudanese-British journalist Zeinab Badawi gives us a lesser-known history of one of Africa’s great historical triumphs.
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Transcript
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| 0:29.7 | This is on point. I'm Megna Chakrabardi. The history of the continent of Africa often centers |
| 0:35.6 | on colonialism, conquest, and conflict. |
| 0:39.8 | Zena Badawi wants to change that. |
| 0:42.5 | Her new book is an African history of Africa, from the dawn of humanity to independence. |
| 0:49.1 | And in it, she highlights Africa's lesser-known historical triumphs and powerful figures. |
| 0:54.8 | It is also an ambitious history from the origins of the human race through the end of apartheid in South Africa. |
| 1:03.3 | Badawi herself was born in Sudan and raised in England. |
| 1:06.6 | She went on to become one of the UK's most distinguished broadcast journalists. |
| 1:12.1 | She hosted flagship news programs at Britain's ITV and Channel 4. |
| 1:16.4 | And for decades, she was also a reporter and host across the BBC's most prominent domestic and global radio and television programs. |
| 1:24.9 | She's currently president of SOAS at the University of London, and she joins us |
| 1:28.9 | from London now. Zena Badawi, welcome to On Point. Megna, it is simply terrific to be with you. |
| 1:37.0 | Hello to you and all your listeners. I actually wanted to start with understanding a little bit more about your thinking and motivation into writing this book. |
| 1:49.8 | Because this morning I was wondering, in your long career as a journalist for UK outlets, I wonder if there was ever a time where you felt like your own work, having to be done for a basically UK audience, was in a sense inadvertently contributing to this kind of myopic view of Africa and African history. |
| 2:15.2 | It is precisely because I didn't want to fall into that trap of simply |
| 2:19.9 | serving a UK audience that I shifted relatively early in my career, a midpoint, to the BBC's |
| 2:29.8 | international division where my audience was a global one, precisely to avoid that myopia, that |
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