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REDISCOVERING THE DARK CONTINENT
F or centuries Europeans referred to Africa as The Dark Continent, a reflection of the ignorance about this huge and diverse land mass. Today it seems little has changed. We might think we know Africa from the pictures on our film and tv screens, but these are the clichéd titbits of our soundbite age: famine, civil wars, safari parks, political upheaval and,
increasingly, sporting excellence. It’s not much of a rounded view for a continent that, on the onehand,includesEgypt,withallitsillustrious ancient history and, on the other, the modern economy of South Africa.
A new BBC co-production should cast some light into the darkness, and seems cer- tain to be a ratings winner both here and in America when it is screened early next year.
Africa - produced in collaboration with PBS - comprises six different journeys through the continent, made by journalist and academic Henry Louis Gates Jr, head of Afro-AmericanstudiesatHarvardUniversity.
Series producer Ben Goold, on a break between these epic journeys, explains the thinking behind the series.
“As we travel across a particular part of Africa we explore its history and the connections between the past and the present. The idea for the show came out of the fact that Henry filmed Great Railway Journeys of the World, travelling through Africa and retracing a journey he’d done as a student in 1970.
“While he was doing that he conceived this series on African history, drawing on the fact that people know so little about this continent. It really uncovers the history of the ancient civili- sations of Africa which, to a western audience, have largely been forgotten.”
Largely forgotten, or shamefully overlooked? The increasing Afro-centric awareness of a generation of black Britons makes this series long overdue, but also offers a salutary perspective on the world for the rest of us.
“Think of Africa and people might typically think of mud huts, famine or flies,” Goold contin- ues. “But they don’t know anything about the ancient kingdoms, empires or civilisations that once rivalled many European states in terms of wealth and power.
“The Empire of Mali once covered an area far more vast than modern Mali, and was recognised both as one of the great centres of learning and
also one of the great kingdoms of the Islamic world. So that’s one of the great journeys, up the Niger to Timbuktu, which had a great university.
“There’s a programme on the Swahili coast and its history, through Kenya, Tanzania and Zanzibar, telling the history of the region. There’s another programme looking at the medieval kingdoms of
Ethiopia, with its lost monaster- ies up in the mountains which, legend has it, house the Ark of the Covenant. And we have another on Ancient Nubia and
the great kingdoms of the Nile, which were said to be overshad- owed by Egypt. Yet there were a whole series of kingdoms
through what is now Sudan.
“We travelled across the country for three weeks, camping in the desert, to get some of the sights on film. We’ve just come back from Ghana and Benin, where we’ve done a programme on the slave coasts and the kingdoms of the forests. And we’ll shortly be off
to do the sixth film which will be in Zimbabwe.”
It all sounds like an epic but rewarding project for everyone involved, documentary filmmakers who in re-discovering the wonders of Africa are the modern equivalent of the western explorers and pioneers of centuries past. But as Goold says, it is a shame that our ignorance has lasted so long. “In an area like African history, films like ours quickly become a matter of historical record because so little is shown to the public about it. It’s been 13 years since there’s been a major series about African history, and there really only have been two major histories that have anything to do
with Africa since 1979.
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