‘Africa: A Moral Outrage’ – Tony Blair (Part 2) by Yemi Ogunshola
In Perspective
Anthropologists say that Africa once enjoyed a time of greatness that helped to bring about the civilization of the Western world: a period of scientists, sailors (as in Mansa Musa’s time), scholars, historians, astrologers, mathematicians,and philosophers. In ancient Ghana, then the Gold Coast, you could keep your gold at the village square and return a long time afterward to find the precious metal at the same spot. But it was also a place that provided strong slaves for the plantations of Europe and the Americas.
Anthropologists say, too, that the concept of trading, negotiation (as in barter), science, sociology, new-age engineering and reconstructionism spread out of Africa. Northern Africa also had a taste of Roman civilization, spreading down to wealthy Egypt and her neighbouring states.
Not only was the first university in the world located there, it was also in Africa that modern warfare and the use of guns originated. Alas, the guns have now been developed and re-sold to the old country so political factions could kill each other. A friend asked recently: “Given the wealth and beauty of the African past, how then did all the good things suddenly go sour?”