Black Africa Quotes

“To overcome the tremendous obstacles in the way of the economic unification of Africa, decisive political actions are required in the first place. Political unification is a prerequisite. The rational organization of African economies cannot precede the political organization of Africa. The elaboration of a rational formula of economic organization must come after the creation of a federal political entity. It is only within the framework of such a geo-political entity that a rational economic development and cooperation can be inserted. The inverse leads to the type of results we have witnessed over the years.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“There are certain American industrialists who try to prevail on their government to aid only those underdeveloped countries that agree to limit their own emergence. At all times, we would have to be ready to refuse any aid that carried strings with it, however unbinding these might appear to be.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“The Senegal River valley, the Macina region and the bend of the Niger would be laid out according to the old Niger Office Project for intensive cotton raising (at the same time as rice). In the tropical and equatorial regions of the world, and especially Africa, it can be forecast that hygiene and climate considerations will keep synthetic fabrics from ever totally displacing cottongoods for clothing.4 The two tropical zones of Africa on either side of the Equator could be turned into textile-producing zones not only for domestic consumption but also for export.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Our notion of optimum populations must be revised. It does not mean the same thing it did before automation. However that may be, the problem of repopulating Africa, of reconstituting its population decimated by slavery far beyond the toll of what has often been attributed to illness, remains an acute problem for all Africans. Zaire and the Congo, with a large part of Equatorial Africa, form a unified natural zone with the same economic characteristics. That is why I made no effort artificially to differentiate between the two banks of the Zaire in an overview such as this.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Black Africa had its specific bicameralism, determined by sex. Far from interfering with national life by pitting men against women, it guaranteed the free flowering of both. It is to the honor of our ancestors that they were able to develop such a type of democracy. Wherever we find this as late as the Aegean period, the southern Black influence is undeniable. In reestablishing it in modern form, we remain faithful to the democratic and profoundly human past of our forebears; once and for all, we relax the society of mankind by freeing it from a latent millennial contradiction.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“A study of our past can give us a lesson in government. Thanks to the matriarchal system, our ancestors prior to any foreign influence had given woman a choice place. They saw her not as sex object but as mother. This has been true from the Egypt of the Pharaohs until our time.1 Women participated in running public affairs within the framework of a feminine assembly, sitting separately but having the same prerogatives as the male assembly.2 These facts remained unchanged until the colonial conquest, especially is such non-Islamized States as the Yoruban and Dahomean. Behanzin’s military resistance to the French Army under Colonel Dodds is said to have resulted from a decision of the women’s assembly of the kingdom, meeting at night after the men had met during the day and reversing them by ordering mobilization and war—after which, the men ratified the decision.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“General de Gaulle acted like a true strategist toward the colonies, hoping to kill any spirit of struggle or opposition to the mother country by depriving that opposition of visible reason. He is reported to have said, “Territories which for ten years have not ceased dreaming of independence today are insistently demanding it. Should we allow this movement to grow against us or on the contrary attempt to understand, assimilate and channel it properly?” This idea had grown out of a long meditation (dating back to the Fourth Republic immediately following World War II) on the possibility of maintaining colonialism. The Indochinese and North African experiences served to forestall events in Black Africa. They allowed the granting of independence which was otherwise going to be seized. “I loosened the bonds before they were sundered,” DeGaulle is reported to have said.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“One might say that it makes no difference to a Wolofspeaking African whether he adopts Zulu or English or Portuguese. This is just not so. An African educated in any African language other than his own is less alienated, culturally speaking, than he is when educated in a European language which takes the place of his mother tongue. Likewise, a Frenchman who got an Italian education would be much less alienated than if inculcated with Zulu or Arabic in place of French. Such is the disparity in cultural interest which exists between European and African languages—something we must never lose sight of.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“We must remain circumspect about subtle efforts to Anglo-Americanize Black Africa, considering how many of the colonies were formerly British. The joint efforts of Great Britain and of the United States especially run counter to established “intellectual” habits and suggest to former French, Portuguese, Spanish, or other colonies that they ought to opt for English, so as to make that tongue the lingua franca of the whole continent. Linguistic unity based on a foreign language, however one may look at it, is cultural abortion. It would irremediably eventuate in the death of the authentic national culture, the end of our deeper intellectual and spiritual life and reduce us to perpetual copycats, having missed out on our historical mission in this world. Anglo-Saxon cultural, economic, social and even political hegemony would thereby be permanently guaranteed throughout Black Africa. We must remain radically opposed to any attempts at cultural assimilation coming from the outside: none is possible without opening the way to the others.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“So we can see that the African states of the Middle Ages had come into being practically when Egyptian-Sudanese antiquity came to its close. The Nilotic Sudan was finally to lose its independence only in the nineteenth century, and its old eastern province of Ethiopia would retain its identity until the Italian occupation of 1936, barring which, it never lost its independence. That being the case, Ethiopia is in point of fact the oldest state in the world. Ghana lasted from about the third century AD until 1240, to be succeeded by Mali from that date to 1464 (accession of Soni-Ali, founder of the Songhay Empire). The dismembering of these nations was effectively completed in the nineteenth century by the European occupation of Africa.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“We now know, thanks to radiocarbon methods, that the earliest sites in Zimbabwe do date back at least as far as the first century of the Christian Era. On the east coast of Africa Roman coins have been discovered at the port of Dunford as well as in Zanzibar, indicating a flourishing sea trade. The first Nigerian civilization, which Bernard and William Fagg named the Nok civilization, has been traced back to the first millennium BC, the ceramics found there being radiocarbon-dated over a range from 900 BC to 200 AD. The Tarikh es-Sudan tells us that the city of Kukia, on the Niger, former capital of Songhay before Gao, was contemporaneous with the time of the pharaohs. However that may be, we do know with certainty that in the eighth century AD the Empire of Ghana was already in existence, extending over all of West Africa, right to the Atlantic.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“From the appearance of homo sapiens—from earliest prehistory until our time—we are able to trace our origins as a people without significant breaks in continuity. In early prehistory, a great South-North movement brought the African peoples of the Great Lakes region into the Nile Basin. They lived there in clusters for millennia. In prehistoric times, it was they who created the Nilotic Sudanese civilization and what we know as Egypt. These first Black civilizations were the first civilizations in the world, the development of Europe having been held back by the last Ice Age, a matter of a hundred thousand years. Beginning in the sixth century BC (525, when Cambyses occupied Egypt) with the end of the independence of the great Black power base, the African peoples, until then drawn to the Nile Valley as by a magnet, fanned out over the continent. Perhaps they then came upon small pockets of populations descended from paleolithic or neolithic infiltrations. A few centures later, around the first century, they founded the first of the continental civilizations in the West and South: Ghana, Nok-Ifé, Zimbabwe and others.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“In prehistoric times, it was they who created the Nilotic Sudanese civilization and what we know as Egypt. These first Black civilizations were the first civilizations in the world, the development of Europe having been held back by the last Ice Age, a matter of a hundred thousand years. Beginning in the sixth century BC (525,”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“From the appearance of homo sapiens—from earliest prehistory until our time—we are able to trace our origins as a people without significant breaks in continuity. In early prehistory, a great South-North movement brought the African peoples of the Great Lakes region into the Nile Basin. They lived there in clusters for millennia.”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State

“Belgian-American interests, preparing for the political instability that would prevail in the colonies following World War II, working at maximum rates and beyond, mined all the uranium of the then Belgian Congo in less than ten years and stockpiled it at Oolen in Belgium. The Shinrolowbe mines in Zaïre today are emptied, having supplied the major part of the uranium that went into the Nagasaki and Hiroshima bombs. Until 1952, Zaïre was the world’s leading uranium producer; now it ranks sixteenth in reserves and has ceased to be counted among the producers. This one example shows how fast our continent can have its nonrenewable treasures sucked away while we nap. The upshot is that only a continentwide”
― Cheikh Anta Diop, Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State