Stereotypically, Westerners have seen Africa as ‘the continent without history’. The misrepresentation follows G W F Hegel’s 1830s dictum that Africa ‘is no historical part of the world’. The misconception continues to condition the way that international agencies approach their work in Africa. Africa’s problems are pressing and can have immediate, proximate solutions (developed by external agencies, with international funding). But, of course, this approach merely replicates the idea of Africa as without history, of a continent that requires saving from the outside: by well-meaning abolitionists and missionaries in the 19th century, and by internationalists in the 21st century. History compels us to look at the causes of things, including current problems; and many powerful internal and external actors involved in African society today would apparently prefer to avoid that consideration.
In order to understand many of the challenges of contemporary Africa, a historical framework is vital. The essentialness of history is evident in three key areas. Much of the contemporary political news about Africa discusses, first, the rise of jihād movements in Mali and northern Nigeria; second, the lack of a strong financial base for many of the things that are associated with modern states; and third, the problem of ‘failed states’ (the Central African Republic, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia). These topics are at the basis of many policy papers and research agendas related to Africa, most of which are developed without any deeper sense of the African past. A historical perspective changes the way these questions seem, and also what answers might be effective.
In the case of jihād in West Africa, it can be understood only as part of Islam’s history as a path of resistance to slavery and social inequalities in West Africa. Outside the continent, Boko Haram is the most well-known of these jihād movements. Its leaders are well aware of their historicity, and have often referred to the Sokoto Caliphate as their inspiration. One of the largest states in 19th-century Africa, this caliphate was established in what is now northern Nigeria following a jihād movement led in 1804 by a sheikh called Uthmān dān Fodio.
Sokoto rose in the Hausa states around the northern centres of Kano and Borno (now the heartland of Boko Haram). Its influence quickly spread through what is now Nigeria. The major empire of Oyò in the south fell in 1835, following an uprising led by slaves of nobles who had converted to Islam after a jihād led in northern Nigeria. With the collapse of Oyò, Lagos was poised to become one of Africa’s supercities. Meanwhile, many of the dispossessed were finding in Islam a religion to help resist inequality and the rising power of capitalism. As inequalities had grown, so had more and more people converted, drawing on the power of Islam to fight back against austerity. It drove the uprisings in both northern and southern Nigeria, and quickly spread as far afield as what is now Mali and The Gambia. The dynamic relationship between inequality and the role of jihād to oppose it continues, as Boko Haram attests. The facts suggest that, as both grow in the 21st century, diminishing the appeal of jihād requires addressing the prevalence of inequalities, probably on a global level.
by Toby Green, aeon
