The conqueror writes history; You don’t expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us.. Miriam Makeba

South African Singer, song writer, and civil right activist, Mirian Makeba popularly known as Mama Africa once said that: “The conqueror writes history, they came, they conquered and they write. You don’t expect the people who came to invade us to tell the truth about us.” This comment, though made for quite a long time now, it is still relevant in these contemporary times.

There have been a lot of concerns from Pan-Africanists and concerned citizens alike that, the African continent has suffered a loss of identity due to the mere fact that, the historical documentations of the continent, its culture, people, traditions etc was not handled mainly by its own people.

Most of these information were documented by the Europeans due to colonialism which lasted for about 500 good years. This raises lots of questions on whether the story and image we have as Africans today is the right one. Obviously no!

The fact of the matter is that, it will be very difficult for a people who controlled the resources of Africa for centuries and subject the people to all manner of treatments to record accurate information about these same people, knowing well that, if they get in touch with reality, lots of things will go wrong. The tendency of such people manipulating history to their advantage cannot be underrated.

There is a need for the new African generation to find and re-establish the true identity of this continent because the systems of today’s Africa were the plans of people who thought many years ahead. The sense of inferiority attached to our indigenous traditional practices leading to the gradual neglect of some cultural values should be enough reason to fight harder and defeat another form of imperialism.

With the evolving wave of enlightenment rolling all over Africa where many people are beginning to develop interest in issues regarding the continent and ways to make it a better place, we will always lead the right conversations, dig the thoughts of opinion leaders to guide today’s generation on this path to reclaim our continent.