Rethinking Africa is a forward looking blog dedicated to the exchange of innovative thinking on issues affecting the advancement of African peoples wherever they are. We provide rigorous and insightful analyses on the issues affecting Africans and their vision of the world.
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe ONE of Africa’s preeminent historians whose A History of the Upper Guinea Coast, 1545-1800 (1970) and How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972) are compulsory references in the study of Africa and African peoples worldwide of the past 500 years
(Max Roach Quartet, “Speak, Brother, Speak!” [sides I and II; personnel: Roach, drums; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Mal Waldron, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; recorded live, The Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, US, 27 October 1962])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author of The longest
genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019) and co-author,
with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why #DonaldTrump is #great for #Africa (2018)
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe SPARK of enduring Biafran creative
energy! Celebrated cultural and literary critic and executive editor of The Guardian, Lagos, Nigeria, beginning
February 1983, when he embarks on the radical
transformation of the focus and scope and
qualitative threshold of journalism practicenot seen in Africa’s
southwestcentral region in 50 years – since the edifying
standard set for post-(European)conquest Africa journalism by Nnamdi Azikiwe,
political scientist, academic, poet, journalist, multiform entrepreneur, leader
in Igbo vanguard role in the drive for restoration of
independence for the African peoples and states in this region (mid-1930s-October
1960) which the British conquest and occupation had contemptuously called “Nigeria”…
BIAFRA is on the way back to
continue the liberatory project disrupted so viciously by this longest genocide
in contemporary history: to teach basic lessons on resolve and competence, to
overcome challenges, to exercise transformative initiatives, to affirm life, African
life, as sacrosanct, particularly given 52 years of Fulani
islamist/jihadist-controlled genocidist Nigeria and its (especially) Yoruba/Edo/Hausa/Urhobo/Nupe/Edo/Tiv allies’ programmed
savagery to destroy the lives of 50 million Igbo people.
(Max Roach Quartet, “Speak, Brother, Speak!” [sides I and II; personnel: Roach, drums; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Mal Waldron, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; recorded live, The Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, US, 27 October 1962])
*****Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is the author, with Lakeson Okwuonicha, of Why Donald Trump is great for Africa (2018)
APPOSITELY, a reference here to Germany’s
Martin Niemöller’s historic reminiscences, “First they came…” (1946): First they came for the
communists and I did not speak out because I was not a communist. Then they came for the trade
unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews and I
did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Finally, they came for me and
there was no one left to speak out.
(Max Roach Quartet, “Speak, Brother, Speak!” [sides I and II; personnel: Roach, drums; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Mal Waldron, piano; Eddie Khan, bass; recorded live, The Jazz Workshop, San Francisco, US, 27 October 1962])
Herbert Ekwe-Ekwe is specialist on the state and on genocide & wars in Africa in the post-1966 epoch – beginning with the Igbo genocide, 29 May 1966-present day, the foundational and most gruesome genocide of post-(European)conquest Africa. 3.1 million Igbo or 25 per cent of this nation’s population were murdered by Nigeria and its allies, principally Britain. Africa and the rest of the world largely stood by and watched as the perpetrators enacted this horror most ruthlessly. The world could have stopped this genocide; the world should have stopped this genocide. This genocide inaugurated Africa’s current age of pestilence. During the period, 12 million additional Africans have been murdered in further genocide in Rwanda (1994), Zaïre/DRCongo (variously, since the late 1990s) and Darfur – west of the Sudan – (since 2004) and in other wars in Africa. African peoples have, presently, no other choice but exit/dismantle the extant genocide-state (the bane of their existence & progress) & construct own nation-centred states that serve their interests. He is author of several books & papers on the subject and his new book is entitled The longest genocide – since 29 May 1966 (2019).
