AFRICAN HISTORIOGRAPHY AND THE CHALLENGES OF EUROPEAN PERIODIZATION: SETTING THE RECORDS STRAIGHT

Abstract

African historiography set by the Europeans has claimed that there was little or no impact of the Africans in creating Africa's history. Africa's history was said to have began with the history of the Europeans in Africa. With this mind-set, in creating what they called Africa's history tended to focus on events that coincided with the intrusive European explorers rather than events antedating them. The brief paper, in the face of this problem, analyzes the thorny issue of African historiography. In doing this, it adopts the primary and secondary sources of data collection with historical method of data analysis. It submits that there seems to be a lacuna in the periodization of Africa's history, especially with respect to the indigenous people's contributions. The structure of African historiography had more to do with the European expeditions than African experiences. It recommends that Africa's history should be periodized in such a way that the multiple fragments of the African past, cultures, languages, religions, philosophies, and cosmology are taken into account in order to represent the peculiarities of the continent's history.