African Historiography in Africa
English-language historiography is a generation ahead of its French-language counterpart. This paper analyzes the historical reasons for this lag and discusses the schools that have developed, namely Ibadan, Dar-es-Salaam, and Dakar. Researchers working during the years 1980-2000 produced an impressive number of studies as masters and doctoral dissertations, most of them unpublished. These are generally factual and contain a great deal of information. However, French-speaking Africanists have been very wary of Afrocentric tendencies and of the stultifying monopoly asserted by a few leading intellectuals, thus missing the central point. For the past four decades, African history has been written principally by African historians, and wariness of their writings is no longer tenable. Despite huge obstacles, contemporary African historians have universal value
Article, 2013