Award-winning broadcaster, journalist, and filmmaker, Zeinab Badawi returns to Oxford to talk to Dean Ngaire Woods about her book An African History of Africa: From the Dawn of Humanity to Independence published in April this year.

The book guides us through Africa’s spectacular history – from the very origins of our species, through ancient civilisations and medieval empires with remarkable queens and kings, to the miseries of conquest and the elation of independence. Visiting more than thirty African countries to interview countless historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and local storytellers, Zeinab Badawi unearths buried histories from across the continent and gives Africa its rightful place in our global story. The result is a gripping new account of Africa: an epic, sweeping history of the oldest inhabited continent on the planet, told through the voices of Africans themselves.

Copies of Ms Badawi’s book will be available for purchase.

Zeinab Badawi is President of SOAS University of London and an honorary fellow of her alma mater St Hilda’s College, Oxford. Born in Sudan, she has worked in the British media for several decades. Zeinab is a recipient of the President’s Medal of the British Academy, a Patron of the United Nations Association UK, and is on the boards of the Arts, Humanities and Research Council, MINDS (the Mandela Institute for Development Studies), the International Crisis Group and Afrobarometer. She was previously Chair of the Royal African Society. An African History of Africa is her first book.