General History of Africa: What Are the Stakes Today?

On 17th October 2025, an event was held at UNESCO headquarters to celebrate the completion of three new volumes of the General History of Africa (GHA): Volumes IX, X, and XI. This ceremony marked the achievement of a new intellectual and scientific endeavour that mobilized over 230 historians and researchers to produce roughly 3,000 additional pages on the history of Africa and its diasporas. On this occasion, AFROSPECTIVES is publishing two articles by its founders who were at the heart of this academic project: Dr. Ali Moussa Iye, initiator and coordinator of the second phase of the project, and Professor Augustin F. C. Holl, Chair of the International Scientific Committee for the new volumes and editor of Volume IX of the GHA. They serve respectively as President and Vice-President of AFROSPECTIVES.

The first article discusses the challenges and stakes involved in writing these volumes. The second analyses the importance of the GHA for future African generations. Two perspectives on a long process of mental emancipation and decolonization of African history, which has been so often misrepresented.

---

With the official launch of Volumes IX, X, and XI, the International Scientific Committee I represent and the roughly 230 authors involved in this extraordinary endeavour all feel a legitimate sense of accomplishment in completing the mission entrusted to us in 2013. For anyone outside academia, the question arises: “What are the stakes of the General History of Africa today?” Here is my response.

Following the decade of African independence inaugurated by Osagyefo Kwame N’Krumah on 6^th March 1957, it became imperative for new African nations to reexamine their past and lay the foundation for a new historical consciousness.

The first stage of the GHA “rocket,” launched in 1964, resulted in eight volumes (I-VIII) published between 1981 and 1999. The pedagogical use of the GHA, already envisioned in the Preface by Mr. Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, then UNESCO Director-General, represents the second stage, launched in 2009 in Tripoli, Libya. The third stage—the project of Volume IX, which became Volumes IX, X, and XI—was launched in 2013 in Addis Ababa.

The GHA, as we envision and live it, serves as an antidote to the continent’s balkanization stemming from the 1884–1885 Berlin Congress and the subsequent “Scramble for Africa”. Each of the six colonial empires (German, British, Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese) appropriated a portion of Africa and managed it from their capitals, creating a persistent external orientation among generations of Africans, from which it remains difficult to break free.

In line with Pan-Africanist principles, the GHA project promotes a continental vision of African historical experiences, downplaying geographic particularities and avoiding “national histories” that legitimize colonial balkanization.

Africa’s history—the longest of all continents—is, in many ways, the backbone and a condensation of human history. It was made by humans in diverse circumstances. Consequently, the GHA is the general history of Africans, regardless of where they live. The theoretical stance embodied in the term “Global Africa” subtly reflects this reality, emphasizing the organic connection between continental Africa and its multiple diasporas.

A panoramic view of the world in 2025 shows a planet riven by identity tensions, competing ambitions, and hegemonic drives. Yet, the GHA reminds us that all humans belong to the same species, Homo sapiens sapiens, emerging in Africa from the famous “Mitochondrial Eve” over 300,000 years ago. This species spread globally, adapting to diverse environments, and gradually colonized the entire planet.

This single fact of natural history could lay the foundation for a peaceful world. Unfortunately, humans are uniquely inventive in self-destruction, and phenotypic diversity—a key adaptive human resource—has been misinterpreted through pernicious hierarchical lenses.

Today, strong revisionist impulses seek to sanitize history to suit dominant narratives. The GHA rigorously presents African history, revealing the heavy toll Africa and Africans paid in shaping the modern world. The twin Eastern and Western systems of slavery drained the continent’s human and intellectual resources, yet these trials also showcased African resilience and perseverance, directly and indirectly enriching much of the world.

The GHA targets new generations worldwide, particularly African and Afro-descendant youth in the Americas and Asia, encouraging them to draw strength and inspiration from their history to live fully in the present and prepare wisely for the future.

The ultimate goal of the GHA is to arm young African and Afro-descendant generations culturally and intellectually while fostering mutual understanding for a planet—human Earth—at peace with itself.

Augustin F.C. HOLL

Co-founder of Afrospectives