S6 E6: Origins of the Ghana/Ivory Coast rivalry: the West African Wager, With Prof. Elisa Prosperetti (Part 2)

Hello friends, I am back again, finally, after more than 5 months of a forced absence. Thank you to those who have taken news! don't worry, my prolonged absence is not due to a lack of inspiration, of topics to share with you, or a breakdown of our Sankofa, it was really a much more prosaic reason, simply professional. One must pay the bills, right? 😊…

Unfortunately, I’m sure we lost some faithful listeners along the way, but new ones joined us! I want to welcome them all. Many of you have asked me, where I went, I have been asked, is there no internet at that new place? is it so hidden? in which country? I replied jokingly many times, that I went to Fashoda! That response usually led to a bit of silence... Fashoda, is today just a lost town in the Republic of South Sudan, on the banks of the Nile. Although the name doesn’t speak to you, that place nevertheless holds an important place in the colonial, and even postcolonial imagination, to the point of having given its name to a French “complex” of inferiority towards the English, if not the Anglo-Saxons. I’m talking about the so-called “Fashoda Complex”.

This woman, Mary Thomas, a courageous 19th-century slave from St. Croix (now part of the U.S. Virgin Islands), rebelled against indignity, along with two other women leaders, Agnes and Mathilda, "the three queens," to spark the largest labour revolt in Danish colonial history, an uprising known as the "Fireburn," in which fifty plantations and most of the town of Frederiksted on St. Croix were burned. This rebellion was brutally suppressed, and the three queens were arrested, tried and convicted. They served their prison terms in Copenhagen, a little over a mile from where the statue stands today.

Join us in Part 2 to learn how the reign of the Nana Benz ended and the efforts of their daughters, ( the Nanettes) who actually went to business schools in the US and Europe to try and keep the sun shining! Enjoy!

The Nana Benz is first and foremost a collective adventure that refers to the economic mutations of an entire continent, from the early days of the colonial age to the arrival in force of China. To understand their story, we have to go back a long way, to the middle of the 19th century, and take the road to Indonesia, then under the domination of the Netherlands.  During their wanderings in the island, Dutch merchants discovered cotton fabrics printed on both sides and covered with wax, a process that allows better fixing colors. The Dutch quickly had these brightly colored fabrics manufactured in Europe, renamed "Dutch wax" and intended primarily for African markets.

Who are you?

What are you the name of?

Where are you going?

and what are you looking for?

To close this third season, whose frequency of episodes has been somewhat disturbed by the writing of the book on African pioneers, I would like to tell you about an article, that was published in the New York Times in August 1923, which dealt with the movie “ The Birth of a Nation ” by D. W Griffiths released in 1915. A technically groundbreaking film, the first film shot in the White House, but terribly racist, described by some as the most racist film in the history of cinema. Incidentally a great box office success in its time. 

Why did France, which was also responsible of inhuman exploitation in its colonies, ban a film that paid tribute to white superiority?

Yes, it is an African guy who was the first to perform a lap of honor in the history of the Olympics! And so logically, every time an athlete does a lap of honor, we should say they did an Akii Bua! it's not that complicated, and yet none of the Tokyo TV consultants will say it, it doesn’t matter which country you are in! bets are open!

As you know, we have been working hard on compiling in a nicely illustrated book, the lives and stories of 25 women and 25 men, who were the first to achieve feats hitherto unattainable in the African continent. 

Read more about this book at

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/821165653/50-pionnieres-africaines-50-african-pioneers

If you too are SL, then tell me about the cotton tree, Bunce island, Dublin in Banana island, York, St John’s Maroon Church, Old Fourah Bay College, the Martello tower, the 3 old city boundaries guns, the Wharf steps, and old guardhouse, yes do justice to your amazing country, probably the most pan-African in Africa, if we judge by the origins of all its people!

It’s a country whose recent history was overshadowed by a brutal civil war, but with a rich history, with one of the largest natural deep-water harbor in the world; it’s the first country to appoint a woman as a cabinet minister within Sub-Saharan Africa, in 1962, the first country in the world to invent a self-adhesive stamp, , and even more important, a country where women have started voting in 1792, 120 years before those in Britain, and almost 200 years before Switzerland.