How did people of African countries see themselves in the past? How do they see themselves today? It’s an interesting perspective to consider especially as so much of the history about people from Africa has been written by non-natives. Yet those false narratives continue to shape perceptions of Africans.

When we consider the slave trade, historical references list slaves as objects of trade and they remain represented as such. They are objects, assets, numbers, profits or whatever else the slave trading Europeans considered them to be. The histories account for this as well and in learning this we fail to recognise that there were considerable rebellions, uprisings, resistance to the slave trade. Slavery ended because of such resistance. It stopped because the fightback organised and executed by people who had slavery forced upon them, ove ...