Africa

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Africa. It could be seen as the great test of the West; economically, intellectually, spiritually. The “dark continent” was seen as a source of power for the West through its natural resources, a place of harvest for western religious missionaries, a prize area for anthropologists - a dark continent to be illuminated by our western lights. Now, darker, all but extinguished some think, by the attentions of its invaders, Africa is outside the take-up of the twentieth century it seems. But is this received view is merely cliched and too easily pessimistic.

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Guests

• Professor Henry Louis Gates Jr No other episodes
  Chair of the Afro-American Studies Department, Harvard University
• Anthony Sampson No other episodes
  Writer, journalist and author of Mandela: The Authorised Biography

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Programme ID: p00545ld

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545ld

Auto-category: 960 (African History and Culture)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello. In the spring of last year, President Bill Clinton glad-handed his way across the continent of Africa, and taking up Thabo Mbeki's theme and phrase, he told the world about an African renaissance.