The Africans: A Triple Heritage
A nine-part documentary on Africa's three formative influences.
The Africans: A Triple Heritage is a documentary series from the early 1980s, written and narrated by Dr. Ali Mazrui. It was a co-production of the BBC and PBS (WETA, Washington), with the Nigerian Television Authority also involved. A companion book was released by BBC Publications and Little, Brown and Company. The series first aired in 1986 on the BBC and on local PBS stations in the US, where it sparked controversy.
Quick Facts
- Narrator and writer
- Dr. Ali Mazrui
- Producers
- BBC
- Public Broadcasting Service (WETA, Washington)
- Nigerian Television Authority
- Premiere year
- 1986
- Number of parts
- 9
- Book publisher
- BBC Publications and Little, Brown and Company
Facts from the source article.
Brief Review of the Series
Mazrui's documentary presents Africa's triple heritage as the product of three major influences: an indigenous heritage shaped by time and climate change; the heritage of eurocentric capitalism imposed by European colonialism; and the spread of Islam through both jihad and evangelism. The series argues that independent African leaders have yet to address the negative effects of this history, while the West tends to view Africa as a recipient rather than a transmitter of effects.
Mazrui contends that Africa has transformed Europe and America in the past, and that the continent's current situation—economically dependent, culturally mixed, and politically unstable—is the price it has paid for Western development. The nine-part series includes the program The Nature of a Continent, in which Mazrui questions the positioning of Africa on world maps. He attributes the continent's cartographic subordination to European ethnocentrism, noting that the Mercator projection portrays North America as one and a half times the size of Africa.
About the creator
Ali Al'amin Mazrui, born in Mombasa, Kenya, on February 24, 1933, and passing on October 12, 2014, was a renowned academic, prolific writer, and sharp political analyst focusing on African politics, global political culture, political Islam, and relations between the Global North and South. At the time of his death, he was ranked among the world's top 100 thinkers. He gained early attention by challenging the dominant views of African intellectuals during the 1960s and 1970s, rejecting African socialism and Marxism as foreign imports no better than earlier colonial systems.
Instead, he championed a revised liberalism he called African liberalism. Mazrui also fiercely critiqued the global order, arguing that capitalism exploits Africa and that the West fails to uphold its own liberal values. He opposed Western military interventions like the Iraq War and was an early voice linking Israeli policies toward Palestinians to South African apartheid. Later in life, he became a notable commentator on Islam, condemning violence and terrorism while appreciating the anti-imperialist currents within Islamic fundamentalism. He maintained that Sharia law and democracy are not fundamentally at odds.
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