African Roots: Shadows of German Colonialism

Cai explores how Senegal's first president, poet Leopold Senghor, believed a mix of African and French culture could carry Senegal into independence. Meanwhile, Laila tells Cai how Nigerian Oba Ewuare's taste in cultural investment still has African nations and European museums at loggerheads.

The atrocities of German colonialism remained largely, and purposefully, obscure as Namibians endured successive German and British colonial administration. Under the South African apartheid rule that only ended in 1990, there was little space to confront the crimes. But women kept, and continue to keep, their people's history and culture alive.

In 1893, Dahomey men and women revolted against abuse by German colonial officers in Cameroon in a famous uprising that Germany was unprepared for. We look at how female resistance against colonialism has taken different forms, from the Dahomey Revolt to the battle to return the Ngonnso sculpture to Cameroon.

As German colonialists swept into East Africa, they came up against a force none had reckoned with: Li'ti Kidanka. Shrouded in folklore, we tell the story of a Tanzanian heroine who fought German colonialism with a very unusual weapon.

Nduna Mkomanile tried to unite East African communities against German colonialism during the Maji Maji war in the early 20th century. She's now regarded as one of Tanzania's most notable female freedom fighters, but for decades her importance was overlooked. We find out why.

One of the world's oldest humanoid fossils, colloquially known as Dinknesh, or "Lucy," has intrigued paleontologists for decades. But her name is also a point of pride for Ethiopians. Meanwhile Laila narrates how fascination and racist attitudes around Sarah Baartman resulted in a harrowing, cautionary tale of human exploitation.

Tropical medicine boomed as European powers claimed territories in Africa. Germany sent the famed Robert Koch and many others to the colonies to find cures to tropical illnesses - but also to test new medicines. This shadowy practice led to Africans being mistreated, and many died in the process, leaving a legacy of physical and psychological trauma that has never been properly cured.

Respected German anthropologists made a career from dividing people by race, a new branch of science that conveniently put Europeans at the top. While eugenics and scientific racism was widely practiced in Western nations in the early 1900s, the ideas developed by Eugen Fischer and others served as the intellectual bedrock for race-based crimes committed by Nazi Germany.

Why does Namibia have a bizarre panhandle? Why do some Ghanaians talk of being from "Western Togoland"? Much of this has to do with African borders drawn up in Europe during late 19th century. Borders that to this day are still very much contested, and have had deadly consequences. We explore how treaties designed to prevent war in Europe have caused conflict in Africa.

After the decisive Battle of Waterberg between German and Herero fighters, colonial officers in the colony of South West Africa, today's Namibia, directed a violent, uncompromising persecution of Herero and Nama people. Their policies would result in the 20th century's first genocide.