ARICAN INTELLECTUAL REVOLUTION

that

DEFINES SOCIETY

Acibar, Jasmin Reina A.

BSEE-1A

19-45578
I. Introduction

For centuries the peoples of Africa were subjected to exploitation and robbery by the
capitalist maritime nations of western Europe and other marauders. Millions of sons and
daughters of Africa were transported as slaves to far away countries. In the words of
Karl Marx, Africa was "a warren for the commercial hunting of black skins." The invaders
destroyed Africa's ancient civilizations. They seized and laid waste her natural wealth.

Africa had, for centuries before the 19th Century, established historic and enduring
intricate relationships with the outside world especially Western Europe. The last quarter
of the 19th Century marked the sudden and dramatic change in the contact between
Africa and Europe. Evidently, the era witnessed the influx of Europeans: Portuguese,
Spaniard, Dutch, French, British, German and Italian to Africa in order to satisfy their
socioeconomic and political interests. To achieve the colonial ideology, an ideology that
was aimed at the brutal exploitation and domination of the African peoples, the invading
imperialists and colonizers used the instrument of history (Uya, 1984:6, Okorobia,
2010:9) to portray their Euro-centric views that human development and cultural
differentiation did not take place in Africa since the beginning of man on earth (Uya,
1984:1, Erim, 1997:331).In the words of Uya (1984:6) history was used to “create the
best atmosphere for the social political and economic rape of Africa”.

By the end of the 19th Century almost the whole of Africa had been conquered - by
trickery or the force of superior arms - and brought beneath the alien yoke of a handful of
European powers - Britain, France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany and Spain. Her peoples
were deprived of self-government, alienated from their ancestral lands and driven to
work as forced labourers on white-owned plantations, mines and other enterprises.
Africa's normal economic and political development was arrested and set back. Vast
fortunes we’re accumulated in Europe and North America out of African resources and
African labour. But the people of our Continent remained the most poverty-stricken in the
world, with the highest death rate and the lowest expectancy of life. The colonialists
proclaimed that their mission was altruistic and civilizing. But now when they are being
driven from Africa, they leave behind them a crippling heritage of illiteracy, ignorance,
economic stagnation, starvation and disease.

As a result of the heroic struggles of the African peoples, all over the Continent, and
also of the breakup of the colonial system of imperialism which was inaugurated by the
great October Socialist Revolution, the peoples of Africa have swept forward to win
freedom and independence. At the end of the second world war, only Ethiopia and
Liberia could claim to be African states governed by Africans. By 1962 the whole picture
had been transformed. Only Angola, Mozambique and a few other scattered territories
remained under the direct colonial rule of European powers, and in the Republic of
South Africa, SouthWest Africa and the Rhodesians, White minorities continued to
dominate. The area of formal political independence had spread to almost the entire
continent. This sweeping process - the return of Africa to the rule of the African people
themselves - is a great victory for the African people and the cause of freedom. It must
 be pressed forward and completed as soon as possible. It is the essential basis for all
future advance. The working class, and its most advanced leaders, the Communists, arc
intimately concerned with this great movement for political independence; they form its
spearhead and its most determined and uncompromising defenders.

The common struggle of the peoples of Africa against imperialism and colonialism in
all its forms has brought the peoples of Africa closer together than ever before. The
African countries which have already achieved independence render fraternal assistance
to the freedom struggle of their brothers who still suffer under foreign or White minority
domination. A powerful urge towards closer ties and solidarity exists among all Africans
based upon the understanding that unity can best enable the African people to maintain
and consolidate independence, overcome their grave social and economic problems,
develop the resources of the Continent and raise their living standards.

II. Objectives:

 To have a better understanding on how Africa struggles against imperialism

and colonialism

 To have a better understanding on how the Intellectual Revolution changed

African perspective and how they able to unite despite the struggles

 To determine the different development in the African society

 To determine the different discoveries and inventions which surfaced

between the ancient African period until today

III. Discussion:

Despite suffering through the horrific system of slavery, sharecropping and the Jim
Crow era, early African-Americans made countless contributions to science and
technology. This lineage and culture of achievement, though, emerged at least 40,000
years ago in Africa. Unfortunately, few of us are aware of these accomplishments, as the
history of Africa, beyond ancient Egypt, is seldom publicized.

Sadly, the vast majority of discussions on the origins of science include only the
Greeks, Romans and other whites. But in fact most of their discoveries came thousands
of years after African developments. While the remarkable black civilization in Egypt
remains alluring, there was sophistication and impressive inventions throughout ancient
sub-Saharan Africa as well. There are just a handful of scholars in this area. The most
prolific is the late Ivan Van Sertima, an associate professor at Rutgers University. He
once poignantly wrote that “the nerve of the world has been deadened for centuries to
the vibrations of African genius”.

A. The Dawn of Civilization

1. The Pyramids in Egypt

The pyramids of Egypt attest to the skills of engineering and architecture.

Classical Egypt crossed all the frontiers of northeastern Africa and southwestern Asia.
The populations of this area were mixed. Those who built the pyramids included Africans
from the middle and upper Nile River valley, as well as people from the Mediterranean
and elsewhere. The technology and the science behind the technology were not
racialized but crossed many cultures. Similarly, the Nok culture of what is now central
Nigeria displays an antiquity in art forms that reveal knowledge of metallurgy and stone
sculpture that has similarities to other parts of the world. This is important to recognize;
technological and scientific breakthroughs occurred independently in many parts of the
world.

2. Iron technology

The spread of iron technology is a case in point. Africans could transfer the skills
of blacksmithing to the Americas because these skills were ancient in Africa. If anything,
some African skills were not transferred into diaspora, such as the ability to work in other
metals, including bronze and silver. Generally, there was no need for these skills in
plantation America, while there was a need for skills in working iron. This is but one
example of the types of technological knowledge that were common in Africa but were
not transferred into diaspora but rather the skills were lost, retarding development. Once
again we see the inefficiency of slavery as a system; the exploitation of people as slaves
tended to undermine the transfer of skills.

3. Architecture and Engineering

The construction of ancient monuments, palaces and temples in the Nile valley
demonstrates an architectural tradition that was continued in the construction of
mosques in West Africa and along the East African coast, as well as churches in
Ethiopia. The knowledge of mathematics and engineering is ancient and was closely tied
to the availability of building materials. In the Americas, architectural contributions can
be seen in the construction of forts and churches, especially in Cuba and mainland Latin
America, where Africans and people of African descent were involved in both
construction and maintenance. Many of the palaces, mosques, temples, churches, and
fortifications have been designated UNESCO Heritage sites from medieval times
onward. The ancient pyramids of the Nile valley demonstrate that the issue of what was
“African” and what was not is a question of definition.

Certainly the pyramids are unique and as much a part of the history of African
contributions to technology and development. Also to be highlighted will be Zimbabwe,
the Ethiopian Coptic churches, the Islamic architecture of the East African coast. The
spread of adobe mosque and palace construction associated with the tradition of al-
Sahili can be highlighted. In addition, African skills in architecture and construction
spread to the diaspora. Some of the cathedrals of Hispanic America, dating from the
16th to the 18th centuries, as well as fortifications, were built by architects who were of
African descent. Similarly, Africans, many from what is now Ghana, constructed all the
buildings in the colonial town of Newport, Rhode Island, as they did in Kingston,
Jamaica, and elsewhere.

Various past African societies created sophisticated built environments. Of

course, there are the engineering feats of the Egyptians: the bafflingly raised obelisks
and the more than 80 pyramids. The largest of the pyramids covers 13 acres and is
made of 2.25 million blocks of stone. Later, in the 12th century and much farther south,
there were hundreds of great cities in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. There, massive
stone complexes were the hubs of cities. One included a 250-meter-long, 15,000-ton
curved granite wall. The cities featured huge castle-like compounds with numerous
rooms for specific tasks, such as iron-smithing. In the 13th century, the empire of Mali
boasted impressive cities, including Timbuktu, with grand palaces, mosques and
universities.

4. Mathematics

Surely only a few of us know that many modern high-school-level concepts in

mathematics first were developed in Africa, as was the first method of counting. More
than 35,000 years ago, Egyptians scripted textbooks about math that included division
and multiplication of fractions and geometric formulas to calculate the area and volume
of shapes. Distances and angles were calculated, algebraic equations were solved and
mathematically based predictions were made of the size of floods of the Nile. The
ancient Egyptians considered a circle to have 360 degrees and estimated π at 3.16.

Eight thousand years ago, people in present-day Zaire developed their own
numeration system, as did Yoruba people in what is now Nigeria. The Yoruba system
was based on units of 20 (instead of 10) and required an impressive amount of
subtraction to identify different numbers. Scholars have lauded this system, as it
required much abstract reasoning.

5. Astronomy

Several ancient African cultures birthed discoveries in astronomy. Many of these

are foundations on which we still rely, and some were so advanced that their mode of
discovery still cannot be understood. Egyptians charted the movement of the sun and
constellations and the cycles of the moon. They divided the year into 12 parts and
developed a yearlong calendar system containing 365 ¼ days. Clocks were made with
moving water and sundial-like clocks were used.

A structure known as the African Stonehenge in present-day Kenya (constructed

around 300 B.C.) was a remarkably accurate calendar. The Dogon people of Mali
amassed a wealth of detailed astronomical observations. Many of their discoveries were
so advanced that some modern scholars credit their discoveries instead to space aliens
or unknown European travelers, even though the Dogon culture is steeped in ceremonial
tradition centered on several space events. The Dogon knew of Saturn’s rings, Jupiter’s
moons, the spiral structure of the Milky Way and the orbit of the Sirius star system.
 Hundreds of years ago, they plotted orbits in this system accurately through the year
1990. They knew this system contained a primary star and a secondary star (now called
Sirius B) of immense density and not visible to the naked eye.

6. Metallurgy and Tools

Many advances in metallurgy and tool making were made across the entirety of
ancient Africa. These include steam engines, metal chisels and saws, copper and iron
tools and weapons, nails, glue, carbon steel and bronze weapons and art.

Advances in Tanzania, Rwanda and Uganda between 1,500 and 2,000 years
ago surpassed those of Europeans then and were astonishing to Europeans when they
learned of them. Ancient Tanzanian furnaces could reach 1,800°C — 200 to 400°C
warmer than those of the Romans.

7. Navigation

Most of us learn that Europeans were the first to sail to the Americas. However,
several lines of evidence suggest that ancient Africans sailed to South America and Asia
hundreds of years before Europeans. Thousands of miles of waterways across Africa
were trade routes. Many ancient societies in Africa built a variety of boats, including
small reed-based vessels, sailboats and grander structures with many cabins and even
cooking facilities. The Mali and Songhai built boats 100 feet long and 13 feet wide that
could carry up to 80 tons. Currents in the Atlantic Ocean flow from this part of West
Africa to South America. Genetic evidence from plants and descriptions and art from
societies inhabiting South America at the time suggest small numbers of West Africans
sailed to the east coast of South America and remained there.

Contemporary scientists have reconstructed these ancient vessels and their

fishing gear and have completed the transatlantic voyage successfully. Around the same
time as they were sailing to South America, the 13th century, these ancient peoples also
sailed to China and back, carrying elephants as cargo.

B. The Domestication of Agriculture

1. Agricultural Innovation

It is clear that African contributions to agriculture have underpinned the

development of the African continent and to a great extent the Americas as well. This
can be seen with respect to several agricultural innovations, including the domestication
of millet/sorghum, rice, yams, kola, and coffee. The base line for understanding the
contribution of Africans to agricultural development, both in Africa and then in the
Americas, is the emergence of civilizations that are reflected in the sculpture of the Nok
complex in Nigeria and the enclosures of Zimbabwe in southern Africa.
2. Animal Husbandry and Food Production

Agriculture, including animal husbandry, evolved independently in Africa, which

in a real sense was not only the origin of all people but also the cradle of food
production, crop specialization, and experimentation in systems of agriculture and
transhumance livestock management.

These great advances in the technology of agricultural production demonstrate

the contribution of Africa in the evolution of the ancient world into the modern world. A
focus on technological and agricultural innovations establishes that skills acquired in
Africa could be transferred to the Americas and therefore could affect development.

One of the questions to be asked, therefore, is what was the nature of African
knowledge of agriculture, and to what extent was this knowledge transferred and
furthered in the Americas under slavery? It is contended here that extensive knowledge
was transferred, especially with respect to certain crops, such as rice, indigo and cotton,
whether or not there was any intention on the part of slave owners in the Americas to
harness that expertise.

Rather, it seems, Africans were foremost seen as brute workers with no

transferrable skills or any previous knowledge that might prove useful. Any benefits
arising from the transfer of knowledge for purposes of development was purely
coincidental and seldom recognized.

3. Indigenous Development

An examination of the indigenous development of agriculture in different parts of

Africa demonstrates that agriculture was developed in several parts of the world,
independently of each other. Such is the case for West Africa and Ethiopia, at least,
where various crops are known to be indigenous, including rice and millets, and in
forested tropics, yams and other root and tree crops, including the oil palm. The various
millets were particularly important and have formed a staple of food production in many
parts of Africa to this day. Production techniques show great variation from swidden
(“slash and burn”) systems and to methods of inter-cropping.

Similarly the domestication of the yam has enabled the demographic expansion
of people into forested regions of Africa. In the Americas, the cultivation of root crops in
plantation settings was often done on the side, not as part of the work load for the slave
owners but for the subsistence strategies of the African population. In time of food
shortage or natural disasters, such as hurricanes, survival depended upon access to
root crops.

Agricultural innovation does not just involve the development of new crops but
also the adoption and adaptation of imported species of foodstuffs, including bananas,
maize, and manioc, and their significance in terms of agricultural production and
sustainability. Similarly, farmers inevitably experimented with different strategies of
agricultural cultivation, from swidden systems to irrigation, tree and root crops, grains,
fruit, vegetables, condiments and spices.

4. Rice Cultivation

An examination of rice cultivation demonstrates how African technology was

transferred to the Americas and how knowledge that derived from Africa was exploited
through slavery. Rice was domesticated in the savanna region of West Africa and along
the upper Guinea coast and spread from there to South Carolina, Louisiana, the Amazon
region of Brazil and elsewhere. An examination of the different techniques of production
and how these spread to the Americas demonstrates the important role of Africans in the
development of the Americas. The Bambara, Fula, Malinke, and Songhay had long
experience in growing rice along the Niger River, while Serer, Mende, Temne, Kissi,
Papel, and Baga utilized their own special techniques of rice production from Senegal to
the Ivory Coast. There are extensive scholarly studies of rice-producing societies on the
upper Guinea coast, including the Doala, Bran, and others.

a) Rice species

Of the more than twenty species of rice found on the planet, only two were
domesticated, one in Asia (Oryza sativa), the other in West Africa (Oryza
glaberrima). It is believed that O. glaberrima was originally domesticated in the
freshwater wetlands of the inland delta of the middle Niger River in Mali some two
thousand years ago. Genetic diversity also suggests two secondary centers of
African rice innovation and development: north and south of the Gambia River and
the Guinean highlands between Sierra Leone, Guinea Conakry, and Liberia.

Several contrasts are evident between African and Asian rice. African rice is
better adapted to soil nutrient deficiencies, such as acidity, salinity, excessive
flooding, iron toxicity, and phosphorus deficiency. It grows quickly, which makes
glaberrima more competitive with weeds in its early growth cycle than sativa. But
under optimum soil and water conditions, the Asian specie typically provides higher
yields. One factor limiting the extension of glaberrima cultivation over a broad area of
the world is the notorious difficulty of milling African rice for consumption. The
indigestible hunks of African rice must be removed through a processing method that
keeps the grains whole; the African mortar and pestle (Portuguese: pilao) serve this
purpose of milling.

Some studies attribute the early presence of rice in West Africa to Portuguese
navigators who brought it from Asia to the upper Guinea coast. However, rather than
introducing rice, Portuguese caravels depended upon the purchase of locally
produced foodstuffs, especially rice, that were marketed in Africa. Europeans
referred to the coast where rice was grown as the Rice Coast, as distinct from the
Grain Coast, where millet and sorghum could be purchased. By the sixteenth and
seventeenth, West Africans were selling rice to slave traders to provision their ships,
including feeding the Africans who were taken to the Americas.
 The species of rice reported by early European accounts was Oryza glaberrima,
which has erect, compact flower clusters and red grains, and was grown as early as
1500 B.C. along the Casamance River in Senegambia and in the inland delta where
the Niger River flows northeast toward Timbuktu. Much later, the adaptable Asian
species, O. Sativa, which has leaning clusters and white grains, and has a greater
yield, was introduced into the western Sudan and the upper Guinea coast. The Asian
species and hybrids tended to replace the indigenous species. However, the
successful introduction of Asian varieties occurred because a system of irrigated rice
culture and methods to mill the rice already existed.

The region where rice is grown in West Africa is divided into a northern and
southern portion, depending upon amount of rainfall. The result is two distinctive
land-use systems for rice cultivation. In the northern zone, in areas that receive less
than 35 inches of annual precipitation, rice cultivation unfolds on wetlands in
conjunction with cattle grazing. To the south, in areas receiving more than about 35
inches of rain, animals figure less centrally as land use shifts from an agro-pastoral
to a mostly agricultural system. Three principal water regimes influence West African
rice planting: rainfall, groundwater, and tides. The resultant rice systems are
respectively known as upland, inland swamp, and tidal production.

The upland system, which may actually be only a hundred feet above sea level,
where rainfall reaches at least 1,000 mm, is characterized by clearing forest for the
planting of well-drained soils. Seed is planted in furrows, either by broadcasting or by
dropping rice grains into a hole made by puncturing the soil with a special hoe. Then
the shallow hole is covered with the heel of the foot. Because the upland rice system
is regulated by the length of the wet season, West African farmers usually plant seed
varieties of short duration, grown over a three- to four month period. Generally,
upland rice cultivation occurs under favorable climatic, soil, and land use systems in
Sierra Leone and Liberia.

The second principal rice system encountered along a West African landscape
gradient is cultivation in inland swamps, where groundwater reaches the root zone
for most of growing period. The broad range of inland swamps sown with rice reflects
a sophisticated knowledge of soils and their moisture-retention properties as well as
methods to facilitate water impoundment for supplemental irrigation. As Judith A.
Carney observes, planting rice in inland swamps requires careful observance of
topography and water flow. Farmers often construct bunds, small earthen
embankments, around plots to form a reservoir for capturing rainfall or stream runoff.
The practice keeps soils saturated through dry cycles of short duration during the
cropping season. If excess flooding threatens the rice crop, the plot can be quickly
drained by puncturing the bund. Farmers sometimes improve drainage and aeration
in inland swamp plots by ridging the soil. Rice grains either are sown directly atop the
ridges or seedlings are then transplanted, the latter method often being favored
when water-logging poses a risk to seedling development.
 Tidal rice cultivation occurs in three distinct floodplain environments: along
freshwater rivers, seasonally saline rivers, and coastal estuaries with permanent
marine water influence. Mangrove rice is the highest-yielding crop in the West
African rice region, characterized by farming in saline estuaries. From Cape Verde to
Sierra Leone the topography determine the development of mangrove technology in
rice cultivation. In the estuaries of numerous silt-laden rivers mangrove roots clutch
the earth and hold the alluvium, producing the richest soil ideally suited to rice
culture. Natives clear the mangrove swamp of underbrush and construct a dike to
keep out the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean. A levee is closed with sluice gates of
wood at high tide and opened again at low tide so that the saline soil may be washed
by fresh waters of rain and rivers. The field is subdivided by series of canals and
causeways that aid in irrigation. Repeated for a long period of time that may take
years this drains the alluvium of salt. Farmers, using a log shovel, prepare ridges
closest to the sea. Meanwhile, the women, using a small hoe, prepare other fields on
higher ground and sow it with rice seeds to be later transplanted to the fields. After
the harvest, the manure of cattle provides further nourishment throughout the entire
trypanosome-free zone of the rice region. Rice farmers south of the trypanosome
belt do not have these advantages: in absence of the cattle they must rely upon
other techniques to maintain soil fertility, such rotating fields with nitrogen-fixing
legumes and intercropping plants that add crucial nutrients to the soil.

b) Rice-Cropping

The labor of women proved crucial to the rice-cropping system in West Africa in
ways that were not the case with other cereals such as sorghum and millet. Their
activities included selecting the seeds, hoeing and harvesting the rice, milling, and
carrying in baskets, processing, cooking, and selling rice in markets. The role of
female labor varied in relationship to the significance of rice in the farming system,
with male participation in cultivation being greater in places where rice was the
dietary staple. When rice was a secondary crop in the regional food system, the crop
was often farmed solely by women.

One of the chief contributions of enslaved Africans to the Americas was the
transmission of the West African rice knowledge systems – land-use principles,
gendered division of labor, and processing techniques. In at least two important
areas of New World slavery, South Carolina and the eastern Amazon in Brazil,
European planters drew on African expertise in rice farming to develop plantations
based on the crop. In both landscapes, the techniques of rice cultivation were very
close to those practiced in West Africa. Many enslaved Africans were experienced
rice producers, and as a result British colonists in South Carolina had some difficulty
in cultivating the crop successfully. Otherwise, the period in which rice became an
important export commodity coincided with that in which Africans were imported in
significant numbers, this fact suggest that English colonists possessed an early
awareness about Africans knowledge of rice cultivation. On the other hand, many of
the practices of early production in South Carolina paralleled those in Africa. Thus
 enslaved Africans were active rather than passive participants in the founding of
American civilization.

c) Exportation

Africans played an important role in the development of the commercial rice

industry in colonial South Carolina and Georgia. Enslaved laborers on South
Carolina rice plantations were skilled. Throughout the eighteenth century, planters
placed a positive value on slaves brought from rice-growing regions, which is
revealed in newspaper advertisements by South Carolina planters searching for
runaway slaves. Colonists preferred captives from the Rice Coast, despite the
predominance of Congo-Angola slaves. Merchants in Charleston and Savannah
maintained a close relationship with the owners of the Bance Island in the Sierra
Leone River, whose captives often were destined for rice plantations in South
Carolina and Georgia.

Planters using enslaved Africans subsequently transmitted rice-growing

technology to Texas, Louisiana, and Brazil. Maranhão began to export rice in the late
1760s and remained the principal source of exports from Brazil during the colonial
period. Between 1760 and 1810, two out of every three Africans who arrived in the
rice-growing region of Maranhão came from the upper Guinea coast; indeed almost
all embarked at Cacheu and Bissau. Elsewhere in Brazil, there were virtually no
Africans from the upper Guinea coast. Rice cultivation in northeastern Brazil
depended upon a predominance of Africans from rice-producing regions of West
Africa.

Africans planted rice in the spring by pressing a hole with the heel and covering
the seeds with the foot, the motion used was similar to that employed in West Africa.
In summer, Carolina blacks moved through the rice fields in a row, hoeing in unison
to work songs that followed the pattern of cultivation in West Africa, and not one that
was imposed by Europeans. In October when the threshed grain was “fanned” in the
wind, the wide, flat winnowing baskets were made by black hands after an African
design. Also the process of removing rice kernels from their husks was made with
the use of the mortar-and-pestle technique from Africa. Based on this technological
evidence and the presence of enslaved Africans from the upper Guinea coast and
the rice producing interior, it is clear that African technology and knowledge on rice
production was transferred to the Americas.

5. Stimulants

Africa was the origin of three important pharmacological substances, known as

alkaloids (kola, coffee, khat). The principal characteristic of these agricultural
commodities is that they have pharmacological properties that stimulate the brain and
the central nervous system. Like other alkaloids (tea, cacao, betel, coca, tobacco,
opium, etc.), they have virtually no food value but rather provide the sensation of
reducing hunger and fatigue. The active ingredients in the various alkaloids vary,
caffeine (kola, coffee) and theobromine (tea, kola) being two of the most important.
Moreover, all alkaloids are addictive to varying degrees, with nicotine (tobacco) being
the most addictive.

The extent to which alkaloids lose their properties after harvest determines the
distribution of these commodities, which have often been considered luxury goods,
depending how perishable they were. How alkaloids are activated varies as well; some
have to be taken as a beverage (coffee, tea), others ingested through smoking
(tobacco), or eaten (kola, and to some extent, tobacco). Several alkaloids are indigenous
to Africa, including kola, coffee, and khat, a stimulant developed in Ethiopia, but which
has not spread extensively beyond northeast Africa because it cannot be transported
easily and loses its properties once dried. Here the focus is on kola and coffee because
of the implications of these two commodities in the transfer of knowledge from Africa to
the rest of the world and hence influence the spread of science and determine particular
kinds of development.

a) Kola nut production

Kola nut production, particularly Cola nitida, is indigenous to western Africa and
is the basis of the popular cola drinks, which were developed in the United States
and Europe in the 1880s and 1890s. This section examines the pharmacology of
kola as a medicine, stimulant and item of consumption. The basis of “kola” drinks,
kola nut consumption was largely confined to West Africa for reasons relating to the
nature of the commodity. Only C. nitida can be transported relatively easily. The nuts
perish and lose their properties quickly unless handled with care. Other varieties of
kola perish more quickly.

Kola nuts, which are eaten because they contain caffeine, theobromine and
kolatin, are a popular stimulant in many parts of West Africa. Like other mild
stimulants, including coffee, tea and cocoa, kola nuts are moderately addictive. Of
the two most common varieties, Cola nitida contains from 1.0 to 4.0 percent caffeine
by weight and traces of theobromine, while C. acuminata has from 1.5 to 3.6 percent
caffeine and from 0.02 to 0.09 percent theobromine.

Both caffeine and theobromine are alkaloids which stimulate the nervous system
and the skeletal muscles. Both varieties contain small amounts of kolatin, a
glucoside heart stimulant, and tannin. In combination, these properties make kola as
effective as other, mild stimulants, including coffee, tea and cocoa (Table 1).
Although kola nuts were not reduced to a drink, the nuts have sometimes been
compared with coffee, even being called the “coffee of the Sudan.”

Kola is indigenous to the West African forest, but is found as far east as Gabon
and the Congo River basin. Of its more than forty varieties, four – C. nitida, C.
acuminata, C. verticillata, and C. anomala – are the most common of the edible
species, and have been important in the commerce of West Africa. These four types
are similar in their chemical composition and use. They contain, together with other
compounds, large amounts of caffeine, and smaller quantities of theobromine,
kolatin, and glucose. All these are stimulants: caffeine affects the central nervous
 system, theobromine activates the skeletal muscles, kolatin acts on the heart, and
glucose provides energy to the body as a whole. Because of these properties, kola
had various medicinal uses, which demonstrates that there was knowledge of the
pharmacologic importance of kola, particularly C. nitida, as a medicine and stimulant.
When chewed, and it appears that kola was not cooked or made into drinks
anywhere in Africa, the nuts have an effect similar to that of coffee, tea or cocoa, and
consequently kola, being an excellent refreshment, can be used to relieve hunger,
thirst, and fatigue, lending itself well to social situations.

6. Manufacturing and Industry

An examination of the technological development of particular manufacturing

items includes a number of items. This section focuses on the early spread of cotton
cultivation, since at least 1,000 CE, and in some places there was also local production
of raffia cloth and the use of skins and leather as clothing. Most significant development,
however, was the manufacture of cotton textiles.

a) Textile Industry

An examination of the textile industry in West Africa demonstrates indigenous

innovation and development. This can be seen clearly in the development of indigo
dyeing, including the development of dye pits using locally produced cement. It
should be noted that the production of indigo for industrial purposes spread to the
Americas via the African diaspora.

b) Cotton

Cotton had been cultivated, harvested, cleaned, spun into yarn, and woven into
cloth for centuries in West Africa, long before direct trade with Europeans. Cotton
was being grown in the region of Senegambia and probably across the whole of the
savanna by 1000 A.D. Consumer markets for certain types of textiles were already in
place when Portuguese mariners began exploring the coastline in the fifteenth
century. Early centers of textile production arose in at least two areas of West African
Interior.

A western centre was located around the upper Niger, Gambia and Senegal
watersheds, and contiguous areas on the desert edge. An eastern centre was
located around Lake Chad, and the area of the early Hausa kingdoms. Cloth is made
by fiber, but no all fibers are spun into thread, and not all threads are woven into
textiles. In many parts of Africa’s rainforest, for example fibers from young leaves of
the raphia palm (raphia viniferera) were selected and carefully processed (but not
spun) and woven into textiles that served many uses, including that of form of
currency. Then there is bark cloth, a category nonwoven fabrics that can have
structures ranging from very sturdy to thin and delicate.

Such cloths were made in West and central Africa b carefully removing sections
of the inner bark of certain selected trees and then pounding those sections with a
mallet to make them wider, softer and more flexible. In other cases, various types of
 fiber were spun and then twisted together into heavier threads or cordage that would
then be knotted, twined or plaited by hand into clothing and other useful articles.

Spining direction is another important feature of thread. Spinners learn to spin by

turning the spindle in one direction or the other, clockwise or counterclockwise, and
this spinning direction can be clearly seen in the thread itself.

c) Indigo

Indigo has played an important role in local, regional, and international economic
histories. Indigo is native to native tropical areas of south Asia, the Americas and
Africa.

Various parts of the plant yield medicines and dyestuff that came to be known
and highly valued in the ancient Mediterranean world and were imported by the
Greeks and Romans by a least the last few centuries BC. Indigofera tinctoria, was
native to eastern and southern Africa, though it has been widely cultivated in West
Africa as well, and it was vigorously promoted in Nigeria after 1905 as a richer
source of dye than I. tinctoria. Another species, from a different genus,
Lonchocarpus cyanescens, has been harvested in the wild and also cultivated by
farmers in the rainforest and moister savannah areas of much of West Africa. Its
presumed antiquity and ubiquity in Yourubaland have earned for it the alternative
vernacular term “Yoruba wild indigo”.

Another Indigora species, I. suffruticosa, was originally native to tropical America

and the West Indies before being introduced into certain parts of Africa during the
Atlantic trade.

It has been an important indigo dyestuff of international commerce. The making

of indigo-dyed cloth has a long history in the lower Niger region, and the making of
adire eleko is firmly rooted in that history. At the same time, the adire eleko tradition
owes much to the Atlantic trade along the Guinea Coast, which brought new types of
patterns, techniques and materials that transformed the way dyed wrappers were
made and how they looked. A number of discoveries were made about particular
varieties of indigo that could be used as a dyestuff, and differences were noted
among them. The efficacy of indigo as a coloring agent varies with the species,
growing conditions, and timing of harvest, and the resulting differences can be easily
recognized in textile products by an experienced and discerning customer. Dyers
would be especially conscious of these differences in visual qualities and so could be
expected to work hard to achieve the deeper shades.

7. Salt Production and Pharmacology

An examination of salt production and pharmacology in the central Sudan of

West Africa demonstrates the impact of technological developments in West Africa. As
the chemistry of various salts that were exploited suggests, there was considerable
knowledge of NaCl (sodium chloride), sodium sulfates, potassium chlorides and sulfates.
Different types of salt, including natron, trona, vegetable salts, and sea salt, had
significance for use as medicines, culinary purposes, tanning of leather, and other uses.

This section discusses salt production and pharmacology, including the

chemistry and uses of various salts. The types of salt ranged from pure NaCl (sodium
chloride), to sodium sulfates, potassium chlorides and sulfates, natron, trona, vegetable
salts, and sea salt. The different salts were used for cooking, as medicines, for tanning
leather, to fix dyes in textile production, as well as mixed with tobacco for chewing or
snuff.

It should be noted that tobacco was grown in West Africa, after being introduced
across the Atlantic from the Americas. Because of Muslim prohibitions on smoking,
tobacco was more often chewed or taken up the nose, which also released the nicotine,
the active ingredient and also an alkaloid with stimulating effects similar to coffee and
kola.

a) Salt

Salt was scarce in Africa before the twentieth century. Salt was found in
scattered deposits, mostly in the Sahara and in the desert area near the Red Sea but
also released through brine springs in widely scattered locations. Salt was also
extracted from sea water through evaporation.

The most sophisticated production of salt developed in the Central Sudan, and
particularly in the area dominated by the state of Borno, and its predecessor, Kanem,
in the basin of Lake Chad. Borno, a Muslim country since at least the eleventh
century, controlled the oases of Fachi and Kawar, on the caravan route to North
Africa and crucial not only for trans-Saharan trade but also as the sites of major salt
deposits.

The types of salt from these sites included red natron (Dirkou), white natron
(Djado, Sequidine), kantu salt (Bilma, Fachi), and small quantities of purer, higher
priced salt (beza, bilma). These sources are the best known of the production sites in
the Central Sudan, Their position on the route to North Africa meant that medieval
Arabic writers were familiar with their locations, although there is no mention of salt
production, except for alum. Because of the importance of Kawar in trans-Saharan
communication, they have loomed large in Borno history.

It seems likely that the salt resources were exploited from an early date. Because
Borno had firm control of Kawar and Fachi in the sixteenth century, at least, the state
dominated the trade with North Africa and hence benefited from the salt industry of
the desert.

The medicinal uses of the different salts were numerous: ungurnu, or trona, from
the eastern shores of Lake Chad, white natron from Mangari and Kawar, and red
natron from Mangari and Kawar contained high concentrations of sodium carbonates
 and hence were excellent for stomach ailments. Local medicinal knowledge credited
the different types of natron with specific properties: some were milder and better for
children and elders, while others were useful in pregnancy. Because Mangari salt
was so similar to natron, it, too, could be used as medicine.

b) Medicine

Many treatments we use today were employed by several ancient peoples

throughout Africa. Before the European invasion of Africa, medicine in what is now
Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa, to name just a few places, was more advanced than
medicine in Europe.

Some of these practices were the use of plants with salicylic acid for pain (as in
aspirin), kaolin for diarrhea (as in Kaopectate), and extracts that were confirmed in
the 20th century to kill Gram positive bacteria. Other plants used had anticancer
properties, caused abortion and treated malaria — and these have been shown to be
as effective as many modern-day Western treatments.

Furthermore, Africans discovered ouabain, capsicum, physostigmine and

reserpine. Medical procedures performed in ancient Africa before they were
performed in Europe include vaccination, autopsy, limb traction and broken bone
setting, bullet removal, brain surgery, skin grafting, filling of dental cavities,
installation of false teeth, what is now known as Caesarean section, anesthesia and
tissue cauterization.

In addition, African cultures preformed surgeries under antiseptic conditions

universally when this concept was only emerging in Europe.

IV. Assessment:
1.

V. References:
Awortu, B. (2015). African Intellectual Revolution In the 20th Century: A Review of.
International Journal of African and Asian Studies , 140-141.

Dunayevskaya, R. (1959, January). The African Revolution, I. Retrieved from

https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1959/african-revolution-
1.htm

Lovejoy, P. E. (2004). The Slave Route Project-UNESCO. Retrieved from

http://www.unesco.org/new/fileadmin/MULTIMEDIA/HQ/CLT/pdf/P_Lovejoy_Afric
an_Contributions_Eng_01.pdf

Mutume, G. (2007, October). Africa Renewal. Retrieved from

https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/october-2007/africa-aims-scientific-
revolution
O'Malley, P. (1966). O'Malley The Heart of Hope. Retrieved from
https://omalley.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02424/04lv0273
0/05lv03005/06lv03132/07lv03148/08lv03151.htm