The History of Africa

In this first episode, Zeinab travels across Africa examining the origins of humankind. During her journey she is granted access to the actual bones of one of the most iconic discoveries in the field of paleontology, 'Lucy'.

Zeinab Badawi continues her journey through the history of human development traveling to meet the Maasai of East Africa. They help explain how human beings began to domesticate animals and become pastoralists.

Zeinab Badawi's quest to uncover the history of Africa takes her to Egypt where she explores the most ancient civilization on the continent, and takes you beyond the usual coverage and examines the question of who the ancient Egyptians actually were.

In this episode Zeinab Badawi travels to the country of her birth and the very region of her ancestors and mothers: northern Sudan where she sheds light on this little-known aspect of ancient African history: the great Kingdom of Kush.

Zeinab Badawi travels to the rarely visited country of Eritrea and neighboring Ethiopia to chart the rise of the kingdom of Aksum and examines archaeological remains in both countries dating back many hundreds of years.

In this episode Zeinab Badawi focuses on the fall of the kingdom of Aksum and how the Christian kings who followed in the wake of its demise left powerful legacies, especially that of King Lalibela who ruled in the 12/13th century.

In this episode Zeinab Badawi's exploration of Africans' rich history focuses on North Africa. She goes to Morocco to find out about the original inhabitants of the region in particular the Berbers or Amazigh as they prefer to be called.

In this episode, Zeinab Badawi examines religion in Africa and the presence of Africa's indigenous religions, to which millions of people on the continent still adhere. In Senegal she meets a man who blends Islamic beliefs with his ancestral ones.

In this episode, Zeinab Badawi travels to several countries and looks at the early spread of Islam in Africa. She shows how not only Islam, but how Arab culture came to influence a large part of the continent, particularly in the north.