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Fire from Timbuktu
Karamoh Kabba
Friday, April 20, 2007
"I have often been accused of pursuing a 'policy of the impossible.' But I cannot believe in the impossibility of achieving African union . . . Africa must unite. We have before us not only an opportunity but an historic duty."
KWAME NKRUMAH (1909~1972) - 24 May 1963
With our hurricane lamps, who says we cannot light asphalt jungles of Paris, Berlin, Madrid, London, Brussels, Amsterdam and Washington, despite the high winds? "Then right opinion is nothing inferior to knowledge." (Socrates)
Introduction Fire from Timbuktu is a revisionist history and ideal political and economic concepts for Africa influenced by the paradox: poverty amidst gold and diamonds with the hope of jolting new debates on Africa.
It examines the growth and demise of an African civilization in ancient Ghana, Mali, and Songhay; the role of spiritual leaders, monarchs, and the people in the developing political and economic ideals in Timbuktu. Simply, the paradoxical poverty in riches has led to a fascination with the early history of the African civilization.
A study of the roles of the kings and scholars of the Songhay and the congressional mosques of Timbuktu and Jenne has turned out empirical evidence that foreign infiltration obliterated the ancient African civilization right in its cradle, in Timbuktu, before it made any impact on the rest of the continent.
Fire from Timbuktu is a conceptualization that African civilization was parallel to Greco-Judeo-Christian Western civilization. In retrospect, Africa was on a lost civilization: the Timbuk-Traditionalist African civilization. With the early exposure to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, Africa was on a springboard for a universal civilization that was bound to become what I have coined as Timbuk-Traditionalist-Islamic-Christian-Judeo African civilization, on a unique African economic system that would have become independent of capitalism, socialism and communism. It was entirely different from ancient hunter-gatherer communal societies as well.
Unlike previous studies, Fire from Timbuktu is a philosophical look at Africa that offers alternative economic and political ideals for Africa in the absence of which, Africa had become a battleground for communism and capitalism, and the cause of all or most of its conflicts, wars and unsustainable economies.
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