Day 1 · 25–30 min
Decolonizing the Lens
Essential question
Whose story of Africa have we been taught, and who told it?
The story
Most of what students learn about Africa arrives pre-edited: famine, safari, colonial rescue. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie names this the danger of a single story — not that it is entirely false, but that it is incomplete, and repeated until it becomes the only story.
Africa is 54 countries, over 2,000 languages, and the longest continuous human history on earth. It is the continent of Timbuktu's libraries and Lagos's film industry, of Great Zimbabwe's stonework and Nairobi's mobile-money engineers.
Sankofa, the Akan symbol of a bird turning its head backward to retrieve an egg, is the method for this course: go back, fetch what was left behind, and carry it forward. Decolonizing the lens is not about replacing one myth with another — it is about restoring scale, agency, and complexity.
Deepen
Video
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, 'The Danger of a Single Story' (TED, 18 min)
Article
UNESCO General History of Africa — Introduction to Volume I
Primary source
A 19th-century European school atlas page depicting Africa — read its labels and blank spaces critically
Classroom do
Single Story Audit
20 min · Materials: A current textbook chapter or lesson on Africa, sticky notes, chart paper
- Students list every image and adjective the text uses for Africa
- Sort them into 'deficit' and 'achievement' columns on chart paper
- Discuss: what would a student conclude if this were their only source?
- Each student writes one missing story they want to learn this unit
Reflect
Which single story about Africa did you absorb as a student, and where did it come from?
Check understanding
1. What is the core risk Adichie identifies in a 'single story'?
2. What does the Akan symbol Sankofa mean?
3. Roughly how many countries make up the African continent?