Producer – Barbara Gullahorn Holecek,

In Production (30 minute videos of all interviewees)

One of the major roadblocks to understanding the vast variety of peoples and nations that comprise the African continent is the lack of first person accounts from Africans about their lives, their aspirations, their ideas, and their problems.

This ongoing project is developing an African oral history series of videotapes for educational purposes and television audiences. Of utmost importance is the collection of oral histories from that generation of Africans who have lived through pre–and post–independence in Africa. The project also extends to interviews with contemporary participants in the social, political, cultural and economic structures of today’s African nations.

Among those interviews to date are Hafsat Abiola, a young Nigerian activist for the pro–democracy movement, Betty Bigombe, former Minister of Peace under President Museveni, and Professor Kwabena Nketia, the highly respected Ghanaian ethnomusicologist, linguist, scholar, and composer.

Also interviewed are Chief Enahoro, the elder statesman of Nigerian nationalism, Hanna Telahun, a teacher who has been part of the Eritrean Liberation Movement for 15 years, and Madame Aisatu Ba, who, along with her colleagues (housewives from the Sahelian region of Senegal), have formed an extensive grass-roots movement for health care and empowerment.