"If you wish to learn about Africa, if you wish Africa to teach you what it knows, cease for the while to be what you are and forget what you know."
- Malian philosopher Tierno Bokar*
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About This Site:
This is a website I created to help middle school social studies teachers incorporate more primary sources about medieval West Africa into their teaching. My goal in presenting this is to share resources that I've either created or found online. This site is informed by my own experience as a teacher.
Although there were other West African kingdoms during the medieval era, such as Gao, Igo-Ukwu, Ife and Benin, this website focuses on the three empires of Ghana, Mali, and Songhai.
For more information on the periodization of West African history, click here.
By no means does this website contain everything there is to know about such a diverse, complex, and beautiful region. My hope is that this site can be a springboard for teachers as they prepare to teach about medieval West Africa using primary sources.
My name is Elizabeth Stenger Balbin and I was a middle school social studies teacher in Oakland, CA for 5 years. I completed my masters in history from California State University, East Bay in 2022 and this website is my final capstone project. If you have any feedback, please don't hesitate to contact me.
*As cited in "Oral Tradition and the Teaching of African Culture: New Challenges and Perspectives" by Kazadi wa Mukuna. Full citation can be found on the Annotated Bibliography page.