The Lies We Were Taught

The Lies We Were Taught: What School Never Told You About Africa

Everything you learned about Africa in school was designed to make you believe the continent contributed nothing.

Here are the lies, and here is the truth.

What did you learn about Africa in school?

If you're like most people educated in Europe or the Americas, the answer is: almost nothing. And what little you learned was wrong. Not incomplete. Not biased. Wrong. Deliberately, systematically, catastrophically wrong. This wasn't accidental. This was curriculum as weapon. Education designed to make Africa disappear.

Here are the lies we were taught. And here is what they replaced.

Lie #1: "Africa Had No Civilisations"

What we were taught:
Africa was "primitive" until Europeans arrived. No cities, no governments, no complex societies.

The truth:

Kemet (Ancient Egypt) - a 3,000-year civilisation with pyramids, written language, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy. Built before Greece existed.

Great Zimbabwe - Stone city housing 18,000 people, built 1100-1450 CE without mortar, walls still standing 800 years later.

Timbuktu - a university city with 25,000 students and 700,000 manuscripts. A larger library than any in Europe during the Middle Ages.

The Songhai Empire - Controlled 1,400,000 km², larger than Western Europe, with an organised civil service and taxation system.

Benin City - When the Portuguese arrived in 1485, they wrote that it was larger and better organised than Lisbon. The British burned it in 1897.

Aksum (Ethiopia) - Minted its own coins, built stone obelisks, and adopted Christianity in 330 CE before most of Europe.

The lie worked because they didn't teach these in school. You can't disprove what you never heard.

Lie #2: "Africa Had No Writing"

What we were taught:
Africans had no written languages. Everything was "oral tradition."

The truth:

Egyptian hieroglyphics — One of the world's first writing systems, 3,000+ years of written records.

Ge'ez (Ethiopia) — Ancient script still used today in Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

Nsibidi (Nigeria/Cameroon) — Ideographic script used for centuries, deliberately kept secret to protect knowledge.

Vai script (Liberia) — Syllabary invented in 1833, proof of indigenous African writing innovation.

Tifinagh (North Africa) — Berber/Amazigh script, thousands of years old.

Adinkra (Ghana) — Symbol system encoding philosophy, proverbs, and ethics.

Meroitic (Sudan) — Script of the Kingdom of Kush, still partially undeciphered.

The lie worked because: Museums have the manuscripts (700,000 in Timbuktu alone) but don't display them. Can't learn what's hidden in basements.

Lie #3: "Africans Didn't Build the Pyramids"

What we were taught:
Either directly or implicitly: Egyptians weren't "really" Black. Or aliens built the pyramids. Anything except: Black Africans engineered them.

The truth:

• Ancient Egyptians called their land Kemet ("Black Land")

• Depicted themselves with African features in their own art

• DNA evidence shows continuity with other African populations

• Worker villages, construction records, and mathematical texts all prove Egyptians built the pyramids

• The "alien theory" exists because people refuse to credit African engineering

The lie worked because: Egyptology as a discipline was invented to "unblack" Egypt. Teach Egypt as separate from Africa, and you can ignore African genius.

Lie #4: "Africa Had No Mathematics or Science"

What we were taught:
Mathematics came from Greece and the Arab world. Science was European.

The truth:

The Ishango Bone (Congo) — 20,000-year-old mathematical tool showing multiplication, prime numbers, possibly lunar calendars. Older than any European mathematics.

Egyptian geometry — Calculated pi, used the golden ratio, understood fractions and algebra 2,000 years before Greece.

Ifa divination (Yoruba) — Binary mathematical system with 256 configurations, structurally identical to Leibniz's binary code (which came 3,000 years later).

African metallurgy — Tanzania had carbon steel by 1400 BCE (2,000 years before Europe). African furnaces reached temperatures 400-600 degrees higher than European furnaces.

African astronomy — Dogon people knew about Sirius B (invisible white dwarf star) centuries before European astronomers discovered it in 1862.

The lie worked because: Credit the Greeks, ignore the Egyptians. Credit the Arabs, ignore that Arabs learned from Africans. Claim "external influence" for everything.

Lie #5: "Africa Had No Philosophy"

What we were taught:
Philosophy is Greek. Africans had "beliefs" or "superstitions," not philosophy.

The truth:

Ma'at (Egypt) is a philosophical system of cosmic order, justice, balance, and truth. Predates Greek philosophy by 2,000+ years.

Ubuntu (Southern Africa), the spirit of which is, "I am because we are is about relational ontology, communal ethics, and interconnected existence. This is a complete philosophical system.

Iwa Pele (Yoruba), ,meaning "Gentle character sees ethics as beauty, morality as aesthetic, character as cosmic alignment.

The Nommo (Dogon) philosophy is one of the creative word, language as force, speech as world-making.

Ifa (Yoruba) is literally divination as epistemology, a knowledge acquisition system, and an ethical framework.

All philosophies that guided civilisations for centuries.

The lie worked because: Define philosophy as "requires Greek-style writing." When Africa has writing, say it's "not really philosophy." Move the goalposts every time.

Lie #6: "African History Begins with Slavery"

What we were taught:
If African history was taught at all, it started with the transatlantic slave trade.

The truth:

Africa has 200,000 years of human history.

• Modern humans originated in Africa

• First tools, first art, first language in Africa

• Civilizations rose and fell for millennia before slavery

• Kemet, Great Zimbabwe, Timbuktu, Songhai, Aksum, Benin — all predate slavery

What we were taught:
If African history was taught at all, it started with the transatlantic slave trade.

Who does this:

Many US school textbooks literally have "Africa" chapters that begin with "The Slave Trade." Before that: maybe one paragraph on Egypt (framed as separate from "Africa"). Typical structure: Ancient Civilisations (skip Africa) - Middle Ages (skip Africa) - Age of Exploration - slavery.

The UK National Curriculum, for example, often introduces Key Stage 3 history only through "Britain and the Transatlantic Slave Trade." African history pre-slavery is rarely mandatory.

European schools generally fall afoul of this, too - in the French curricula, for instance, Africa appears when discussing colonialism. German curricula: Africa in the context of WWI/WWII. Portuguese curricula: Africa in the Age of Discovery.

Many African history in Museums exhibits BEGIN with sections on slavery and colonialism. Pre-colonial achievements are relegated to separate "ancient history" galleries or hidden entirely.

Popular media and Films about Africa overwhelmingly focus on slavery, colonialism, poverty, and conflict. "Roots," "12 Years a Slave," and "Amistad" dominate. When African civilisation appears in film ("Black Panther"), it's treated as fantasy, not historical precedent. This severs Black people everywhere from a longer history of Africa than what is represented by slavery and also occludes the colonialism on the continent itself, along with its attendant injustices and obscuration.

As a result, students experience a typical school year where Ancient History covers Egypt (maybe), Greece, and Rome. Medieval History covers Europe, maybe China. Age of Exploration covers the "discovery" of the Americas. The First substantial mention of Africa: the transatlantic slave trade. Then colonialism, "Scramble for Africa," independence movements, and poverty.

It erases everything that came before. It makes African people objects of history (things done to) instead of subjects of history (people who did).

Starting African history with slavery is like starting European history with the Holocaust. It erases everything that came before. It makes African people objects of history (things done to) instead of subjects of history (people who did). The lie worked because if you erase 200,000 years of achievement, slavery becomes the origin story, and origin stories shape how people are seen forever because if you can make people forget what Africans built, you can pretend they built nothing. If students never learn that Africans were pharaohs, they'll believe Africans were only slaves. Control the curriculum, control the identity.

Lie #7: "Africans Sold Their Own People"

What we were taught:
Africans participated in slavery, so it's not just European fault.

The truth (more complex):

First, the critical distinction:

No slavery anywhere in the world, ever, equalled transatlantic chattel slavery.

Not Roman slavery.

Not Arab slavery.

Not African servitude systems.

Not Asian bonded labour. None of them created what Europe created in the Americas, which was permanent, hereditary, race-based property status where enslaved people were legally defined as non-human, which meant no legal personhood, so chattel slaves couldn't sue, testify, own property, or claim any rights against any of the horrendous crimes committed against them. Mind you, this chattel slave status was hereditary forever, which meant that your children, grandchildren, and all descendants were automatically property.

We must acknowledge a separate egregious aspect, which was that of the non-human status ascribed to African slaves in the Americas, as they were legally classified as property, not persons, so that livestock had more protections. A related practice was that of total ownership, such that these people could be bred, sold, raped, tortured, and killed, with absolutely no legal consequence.

Unlike Roman manumission, Islamic legal paths to freedom, or African systems where captives could earn freedom or marry in, there was absolutely no path to freedom, not time, not death, not birth. Pretending that anything like this had ever existed in the world compounds this mendacity.

There was a bone chilling and underlying principle at work here, on which empire on the continent of Africa and the performance of imperialism against Black people was based, which was to relegate non-personhood to a class of people so completely that they would never amount to human, be forever property, work for free, and exist as the category against which all rape, violence, and acts deemed crimes for others simply did not apply, in a legal system that would not mandate such treatment even for livestock. This is what scholar Saidiya Hartman calls "the fungibility of the slave", an interchangeable property whose suffering generates no legal or moral consequence. This is the Dorian Grayisation of the Black body, making Black people the hidden portrait where the empire's sins manifest so perpetrators can maintain innocence.

Now, about "Africans sold their own people, it is important to realise the very substantial and significant differences, because a multitude of sins hide beneath the conflation of 'slaves' across time, where it is possible to pretend that chattel slavery does not stand entirely alone in time and space as a particular and immutable evil. For a start, different African societies had different relationships to slavery, where some practised temporary servitude (debt bondage, war captives, which was NOT chattel slavery, not permanent or hereditary). It must not be forgotten that a fundamental aspect here was that Europeans introduced race-based chattel slavery as described above, but moreover, they created demand, provided weapons, and destabilised kingdoms to force participation.

Because of the other lies listed here, we lose the fact that many African kingdoms resisted, including Queen Nzinga, who fought the Portuguese for 30 years. Additionally, saying "Africans sold their own people" ignores that "African" is not one identity; the Yoruba didn't see Igbo as "their people," any more than the French saw Germans as "their people". Once interrogated, the whole premise falls apart under the weight of its own conceit and foolishness.

The lie worked because it shifts blame from the European system, which created unprecedented horror, to African "complicity" (which was coerced participation in a system Africans didn't design and couldn't conceptually model).

African cosmological systems assumed humanity was essential, that balance would be restored, that shame and honour mattered, and that children would be free. They couldn't model a system built on abandoning cosmic accountability entirely and on a permanent hereditary non-personhood in which honour was irrelevant if power could enforce it.

LIE #8: "Europeans 'Discovered' Africa"

The lie worked because: If Africans "don't count" as real people, then Europeans arriving is "discovery," not invasion.

Explorers "discovered" Africa, as if there weeren't already millions of Africans living there didn't count as discovery.

The shameful timeline of "discovery" claims:

1434: Gil Eanes (Portuguese) claimed to "discover" Cape Bojador (Western Sahara). Reality: Africans already lived there. Europeans were just too scared to sail past it (feared the "Sea of Darkness").

1443: Portuguese build Arguin Island fortress (Mauritania) - The first permanent European settlement in sub-Saharan Africa. Started trading European goods for African gold and enslaved Africans. This is when it began.

1444-1447: Portuguese "explore" Senegal, Gambia, Guinea - "Explore" apparently meant to invade coasts where Africans already lived and traded.

1456: Alvise Cadamosto (Venetian under Portuguese command) claimed to "discover" Cape Verde islands, when the Islands were inhabited. Antonio de Noli became "first European colonial governor in Sub-Saharan Africa" imposing a governance on people who already governed themselves.

1472: Ruy Sequeira & Fernão Gomes (Portuguese) claimed to "discover" Bight of Benin. Reality: Kingdom of Benin already existed there.

1485: João Afonso d'Aveiro (Portuguese) claimed to "discover" Kingdom of Benin and reported it to Portuguese King John II as great opportunity for trade and conversion. Benin City was larger than Lisbon when he arrived. You can't "discover" a functioning city with a king, court, organised governance, and international trade.

1488: Bartolomeu Dias (Portuguese) claimed to "discover" and round the Cape of Good Hope (first named it "Cape of Storms"). Africans had been living around, sailing past, and navigating that cape for millennia.

1498: Vasco da Gama (Portuguese) claimed to "discover" sea route to India via Africa. Specifically he claimed to "discover":

• Rio dos Bons Sinais ("River of Good Omens"), which was the Zambezi delta

• Quelimane (Mozambique)

• Mombasa (Kenya), where he arrived, and was met with hostility, and then fled firing cannons

• Malindi (Kenya), having hired an Arab pilot who showed him the way to India

In reality, all these places were inhabited. Swahili trading cities had existed for centuries. Arab and African traders had been using these routes for generations. The fact that da Gama needed to hire a local pilot proves the route was already known.

1511 & 1513: António Fernandes (Portuguese) was the first European to visit inland Zambezi River, and claimed its discovery when millions lived along it.

1855: David Livingstone (Scottish) claimed to "discover" Victoria Falls, when in reality, local Kololo people called it Mosi-oa-Tunya ("The Smoke That Thunders") and showed it to him. He renamed it after Queen Victoria.

1871: Henry Morton Stanley (Welsh-American) claimed to "discover" the Congo River source, when in reality, millions lived along it, navigated it, and traded on it.

Let's let that timeline sink in:

1443 — Portuguese start enslaving Africans from Arguin Island
2026 — 583 years later

Europe has been invading, enslaving, and "discovering" Africa for nearly 600 years.

Not 400 years (just slavery).
Not 200 years (just colonialism).
600 years of continuous European aggression, theft, and claiming to "find" what was never lost.

And they still call it "exploration. As the lies are never called out and acknowledged, history is attempting to repeat itself right now, while the wholesale exploitation of Africa has never ended.

The truth:

You cannot "discover" a place where people already live, especially when, while Africa lay woefully 'undiscovered', they were growing, innovating and prospering.

While Europe was in the Dark Ages (476-1000 CE), Africa was:

Kemet/Egypt was operating the Library of Alexandria ( which the largest in the world until burned), practising advanced medicine (surgery, pharmacology) and teaching Greek scholars (Pythagoras studied in Egypt).

Aksum/Ethiopia was minting its own coins (proof of economic sophistication), building stone obelisks 79 feet high, trading with Rome, India, and Arabia as they engaged in adopting Christianity (330 CE, before most of Europe).

In the West African Kingdoms. The Ghana Empire controlled the trans-Saharan gold trade (300-1200 CE), developed sophisticated bronze casting (Igbo-Ukwu, 9th century) and built urban centres with organised governance.

The people of the Swahili Coast were building stone cities (Kilwa, Mombasa, Zanzibar, trading with China, India, and Persia , writing in Swahili using Arabic script and independently operating as international commercial centers. Meanwhile, in the Nile Valley, they were maintaining 3,000-year-old hydraulic systems, calculating flood cycles with precision, operating granaries feeding millions and preserving astronomical knowledge

At that exact time, Europe was in need of salvation - most people were entirely illiterate (most people couldn't read), living in filth (no sewage systems, throwing waste in streets), dying of the plague (Black Death killed 30-60% of population) and in completely unrelated news, were burning books and scholars (anti-intellectual persecution), while using leeches for medicine, bathing once a year, if that, and believing Earth was flat and center of universe. And yet, According to Germaine Dieterlen's report, The Dogon "... knew that the planets revolve around the Sun as well and they knew very well that the Earth is spherical and it's spinning on its own axis."

And Ancient Egypt knew even more - they knew and built their civilisational calendars around the solar calendar (based on Earth's orbit around Sun), precise astronomical observations, Sirius observations for Nile flood predictions and mathematical astronomy. Africa certainly needed to be discovered.

When Europeans finally "discovered" Africa starting in 1434, they were arriving at civilisations that had been functioning for millennia while Europe was recovering from self-inflicted collapse.

The lie worked because because if Africans "don't count" as real people, then Europeans arriving is "discovery," not invasion. Erase the millennia of African achievement, and European "explorers" look like heroes instead of thieves mapping what to steal.

And it started in 1443. 583 years ago, when Portugal built that fortress and began trading for enslaved Africans.

600 years of European impunity. That's the real timeline.

We need an inventory of these lies, and they need to be addressed.

Because these lies cause measurable harm. When Black children are taught, they come from nothing and what Africans and Black people have done and created are obscured, erased, and misattributed. They internalise inferiority, lose connection to excellence and believe the stereotypes propagated, and an identity crisis becomes generational trauma.

Because when everyone is taught these lies, African achievement is illegible and dismissed, African knowledge is unacknowledged or appropriated, and so African people are devalued, and the cycle of erasure continues.

The Truth We Deserve

Africa is the birthplace of humanity. Africa built the first civilisations. Africa had writing, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, and engineering before Europe.

African knowledge systems survived slavery and colonialism because they were designed to survive.

Africa and Global Black history didn't begin with slavery. It began 200,000 years ago.

What To Do Now

1. Unlearn the lies
Question everything you were taught about Africa.

2. Learn the truth
Read corrective history. Study the Bridgeworks. Explore African philosophy.

3. Teach others
Share what you learn. Correct the narrative when you hear the lies repeated.

4. Demand better curricula
Push schools to teach accurate African history, not erasure disguised as education.

5. Support the work
Institutions like Afrodeities exist to correct centuries of lies. That work needs support.

The lies we were taught were designed to make Africa disappear.

The truth we're teaching makes Africa undeniable.

Read more:

• Why Hegel Was Wrong

• The Erasure Protocol

• UnBlacking Africa

• Corrective African History

• Peremptorical History

All rights reserved. Chinenye Egbuna Ikwuemesi