October 10th 2023.
Nationwide – Manu Ampim, a tenured professor of History and Africana Studies at Contra Costa College in San Pablo, California, has made a startling revelation: the California Community College system, the largest educational system in the U.S. serving more than 1.8 million students, omits Africa in its curricula. Only two of the 116 colleges offer a required course on African history for students obtaining an Associate of Arts degree.
Students majoring in History are required to take U.S. history and Western civilization courses but African history courses are omitted from the curriculum throughout the state. San Diego City College is one of only two California community colleges that has a required course on African history. Similarly, Contra Costa College in San Pablo is the only California campus that requires completing an African history course for both History and African American Studies majors.
Manu Ampim’s “History of African Civilizations” course is the only class in the state that focuses exclusively on ancient Africa, without covering modern slavery. Unfortunately, not only are courses on Africa rare in California but there is also a scarcity of U.S. textbooks on African civilizations. Most of the existing books typically emphasize the modern issues of slavery, colonization, and the 20th-century independence movement, while minimizing the African civilizations before the continent’s recent decline since the 16th century.
To fill this void, Manu Ampim has written his own book, A History of African Civilizations. It covers African civilizations and the myriad of contributions from these various ancient civilizations, including in fields such as writing, medicine, mathematics, architecture, solar calendar, and social organization. This book has the same title as the course he teaches at CCC each semester.
Ampim’s book is based on his first-hand research in two dozen countries over the past 34 years. He emphasizes the importance of studying ancient African civilizations at the apex of their influence, and explains that “these pre-colonial civilizations give us a glimpse into the African past before the advent of slavery, colonization, and foreigners who derailed African development.”
In Unit 3 of Ampim’s book, he states that it was not until the 20th century that African Studies was viewed as a subject worthy of academic study. In 1922, for example, scholar William Leo Hansberry created the first “African Civilization section” of the History Department at Howard University. Despite ridicule from his peers, Hansberry and historian Dr. Carter Woodson led the way for various Black scholars in the mid- and late-20th century, who wrote pioneering books on African civilizations. However, these works are now decades old and do not meet the curriculum requirement that textbooks for transferable courses must be published within the past 7 years.
Ampim’s book is now being adopted by other professors to supplement their classroom instruction beginning this fall semester. It is distributed by Advancing The Research. A History of African Civilizations, 216 pp. ISBN: 978-1-733652-2-3
Manu Ampim has published three books and numerous scholarly articles on his extensive field research. He has conducted first-hand research on African civilizations in 24 countries and has trained various people on first-hand research methods in Africana Studies. He is the Chair of the History, Anthropology, and Geography Department at Contra Costa College, where he teaches about 300 students a year.
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