The updated eleven-volume series is reshaping how schools in Africa and beyond teach African and diaspora history
For the first time, a full UNESCO African diaspora history volume anchors the General History of Africa, a series six decades in the making. The project began in 1964, when newly independent African nations pushed UNESCO to help them reclaim a history that had, for generations, been narrated almost entirely by outsiders. It took until 1999 to complete the original eight volumes, a slow, deliberate act of historical repair carried out by more than 550 scholars working across the continent and its diaspora. UNESCO released three new volumes in October 2025, and for the first time, an entire volume is dedicated to the African diaspora. Volume X, titled Africa and Its Diasporas, sits alongside Volume IX, a revisiting of the earlier series, and Volume XI, which covers Africa in the contemporary world.
“It is the suffering of a continent that has built a kind of common past, and that we can return it to strength, so Africans possess their own history and move forward confidently,” said Dr. Augustin Holl, professor emeritus and technical lead on the new volumes, in an interview with The Africa Report. Holl described the diaspora as never fully cut off from the continent, a relationship the new volume treats as ongoing rather than historical. “We’re looking at movement back and forth because the links were never totally cut,” he said.
The scholars behind UNESCO African diaspora history
The original eight volumes carried the names of some of the most respected historians in African studies. Joseph Ki-Zerbo of Burkina Faso served as general editor and wrote the introduction, framing the entire project’s purpose before the first page of history even began. Bethwell A. Ogot of Kenya edited the volume on Africa from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century and later led the International Scientific Committee overseeing the whole series. Ghanaian historian A. Adu Boahen took on the volume covering colonial domination between 1880 and 1935, while Kenyan-born political scientist Ali A. Mazrui closed out the original series with the eighth volume, examining Africa since 1935. Guinean historian Djibril Tamsir Niane, Egyptian scholar Mohamed El Fasi, Sudanese historian Gamal Mokhtar, and Nigerian historian J.F. Ade Ajayi rounded out the founding editorial team, each responsible for a distinct period of the continent’s past. Even sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, known worldwide for his work on global economic systems, contributed a chapter on Africa’s place in the world economy.
That same tradition of naming individual scholars to individual volumes continued with the 2025 UNESCO African diaspora history expansion, when Brazilian historian Vanicléia Silva Santos, working with UNESCO’s International Committee for the New Volumes of the General History of Africa, took on Volume X as editor. She drew on her own background studying Afro-Brazilian history to help shape how the book treats the Americas, the Caribbean, and Europe as extensions of Africa’s story rather than footnotes to it.
A shift toward Africa’s own voice
Former UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay framed the new volumes as a correction to a story long told by outsiders. “By restoring to Africa the mastery of its own narrative, this collective work celebrates the richness of its knowledge, the strength of its diasporas, and the continent’s essential contribution to our shared humanity,” she said. More than 200 African and international experts contributed to this UNESCO African diaspora history project, a scale of collaboration that mirrors the original series and reflects how central the African Union has become to its direction. Cecilia Barbieri, UNESCO’s Chief of Section for Global Citizenship and Peace Education, has described the initiative as central to promoting peace, social cohesion, and what she called a reappropriation of Africa’s identity, history, and heritage.
Professor Valter Silvério, who took part in a UNESCO workshop on the volumes, said the diaspora focus works in tandem with the series’ older thesis that Africa is the cradle of humanity. “This reversal is extremely important, as it positions Africa in relation to other continents while countering damaging notions that have been constructed around it,” he said. At the African Union, Ambassador Amr Aljowaily, director of the Directorate for Citizens’ Organizations and African Diaspora, welcomed the volumes as being fully in line with the AU’s Agenda 2063 vision of a continent with a strong cultural identity and shared heritage, and with the AU’s broader push to deepen engagement with people of African descent worldwide.
From the page to the classroom
A book on a shelf changes little on its own, which is why UNESCO paired the new volumes with a Curriculum Pathway Tool, released the same day in October 2025. The tool lays out nine thematic learning units for basic and secondary schools, spanning from early African civilizations through the diaspora and into the present, and UNESCO has since built out a ten-booklet pedagogical pathway to help teachers translate those units into actual lesson plans. UNESCO has also developed teacher guides and an educational video game called African Heroes, featuring historical figures such as Zumbi dos Palmares, Queen Nzinga, and Toussaint Louverture, spanning five African subregions and multiple historical eras, to bring the material into classrooms beyond the textbook. A companion game kit called Diáspora focuses specifically on hidden milestones, heritage, landmarks, and role models from Africa and its Caribbean descendants.
The push to bring UNESCO African diaspora history into classrooms has already reached beyond the continent. Brazil’s Ministry of Education has run its own Africa and Afro-Brazilian history mandate since 2003, a law UNESCO now points to as a model for other countries, and UNESCO presented the diaspora-focused African Diaspora educational game in Cuba earlier this year to promote new ways of teaching the material. For DMV readers, the project lands close to home too. Howard University’s own Department of African Studies sits inside the same academic conversation this UNESCO initiative is trying to shift, part of the broader network AfroDMV covered in its recent piece on the Asantehene’s visit to Howard University. It is also the kind of resource that could shape how DMV families evaluate the best universities for African students in the region, particularly for students weighing programs in African and diaspora studies. It is a reminder that the fight over how UNESCO African diaspora history gets taught is not confined to Paris or the continent. It runs through Washington, Prince George’s County, and every DMV classroom where that history is still too often told secondhand, a theme AfroDMV has also traced through the region’s own Nigerian diaspora community.
Key figures at a glance
- Joseph Ki-Zerbo (Burkina Faso), general editor of the original eight-volume series and author of its introduction
- Bethwell A. Ogot (Kenya), original volume editor and later president of the International Scientific Committee for the series
- A. Adu Boahen (Ghana), edited the original volume on colonial domination from 1880 to 1935
- Ali A. Mazrui (Kenya), edited the original eighth and final volume, covering Africa since 1935
- Djibril Tamsir Niane (Guinea), Mohamed El Fasi (Egypt), Gamal Mokhtar (Sudan), and J.F. Ade Ajayi (Nigeria), the remaining editors of the original eight volumes
- Dr. Augustin Holl, professor emeritus and technical lead on the new ninth, tenth, and eleventh volumes
- Vanicléia Silva Santos (Brazil), editor of Volume X, Africa and Its Diasporas
- Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO’s former Director-General during the launch of the new volumes
- Cecilia Barbieri, UNESCO’s Chief of Section for Global Citizenship and Peace Education
- Ambassador Amr Aljowaily, African Union director for Citizens’ Organizations and African Diaspora
FAQ
What is UNESCO’s General History of Africa? It is a UNESCO-led series, first launched in 1964, that tells African history through African scholarship rather than colonial-era accounts. It now spans eleven volumes.
What makes the newest volumes different? Volumes IX, X, and XI, released in October 2025, update the original series and add the first volume fully dedicated to the African diaspora, alongside new material on Africa in the contemporary world.
How is this reaching schools? UNESCO released a Curriculum Pathway Tool alongside the volumes, offering nine thematic learning units, teacher guides, and an educational video game to help ministries of education and school systems adopt the material.