African Perspective Quotes

I think hip hop allows us to talk about everything, and Africa is what I choose to talk about now. If people are not talking about Africa, that's them, that's cool, there's nothing wrong with that. But this is who I am, this is what I have to say, this is what I have to offer.

My message was 'Think African. Make schools read African history.'

I admit that living in Nigeria sounds romantic, but Africa isn't America by a long shot. It's a different world and a different place in time...

Africa gives you the knowledge that man is a small creature, among other creatures, in a large landscape.

A tanned skin is something more than respectable, and perhaps olive is a fitter color than white for a man,--a denizen of the woods. "The pale white man!" I do not wonder that the African pitied him.

I realized that you cannot think European and want to write or create something African. You have to think African in everything.

In Africa, when you pick up a book worth reading, out of the deadly consignments which good ships are always being made to carry out all the way from Europe, you read it as an author would like his book to be read, praying to God that he may have it in him to go on as beautifully as he has begun. Your mind runs, transported, upon a fresh deep green track.

We must learn to live the African way. It's the only way to live in freedom and with dignity

Because I am an African I reserve the right to say that Africa does not exist simply to make people in this country [the UK], or anywhere else in the developed world, feel good about themselves.

I always hope for the better for the continent and what I know comes from Africa. Living in the West we feel like we're so removed from the continent that we can somewhat shut off.

There is no African, myself included, who does not appreciate the help of the wider world, but we do question whether aid is genuine or given in the spirit of affirming one's cultural superiority.

My biggest obsession is to show Africans and the world who the people of Africa really are.

Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.

You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off.

It is important to stress: Africa is also a victim of the September 11 attacks.