Urban life emerges in Africa

Abstract

This text introduces the book "The African city: a history", published in 2007, which has been ever since, a landmark on the history of cities in Africa. In this paper, Bill Freund defends and shows that African urbanization has pre-colonial origins, deconstructing the myth that the city is a European invention, adding that “Africa is the ideal setting to study the beginnings of urbanization”. The author expands further to explain the sacred genesis of the pre-colonial African city, whose importance far surpassed the economic dimension. Freund gives us an idea of the cities in the various regions of the continent, since before the pharaohs of the ancient Egyptian Empire until the 20th century, based on a rich and critical information obtained from several sources and from different times, although mostly from European authors, includes important African authors, addresses many issues and reinforces that the future of African societies and cultures will probably pass a lot through cities (Since there is no abstract in the original text, this was done by the editors).