Contributions of Herodotus to African History
This paper focuses on the contributions of Herodotus to African historiography. Its aim is to define, justify and affirm the importance of Herodotus in African History. Being a librarybased study, its data is mainly obtained from secondary sources and from discussions with historians. A purely historical research method was adopted so as to gain deeper understanding of the pertinent issues involved in African historiography. The historical data was evaluated utilizing external and internal criticism. Herodotus was one man who did not subscribe to the biased writing about Africa. If by scientific knowledge, scholars can eliminate all forms of frustrations which victimize people, particularly Africans, the sincere rapprochement of mankind to create a true humanity will be fostered as argued by Cheikh Anta Diop, in the reconstruction of African history. The Euro-centric view about lack of history in Africa is biased and one of the classical writers, Herodotus tried to argue a case, for African’s rich historical background.
