Writers 
Before the ships,
before the borders drawn by foreign hands,
before our names were twisted
into sounds that did not belong to us,
we were here.
Beneath the golden African sun,
our footsteps wrote stories
upon the red earth.
We built.
Not only houses of clay,
but kingdoms of knowledge,
cities of trade,
and paths where wisdom
travelled farther than the eye could see.
Our ancestors looked at the stars
and found meaning.
They listened to the rivers,
read the seasons,
and planted tomorrow
with their hands.
In the libraries of memory,
elders became books.
Around fires,
history did not die—
it lived in voices.
A mother told her child.
A father taught his son.
A grandmother carried generations
inside a single story.
We were not empty
before others came to describe us.
We were not without language
because they did not understand our tongues.
We were not without civilisation
because they refused to see our cities.
Africa had already awakened.
In the songs of the griot,
in the drums that spoke
when words were not enough,
in the hands of artists
turning wood, bronze, cloth,
and earth
into beauty.
Then came the breaking.
Lines across the land.
New names.
New rulers.
Old stories interrupted.
Some treasures disappeared.
Some languages grew quiet.
Some histories were buried
beneath the dust of other people's versions.
But buried
does not mean forgotten.
Listen closely.
The drum still remembers.
The earth still remembers.
And we—
we are remembering too.
We remember the kingdoms.
We remember the scholars.
The farmers.
The queens.
The warriors.
The storytellers.
We remember that civilisation
does not belong to one colour,
one nation,
or one people.
It belongs wherever human beings
have dreamed,
built,
questioned,
created,
and passed knowledge
from one generation
to another.
So do not ask Africa
where her civilisation began.
Look around.
It is written in ancient walls,
in surviving languages,
in music that crossed oceans,
in patterns woven by patient hands,
and in children who still carry
the future in their names.
I am Black.
Not as a shadow of history,
but as a page still being written.
My skin carries no shame.
It carries sunlight.
It carries ancestors
who survived storms
so that I could stand here
and speak my name.
And though history has wounded us,
we are more than our wounds.
We are the hands that rebuild.
We are the voices returning.
We are the children of an ancient land
walking toward tomorrow.
Africa was never waiting
to become something.
She has always been becoming.
And now,
with every story we tell,
with every language we protect,
with every dream we dare to build,
we say to the world:
We were here.
We are here.
And we are not finished.
