Zeinab Badawi

This Sudanese-born BBC journalist is constantly striving to improve the way the continent is portrayed in Western media.

“The history of Africa deserves more respect and attention than it has received to date,” insists Zeinab Badawi. Having enjoyed a prolific career with the venerable BBC, the Sudanese-born English journalist, who will soon be 65, is publishing her very first book, with the ambitious goal of changing the way the continent is seen: An African History of Africa (From the Dawn of Civilisation to Independence). Her father was a journalist in Sudan, then in Great Britain, working for the Arabic edition of the BBC. Her grandfather fought the British invaders, including a certain Winston Churchill, in the famous anti-colonialist Battle of Omdurman (1898)! Zeinab, who as a child dreamed of becoming a doctor, eventually followed in her father's footsteps, first at ITV Yorkshire, then at Channel 4 and, since 1998, at the BBC. One of her first reports gave her the opportunity to spend several extraordinary months in the country of her birth, conducting interviews and gathering information.

Her aim was always to present the continent's news in a different way, to take it out of its grim Western relegation – “the coup-war-famine angle”, as she puts it. Now President of Britain's Royal African Society and of London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Zeinab Badawi also produced and directed an exhaustive documentary series for the BBC, with the support of UNESCO, covering the entire history of Africa - nine 45-minute episodes filmed in some thirty countries, available on YouTube.