Welcome to FO Live, to make sense of Africa’s colonial legacy.

For centuries, Europeans used Africa as land for exploitation. They raided the continent for slaves, then engaged in a "Scramble for Africa" and stole both land and resources.

So in 2022, can and does the African continent determine its own destiny - or is it trapped by its colonial past?

1. Professor Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò hails from Nigeria and now works at Cornel University in the US, where he Professor of African Political Thought and Chair at the Africana Studies and Research Center. He’s just written a book called ‘Against Decolonisation: Taking African Agency Seriously’.
2. Natasha Uwimanzi joins us from Rwanda, where she is an international social development and research consultant with passion for education in Africa
3. Martin Plaut is a former Africa editor at the BBC World Service and senior research fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and King’s College London.

FO° Live is brought to you by Fair Observer, a platform for citizen journalism which has two and a half thousand contributors from over ninety countries - and we’d love you to join the conversation. Sign up for our newsletter, subscribe to our channel and follow us on social media - and publish with us too.