Share Chancellor’s Professor and Professor of Africana Studies, Anthropology and History at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, US, Akinwumi Ogundiran, is the author of ‘The Yoruba: A New History.’ The remarkable book, which was published in the last quarter of 2020 by Indiana University Press, provides a new way and style for imagining and writing Yoruba history. The academic shares some findings that challenge extant beliefs and knowledge in this e-conversation about the book. Excerpts:
CONGRATS on the publication of this seminal and interesting work titled ‘The Yoruba: A New History’. Could you please let us into how it came to be? The conception and execution?
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As part of efforts to strengthen the Yoruba race by ensuring that youths in the region can stand on their feet and hold their ground among their peers, a group of young entrepreneurs under the aegis of Yoruba Professionals Foundation (YPF), commenced an etymology of industrial revival as a new reality in its advocacy for development of Yoruba land by training 50 Yoruba youths on smart automations, solar technology in collaboration with another group, Ilana Omo Oodua
To YPF, the struggle for liberation and development of Yorubaland, and by extension, Nigeria, can never be won without placing premium on knowledge-based entrepreneurship in terms of science, technology, research, agriculture and digital innovations.