Besides the academic personnel, there are other important actors contextualizing the production of this book. The new General History of Africa project was developed in the 2010s, a period that is far from the African independence movements of the 1950s to the 1970s. This project is marked by other debates, namely those around political inclusion, the struggle for equal opportunity and justice, which are usually restricted to the confines of academia, organized social movements and State institutions. At the global level, the first two decades of the twenty-first century were characterized by two phenomena which are far from traditional historical landmarks: the development of information technologies and the rapid popularization of social media, catapulted by smartphones and other easily handled devices. These two phenomena have brought onto the global scene other political actors that have redefined the agendas of universities, just as African independence movements had done for more than half a century. Around the world, the toppling of statues of slave traders, enslavers, conquistadors, and other men who, in their times, used their powers to hunt and oppress Africans and their descendants may lead to the writing of other histories about African diasporas.  
Surely, narratives of history are no longer exclusively produced within closed academic circles, shaped by Eurocentric perspectives. Social movements have been instrumental in creating a new historical memory for the societies where they exist. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon asserted that after dismantling colonial institutions, our challenge should be to decolonize our minds; in the same vein, in 'Redemption Song', Bob Marley urged us to 'emancipate ourselves from mental slavery'. We hope that this book will be a useful, if modest, pedagogical tool for achieving these goals through the teaching of history in schools and universities.