In this opening episode of Africa vs Itself: The Internal War No One Talks About, we confront one of the most uncomfortable questions facing the continent today: Are Africa’s struggles caused only by external powers, or have internal systems helped sustain them?

This episode explores the complicated relationship between Western imperialism, political influence, leadership failure, tribal division, and the mental conditioning left behind after colonization. It examines how foreign control often survives through local cooperation, elite interests, silence, survival systems, and the willingness of Africans themselves to participate in structures that weaken the continent from within.

Without ignoring the realities of exploitation, this episode challenges the audience to look deeper—not just at what was done to Africa, but at what continues to happen inside Africa today.

This is not an attack on Africans. It is a conversation about accountability, power, identity, and the internal contradictions shaping the continent’s future.

The war may not only be outside the borders anymore. Sometimes, the battlefield is within.

A short story about six neighbours… and the dangerous pattern of ignoring problems until they reach our own doorstep.

A reflection on insecurity and collective responsibility in Nigeria.

And yes — today is my birthday.

On April 13, 1868, British troops entered Magdala, a mountain fortress in Ethiopia and the stronghold of Emperor Tewodros II. The expedition, led by Sir Robert Napier, was a military campaign. The British won and then looted the city.

They moved through Magdala taking items systematically. Churches and monasteries were stripped of large numbers of handwritten manuscripts written in Ge’ez, covering religion, law, medicine, governance, history, and astronomy. Crowns, ceremonial crosses, royal objects, and sacred tabots were also taken.

After the looting, the city was burned.

Following the invasion, stolen items were divided among officers, auctioned to soldiers, or shipped to Britain. Over time, many of the manuscripts and objects ended up in British institutions such as the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the Bodleian Library at Oxford, while others entered private collections.

Ethiopia was never colonized, so this was not administration but invasion and theft. The removal of books and sacred objects helped erase evidence of Ethiopia’s long tradition of written knowledge and scholarship, making it easier to later claim that Africa lacked recorded history and intellectual systems.