Abstract: | Text of three lectures on West Africa and the Arab world the author delivered in the 23rd series of the J.B. Danquah Memorial Lectures at the Teachers' Hall in Accra, Ghana, on 19-21 February 1990. The first lecture examines how Arabs have looked at Africa and Africans, and how Africans have looked at Arabs, highlighting some of the stereotypes that were formed historically. The second lecture deals with the effects of contacts between Arabs and West Africans brought about under Islam, with particular attention to the trans-Saharan slave trade and its consequences. The final lecture looks at the present century and at Arab-African relations in the light of Pan-Africanism, the OAU, the oil crisis of the 1970s, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. |