ABSTRACT
In the Periplus, an ancient Roman inscription of the fifth century BC, dedicated to Hanno the Carthaginian, we read of a trade and navigational route which begins in the Mediterranenan, traversing the heart of Africa and ending somewhere in what is today the modern republic of Cameroon. From this inscription we know that trade relations between the two continents have existed for at least 2,500 years.1 Although Africa’s encounter with Europe dates back to classical antiquity, it was the history of slave trade in the sixteenth century and of colonialism in the nineteenth that was to shape the modern structure of EuroAfrican relations.
