Portuguese author Bruno Maçães visits Kilwa, “an island city-state on the East African coast” and writes:
“One of the oldest misconceptions about Africa is that the continent south of the Sahara had no cities before the Europeans got there. To this day, Africa is seen as the land of the village, an intensely communal space, where everyone shares his life with everyone else. In fact, cities such as Kilwa and Sofala on the east coast existed, but the process of their destruction began with the European arrival and Portugal’s control over the Indian Ocean’s trade routes (after 1505, the Kilwa sultan fled and was replaced with a ruler acceptable to the Portuguese). Rhapta, which probably lay somewhere in the delta of the Rufiji, just north of Kilwa, has yet to be found. As for Timbuktu and Lalibela, enough is already known about their global importance.”
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