Early Modern Women in Africa

During the early modern era, most Bantu languages were not represented in written form. Instead, Bantu-speaking women, like most Africans, retained and recounted their histories, beliefs, values, literature, and knowledge in oral, musical, or visual imagery. Bantu-speaking people, who populate two-thirds of the African continent south of the Sahara Desert, chose to maintain orality, musical communication, and visual literacy, even when presented with the concept of the written word from both Islamic and Western interventions.