What this is being built towards.
Six parts of one institution. One is open, one opens soon, and four are still to come. This page says plainly which is which. An institution that overstates what it has already built cannot be trusted with what it says it will build.
01 / The six parts
The Journal
The public editorial platform. Stories, Essays, Conversations and Next. Three pieces published, the first Stories being recorded now.
Read itThe Fellowship
The development platform. Five levels, a published scorecard, and the Community Backing Score. Applications for the first cohort open shortly.
How it worksThe Archive
The long-term knowledge asset. It is not a website feature and it is not launched. It is being built from the first interview, because an archive retrofitted onto ten years of published articles is not an archive.
Research
Turning the record into knowledge. Patterns across lives, published openly, with university and think tank partners. It needs material before it can begin, which is why it comes fourth.
#PeopleMakingHistory 100
One hundred Africans shaping what comes next. It exists only once the method, the criteria and the evidence standard justify it, and not one year earlier.
The Forum
The convening platform. People shaping Africa's future, funders, researchers and emerging talent in one room, with intellectual content worth convening around rather than an annual networking event.
02 / The Archive
A continent that does not record its present cannot learn from it.
Every record we publish creates an archival entry on the same day: the recording, the transcript, the photographs, the dates, the countries, the fields, the decisions, the failures, the sources, the permissions and the editorial notes.
Not because an archive is impressive. Because of what happens otherwise, which we have all watched. An organisation publishes for a decade, then decides to build an archive, and finds the recordings deleted, the photographers untraceable, and nobody who ever asked for the right to keep any of it. A decade of work, and nothing left that a researcher could use.
Over five, ten and twenty years this becomes a longitudinal record of people shaping modern Africa. It can support research, education, exhibitions, books, documentaries, university partnerships and public programming. None of that is possible if the discipline does not start on day one.
The Archive is not a page on this website. It is the reason the website is built the way it is.
03 / The sequence
In this order, and not in a different one.
Every stage depends on the one before it having actually happened. This is the whole reason there is no list yet, and the reason there is no annual conference.
Prove Now
The Journal and the Fellowship. Build editorial credibility, an audience, a nomination pipeline, the archival infrastructure, and evidence about what actually works.
Study Next
Once enough material exists, formalise the research capability, analyse recurring patterns, publish findings, and develop the methodology that any recognition would have to rest on.
Recognise Later
#PeopleMakingHistory 100, only when the methodology and the evidence justify it. A first group of twelve to twenty people documented completely is worth more than a hundred thin entries.
Convene Later
The Forum, once there is something worth convening around. A gathering with no intellectual content is a networking event with better catering.
Institutionalise The long term
Expanded archive, research programmes, fellowships, books, education, exhibitions, and eventually a permanent African centre for the study of how this continent's people shape its future.
None of this happens on the strength of a plan. It happens on the strength of the first twenty records.
Which is why the only two things asked of anybody on this site are the two things that make the first twenty possible.
Tell us who is making history now. Or help build the institution that is going to write it down.