Solid Knowledge on Africa is a dossier that focuses on the past and present knowledge on Africa. It presents the facts about Africa's socio-economic development trajectory using a historical perspective and the circumstances that might have facilitated or hindered that development. It is a reflection on Africa's distant past, recent past, present, and future. As a document to portray the winding past of the continent, it presents the picture of the African strategy to gain its ownership and the use of its own resources for the benefit of the continent. The aim is to create a building block that consolidates written knowledge on Africa's development challenges. It shows that the past is written and oral knowledge provides veins to feed the transformation agenda for the future with filtered development plasma. The argument that Mother Africa was a backward continent is dispelled by factual evidence. The dossier demonstrates that the notion is misplaced. In the UN-partitioned Africa, the continent had a rich head-start. It had thriving economies, diverse arts, strong culture and polities that were founded on evolving governance systems.