The award-winning film-maker and academic Henry Louis Gates Jr travels the length and breadth of Africa to explore the continent's epic history.

Empires of Gold marks an era of great commercial and manufacturing growth throughout several of the continent's regions. Beginning with the revolutionary transformation of north and west Africa, Gates travels to the shores of the Sahara Desert, where farmers, traders, warriors and nomads have turned the region into the crossroads of some of history's most advanced and wealthiest civilisations. Show less