 Mae'n gwybod i'n meddwl, yn gweld i ffryd yng Nghymru, i fynd i'n meddwl i'n meddwl i'r blaen i West-Africa's traddwl cyfnodau cyfnodau. A oedden ni'n gwybod i'n ddiddordeb yn ei ddweud i'r ffroddol. Mae hi'n ddiddordeb yn rhoi y ffrodd, a ddim yn ei ddweud i'r ddweud i'n meddwl. Mae'n meddwl i'n meddwl. Mae'n ddweud i'r exibisiwn ac yn rhan o'r ffrwng. I couldn't help reflect on how far we've come, not just over the years, the four years of development of this exhibition, but also the difficult journey of our story to get here, of the struggles, of the sacrifices made to hold on to narrative in the face of enslavement, colonialism, wars, racism and so much else. But our narrative hasn't just survived. As this exhibition shows, this is artistic excellence and intellectual endeavour at its very best. And I want to thank the British Library, all of its staff for making this happen. And I also, you know, wandering round this evening and seeing so many familiar faces and the contribution that you make, I want to thank you all, for all you do every day to support libraries, to support intellectual endeavour and to support Africa. This really matters. I'm sure you've been following in the news recently, the Al Qaeda-affiliated militia and Sardin, but some of those guys have begun to be indicted for war crimes and they've begun to be sent for trial at the Hague. And one of the first is a very kind of intriguing guy, Ahmad al-Madi al-Faki. He's a young Marley and he's charged, which is quite unusual for trials at the Hague, not with genocide, not with ethnic cleansing, but with being one of the instigators of a campaign to destroy some of Marley's most important cultural heritage. And this wasn't vandalism. These weren't thoughtless acts. One of the things that al-Faki said when he was asked to identify himself was that he was a graduate, that he was a teacher. This was deeply considered waging war in the most powerful way that he could envisage by destroying narrative, destroying stories, the destruction of nine tombs, of the central mosque and perhaps as many as 4,000 manuscripts. This was a considered act. They understood the power of narrative. They understood the power of stories to hold communities together and they conversely understood that in destroying those stories that they hoped that they would destroy a people. But just as Ansah Dean was driven by a powerful narrative and ideology, so was the local population. And in their defence of their libraries they showed incredible bravery. These were communities who'd grown up with the stories of the Marley Empire, lived in the shadow of Timbuktu's libraries and listened to its songs of origin. And they weren't about to give up on that without a fight. Over months of the Ansah Dean invasion, Marley risked their lives to secrete and smuggle documents to safety, doing what they could to protect the historic buildings and to defend their ancient libraries. And although they weren't always successful, many of the manuscripts were thankfully saved. Today each of the strides that were damaged have been repaired. And the mosque, that 14th century mosque, the symbolic heart of the city has been restored. Even in the bleakest periods of occupation, enough of the population of Timbuktu simply would not bow to men like El Farkin. They wouldn't allow their history to be wiped away. And anyone who's visited Marley will understand why. Stories, histories, narratives, they matter. This really matters. And this is part of a recurrent echo across our history of ordinary people making a stand, making a stand for their history. Just as in the 19th century the people of the Caribbean, under threat of punishment, fought to practice their own religions, to celebrate carnival, to keep their history alive, ordinary people were prepared to make great sacrifices even in the face of appalling punishment. But they wanted to hold on to their stories. It's because this really matters. And many of our own parents and our grandparents who came to Britain carrying very little more than, coming with very little more than what they could carry. But what they did bring, all of them, were their stories. And against an onslaught of the challenges of settling and integration it was those stories that underpinned and strengthened families. Those are the stories that have built our communities. It's because this really matters. And because the world is changing quickly and profoundly, I think perhaps this matters even more. You know, since we woke up this morning half a billion tweets have been sent, 100 billion emails. It would be easy to think that the world of paper and print is now moribund. That oral history is dead. That it's part of ancient history. But we haven't left this behind. As the ongoing popularity of endeavours like the Cain Prize demonstrate, as the drive by Ancidine to target history, and for so many ordinary Marlians to step forward to protect it, these things show. This really matters and it continues to matter. Our words, our history, they matter. They're worth fighting for. They're worth conserving. They're worth celebrating. If you think about the areas in which we as West Africans have found our greatest international success, it's our words. It's as advocates. It's as writers. It's as politicians. It's through our aesthetic intelligence, as designers, as architects, as filmmakers. It's through our music. It is, after all, our rhythms, our rhythms, our West African beats that underpin international contemporary music. It is in word. It is in symbol. It is in song. That these traditions have broken the yoke of that troubled history and have come to shape and change the modern world. Thank you to the British Library for acknowledging this history, and thank you to the curatorial and design teams for delivering what is an absolutely exceptional exhibition. They've done it with such panash. But now we all have the equally tough job, each and every one of us, of inspiring the younger generation to come and to immerse themselves in this magnificent history for us to give them a leg up onto the shoulders of these West African giants so that they can write our next chapter. Thank you.