Owen 'Alik Shahadah

Owen 'Alik Shahadah (b. 1973) (Arabic: اليك شحادة) is a director, African writer, and scholar. He writes on African culture, African slavery, and the Arab slave trade. He is best known for authoring works, which deal with African history, social justice, environmental issues, education and world peace. Born in Hanover, Germany and educated in England, New York, and the Caribbean, Shahadah is of a new generation of African Diaspora filmmakers inspired by the likes of Malcolm X and Kwame Ture. He produces work that articulates a multidimensional African world perspective. Testimony to this is 500 Years Later and Motherland (film). As a cultural writer he is a leading critic of the terms black people and Sub-Saharan Africa, he states they are products of racism to undermine African history and cultural contributions. He argues for African agency and economic ownership of African culture by Africans.