Indonesian sailors and Africa

In his book "The Phantom Voyagers", Dick-Read affirms that the Indonesians played a forgotten but very influential role in the development of Africa. Their colonization of Madagascar is widely accepted, but Dick-Read goes even farther, and attempts to prove that they had an influence on the technological and cultural devlopment of large parts of the African mainland, including even West Africa.

Is this pseudo-science or a fresh new perspective? What about the racial implications of this theory? If this theory is correct, then there is a possibility that a civilization such as Great Zimbabwe was not entirely indigenous, and many of the African achievements such as the development of iron-working could be simply borrowings. This is reminiscent of the earlier (and still common) view that the Sub-Saharan Africans did not develop civilizations on their own but were spurred on by foreign influences.This view has been widely condemned as racist. What do people think?

http://hnn.us/roundup/entries/3010.html

http://www.phantomvoyagers.com/