History in Africa In accordance with
African cosmology, African historical consciousness viewed historical change and continuity, order and purpose within the framework of man and his environment, the gods, and his ancestors, and he believed himself part of a
holistic spiritual entity. In African societies, the historical process is largely a
communal one, with eyewitness accounts,
hearsay, reminiscences, and occasionally
visions, dreams, and hallucinations crafted into narrative
oral traditions which are performed and transmitted through generations. In oral traditions time is sometimes
mythical and social, and ancestors were considered historical actors. Mind and memory shapes traditions, as events are condensed over time and crystallise into
clichés. Oral tradition can be
exoteric or
esoteric. It speaks to people according to their understanding, unveiling itself in accordance with their aptitudes. In
African epistemology, the epistemic subject "experiences the epistemic object in a sensuous, emotive, intuitive, abstractive understanding, rather than through abstraction alone, as is the case in
Western epistemology" to arrive at a "complete knowledge", and as such oral traditions,
music,
proverbs, and the like were used in the preservation and transmission of knowledge.
Prehistory Africa is considered by most
paleoanthropologists to be the
oldest inhabited territory on Earth, with the Human species originating from the continent. During the mid-20th century,
anthropologists discovered many
fossils and evidence of human occupation perhaps as early as seven million years ago ("
Before Present"; BP). Fossil remains of several species of early apelike humans thought to have
evolved into modern humans, such as
Australopithecus afarensis radiometrically dated to approximately 3.9–3.0 million years BP,
Paranthropus boisei (c. 2.3–1.4 million years BP) and
Homo ergaster (c. 1.9 million–600,000 years BP) have been discovered. These first modern humans left Africa and populated the rest of the
globe during the
Out of Africa II migration dated to approximately 50,000 years BP, exiting the continent either across
Bab-el-Mandeb over the
Red Sea, the
Strait of Gibraltar in Morocco, or the
Isthmus of Suez in Egypt. Other migrations of modern humans within the African continent have been dated to that time, with evidence of early human settlement found in Southern Africa, Southeast Africa, North Africa, and the
Sahara. At the end of the
Ice ages, estimated to have been around 10,500BC, the Sahara had again become a green fertile valley, and its African populations returned from the interior and coastal highlands in
Africa, with
rock art paintings depicting a fertile Sahara and large populations discovered in
Tassili n'Ajjer dating back perhaps 10 millennia. However, the warming and drying climate meant that by 5,000BC, the Sahara region was becoming increasingly dry and hostile. Around 3500BC, due to a tilt in the Earth's
orbit, the Sahara experienced a period of rapid desertification. The domestication of cattle in Africa preceded agriculture and seems to have existed alongside hunter-gatherer cultures. It is speculated that by 6,000BC, cattle were domesticated in North Africa. In West Africa, a wet phase ushered in an expanding
rainforest and wooded savanna from Senegal to Cameroon. Between 9,000 and 5,000BC,
Niger–Congo speakers domesticated the
oil palm and
raffia palm.
Black-eyed peas and
voandzeia (African groundnuts), were domesticated, followed by
okra and
kola nuts. Since most of the plants grew in the forest, the Niger–Congo speakers invented polished stone axes for clearing forest.
Pygmies are thought to have inhabited Central Africa for many millennia, splitting into eastern and western groups around 5,000BP. Over 150,000 BP, there was an early dispersal of
anatomically modern humans to Southern Africa, equated with the modern-day
Khoisan who have preserved their traditional
hunter-gatherer way of life.
4th millenniumBC – 6th centuryAD Northeast Africa , showing its major cities and sites, From 3500BC,
nomes (ruled by
nomarchs) coalesced to form the kingdoms of
Lower Egypt and
Upper Egypt in
northeast Africa. Around 3100BC Upper Egypt conquered Lower Egypt to unify
Egypt under the
1st dynasty, with the process of consolidation and assimilation completed by the time of the
3rd dynasty who formed the
Old Kingdom of Egypt in 2686BC. The
Kingdom of Kerma emerged around this time to become the dominant force in
Nubia, controlling territory as large as Egypt between the 1st and 4th
cataracts of the Nile. The height of the Old Kingdom saw the construction of many
great pyramids, though under the
6th dynasty power gradually decentralised to the nomarchs, culminating in the
disintegration of the kingdom, exacerbated by drought and famine. Around 2055BC, the
11th dynasty, based in
Thebes, conquered the others to form the
Middle Kingdom of Egypt, and the
12th dynasty expanded into
Lower Nubia at the expense of Kerma. In 1550BC, the
18th dynasty expelled the Hyksos, and established the
New Kingdom of Egypt. The New Kingdom conquered the
Levant from the
Canaanites,
Mittani,
Amorites, and
Hittites, and extinguished Kerma, incorporating Nubia into the empire, and sending the Egyptian empire into its golden age. The Assyrians installed a
puppet dynasty that later gained independence and once more
unified Egypt, until it was conquered by the
Achaemenid Empire in 525BC. The Ptolemaics lost their holdings outside of Africa to the
Seleucids in the
Syrian Wars, expanded into
Cyrenaica, and briefly occupied
part of Kush in the 3rd century BC. In the 1st century BC, Ptolemaic Egypt became entangled in a
Roman civil war, leading to its conquest by the
Romans in 30BC. Kush persisted as a major regional power until, having been weakened from internal rebellion amid worsening climatic conditions, invasions by
Aksum and the
Noba caused their disintegration into
Makuria,
Alodia, and
Nobatia around the 5th centuryAD.
Horn of Africa In the
Horn of Africa, there was the
Land of Punt, a kingdom on the
Red Sea which was a close trading partner of Ancient Egypt in the 3rd and 2nd millennia BC.
Rodolfo Fattovich equated it to the
Gash Group in the Sudanese-Eritrean lowlands, and some scholars have hypothesised modern-day Somalia, while
Kenneth Kitchen and
Felix Chami locate it on
Zanzibar Island. In the
Eritrean-
Ethiopian Highlands, the kingdom of rose c. 980 BC as the region was incorporated into global trading networks, and it exhibited
Sabaean influences which most scholars attribute to a small migration of Sabaeans and their assimilation. Several scholars consider there to have been other contemporaneous states, and 's collapse in the mid-1st century BC saw the region inhabited by small
polities. Modern-day Somalia was inhabited by
nomadic pastoralists, and along the Horn's coast there were many
ancient Somali city-states that thrived off of the
wider Red Sea trade, and enjoyed a lucrative
monopoly on cinnamon from
Ancient India due to their freedom from Roman interference. In the 1st century AD, the
Kingdom of Aksum rose from a city-state to rule much of the northern Ethiopian-Eritrean Highlands and the
Red Sea port of
Adulis. Aksum was described as one of the four
great powers by Persian prophet
Mani in the 3rd century.
Aksum's king converted from
traditional religion to
Christianity in the 4th century, gradually followed by the population. In the 6th century, Aksum
conquered South Arabia, though struggled to maintain control over it, and began to gradually lose its dominance over Red Sea trade to Persians and Arabs. This grew into
Ancient Carthage after gaining independence from
Phoenicia in the 6th century BC, and they built an
extensive trading empire with a strict
mercantile network. Carthage's collapse and conquest by Rome in the
Punic Wars (3rd and 2nd centuries BC) saw
Numidia and
Mauretania become major powers in the Maghreb. Towards the end of the 2nd century BC Mauretania fought alongside Numidia's
Jugurtha against the Romans in the
Jugurthine War after he had usurped the Numidian throne from a Roman ally. Together they inflicted heavy casualties, with the war only ending inconclusively when Mauretania's
Bocchus I sold out Jugurtha to the Romans. Around the turn of the millennium, both came under direct Roman rule.
West Africa In the western
Sahel the rise of settled communities occurred largely as a result of the domestication of
millet and of
sorghum, and cattle
pastoralism began c. 2500 BC. Extensive east-west belts of
deserts,
grasslands, and
forests from north to south were crucial for the moulding of their respective societies and meant that symbiotic trade relations developed in response to the differing environments. Beginning around 4000BC, the
Tichitt culture in modern-day Mauritania and Mali is the oldest known
complexly organised society in West Africa, while others included the
Kintampo culture in modern-day Ghana, the
Nok culture in modern-day Nigeria, and the
Daima culture around
Lake Chad. Towards the end of the 3rd century AD, a
wet period in the Sahel created areas for human habitation and exploitation that had not been habitable for the best part of a millennium. The
Ghana Empire (also called ) rose out of the Tichitt culture, growing wealthy following the introduction of the
camel to the western Sahel, which revolutionised the
trans-Saharan trade that linked their capital and
Aoudaghost with
Tahert and
Sijilmasa in North Africa.
Soninke tradition holds that the final founding of Wagadu occurred after
Dinga did a deal with , a serpent deity who was guarding a well, to sacrifice one maiden a year in exchange for assurance regarding plenty of rainfall and gold supply. Based on
large tumuli scattered across West Africa dating to this period, several scholars have speculated that there were further simultaneous and preceding states relative to Wagadu. Dispersal from the Great Lakes region occurred in two more streams. One went west to meet the Western Stream in the DR Congo and Angola, while the other went south and spread across Eastern and Southern Africa.
7th to 18th centuries , in
Nigeria displayed a level of technical accomplishment that was notably more advanced than European bronze casting of the same period. Pre-colonial Africa possessed as many as 10,000 different states and polities. These included small family groups of hunter-gatherers such as the
San people of southern Africa; larger, more structured groups such as the family clan groupings of the
Bantu peoples of central, southern, and eastern Africa; heavily structured clan groups in the
Horn of Africa; the large
Sahelian kingdoms; and autonomous city-states and kingdoms, such as those of the
Akan;
Edo,
Yoruba, and
Igbo people in West Africa; and the
Swahili coastal trading towns of Southeast Africa. By the 9th century AD, a string of dynastic states, including the earliest
Hausa states, stretched across the sub-Saharan savannah from the western regions to central Sudan. The most powerful of these states were
Ghana,
Gao, and the
Kanem-Bornu Empire.
Ghana declined in the eleventh century, but was succeeded by the
Mali Empire, which consolidated much of western Sudan in the thirteenth century. Kanem accepted Islam in the eleventh century. In the forested regions of the West African coast, independent kingdoms grew with little influence from the Muslim north. The
Kingdom of Nri, which was ruled by the
Eze Nri, was established around the ninth century, making it one of the oldest kingdoms in present-day Nigeri. The Nri kingdom is famous for its elaborate
bronzes, found at the town of
Igbo-Ukwu. , which flourished in the eleventh to fifteenth centuries The
Kingdom of Ife, historically the first of these Yoruba city-states or kingdoms, established government under a priestly
oba ('king' or 'ruler' in the
Yoruba language), called the
Ooni of Ife. Ife was noted as a major religious and cultural centre in West Africa and for its unique naturalistic tradition of bronze sculpture. The Ife model of government was adapted by the
Oyo Empire, whose obas, called the
Alaafins of Oyo, controlled many other Yoruba and non-Yoruba city-states and kingdoms including the
Fon Kingdom of Dahomey. The
Almoravids were a
Berber dynasty from the Sahara that spread over northwestern Africa and the Iberian peninsula during the eleventh century. The
Banu Hilal and
Banu Ma'qil were a collection of
Arab Bedouin tribes from the
Arabian Peninsula who migrated westwards via Egypt between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Their
migration resulted in the fusion of the Arabs and Berbers, where the locals were
arabised, and
Arab culture absorbed elements of the local culture, under the unifying framework of Islam. Following the breakup of Mali, a local leader named
Sonni Ali (1464–1492) founded the
Songhai Empire in the region of middle
Niger and the western
Sudan and took control of the trans-Saharan trade. Sonni Ali seized
Timbuktu in 1468 and
Jenne in 1473, building his regime on trade revenues and the cooperation of Muslim merchants. His successor
Askia Mohammad I (1493–1528) made Islam the official religion, built mosques, and brought to Gao Muslim scholars, including al-Maghili (d.1504), the founder of an important tradition of Sudanic African Muslim scholarship. By the eleventh century, some
Hausa states – such as
Kano,
Jigawa,
Katsina, and
Gobir – had developed into walled towns engaging in trade, servicing
caravans, and the manufacture of goods. Until the fifteenth century, these small states were on the periphery of the major Sudanic empires of the era, paying tribute to Songhai to the west and Kanem-Borno to the east.
Height of the slave trade Slavery had long been practiced in Africa. Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, the Atlantic slave trade took an estimated 7–12 million slaves to the New World. In addition, more than 1 million Europeans were captured by
Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries. The
Trans-Saharan slave trade contributed to a mass movement of Africans across North Africa and wider Near East over several millennia. Islamic
caliphs with Sub-Saharan African ancestry include
Abu al-Misk Kafur Al-Mustansir Billah,
Yaqub al-Mansur,
Abu al-Hasan Ali ibn Othman, Sultan of the
Marinid dynasty and
Moulay Ismail Ibn Sharif. In West Africa, the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1820s caused dramatic economic shifts in local polities. The gradual decline of slave-trading, prompted by a lack of demand for slaves in the
New World, increasing
anti-slavery legislation in Europe and America, and the
British Royal Navy's increasing presence off the West African coast, obliged African states to adopt new economies. Between 1808 and 1860, the British
West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. Action was also taken against African leaders who refused to agree to British treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against "the usurping King of
Lagos", deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 African rulers. The largest powers of West Africa (the
Asante Confederacy, the
Kingdom of Dahomey, and the
Oyo Empire) adopted different ways of adapting to the shift. Asante and Dahomey concentrated on the development of "legitimate commerce" in the form of
palm oil,
cocoa, timber and gold, forming the bedrock of West Africa's modern export trade. The Oyo Empire, unable to adapt, collapsed into civil wars.
Colonialism Independence struggles Imperial rule by Europeans continued until after the conclusion of
World War II, when almost all remaining colonial territories gradually obtained formal independence.
Independence movements in Africa gained momentum following World War II, which left the major European powers weakened. In 1951, Libya, a former Italian colony, gained independence. In 1956,
Tunisia and
Morocco won their independence from France.
Ghana followed suit the next year (March 1957), becoming the first of the sub-Saharan colonies to be granted independence. Over the next decade, waves of
decolonisation took place across the continent, culminating in the 1960
Year of Africa and the establishment of the
Organisation of African Unity in 1963. Since independence, African states have frequently been hampered by instability, corruption, violence, and authoritarianism. The vast majority of African states are republics that operate under some form of the
presidential system of rule. However, few of them have been able to sustain democratic governments on a permanent basis—per the criteria laid out by Lührmann et al. (2018), only
Botswana and
Mauritius have been consistently democratic for the entirety of their post-colonial history. Most African countries have experienced several
coups or periods of
military dictatorship. Between 1990 and 2018, though, the continent as a whole has trended towards more democratic governance. Upon independence an overwhelming majority of Africans lived in
extreme poverty. The continent suffered from the lack of infrastructural or industrial development under
colonial rule, along with political instability. With limited financial resources or access to global markets, relatively stable countries such as
Kenya still experienced only very slow economic development. Only a handful of African countries succeeded in obtaining rapid economic growth prior to 1990. Exceptions include Libya and Equatorial Guinea, both of which possess large oil reserves. Instability throughout the continent after decolonisation resulted primarily from
marginalisation of ethnic groups, and
corruption. In pursuit of personal
political gain, many leaders deliberately promoted ethnic conflicts, some of which had originated during the colonial period, such as from the grouping of multiple unrelated ethnic groups into a single colony, the splitting of a distinct ethnic group between multiple colonies, or existing conflicts being exacerbated by colonial rule (for instance, the preferential treatment given to ethnic
Hutus over
Tutsis in Rwanda during German and Belgian rule). Faced with increasingly frequent and severe violence, military rule was widely accepted by the population of many countries as means to maintain order, and during the 1970s and 1980s a majority of African countries were controlled by
military dictatorships. Territorial disputes between nations and rebellions by groups seeking independence were also common in independent African states. The most devastating of these was the
Nigerian Civil War, fought between government forces and an
Igbo separatist republic, which resulted in a famine that killed 1–2 million people. Two
civil wars in Sudan,
the first lasting from 1955 to 1972 and
the second from 1983 to 2005, collectively killed around 3 million. Both were fought primarily on ethnic and religious lines.
Cold War conflicts between the United States and the
Soviet Union also contributed to instability. Both the Soviet Union and the United States offered considerable incentives to African political and military leaders who aligned themselves with the superpowers' foreign policy. As an example, during the
Angolan Civil War, the Soviet and Cuban aligned
MPLA and the American aligned
UNITA received the vast majority of their military and political support from these countries. Many African countries became highly dependent on foreign aid. The sudden loss of both Soviet and American aid at the end of the Cold War and
fall of the USSR resulted in severe economic and political turmoil in the countries most dependent on foreign support. There was a
major famine in Ethiopia between 1983 and 1985, killing up to 1.2 million people, which most
historians attribute primarily to the forced relocation of farmworkers and seizure of grain by the communist
Derg government, further exacerbated by the
civil war. In 1994 a
genocide in Rwanda resulted in up to 800,000 deaths, added to
a severe refugee crisis and fueled the rise of militia groups in neighbouring countries. This contributed to the outbreak of the
first and
second Congo Wars, which were the most devastating military conflicts in modern Africa, with up to 5.5 million deaths, making it by far the deadliest conflict in modern African history and one of the
costliest wars in human history. File:African nations order of independence 1950-1993.gif|An animated map shows the order of
independence of African nations, 1950–2011. File:Africa’s wars and conflicts, 1980–96.svg|Africa's wars and conflicts, 1980–96 File:Political Map of Africa.svg|Political map of Africa in 2021 Various conflicts between various insurgent groups and governments continue. Since 2003, there has been an ongoing
conflict in Darfur (Sudan), which peaked in intensity from 2003 to 2005 with notable spikes in violence in 2007 and 2013–15, killing around 300,000 people total. The
Boko Haram Insurgency primarily within Nigeria (with considerable fighting in Niger, Chad, and Cameroon as well) has killed around 350,000 people since 2009. Most African conflicts have been reduced to low-intensity conflicts as of 2022. However, the
Tigray War from 2020 to 2022 killed an estimated 300,000–500,000 people, primarily due to
famine. Overall though, violence across Africa has greatly declined in the 21st century, with the end of civil wars in Angola,
Sierra Leone, and
Algeria in 2002,
Liberia in 2003, and
Sudan and
Burundi in 2005. The Second Congo War, which involved 9 countries and several insurgent groups, ended in 2003. This decline in violence coincided with many countries abandoning communist-style command economies and opening up for market reforms, which over the course of the 1990s and 2000s promoted the establishment of permanent, peaceful trade between neighbouring countries (see
Capitalist peace). Improved stability and economic reforms have led to a great increase in foreign investment into many African nations, mainly from China, North Africa experienced comparable growth rates. A significant part of this growth can also be attributed to the facilitated diffusion of information technologies and specifically the mobile telephone. While several individual countries have maintained high growth rates, since 2014 overall growth has considerably slowed, primarily as a result of falling commodity prices, continued lack of
industrialisation, and epidemics of
Ebola and
COVID-19. ==Geography==