50 Fun Facts About African History

Which emperor of Mali became legendary for the gold he carried on a 1324 pilgrimage to Mecca?

Mansa Musa gave away so much gold in Cairo along the way that his generosity is said to have noticeably shifted its value across Egypt.

Which North African general marched war elephants over the Alps to invade Roman Italy?

Hannibal won crushing victories at Lake Trasimene and Cannae and occupied most of southern Italy for 15 years, yet he never took the city of Rome itself.

Which queen of Ptolemaic Egypt is the only ruler of her Greek-speaking dynasty known to have learned Egyptian?

Cleopatra came from a family that had governed Egypt for generations as Greek monarchs who refused to learn the local tongue. She spoke several languages by adulthood.

Which East African sultanate lost history's shortest war, beaten by British warships within 45 minutes?

Zanzibar's 1896 war began when Sultan Khalid took the throne without British approval. Once his palace came under fire, he fled to the German consulate.

Which West African republic, settled by Black Americans, named its capital after US president James Monroe?

Liberia declared independence in 1847 and is Africa's oldest republic, yet the United States withheld recognition until 1862, during its own Civil War.

Which medieval city, built by ancestors of the Shona, is famed for towering granite walls laid without mortar?

Great Zimbabwe's largest enclosure has walls 11 metres high. Colonial rulers pressed archaeologists to deny that Africans built it; the modern country later took its name from the ruins.

Which fossil skeleton, found in Ethiopia in 1974, showed human ancestors walked upright 3.2 million years ago?

Lucy got her name from a Beatles song played over and over in camp on the night of the find. In Ethiopia she is also known as Dinkinesh, meaning 'you are marvellous'.

Which former prison off Cape Town, now a museum, held Nelson Mandela for 18 of his 27 years behind bars?

Robben Island takes its name from an old Dutch word for seals. It held prisoners from the late 1600s until 1996 and became a World Heritage Site three years later.

Which African state is often called the first country to recognise the independent United States?

Morocco opened its ports to American ships in 1777, and the friendship treaty the two signed in 1786 became the longest unbroken treaty relationship in US history.

Which West African city, a byword for remoteness, flourished as a medieval centre of Islamic scholarship?

Timbuktu grew rich on caravans of gold and ivory after joining the Mali Empire. In 2013, about 28,000 of its old manuscripts were moved to safety before militants set a library alight.

Which Phoenician-founded North African city fought three Punic Wars with Rome before being destroyed?

Carthage fell in 146 BC after a siege of nearly three years. In legend its founder, Queen Dido, was promised the land one oxhide could cover, so she cut the hide into strips.

Which Egyptian port city boasted the ancient world's largest library and a lighthouse among its Seven Wonders?

Alexandria was founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great. It served as Egypt's capital until a new one was founded at Fustat, now part of Cairo.

Which inscribed slab, found by a French officer in Egypt in 1799, gave scholars the key to reading hieroglyphs?

The Rosetta Stone repeats one royal decree in three versions, the last in ancient Greek that scholars could already read. British forces seized it in 1801, and it reached London the next year.

Which waterway did Egypt's President Nasser nationalise in 1956, prompting an international crisis?

The Suez Canal took ten years to dig and opened in 1869. It cut the voyage between the Arabian Sea and London by about 8,900 km.

In which European capital did an 1884–85 conference set the rules for the colonial Scramble for Africa?

Berlin hosted delegates from fourteen countries, yet no African state was invited. Six of the fourteen went home without securing any territory.

Which Zulu king built a formidable army around the short stabbing spear before his half-brothers killed him?

Shaka ruled the Zulu Kingdom from 1816 to 1828 and is credited with introducing the iklwa, a short spear with a long, broad, sword-like head.

Which British mining magnate founded De Beers and dreamed of a railway running from the Cape to Cairo?

Cecil Rhodes became prime minister of the Cape Colony in 1890. His will set up the Oxford scholarship that carries his name, the oldest graduate scholarship in the world.

Which Ethiopian emperor appealed to the League of Nations in 1936 after Italy invaded his country?

Haile Selassie chose to address the League in Amharic, though he was fluent in French. His earlier title, Ras Tafari, gave the Rastafari faith its name.

Which Anglican archbishop chaired South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission after apartheid ended?

Desmond Tutu had already won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize for his activism, and he popularised the term 'Rainbow Nation' for the country that emerged after 1994.

In which country were hundreds of thousands of Tutsi killed by Hutu militias in about 100 days in 1994?

Rwanda's genocide began the day after its president was assassinated and ended when a rebel army captured the capital, Kigali, about 100 days later.

Which Belgian king ran the Congo Free State as his own private colony, growing rich on forced rubber labour?

Leopold II never visited the territory he owned outright from 1885 to 1908. Scandal over deaths and abuse there finally forced him to hand it to the Belgian state.

Which Ugandan dictator expelled tens of thousands of Asians in 1972, claiming God had told him to in a dream?

Idi Amin later added 'CBE' to his titles, for Conqueror of the British Empire, after the United Kingdom broke off diplomatic relations with Uganda in 1977.

Which Ghanaian diplomat led the United Nations from 1997 to 2006 and shared a Nobel Peace Prize with it?

Kofi Annan was the first secretary-general to be chosen from the UN's own staff. His first name is the Akan name for a boy born on a Friday.

Which country won independence in 1962 after a war that brought down France's Fourth Republic?

Algeria had been declared an integral part of France in 1848, not a mere colony. At independence some 900,000 European settlers fled within a few months.

By which name was the Democratic Republic of the Congo known under Mobutu Sese Seko from 1971 to 1997?

Zaire came from a Portuguese mangling of a local word for river. The old name was restored in 1997, less than four months before the exiled Mobutu died.

Which Portuguese navigator sailed around Africa's southern tip to open the first sea route from Europe to India?

Vasco da Gama landed in India in May 1498, a decade after Bartolomeu Dias first rounded the Cape. On the way his crews became the first known Europeans to visit Mombasa.

Which name is given to the Atlantic crossing that carried millions of enslaved Africans to the Americas?

The Middle Passage was one stage of the triangular trade linking Europe, Africa and the Americas. An estimated two million captives, about 14%, died during the voyage.

Which Scottish missionary named Victoria Falls and was famously tracked down by reporter Henry Morton Stanley?

David Livingstone was the first European to see the waterfall, known locally as 'the smoke that thunders'. When he died in 1873 in what is now Zambia, his heart was buried under a tree there.

Which Bantu language, rich in Arabic loanwords, emerged as the common tongue of East Africa's trading ports?

Swahili takes even its own name from Arabic, from a word meaning 'of the coasts'. The borrowings date from centuries of contact between Arab traders and Bantu speakers on the shore.

Which mineral, cut into slabs at the Saharan mines of Taghaza, did desert caravans carry south to West Africa?

Salt was so plentiful at Taghaza that the miners' buildings were made from slabs of it and roofed with camel skins. Each camel carried two thick slabs away.

Which Nubian kingdom on the Nile conquered Egypt and ruled it as the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of pharaohs?

Kush's rulers revived pyramid building on a scale the Nile valley had not seen for centuries, much of it in modern Sudan. Greek writers knew the kingdom as Aethiopia.

Which ancient kingdom in what is now northern Ethiopia adopted Christianity under King Ezana and raised giant obelisks?

Aksum struck its own coins in gold, silver and copper, and the prophet Mani counted it among the four great powers of his age, alongside Rome, Persia and China.

Which empire, ruled from Gao by Sonni Ali and Askia the Great, became one of the largest in African history?

Songhai collapsed after losing the Battle of Tondibi in 1591 to an army sent across the Sahara to seize its trade routes.

Which West African kingdom's palace held thousands of metal plaques that British forces seized in 1897?

Benin's famous bronzes decorated a royal palace in what is now Edo State, Nigeria. After the raid, two hundred pieces went to the British Museum in London.

Which Ethiopian town, laid out as a symbolic Jerusalem, is famed for churches cut from solid rock?

Lalibela shares its name with the king traditionally credited with the churches, who by local tradition was told to build a second Jerusalem in Ethiopia.

Which Tangier-born traveller of the 1300s covered about 117,000 km, more than any other explorer before modern times?

Ibn Battuta travelled farther than Zheng He and Marco Polo put together. Near the end of his life he dictated the story of his journeys, a travelogue known as the Rihla.

Which West African empire rose against Britain in 1900 after a colonial official demanded its sacred Golden Stool?

Ashanti resistance was rallied by a queen mother, Yaa Asantewaa, whom the British later exiled to the Seychelles. The stool stayed hidden in the forest and was never captured.

Which West African kingdom fielded an all-female regiment that Europeans nicknamed the Amazons?

Dahomey's women soldiers called themselves ahosi, the king's wives, or Mino, our mothers. The corps is said to have begun as a band of elephant hunters.

Which Ethiopian emperor crushed an invading Italian army at Adwa in 1896, securing his country's independence?

Menelik II fielded as many as 100,000 men, most carrying modern rifles imported from France and Russia. No other African state of the era owed its freedom to a battlefield victory.

Which 1830s migration took Dutch-speaking settlers by wagon train out of the British-ruled Cape Colony?

The Great Trek's pioneers called themselves Voortrekkers, meaning pathfinders. About 6,000 people, roughly a tenth of the colony's white population, left in the first wave.

Which leader took Ghana to independence in 1957 and helped found the Organisation of African Unity?

Kwame Nkrumah was known at home as Osagyefo, an Akan word for redeemer. He had studied in Pennsylvania before returning home, and a coup removed him in 1966.

Which independence leader, jailed by Britain over the Mau Mau uprising, became his country's first president in 1964?

Jomo Kenyatta studied in London in the 1930s and published a study of Kikuyu life in 1938. He then spent the Second World War working as a farm labourer in Sussex.

Which first prime minister of the independent Congo was dismissed within months and executed in Katanga in 1961?

Patrice Lumumba held office only from June to September 1960. Six decades later, a Belgian prime minister apologised for his government's part in the killing.

In which South African township did school pupils rise up in 1976 against being taught in Afrikaans?

Soweto's protest began on 16 June, now a South African public holiday called Youth Day. A photograph of a dying 12-year-old, Hector Pieterson, became its symbol.

Which breakaway state declared independence from Nigeria in 1967, starting a civil war that ended in 1970?

Biafra was blockaded into famine, and television pictures of its starving children led aid groups to launch a relief airlift. Its leader, Ojukwu, fled into exile as the war ended.

Which country did President Thomas Sankara rename in 1984, dropping the colonial name Upper Volta?

Burkina Faso joins words from two of the country's languages and is usually translated as 'land of the upright men'. 'Burkina' is Mooré for upright.

In which Sudanese city was British general Charles Gordon killed in 1885 when Mahdist forces ended a ten-month siege?

Khartoum fell just two days before a British relief expedition arrived. Realising they were too late, the rescuers withdrew from Sudan altogether.

Which ancient Nigerian culture, named after a village in Kaduna State, left terracotta sculptures first found in 1928?

Nok sculpture may reach back as far as 900 BCE. The first piece was found by the co-owner of a mining partnership, and more turned up later during tin mining.

Which prince, the hero of a West African epic handed down by griots, founded the Mali Empire in the 13th century?

Sundiata Keita is also remembered as the Lion of Mali, and he was the great-uncle of the empire's most famous ruler. His epic is known mainly through oral tradition.

Which 17th-century queen of Ndongo and Matamba, in present-day Angola, resisted Portuguese expansion for decades?

Nzinga, in a popular story, was offered only a floor mat at talks with a Portuguese governor, so an attendant knelt to serve as her chair and she spoke to him face to face.