At the instigation of Portugal, the Berlin Conference was convened by the German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, with 13 European powers and the United States represented. Its purpose was to establish a mutually agreed protocol for the colonization of Africa. The Conference reached agreement regarding some existing conflicts between the... More
From 1808–34, the abolition movement progressively eliminated the slave trade with North America, but the Islamic Sokoto caliphate did its best to compensate. Founded in 1804 by a Sufist rebellion, this confederation of emirates became one of Africa’s largest polities and second only to the American South in its slave... More
After the ‘Scramble for Africa’, triggered by the Berlin Conference of 1884, over 90 per cent of Africa had been claimed by a colonial power by 1914. Of this land area, well over 90 per cent was assigned to what would become the Allied Powers. Of the Central Powers, Austria-Hungary... More
After World War II, the UN issued a declaration that all people had the right to self-governance and in 1945 created an agency to supervise the decolonization of dependent territories, some of which had been ceded by Italy after its defeat in World War II. In 1947, these territories were... More
The Saadi dynasty of Morocco, would, in a decade, sound the death knell for two African empires. Their campaign (1590–91) destroyed the Songhay and annexed their lucrative trading networks; earlier the crushing of the ‘crusade’ of King Sebastian (1578) had led quickly to Portugal’s absorption by Spain. Moroccan control of... More
British Commonwealth forces achieved the first Allied campaign victory of the war. Mussolini had been quick to follow his declaration of war (June 1940) with invasions of British Somaliland, Sudan and Kenya. But the British seized maritime control and counterattacked forcefully. By April 1941, East Africa had been secured, with... More
In the 16th century the Songhay Empire dominated in West Africa through control of the lucrative trans-Saharan caravan routes and trade in slaves and gold. This dominance would be abruptly shattered by the invasion of Sultan Ahmad Al-Mansur of Morocco (1591). The Moroccans soon withdrew, enabling the Air Dynasty of... More
The nomadic Bedouin followed in the wake of the Islamic conquest of North Africa, spreading from their heartlands in Syria, Jordan and Arabia. Pastoralists, they would occupy the arid steppes on the margins of arable cultivation, ranging over wide areas and trading their livestock produce for the cereals, dates and... More
The America’s earliest abolitionist newspaper, the “Manumission Intelligencer” was actually published in the slave state of Tennessee by a white ex-slave owner, Elihu Embree in 1819. However, black leaders soon stepped forward to “plead their own cause”, in the words of the Reverend Samuel E. Cornish, founder of “Freedom’s Journal”,... More
The late 18th and early 19th centuries saw a series of Muslim uprisings amongst Fula populations across West Africa, which resulted in the establishment of a number of Jihad states. These events, known as the Fula Jihads, were conducted upon religious calls to arms by local Islamic leaders who rallied... More
As befits the starting point for human evolution, the African continent has incredible linguistic diversity. The aboriginal languages of much of Africa were probably similar to the Khoisan linguistic group, now almost entirely confined to the Bushmen and Hottentots in southwestern Africa. A thousand years ago, two great waves of... More
The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was established in 1963 to coordinate African state cooperation, to defend state sovereignty and eradicate colonialism. In 2001, it became the African Union (AU) and consisted of all 55 African states. The AU’s 2017 mission statement is ‘Towards a Peaceful, Prosperous & Integrated Africa’.... More