The history of Africa begins with the emergence of hominids, archaic humans and—at least 200,000 years ago—anatomically modern humans (Homo sapiens), in East Africa, and continues unbroken into the present as a patchwork of diverse and politically developing nation states.[1]The earliest known recorded history arose in Ancient Egypt, and later in Nubia, the Sahel, the Maghreb and the Horn of Africa.
Following the desertification of the Sahara, North African history became entwined with the Middle East and Southern Europe while the Bantu expansion swept from modern day Cameroon (Central Africa) across much of the sub-Saharan continent in waves between around 1000 BC and 0 AD, creating a linguistic commonality across much of the central and Southern continent.[2]
During the Middle Ages, Islam spread west from Arabia to Egypt, crossing the Maghreb and the Sahel. Some notable pre-colonial states and societies in Africa include the Ajuran Empire, D'mt, Adal Sultanate, Alodia, Warsangali Sultanate, Kingdom of Nri, Nok culture, Mali Empire, Songhai Empire, Benin Empire, Oyo Empire, Kingdom of Lunda (Punu-yaka), Ashanti Empire, Ghana Empire, Mossi Kingdoms, Mutapa Empire, Kingdom of Mapungubwe, Kingdom of Sine, Kingdom of Sennar, Kingdom of Saloum, Kingdom of Baol, Kingdom of Cayor, Kingdom of Zimbabwe, Kingdom of Kongo, Empire of Kaabu, Kingdom of Ile Ife, Ancient Carthage, Numidia, Mauretania, and the Aksumite Empire. At its peak, prior to European colonialism, it is estimated that Africa had up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs.[3]
From the mid-7th century, the Arab slave trade saw Muslim Arabs enslave Africans. Following an armistice between the Rashidun Caliphate and the Kingdom of Makuria after the Second Battle of Dongola in 652 AD, they were transported, along with Asians and Europeans, across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert.[citation needed]
From the late 15th century, Europeans joined the slave trade. One could say the Portuguese led in partnership with other Europeans. That includes the triangular trade, with the Portuguese initially acquiring slaves through trade and later by force as part of the Atlantic slave trade. They transported enslaved West, Central, and Southern Africans overseas.[4] Subsequently, European colonization of Africa developed rapidly from around 10% (1870) to over 90% (1914) in the Scramble for Africa (1881–1914). However following struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, as well as a weakened Europe after the Second World War (1939–1945), decolonization took place across the continent, culminating in the 1960 Year of Africa.[5]
History of Africa
AFRICA
'THE STORY'
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area.[4] With 1.3 billion people[1][2] as of 2018, it accounts for about 16% of the world's human population. Africa's average population is the youngest amongst all the continents;[5][6] the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4.[7] Despite a wide range of natural resources, the continent is the least wealthy per capita in large part due to the legacies of European colonization in Africa. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context.
The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognised sovereign states (countries), eight territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Algeria is Africa's largest country by area, and Nigeria is its largest by population. African nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa.
Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones.[8] The majority of the continent and its countries are in the Northern Hemisphere, with a substantial portion and number of countries in the Southern Hemisphere. Africa is home to much biodiversity; it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. However, Africa also is heavily affected by a wide range of environmental issues, including desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, and other issues. These entrenched environmental concerns are expected to worsen as climate change impacts Africa. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified Africa as the most vulnerable continent to climate change.[9][10]
Africa, particularly central Eastern Africa, is widely accepted as the place of origin of humans and the Hominidae clade (great apes), meaning that Africa has a long and complex history. The earliest hominids and their ancestors have been dated to around 7 million years ago, including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster—the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human), found in Ethiopia, date to circa 200,000 years ago.[11] Early human civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Phoenicia emerged in North Africa. Following a subsequent long and complex history of civilizations, migration and trade, Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. The last 400 years have witnessed an increasing European influence on the continent. Starting in the 16th century, this was driven by trade, including the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which created large African diaspora populations in the Americas. In the late 19th century, European countries colonized almost all of Africa, extracting resources from the continent and exploiting local communities; most present states in Africa emerged from a process of decolonisation in the 20th century.
East Africa or Eastern Africa is the eastern region of the African continent, variably defined by geography. In the United Nations Statistics Division scheme of geographic regions, 20 territories make up Eastern Africa:[1]
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Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and South Sudan are members of the East African Community (EAC). The first five are also included in the African Great Lakes region. Burundi and Rwanda are at times also considered to be part of Central Africa.
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Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia and Somalia – collectively known as the Horn of Africa.[2][3][4][5][6] The area is the easternmost projection of the African continent.[7]
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Comoros, Mauritius and Seychelles – small island nations in the Indian Ocean.
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Réunion and Mayotte – French overseas territories also in the Indian Ocean.
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Mozambique and Madagascar – often considered part of Southern Africa, on the eastern side of the sub-continent. Madagascar has close cultural ties to Southeast Asia and the islands of the Indian Ocean.
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Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe – often also included in Southern Africa, and formerly constituted the Central African Federation (also known historically as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland).
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Sudan and South Sudan – collectively part of the Nile Valley. Situated in the northeastern and central portion of the continent,[8] Sudan is sometimes included in Northern Africa.[9] Also members of the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) free trade area.
Due to colonial territories of the British East Africa Protectorate and German East Africa, the term East Africa is often (especially in the English language) used to specifically refer to the area now comprising the three countries of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda.[10][11][12][13] However, this has never been the convention in many other languages, where the term generally had a wider, strictly geographic context and therefore typically included Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia
Nubia (/ˈnuːbiə, ˈnjuː-/) is a region along the Nile river encompassing the area between Aswan in southern Egypt and Khartoum in central Sudan. It was the seat of one of the earliest civilizations of ancient Africa, as the Kerma culture lasted from around 2500 BC until its conquest by the New Kingdom of Egypt under pharaoh Thutmose I around 1500 BC. Nubia was home to several empires, most prominently the kingdom of Kush, which conquered Egypt during the 8th century BC during the reign of Piye and ruled the country as its Twenty-fifth Dynasty (to be replaced a century later by the native Egyptian Twenty-sixth Dynasty).
The collapse of Kush in the 4th century AD after more than a thousand years of existence was precipitated by an invasion by Ethiopia's Kingdom of Aksum and saw the rise of three Christian kingdoms, Nobatia, Makuria and Alodia, the last two again lasting for roughly a millennium. Their eventual decline initiated not only the partition of Nubia into the northern half conquered by the Ottomans and the southern half by the Sennar sultanate in the 16th century, but also a rapid Islamization and partial Arabization of the Nubian people. Nubia was again united with the Khedivate of Egypt in the 19th century. Today, the region of Nubia is split between Egypt and Sudan.
The primarily archaeological science dealing with ancient Nubia is called Nubiology.
The Sahel (/səˈhɛl/, sāḥil; ساحل Arabic pronunciation: [ˈsaːħil] "coast, shore")[1] is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south. Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea. The name is derived from the Arabic term for "coast, shore": this is explained as being used in a figurative sense (in reference to the southern edge of the vast Sahara).[2][3] However, such figurative use is unattested in Classical Arabic, and it has been suggested that the word may originally have been derived from the Arabic word sahl سهل "plain" instead.[4]
The Sahel part of Africa includes from west to east parts of northern Senegal, southern Mauritania, central Mali, northern Burkina Faso, the extreme south of Algeria, Niger, the extreme north of Nigeria, the extreme north of Cameroon and Central African Republic, central Chad, central and southern Sudan, the extreme north of South Sudan, Eritrea, and the extreme north of Ethiopia.[5]
Historically, the western part of the Sahel was sometimes known as the Sudan region (bilād as-sūdān بلاد السودان "lands of the blacks"). This belt was roughly located between the Sahara and the coastal areas of West Africa.
The Horn of Africa ( Amharic: የአፍሪካ ቀንድ, romanized: yäafrika qänd,Somali: Geeska Afrika, Oromo: Gaaffaa Afriikaa, Tigrinya: ቀርኒ ኣፍሪቃ, romanized: q’ärnī afīrīqa, Arabic: القرن الأفريقي, romanized: al-qarn al-'afrīqī) (shortened to HoA) is a peninsula in Africa.[1][2][3][4] It lies along the southern side of the Red Sea and extends hundreds of kilometers into the Gulf of Aden, Somali Sea and Guardafui Channel. The area is the easternmost projection of the African continent. Referred to in ancient and medieval times as the land of the Barbara and Habesha,[5][6][7] the Horn of Africa denotes the region containing the countries of Djibouti, Somaliland, Eritrea, Ethiopia, and Somalia.[8][3][2][1]
It covers approximately 2 million km2 (770 thousand sq mi) and is inhabited by roughly 115 million people (Ethiopia: 96.6 million, Somalia: 15.4 million, Eritrea: 6.4 million, and Djibouti: 0.81 million). Regional studies on the Horn of Africa are carried out, among others, in the fields of Ethiopian Studies as well as Somali Studies.
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The Maghreb (/ˈmʌɡrəb/; Arabic: المغرب al-Maghrib, "the west"), also known as Northwest Africa,[2] the Arab Maghreb (المغرب العربي al-Maghrib al-ʻArabī), and Barbary,[3][4] is a subregion of North Africa that is effectively a western part of the Arab world and is predominantly Muslim. The region includes Algeria, Libya, Mauritania (part of West Africa), Morocco, and Tunisia, which are all member states of the Arab Maghreb Union (AMU). The Maghreb additionally includes the disputed territories of Western Sahara (controlled mostly by Morocco and partly by the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) and the cities of Ceuta and Melilla (both are controlled by Spain but claimed by Morocco). As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.
Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, English and European sources often referred to the region as the Barbary Coast or the Barbary States, a term derived from the Berbers.[5][6] Sometimes, the region is referred to as the Land of the Atlas, derived from the Atlas Mountains found in the region.[7] In Berber languages, "Tamazgha" refers to the Maghreb region together with smaller parts of Mali, Niger, Egypt, and the Spanish Canary Islands—the lands traditionally inhabited by Berbers.
The Maghreb is usually defined as much of northern Africa, including a large portion of Africa's Sahara Desert, but excludes Egypt and Sudan, which are considered to be in the Mashriq, the eastern part of the Arab world. The traditional definition of the Maghreb, which restricted it to the Atlas Mountains and the coastal plains of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya, was expanded by the inclusion of Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara.
During the era of Al-Andalus in the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492), the Maghreb's inhabitants, the Muslim Berbers or Maghrebi, were known by Europeans as "Moors",[8] or as "Afariqah" (Roman Africans).[9][need quotation to verify] Morocco transliterates into Arabic as "al-Maghreb" (The Maghreb).
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River, situated in the place that is now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology)[1] with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes (often identified with Narmer).[2] The history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.
Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power in the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Near East, after which it entered a period of slow decline. During the course of its history Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians under the command of Alexander the Great. The Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.[3]
The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.[4]
The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques, the first known planked boats,[5] Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites.[6] Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. A new-found respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy.[7]