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Africa and its three great empires

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:30:21 +0000

The first of the three great sub-Saharan empires, the Ghana Empire, which was powerful at the time of the Islamization of Africa, was weakened by attacks from the Almoravids in the 11th century and began to decline. It was gradually reduced to its original core, corresponding to the kingdom of Ouagadou.

Several other kingdoms (Sosso kingdom, Diarra kingdom, etc.) shared domination of the region controlled by Ghana at its peak.

Map of the Ghana Empire at its height in the 10th century.

Around 1230, Soundiata Keïta, king of Mandé, a region roughly corresponding to present-day Mali, united the Malinké to counter the attacks of the king of Sosso, Soumaoro Kanté. In 1235, at the Battle of Kirina, he defeated his adversary. He then continued his conquests, retaking Koumbi Saleh, the former capital of the Empire of Ghana, from the hands of the king of Sosso. He created the second of the three great empires, the very rich and powerful Empire of Mali, which was expanded, organized, and managed by his successors.

The Mali Empire is also known for the “Manden Charter,” dating from 1222 or 1236, which corresponds to the oath taken by Soundiata Keïta at his enthronement. Considered one of the oldest texts relating to human rights, it is an oral, “constitutional” document relating to human rights and the formal and legal organization governing relations between people. It was not transcribed into writing until the 20th century.

After the reign of Mansa Musa II (around 1387), the empire experienced a period of succession troubles that weakened it. At the same time, the Tuareg Berbers, who had remained permanently rebellious, launched attacks against the cities of the Sahel region, notably Timbuktu, which they seized in 1433. The Portuguese, meanwhile, arrived on the continent at the beginning of the 15th century and traded with the empire while also participating in its weakening by promoting their trade, notably in slaves. They supported the small coastal communities and encouraged them to emancipate themselves.

Map of the Songhai Empire in the 16th century.

Tuareg domination in the northern region was short-lived. Under the leadership of Sonni Ali Ber (“Sonni Ali the Great”), considered a great strategist, the Kingdom of Songhai, which had been tributary to the Mali Empire since 1300, implemented a policy of territorial conquest, breaking with the raiding-based economy that had prevailed until then. He fought and defeated the Fulani and the Tuareg, and he reclaimed Timbuktu in 1468. This was the advent of the third empire, the Songhai Empire, which developed during the 15th and 16th centuries, building on territorial conquest and a political organization largely inspired by that of the Mali Empire.

Sonni Ali, a “facade” Muslim, remained faithful to Songhai traditions. Upon his death, the Muslim party prevailed, and the Songhai Empire was ruled by a Muslim dynasty, the Askia dynasty, which brought the empire to its peak in the 16th century. At the end of the 16th century, civil wars, combined with assaults by the Saadians—who contested Songhai’s possession of the salt mines of Teghazza in the Sahara—further weakened the empire. The Battle of Tondibi, lost against the Saadians on April 12, 1591, marked the end of the empire and its allegiance to the Sultan of Morocco.

Map of the Songhai Empire in the 16th century.

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Africa: intra-african trade and arab treaty

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:25:07 +0000

Like other social organizations of the same period, African communities were unequal and based on slavery and, in some places, on a caste system linked to trades (castes of blacksmiths, weavers, griots, etc.). The slave trade had existed for a long time in Africa, connected to captives taken in warfare.

With the Islamic surge, trans-Saharan trade intensified, circulating gold, salt, and slaves between the North and South of the continent. The latter formed a significant part of the caravans. The Arab slave trade took on an additional dimension by accentuating, in addition to the intra-African trade, a sustained intercontinental traffic, long before the Europeans.

Thus, for example, the east coast of Africa had supplied India and China with black slaves since at least the 9th century. The Arab slave trade involved around seventeen million deported individuals.

Slave trade routes in Africa in the Middle Ages.

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The atlantic slave trade in africa

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:18:04 +0000

The slave trade developed massively with the arrival of the Portuguese, followed by other Europeans, who organized the “Atlantic slave trade,” in addition to the intra-African slave trade that continued to use the caravan routes and the Arab slave trade, which transited through the Mediterranean (towards Europe) and the Indian Ocean (towards the Middle East, India, and Asia). The Atlantic slave trade took the form of the “triangular trade” in the North Atlantic: ships from Europe, loaded with goods (fabrics, weapons, alcohol, etc.), landed on the coasts, exchanged these products for slaves, who were then sold in the Antilles and America. The ships then brought back, in particular, molasses from sugar cane, intended to make sugar and alcohol in European distilleries. In the South Atlantic, it was the “straight trade,” practiced by the Portuguese, that dominated; the ships directly linked the African coasts to the American and Antilles coasts.

It was the Portuguese who established the slave trade in the 15th century. African slaves from Arguin (an island in present-day Mauritania) were sold in the Portuguese city of Lagos in 1444, and the first black slaves were introduced to Hispaniola in 1493. The Portuguese discovered the Cape Verde Islands in 1456 and then those of São Tomé and Príncipe in 1471, which were deserted at the time. They settled there and began to cultivate sugarcane using slaves from the continent. They thus established a plantation economy that was quickly transposed to the American colonies in 1505, and the first triangular circuit was set up, bound for Cibao and Hispaniola. The Portuguese were the first and, for a hundred and fifty years, the only European nation involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The circuits were, from their beginnings in the late 15th century, controlled and organized. The King of Portugal granted exclusive navigation and marketing rights in exchange for royalties.

The Atlantic slave trade accelerated as the exploitation of the American continent by Europeans was accompanied by a strong demand for labor for the plantations of sugarcane, coffee, cocoa, cotton, tobacco, etc., which developed massively in the second half of the 16th century. The demand also extended to the exploitation of silver and gold mines in Peru and Mexico, though to a lesser extent. The Portuguese, and later more broadly, European settlements on the West African coast became the hubs of the slave trade, while within the continent, complex exchange circuits were established, the European Atlantic slave trade combining with the previous circuits that persisted: those of the Eastern slave trade on the east coast and the trans-Saharan slave trade oriented towards the north.

Other European powers became involved in the slave trade in the 16th and 17th centuries, including the French, the English, the Dutch, and even the Danes and Swedes. These European nations followed the same path as Portugal, creating chartered companies (benefiting from a monopoly or privilege granted by a state). However, over time, they were gradually replaced by purely privately run companies; around 1720, the latter dominated the trade, taking advantage of the gradual deregulation granted by European governments. The role of countries in the slave trade fluctuated according to the struggles and balances of power among European nations. The end of the 17th century was marked by French domination, while England dominated the Atlantic slave trade at its peak in the 18th century.

The Europeans had not yet penetrated the interior of the continent. Established on the coast, they traded with coastal ethnic groups and kingdoms that supplied slaves captured inland. African kingdoms, both warriors and traders, prospered thanks to this trade—which coexisted with the oriental slave trade—such as the Kingdom of Dahomey, the kingdom of Kongo, the Ashanti Empire, and the kingdom of Kanem-Bornu, to the detriment in particular of inland Africa, which was the object of incessant raids.

The number of slaves deported from Africa as part of the Atlantic slave trade is estimated to be around twelve million in 400 years.

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North africa and the berber-muslim rise

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:12:15 +0000

In the 11th century, the expansion of Islam in Africa entered a second phase, which was more warlike and justified by Jihad, as the Islamized Berbers of the Almoravid dyn-asty set out to conquer the continent, moving both north and south . In the north, they founded Marrakech around 1062, captured Fez in 1075 , and took Tlemcen in 1080 . In the south, they seized the capital of the Ghana Empire, Koumbi Saleh, in 1076, following a “bloody expedition, punctuated everywhere by pillaging, massa-cres, and manhunts,” with the help of the kingdom of Tekrour. The king of Ghana eventually converted to Islam.

The influence of Islam did not extend beyond the 10th parallel north in its southward expansion , where the great equatorial forest begins. This region was difficult to traverse and not conducive to dense settlement . Some historians also attribute this halt to the presence of the tsetse fly, a vector of sleeping sickness, which posed a danger to the horses of Arab riders. However , the cessation of geo-graphical expansion can also be explained by the desire of Abu Bakr ben Omar’s succes-sors , the conqueror of the Ghana Empire, to consolidate Almoravid pos-sessions in Africa and elsewhere.

When the Almohads succeeded the Almoravids in the 12th century, the map of Islam in Africa was largely fixed. The religion was present and dominant in the north of the con-tinent up to the northern border of the tropical forest, as well as in the eastern coastal zone.

The Almohad Empire at its maximum extent, between 1195 and 1212.

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Africa, Cradle of Humanity

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 16:04:37 +0000

Africa is considered the cradle of humanity, where the human lineage appeared, and where the only surviving species today is the modern human, Homo sapiens. During the 20th century, paleoanthropologists discovered a large number of fossils and evidence of occupation by hominid precursors of humans, dated by radiometric dating to: 7 million years before present for the species Sahelanthropus tchadensis (Toumaï fossil), 6 million years for Orrorin tugenensis, 4 million years for the Ardi fossil of the species Ardipithecus ramidus, 3.9 to 3.0 million years for Australopithecus afarensis, 2.3 to 1.4 million years before present for Paranthropus boisei, and approximately 1.9 million to 600,000 years before present for Homo ergaster.

After the evolution of Homo sapiens, about 200 to 100,000 years ago, the continent was mainly populated by hunter-gatherer groups. According to the “Out of Africa” theory, these first modern humans left Africa and populated the rest of the world between 80 and 50,000 years ago. They would have left the continent by crossing the Red Sea via the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Isthmus of Suez. Other migrations of these modern humans, within the continent, date from the same periods, with traces of early human settlement in southern Africa, North Africa, and the Sahara.

Lucy, skeleton of Australopithecus afarensis
Discovered on November 24, 1974 in the Awash Valley, Afar Depression, Ethiopia.

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Julius nyerere and the independentist militants

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:53:49 +0000

The 1950s saw a political evolution, but also the emergence, in France, of cartierism, a movement of thought that explained that colonies, instead of being a source of profit, were expensive, and that it was better to finance the mother country. The analysis is extended by the notion of the Dutch complex, which aims to demonstrate that the abandonment of colonies boosted the economy of the metropolis, taking the example of the Netherlands, which lost its colony of Indonesia at the end of the 1940s and experienced strong economic growth in the 1950s due to a reorientation of public spending and investment.

It was in this context that the decolonization movement began, which British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan referred to in 1960 as the “Wind of Change.”

In 1951, defeated Italy was forced by the UN to grant independence to Libya, whose territory was occupied by French and British forces. The French protectorates of Morocco and Tunisia gained independence in 1956. Sub-Saharan Africa followed with the independence of the Gold Coast, which became Ghana in 1957, marking the beginning of a relatively peaceful and negotiated wave of independence that lasted until 1960. By its end, more than twenty countries had obtained their political emancipation, including most of the French colonies. From 1960 to 1965, it was mainly the British possessions (Nigeria, Tanganyika which became Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Northern Rhodesia, which became Zambia) that were concerned. The negotiations were more complicated there because of the strong presence of white settlers from Kenya or a great ethnic or religious diversity from Nigeria.

Tanganyika (now Tanzania) was granted independence from the United Kingdom on 9 December 1961, without any violence. Julius Nyerere was briefly Prime Minister during the monarchy and then became the first President of the Republic of Tanganyika following elections in December 1962.

Some instances of independence, however, are more wrested than negotiated. For Algeria, independence came in 1962 after a war that began in 1954. Southern Rhodesia became Rhodesia, then Zimbabwe-Rhodesia and finally Zimbabwe, unilaterally declaring its independence in 1965. The Portuguese possessions (Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, Angola, and Mozambique) experienced wars that only ended with the end of the Salazar regime, in 1974 and 1975, a period that also marked Spain’s abandonment of the Spanish Sahara (albeit with a disputed status). Other territories gained their independence later from non-European countries. Namibia had to wait until the end of apartheid in South Africa in 1990 to achieve independence. Eritrea, reunited with Ethiopia at the end of the Second World War, broke away in 1993 after thirty years of war. South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011.

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Africa and jihadist insurrections

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:45:44 +0000

Since the end of the 20th century, Africa has been massively affected by jihadist insurrections. In the 1990s, Algeria descended into a civil war. From 2003, the unrest began to spread to the Sahel. In 2006, Islamists seized Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia. In 2009, an insurrection broke out in northeastern Nigeria. In 2012, northern Mali came under the control of groups linked to al-Qaeda.

The main Salafist jihadist groups in Africa are the Al-Shabab movement (operating in Somalia and Kenya), Boko Haram (operating in Nigeria, Niger, Cameroon, and Chad), AQIM (operating in Algeria, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Tunisia, and Libya), and various other Sahelian groups linked to al-Qaeda (Ansar Dine, MUJAO, The Signatories in Blood, Al-Mourabitoune, Ansarul Islam, and the Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims). The Islamic State also appeared on the continent in the mid-2010s, notably with the rallying of part of Boko Haram, which formed the Islamic State in West Africa, the rallying of part of al-Mourabitoune, which formed the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara, and the rallies of Majilis Choura Chabab al-Islam in Libya, Ansar Baït al-Maqdis in Egypt, Jund al-Khilafah in Algeria, and some other groups in Tunisia, Somalia, and Mozambique.

The rise of jihadist movements and the multiplication of armed conflicts on the continent have led to several international interventions, notably those of France (in the Sahel with Operation Serval and then Barkhane) and the United States (Operation Enduring Freedom – Trans Sahara). These interventions aim to support allied governments but also to weaken jihadist hotbeds likely to constitute bases for terrorist attacks against Europe.

According to the Global Terrorism Index, between 2014 and 2015, Nigeria was the second country in the world after Iraq that was most affected by Islamist terrorist attacks, in terms of the number of deaths. Sub-Saharan Africa also holds the grim record for the highest average number of deaths per terrorist act (6.7 deaths), and Boko Haram was the deadliest terrorist group on the planet in 2014.

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Bantu expansion in africa

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:34:21 +0000

While the civilizations of the Nilotic area were prospering and developing, around 2000 BC or 1500 BC, the first Bantu migration to the tropical forests of Central Africa began, from a location in the southeast of present-day Nigeria and Cameroon. This was likely caused by demographic pressure from Saharan populations fleeing desertification. The second phase of migration, about a thousand years later, around 1000 BC, brought them to southern and eastern Africa. The Bantu, who were breeders and semi-nomads, migrated southward, where they both mixed and clashed with local hunter-gatherer populations. Their movement continued until they reached the region inhabited by Khoisan-speaking people in southern Africa. These events explain the ethnolinguistic map of present-day Africa.

Area of Bantu languages.

1 = 3000–1500 BC, origin

2 = approx. 1500 BC, first migrations

2.a = Eastern Bantu, 2.b = Western Bantu

3 = 1000—500 BC, Urewe, the core of Eastern Bantu

4–7 = advance south

9 = 500 BC—0, Congo core

10 = 0—1000 AD, last phase147.

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Africa And Colonial Domination

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:27:20 +0000

In 1880, less than 20% of the continent was in European hands at the dawn of mass colonization. These were coastal areas in the West, while East Africa was free of European presence. Only southern Africa was significantly occupied, up to 250 km inland, as well as Algeria, which was conquered by the French in 1830. Between 1880 and 1910, due to the technological superiority of the Europeans, almost all of its territory was conquered and occupied by the imperialist powers that established a colonial system. The period after 1910 was essentially one of consolidation of the system.

This rise caused tensions among European countries; this was particularly the case in the Congo region, where Belgian, Portuguese, and French interests clashed, and in southern Africa, where the British and Afrikaners fought. To deal with the situation, the European states organized the Berlin Conference in late 1884 and early 1885, in the absence of any African representatives, which resulted in a treaty setting out the rules to which the signatories agreed to submit as part of their colonization process. This had the effect of accelerating colonization and therefore the deployment of the “3 Cs” (commerce, Christianity, civilization) in the name of the “white man’s burden.”

Two countries escaped the division of Africa: Liberia, created by an American colonization company in 1822 and having proclaimed its independence on July 26, 1847, and Ethiopia, a sovereign state since Antiquity, which managed to repel the colonization attempt of the Italians, to whom it inflicted a defeat at the Battle of Adwa on March 1, 1896. This was the first decisive victory of an African country over the colonialists.

What French speakers call “the sharing of Africa,” thus emphasizing the consequences for the continent, is called Scramble for Africa by English speakers, who thus highlight the causes. This term is correlated with the economist analysis which suggests that this colonization was triggered by the need for raw materials of the European economies, engaged in the industrial revolution and international trade. The term also refers to the economic competition between nations on African soil. For the economist’s meaning, inspired by John Atkinson Hobson, imperialism and colonization are the consequences of economic exploitation practiced by capitalists and the result of rivalries between nations.

Colonial Africa in 1914. Colonial Africa in 1930.

Most colonial regimes put an end, de jure, to slavery in their zone of influence—although the practice continued de facto for a long time to come—thus assuming a role of “civilizing mission.” This is a second explanatory part of the “rush”: the feeling of superiority of Europe vis-à-vis Africa, reinforced by the theories of Darwinism and social atavism as well as by the period of the slave trade, which had seen the rise of racist sentiment and the idea of hierarchy between races (a school of thought called racialist, embodied for example by Gobineau, author of an Essay on the Inequality of Human Races in 1855), all of this justifying bringing civilization and Christianity to the peoples of the “dark continent,” via the “sword and the holy water sprinkler.”

The colonial economy that was established was based mainly on two sectors: mining and the trade of agricultural products. The internationalized commercial activity (trade economy) was in the hands of the Europeans via their import-export firms, which had the capital necessary for local investment.

Several mechanisms structure this economy: the poll tax, which forces Africans to work as wage labor on behalf of the colonists to pay the tax, compulsory plantations, “abject” forced labor and migratory labor, population displacement, land seizure, the native code in its various variants which exclude the colonized from common law, British indirect rule. This significantly disrupts existing social structures and the economic system, which leads to poverty, malnutrition, famines, and epidemics. These practices, already brutal, are aggravated by bloody repressions against uprisings and resistance. The repression of the Hereros (1904-1907) is arguably the first genocide of the 20th century.

The First World War mobilized 1.5 million African combatants, and, in total, 2.5 million people were affected by the war effort.

The period that followed, up to the dawn of the Second World War, is called the “heyday” of colonialism; colonial powers built roads, railways, schools, and clinics. Nevertheless, “the period 1920-1935 remained a harsh colonial period. During the Great Depression [1929], there was deep poverty.” Africa became increasingly integrated into the world economy, and the continent benefited from the recovery—interrupted by the Second World War—that followed the crisis of 1929 until about 1950, when corporate profits peaked.

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Arab conquest of north africa

admin — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 15:20:22 +0000

In North Africa, after a short Vandal occupation (439 to 534) and then a Byzantine influence (Exarchate of Carthage, c. 590-642), the Arab conquest began at the beginning of the 7th century under the reign of the Umayyad dynasty: “In 639, the Arabs gained a foothold in Africa, only seven years after the death of the Prophet.” In 641, having just conquered Egypt, they founded the city of Al-Fustât (today Cairo) and built the first mosque in Africa. In 670, the Arab general Oqba Ibn Nafi al-Fihri established his camp on the site of what would become the city of Kairouan (today Tunisia), where construction of the Great Mosque of Kairouan began the same year. Despite much resistance, particularly that of the indigenous Berbers (with the historical figures of Koceïla and Kahena in particular), and that of the kingdoms of Nubia, Christianized since the 6th century, the Arabization and Islamization of the Maghreb progressed rapidly.

At the time when the Arabs conquered North Africa, thanks to the trade in gold and salt, the most powerful and richest political entity south of the Sahara was the empire of Ghana. The influence of Islam was quickly felt there; the traders were mostly Muslim, and an Islamized political elite was created around a king who remained, however, like his population, an animist.

The Senegal River area, dominated by the kingdom of Tekrour, was partly Islamized from the 7th century and would be more massively so in the 9th century; the kingdom of Kanem, which would become the kingdom of Kanem-Bornu in the 12th century, established in the 8th century in the north of present-day Chad, was Islamized in the 9th century. The Songhai, mixed with Berbers fleeing the Arab advance, settled at the beginning of the 7th century along the banks of the Niger; they founded a small kingdom, Islamized in the 9th century, which would become the powerful Songhai Empire (whose peak was in the 15th and 16th centuries).

The eastern coast of the continent, bathed by the Indian Ocean, has long been—at least since the beginning of the 1st century, as attested by The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea—turned towards Arabia and, beyond, towards India, China as well as Europe. At the time of the development of Islam, Swahili culture, a cultural mix between Africa and the Arab-Muslim world, developed concomitantly; the Islamization of the area is attested from the 8th century when Muslim trading cities were founded or developed. But Muslim merchants limited their activities to coastal establishments, the hinterland escaping Islamic influences.

The Islamization of sub-Saharan Africa is essentially peaceful and, to some extent, superficial. It is an acculturation and not a colonization or a conquest. The propagation of religion is also the work of sub-Saharan Africans (Hausas, Peuls, Dioulas), who spread the religion while trading. The term “court Islam” is sometimes used to refer to the Muslim elites of commerce, science, and politics who coexist with populations that have remained largely animist.

Further south, in a region populated since the 6th century BC, in the southwest of present-day Nigeria, the Ife civilization (or Ifé) developed around the eponymous city, which became an important city from the 9th century until the 12th century. It remained a major artistic center until the 14th century.

Further south, in the region of present-day Zimbabwe and Mozambique, the Bantus, who arrived in the area around 500 AD, driving out the indigenous San before them, built Great Zimbabwe between the 11th and 13th centuries, the capital of the Monomotapa empire, renowned, even mythical, for its gold. It reached its peak in the 15th century. The Portuguese tried to dominate the empire from the 16th century, attracted by the gold, but they did not succeed until 1629; the Monomotapa of this period had already declined sharply, its gold sources were tending to run out, and the slave trade had come under the domination of the coastal and island states of the east coast.

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