The thread
Three million years, in order.
African history is usually taught in fragments. Here it runs as one line — from the first stone tools to the plans for 2063 — with every milestone opening the full entry.
- c. 3.6 million years agoEast Africa
Laetoli footprints
Hominins walk upright across wet volcanic ash in Tanzania and leave the prints behind.
Read: The Great Rift Valley → - c. 3.3 million years agoEast Africa
First stone tools
Lomekwi in Kenya yields the oldest known deliberately flaked stone tools, older than the genus Homo.
Read: The First Humans → - c. 315,000 years agoNorth Africa
Early Homo sapiens at Jebel Irhoud
Moroccan fossils push the origin of our species back and spread it right across the continent.
Read: The First Humans → - c. 100,000 years agoSouthern Africa
Pigment workshop at Blombos
Ochre processed and stored in abalone shells at the southern Cape: a repeated recipe.
Read: Blombos Cave → - c. 70,000–50,000 years ago
The successful migration out of Africa
One dispersal populates the rest of the planet; everyone outside Africa descends from it.
Read: Out of Africa — and Back Again → - c. 11,000 – 5,000 years agoSahara
The Green Sahara
Monsoon rains turn the Sahara into lakes and grassland, with herders, fish and rock art.
Read: When the Sahara Was Green → - c. 4800 BCENorth Africa
Nabta Playa
A megalithic calendar circle in the Nubian Desert, older than Stonehenge.
Read: Reading the African Sky → - c. 3100 BCENorth Africa
Unification of Egypt
Upper and Lower Egypt join under one crown, beginning three thousand years of dynastic rule.
Read: Ancient Egypt → - c. 2500 BCENorth East Africa
Kerma rises in Nubia
The first great Nubian state grows on the Nile south of Egypt.
Read: The Kingdom of Kush → - c. 1500 BCE
Bantu expansion accelerates
Farming communities spread east and south from the Nigeria–Cameroon borderlands.
Read: The Bantu Expansion → - 814 BCENorth Africa
Carthage founded
A Phoenician colony on the Tunisian coast becomes the western Mediterranean's great power.
Read: Carthage → - c. 750 BCENorth East Africa
Kushite pharaohs rule Egypt
The 25th Dynasty from Napata governs the whole Nile valley.
Read: The Kingdom of Kush → - c. 500 BCEWest Africa
Nok terracotta and early iron
Central Nigerian communities produce remarkable sculpture and work iron.
Read: The Nok Culture → - c. 300 BCENorth East Africa
Meroë becomes the Kushite capital
An iron-working, pyramid-building city with its own Meroitic script.
Read: Meroë → - c. 100 CEHorn of Africa
Aksum emerges
A trading empire on the Red Sea minting its own coins in gold, silver and bronze.
Read: Aksum → - c. 250 CEWest Africa
Jenne-jeno at its height
An urban centre on the Niger inland delta that grew without kings or walls.
Read: Jenné-jeno → - c. 330 CEHorn of Africa
Aksum adopts Christianity
Ezana's conversion makes Ethiopia one of the world's oldest Christian states.
Read: Ethiopia and the Solomonic Line → - c. 700 CE
Trans-Saharan trade intensifies
Camel caravans link West African gold to Mediterranean and Islamic markets.
Read: The Empire of Ghana → - c. 800 CEWest Africa
Ghana Empire dominates the gold trade
Wagadu's rulers tax the gold and salt that crosses the desert.
Read: The Empire of Ghana → - c. 900 CEWest Africa
Igbo-Ukwu bronzes
Nigerian metalworkers cast objects of extraordinary delicacy by lost-wax method.
Read: Gold, Copper and the Deep Mines → - c. 1000 CEEast Africa
Swahili city-states flourish
Kilwa, Mombasa, Lamu and Zanzibar trade across the Indian Ocean monsoon.
Read: The Swahili Coast → - 1235West Africa
Sundiata founds the Mali Empire
Victory at Kirina and the Kurukan Fuga charter set out a constitution in oral law.
Read: Sundiata Keita → - 1270Horn of Africa
Solomonic dynasty restored in Ethiopia
A line claiming descent from Solomon and Sheba rules until 1974.
Read: Ethiopia and the Solomonic Line → - 1324West Africa
Mansa Musa's pilgrimage
Mali's ruler crosses to Mecca with so much gold that Cairo's prices fall for years.
Read: Mansa Musa → - c. 1350Southern Africa
Great Zimbabwe at its peak
Dry-stone walls up to eleven metres high above a gold and cattle economy.
Read: Great Zimbabwe → - c. 1450West Africa
Timbuktu's scholarly golden age
Sankoré and private libraries hold hundreds of thousands of manuscripts.
Read: Timbuktu → - 1493West Africa
Askia Muhammad takes power in Songhai
Administrative reform, scholarship and the largest empire West Africa had seen.
Read: Askia Muhammad → - 16th centuryWest Africa
Benin City at its height
A walled capital with vast earthworks, guild bronze casting and a powerful Oba.
Read: The Kingdom of Benin → - 1526Central Africa
Afonso I of Kongo protests enslavement
The Kongo king writes to Portugal demanding an end to the trade in his people.
Read: The Kingdom of Kongo → - 1591West Africa
Songhai falls at Tondibi
A Moroccan force with firearms breaks the empire and scatters Timbuktu's scholars.
Read: The Songhai Empire → - 1624Central Africa
Njinga becomes ruler of Ndongo
Three decades of war and diplomacy against Portuguese expansion in Angola.
Read: Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba → - 1701West Africa
The Asante union
Osei Tutu and Okomfo Anokye unite the Akan states around the Golden Stool.
Read: The Asante Empire → - 1780s
Peak of the transatlantic slave trade
Roughly 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships across the trade's four centuries.
Read: The Transatlantic Slave Trade → - 1791–1804Diaspora
The Haitian Revolution
Enslaved Africans defeat three empires and found the first Black republic.
Read: The Haitian Revolution → - 1818Southern Africa
Shaka reshapes the Zulu kingdom
Military and political reorganisation transforms the southern African interior.
Read: The Zulu Kingdom → - 1884–85
The Berlin Conference
European powers set rules for partitioning Africa with no African present.
Read: The Scramble for Africa → - 1885–1908Central Africa
The Congo Free State
Leopold II's private colony: rubber quotas, mutilation and mass death.
Read: The Congo Free State → - 1896Horn of Africa
Ethiopia defeats Italy at Adwa
Menelik II and Taytu Betul stop a European conquest and keep Ethiopia sovereign.
Read: The Battle of Adwa → - 1897West Africa
The sack of Benin City
A British punitive expedition burns the city and removes thousands of bronzes.
Read: The Benin Bronzes → - 1900West Africa
Yaa Asantewaa leads the Asante war
The Queen Mother of Ejisu leads the last major Asante resistance to British rule.
Read: Yaa Asantewaa → - 1905–07East Africa
The Maji Maji war
A mass uprising across German East Africa, and a brutal famine reprisal.
Read: The Maji Maji War → - 1945
Fifth Pan-African Congress, Manchester
Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Padmore and Du Bois turn Pan-Africanism toward independence.
Read: Kwame Nkrumah → - 1957West Africa
Ghana independent
The first sub-Saharan colony to break free; Nkrumah ties it to total African liberation.
Read: Kwame Nkrumah → - 1960
The Year of Africa
Seventeen countries become independent in a single year.
Read: Independence → - 1963
Organisation of African Unity founded
Thirty-two states sign in Addis Ababa; the AU succeeds it in 2002.
Read: Agenda 2063 → - 1974Horn of Africa
Haile Selassie deposed
The Derg ends the Solomonic monarchy after eight centuries.
Read: Haile Selassie I → - 1983–87West Africa
Sankara's Burkina Faso
Four years of vaccination drives, land reform, debt refusal and women's rights.
Read: Thomas Sankara → - 1994Southern Africa
South Africa's first democratic election
Apartheid ends; Mandela becomes president.
Read: Nelson Mandela → - 2004East Africa
Wangari Maathai wins the Nobel Peace Prize
The first African woman laureate, for the Green Belt Movement's 50 million trees.
Read: Wangari Maathai → - 2007East Africa
M-Pesa launches
Mobile money on basic phones reshapes African finance and is copied worldwide.
Read: African Technology → - 2013
Agenda 2063 adopted
The AU's fifty-year plan for an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa.
Read: Agenda 2063 → - 2021
AfCFTA trading begins
The world's largest free trade area by membership starts operating.
Read: AfCFTA → - 2050 (projected)
One in four humans is African
About 2.5 billion people, with the world's largest working-age population forming.
Read: Africa 2050 →
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