HISTORY OF COTE D’IVOIRE

Félix Houphoët-Boigny: AD 1944-1993

For half a century the affairs of the Ivory Coast, independent from 1960 after the dissolution of French West Africa, are dominated by Félix Houphouët-Boigny.

With twin careers as a doctor and cocoa planter, he first makes his mark in politics in 1944 when he organizes the SAA (Syndicat Agricole Africain, or African Farmers Union) to protect…

HISTORY OF CHAD

Colonial period: AD 1900-1958

The extensive area of central Africa from the Ubangi river to the Sahara has been a heartland of the slave trade during the 17th to 19th centuries. People captured here, usually by neighbouring tribes in warfare or slave raids, are sold to Arab traders to be taken north through the Sahara or to middlemen for the…

HISTORY OF THE CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

Colonial period: AD 1900-1958

The extensive area of central Africa from the Ubangi river to the Sahara has been a heartland of the slave trade during the 17th to 19th centuries. People captured here, usually by neighbouring tribes in warfare or slave raids, are sold to Arab traders to be taken north through the Sahara or…

HISTORY OF CAMEROON

A German colony: AD 1884-1914

In the early 19th century there is considerable activity in Cameroon by British and American missionaries, but a German connection begins only when the Woermann Company of Hamburg builds a warehouse in 1868 on the estuary of the Wouri river. Other German traders follow, in sufficient numbers to send requests home for the appointment of…

HISTORY OF BURKINA FASO

Independence: from AD 1960

In the years after independence in 1960, following the dissolution of French West Africa, Upper Volta goes through many abrupt changes – including five military coups (in 1966, 1980, 1982, 1983, 1987) and a change in the nation’s name, in 1984, to Burkina Faso.

The independent nation’s first president, Maurice Yaméogo, is noted for his…

HISTORY OF BURUNDI

Ruanda-Urundi: AD 1887-1914

The highlands of Rwanda and Burundi, east of Lake Kivu, are the last part of Africa to be reached by Europeans in the colonial expansion of the late 19th century. Before that time local tradition tells of many centuries during which the Tutsi, a tall cattle-rearing people probably from the upper reaches of the Nile, infiltrate the…

Mahatma Gandhi Biography (1869-1948)

Indian nationalist leader. Born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on October 2, 1869 in Poorbandar, Kathiawar, West India. He studied law in London, but in 1893 went to South Africa, where he spent 20 years opposing discriminatory legislation against Indians. As a pioneer of Satyagraha, or resistance through mass non-violent civil disobedience, he became one of the major political…

HISTORY OF ARABIA

An empty quarter

Arabia is the huge peninsula lying between northeast Africa and the bulk of continental Asia. Its long southern coast faces across the Indian Ocean towards India. So it is well placed for trade.

But until the 20th century the region has had no other natural advantages. The centre is a desert, as inhospitable as…

HISTORY OF ALGERIA

The Barbary coast: 16th – 20th century AD

With the decline of the local Berber dynasties in the 15th and 16th centuries, the valuable coastal strip of north Africa (known because of the Berbers as the Barbary coast) attracts the attention of the two most powerful Mediterranean states of the time – Spain in the west, Turkey in the east.

The…

HISTORY OF AFRICAN ART

Rival masterpieces: 5th century BC

By one of the strange coincidences of history, the 5th century BC produces the first masterpieces in two incompatible styles of sculpture. Nearly 2500 years later, these styles become bitter rivals in the studios of our own time.

One is the classical realism which will prevail from the Renaissance to the end of the…

HISTORY OF AFRICA

Walking tall: from 4 million years ago

Africa is the setting for the long dawn of human history. From about four million years ago ape-like creatures walk upright on two feet in this continent. Intermediate between apes and men, they have been named Australopithecus. Later, some two million years ago, the first creatures to be classed as part of the…