African History

By Colette Coleman Following Nat Turner's rebellion of 1831, legislation to limit black people's access to education intensified. But enslaved people found ways to learn. On August 21, 1831, enslaved Virginian Nat Turner led a bloody revolt, which changed the course of American history. The uprising in Southampton County led to the killing of an estimated 55 white people, resulting in execution of...

I’ve been reading a script for a film about Sara Forbes Bonetta. If the name is unfamiliar, she lived a remarkable nineteenth-century English life and a movie should be made about her. She was born into Yoruba royalty north-east of Lagos in 1843 and named Aina. But five years later, her village was raided by those infamous female Amazons of...

By Miracle Nwankwo Have you heard about Mansa Musa? I bet you have, but if you haven’t let me take you through a journey on a short story about the richest African emperor that once lived. His name is Mansa Musa, from Mali, which is today described as a landlocked country in Western Africa that shares boundaries with Niger on the...

The iconic plastic bag is recognized around the world in either its blue-white or red-white varieties. This bag which was once nameless in West Africa has long been especially popular in markets across the region. However, the bag took the name Ghana Must Go in the 1980s. When hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants, most of them Ghanaians, hurriedly stuffed...

Over 2,500 years after their burial, Egyptian officials have discovered more Ancient mummies and antiquities. Egyptian officials hail the brightly coloured, ornate sarcophagi as one of the biggest discoveries of 2020. The Egyptian authorities unveiled Over 100 sealed and intact mummies along with 40 other status of deities, gilded mosques, and ornate sarcophagi on Saturday. The unveiling was held under...

By National Museums of Kenya Mohammed Abdulla Hassan was born in the 1870s in Kob Fardod near Kirrit, in what later became Somaliland. Abdulla was the eldest son of Sheikh Abdille, who was part of the Ogaden Bah Gari sub-clan of the Darod major Clan. His mother, Timiro Sade, was from the Dhulbahante clan. The young Abdulla He grew up among the...

By Miracle Nwankwo Once upon a time in Africa, great heroes and heroines walked the earth. But today they are no more, and all we have left of them are stories, quotes, legacies, documentaries, statues, memories etc. Speaking of memories, this week on African History, we bring you one of Ghana’s treasured memories, the story of queen Mother Yaa Asantewaa of...