Africa is Not a Country by Faloyin

Ref: Dipo Faloyin (2022). Africa is Not a Country. WW Norton & Co.

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Summary

  • Africa – a continent of 54 countries, more than 2000 languages, and 1.4B people. A region that is treated and spoken of as if it were a single country, devoid of nuance and cursed to be forever plagued by deprivation. For too long, ‘Africa’ has been treated as a buzzword for poverty, strife, corruption, civil wars, and large expanses of arid red soil where nothing but misery grows. Or it is presented as one big safari park, where lions and tigers roam freely around our homes and Africans spend their days grouped in warrior tribes, barely clothed, spears palmed, hunting game, and jumping up and down with ritualistic rhythm to pass the time before another aid package gets delivered. Poverty or safari, with nothing in between. 

  • Africa is a rich mosaic of experience, of diverse communities and histories, and not a singular monolith of predetermined destinies. 

  • In the context of Africa, there is a longstanding frustration with the West’s very specific need to portray Africa as functionally helpless in battling its own problems – using stark imagery of death and devastation, starvation and corruption, to reinforce the idea that this is a place where nothing but misery grows out of violent cracks in the foundations of a grossly unstable society, and within a people who do not know what’s good for them. The white saviour complex reinforces the view that Africans can never be the solution, that they are without agency, and that sunshine and hope only come when cradled in the warm, bright embrace of the Western world, always on time to save the day. 

  • For centuries, the West has adopted some form of white man’s burden . . . First it was with missionaries, then “civilizing” missions, and finally the ultimate end of white paternalism, which was placing Africans under the direct Western control of imperialism.’ 

  • Each chapter of this book will bring the context that is often missing in discussions about Africa to the fore. You will discover how each country was formed by people with poor maps and even poorer morals. I will analyse the harmful ways Africa is depicted through cheap stereotypes in popular culture, and in the imagery used by charitable campaigns to elicit quick-fix solutions that often do more harm than good, by pushing negative typecasting. You will understand the story of democracy across the continent through seven dictatorships; the ongoing battle to have the artefacts and treasures that were stolen during the colonial period returned; and the impact food culture from across the continent has had on rituals throughout the world. Identity also requires a healthy rivalry, and you will discover the fabled Jollof rice wars and the strange, incongruent beauty of the Africa Cup of Nations. In the final section, I explore the present, and how locally led, on-the-ground activists, movements and emerging creative and business cultures are shaping the future of the continent, speaking to how communities are actually built – efforts that represent more than just dusty savannahs, civil wars, and a people without a voice of their own waiting for someone to speak for us, for others to swoop in and save. 

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Introduction

  • I delight in discussion because I am forged from my family’s most consistent ritual: gathering too many people in a confined space and arguing about nothing – each person giving their opinion on each person’s opinion.

  • In all our interactions, we leave tiny breadcrumbs as clues to the inner sanctum of our complex identities. 

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Part 1 Lagos

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Part 2 By the Power Vested in Me, I Now Pronounce You a Country

  • “The inflow of the white race cannot be stopped where there is land to cultivate, ore to be mined, commerce to be developed, sport to enjoy, curiosity to be satisfied. If any fanatical admirer of savage life argued that the whites ought to be kept out, he would only be driven to the same conclusion by another route, for a government on the spot would be necessary to keep them out. Accordingly, international law has to treat natives as uncivilised. It regulates, for the mutual benefit of civilised states, the claims which they make to sovereignty over the region and leaves the treatment of the natives to the conscience of the state to which the sovereignty is awarded”-John Westlake.

  • Livingstone’s 3 C’s- commerce, Christianity and civilisation.

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Part 3 The Birth of White Saviour Imagery or How Not to Be a White Saviour While Still Making a Difference

  • The two most enduring theories of ethics are consequentialism and deontology. 

    • Consequentialism: An ethical theory that proposes that the morality of an action should be judged by its consequences and not the act itself- the ends justify the means. 

    • Deontology: An ethical theory that proposes that the morality of the action is all that matters, regardless of the outcome- without that, we would never be able to agree on universal principles of right and wrong.

  • Ethiopian Famine

    • Aid appeals in Ethiopia did not mention the government’s role in the famine and the political calculations that drove it. Rather, the mass starvation was presented as if it was purely natural, a random act of wickedness from the weather gods. Just another day in the jungle of Africa. 

    • The BBC spoke to one secessionist leader who estimated that his group had stolen in ~£63M, by posing as farmers selling grain to aid agencies. They would fill half the sacks with grain, and the other half with sand. 

    • You cannot blame anyone else for the malignant actions of a military government unilaterally concerned with holding on to power. Still, the rush towards generosity was easily exploited – a reality that could have been avoided if charities had trusted the public’s capacity to handle a more convoluted truth, however tangled, by taking more time to identify how best to help. 

  • Africa is a mecca for thousands of young people who treat the continent as the official volunteering leg of their gap year. It’s almost a rite of passage for people visiting to take photos of themselves standing in the middle of a group of smiling, ideally dancing, impoverished Africans – who often, by the nature of their circumstances, cannot give appropriate consent for their images to be used this way – before posting the evidence online as if to subtly suggest: ‘Isn’t it incredible that these people have found joy in a hopeless place?’ 

  • A few months after the Dooley row ignited, David Lammy revealed that he had asked his nine-year-old son why he should donate to Comic Relief, to test what he had learned from the campaign’s messaging. ‘We have to help the poor people in Africa,’ his son replied. The poor people in Africa. At such a young age, he had ingested the singular concept of ‘Africa’ as a buzzword for pain and strife, devoid of a diverse range of people and cultures. 

  • Preconceived perceptions breed discrimination. When Africans travel the world, we are forced to carry on our backs the same bigoted assumptions that we are coming from poverty, with relatives living in mud huts waiting for handouts from the West.

  • White saviorism is a symptom of white supremacy and something we all have to work together to deconstruct.

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Part 4 The Story of Democracy in Seven Dictatorships

  • The lack of precision and the laziness of thought, language and solutions regarding despotism in Africa stops us from getting to the various root causes and coming up with sustainable fixes to ensure that the dynamics that maintain them are removed as nations continue to establish themselves. Of course, the blame cannot be separated from the actions of the continent’s worst, who have taken advantage of the disarray and the early turmoil of half-baked nations – but the more efficient we are in removing the opportunities to exploit, the more chances there will be for ordinary people on the continent to have a voice in terms of how their destinies are governed. 

  • Paul Kagame: Rwandan President. Raised in a refugee camp in Uganda. His family were among the thousands of ethnic Tutsis forced to flee Rwanda in 1959 when the Hutus – who represented about 70 per cent of the country’s population – violently seized power from a Tutsi monarchy that had ruled Rwanda for centuries. By his early thirties, he had risen to command the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) – a Uganda-based Tutsi rebel force that planned on overthrowing Rwanda’s Hutu-led government. The RPF would invade Rwanda in 1990, starting a 4-yr war for power. 

    • Under Kagame, the nation’s economy has grown 8% on average every year, a trajectory that experts believe will only continue. His government has introduced a national health system and orchestrated significant education reforms. Dubbed the Singapore of Africa, Rwanda is currently rated in the top 40 best places in the world to do business. Its cities are some of the safest on the continent. With over 60% representation, Rwanda has by far the most elected women in parliament of any government in the world. While its neighbours battle widespread corruption, Kagame forces his government officials to sign performance goals with hyper-specific targets that are assessed every year at a government retreat. And as part of its national ‘Vision 2050’ initiative, Rwanda aims to become a high-income nation in the next 30 yrs. 

Algeria 

  • Bouteflika was a young soldier during the revolution. He fought in the military wing of the FLN under his mentor Houari Boumédiène – Algeria’s second president. Following Bouteflika’s stroke in 2013, it was understood to be The Powers who were really running the government and keeping the president in office. The group included his brother and senior adviser, Saïd Bouteflika, considered by many to be the de facto president. Change came after the powerful head of the army, Ahmed Gaid Salah – another remnant of the independence years – read the winds and called for Bouteflika’s resignation. Elections were held the next year. But missing a strong opposition, The Powers simply anointed one of their own, the current president, Abdelmadjid Tebboune – further locking the country in a cycle of being controlled by once-great national heroes who refuse to budge. 

Equatorial Guinea

  • Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is the president of Equatorial Guinea. His oldest son, Teodorin, is the appointed vice president and defence minister; his youngest son, Gabriel, is the Minister of Mines, Petroleum and Energy; and his middle son, Ruslan Obiang Nsue, was the former minister for sport before becoming the president of the country’s leading football club. President Nguema’s half-brother, Antonio Mba Nguema, was the defence minister before his death in 2019, while his other brother is the head of national security. By some estimates, up to half of President Nguema’s cabinet is directly related to the president, while many more are from his hometown of Mongomo. President Nguema has run Equatorial Guinea since 1979. 

Libya

  • Gaddafi published his thoughts on governance in a scroll titled The Green Book – a play on Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book- that was compulsory reading in schools. Gaddafi claimed his guiding philosophy was based on developing a greater theory beyond socialism and capitalism, built around ‘people power’. 

  • Hundreds of people – journalists, politicians, lawyers, academics – were routinely tortured and disappeared, as the crackdown grew more widespread. The many failed coup attempts kept him paranoid. Gaddafi routinely purged the military of powerful officers, killing any soldiers accused of plotting to oust him. Around 1,200 inmates of the Abu Salim prison – many of them political prisoners – were summarily executed in 1996. 

  • ‘What did I do to you?’ he asked. 

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Part 5 There Is No Such Thing as an African Accent

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Part 6 The Case of the Stolen Artefacts

Benin

  • For centuries, the Kingdom of Benin was one of the most powerful in the region. Its capital, Benin City, was home to thousands, ruled by a single familial lineage of Oba’s.

  • Mino (‘Our Mothers’-Fon): An all-women militia force whose role was to protect the citizens of the Kingdom of Dahomey and its ruling monarch. At their peak, there were 6K soldiers, trained to be fearless and merciless. 

  • Kumasi: Capital of the Kingdom of Ashanti of the Gold Coast. 

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Part 7 Jollof Wars

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Part 8 What’s Next?

  • It is accepted wisdom that the only way to make money in Africa is to work for a government or sell a natural resource. 

  • ‘What specific steps will you take then to convince people that you won’t just be another freedom fighter who turns into a dictator?’ VICE asked Ugandan presidential candidate Bobi Wine on the eve of the election. ‘Museveni has always boasted of having liberated us,’ Wine replied. ‘I tell the people of Uganda that we must achieve this liberation all of us together as a nation so that not one single politician, not even myself, will wake up one morning and say “I liberated you.” We are liberating ourselves.’

  • The real scarcity since the continent’s independence era has been opportunity.

  • According to the UN, since 2017 ‘there are 30% more women ministers of defense, 52.9% more women ministers of finance, and 13.6% more women ministers of foreign affairs. 

  • Botswana was not designed as artificially as most other states; it is largely dominated by one ethnic group, the Tswana, who make up about 80% of the population. From the start, Botswana was able to more easily work towards building a singular, cohesive national identity. 

  • The further the continent gets from the damage wrought by colonialism and the early ethnic battles and civil wars following independence, the more each country’s attention will be focused on developing the common good. Political races will be less of a winner-takes-all brawl and more about ways these increasingly mature nations- that are not to blame for their make-ups- can harness their resources to positively impact the greatest number of people. 

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Misc Quotes

  • “Execution is the fate of anyone who forms a political party”- Gaddafi, 1974. 

  • “Authoritarians very rarely go down without taking their entire country with them.”

  • “We are trying to give our children a better education. We are developing our countries. We need aid but it must not come with strings attached. We are saying that if you want to help, first listen to us and provide what we need – not what you think we need”-Alaso.

  • “Those on the ground see the larger disasters behind it: militarization of poorer countries, short-sighted agricultural policies, resource extraction, the propping up of corrupt governments, and the astonishing complexity of long-running violent conflicts over a wide and varied terrain”-Teju Cole.

  • “I was emotional to see the wealth that belongs to me.”

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Chronology

  • Mar, 2021: Death of Tanzania President John Magufuli, purportedly from COVID-19. His VP, Samia Suluhu Hassan, becomes Tanzania’s first female president (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Oct, 2020: #ShutItDown; the body of Shannon Wasserfall is found in a shallow grave near Walvis Bay, Namibia. Thousands of predominantly young women march through the streets of the capital, Windhoek, demanding an effective shutdown of all government operations in order for authorities to focus on the singular task of tackling a pandemic of sexual violence and femicide. The movement was dubbed #ShutItDown (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Oct, 2020: #EndSARS; Nigerians protest its corrupt police force- SARS- for weeks until being violently quelled. Amnesty International reported that at least 15 people were killed and hundreds injured (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 2020: Tanzania Presidential elections; dozens of potential presidential candidates are banned by the government from competing and Magufuli was declared the winner, allegedly winning over 80% of the vote in elections that independent observers claimed were not free (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 2020: Egypt amends its constitution to require that women make up 25% of parliamentary seats (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 2020: Lake Victoria and the River Nile rise to their highest levels on record. And then a plague of billions of locusts swept through East Africa in 2020 thanks to the cyclone winds and rains that created the perfect wet environment for them to breed, destroying crops and food supplies across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Feb, 2019: Algeria’s Hirak (‘Revolution of Smiles’) Movement; every Friday for a year, tens of thousands of young Algerians and their parents’ protest their countries president, Abdelaziz Bouteflika, who had decided to seek a 5th term in power (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 2019: Cyclone Idai, the worst in the history of Southern Africa, strikes Mozambique. The storm kills >1000 and displaces hundreds of thousands. The 200 kph winds devastate the port-city of Beira on the east coast and burst multiple river banks. The resultant flooding created a new inland lake the size of Luxembourg (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 17 Jun, 2015: Charleston Church shooting; Dylann Roof, a 21-yo white supremacist, kills nine people and injures one during a bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the oldest black church in the southern US (Africa by Faloyin, Wiki). 

  • 2015: John Magufuli is elected President of Tanzania. He cracks down on the media, opposition parties, and dissenting civic voices. Magufuli’s opposition candidate, Tundu Lissu, was shot 16x in a single assassination attempt. Lissu survived and fled to Belgium, where he remained in exile for several years before returning to Tanzania to challenge Magufuli in the 2020 elections (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Feb, 2011: Arab Spring uprisings begin in Libya (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 2000: Frustrated by his diminishing influence on the country, Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu resigns. His VP, Paul Kagame, is sworn in as president a month later (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1996: Equatorial Guinea discovers its large oil reserves (OPEC).

  • Jul, 1994: RPF leader Paul Kagame is appointed VP of Rwanda. As the head of the military, he was effectively the most powerful man in Rwanda (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Apr, 1994: Shortly after a UN-backed peace settlement with the RPF was agreed, a plane carrying Rwandan president Juvénal Habyarimana, a Hutu, was shot down by a missile. Though still unknown who launched it- Habyarimana’s murder was all the excuse Hutu leaders needed to exterminate the Tutsi (Africa by Faloyin).

    • In 100 days, ~1M Tutsi- and any Hutu that tried to stop it- were slaughtered. The genocide only ended when Kagame’s RPF, with the help of the Ugandan army, seized control of the capital, Kigali, in July of that year, forcing millions of Hutus to flee into neighboring Zaire, now the DRC (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1991: Somalia Coup; Somali dictator Said Barre is toppled by rebels and flees the country. Barre dies 4 yrs later of a heart attack in exile (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1990: The Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Uganda-based Tutsi rebel force led by Paul Kagame, invades Rwanda, starting a 4-yr civil war (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1987-1989: Said Barre’s regime in Somalia kills ~200K people (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1986: Uganda Military Coup; Museveni rises to power after leading an army insurgency that topples a military junta, making him, at the time, somewhat of a national hero (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Jul, 1985: Irish Musician Bob Geldof, lead singer of the Boomtown Rats, establishes a Global Concert Series, later named Live Aid, following BBC’s groundbreaking report on the Ethiopian famine. Live Aid features simultaneous concerts across nine countries with the biggest at Wembley Stadium in London and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, spanning 16 hrs, with ~1.5B viewers that raises £150M to fight the famine in Ethiopia (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1983: Somali President Barre launches an attempted purge of the Isaaq ethnic group in N. Somalia. The military campaign included the almost-total destruction of the two largest cities in the region, Hargeisa and Burao. An estimated 200K Somali civilians were killed, while the civil war created upwards of 300K refugees (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1979: Equatorial Guinea Coup; Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is elected president of Equatorial Guinea after deposing his uncle, Macías, in a violent coup that ends in his uncle’s execution by firing squad (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1977: Emboldened by Soviet support to their armed forces, Somalia invades Ethiopia’s Ogaden (Africa by Faloyin).

    • Two of Moscow’s protégés were now at war. The USSR pushed for a peace settlement. After Barre rejected their calls for a ceasefire, the USSR chose to support Ethiopia and its newer military junta. Along with Cuba, the USSR cut off military support to Somalia and increased it in Ethiopia. Without their support, Somalia was eventually forced into an embarrassing retreat out of the Ogaden. As revenge, In Nov, 1977, the Somali government kicked Soviet forces out of Somalia, giving them seven days to evacuate thousands of personnel from military bases in Berbera and Kismayu (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1976: Zimbabwe Elections; Mugabe’s Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) wins the majority of parliamentary seats. Mugabe becomes the countries first black PM (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1975: Portugal loses control of Mozambique. Freedom fighters including Mugabe were able to slip out of Rhodesia and into Mozambique to coordinate the liberation movement from there. Smith and the Rhodesian Front faced attacks from several angles, as Nkomo led the movement from Zambia and Mugabe from Mozambique. The conflict resulted in the deaths of ~30K (Africa by Faloyin).

    • The British government invited all parties to a summint in London in 1975. The meeting produced the Lancaster House Agreement, which finally granted a path to independence for a new government elected by the majority, with the enfranchisement of Black voters. In exchange, whites could maintain some representation in parliament. Smith hated the deal, but he had run out of options. Four months later, the Black majority were finally freed from the oppression of minority rule. They rename their country Zimbabwe (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1974: Somalia and the USSR sign a ‘Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation’. In exchange for military support, Somalia granted the USSR access to a military base in Berbera (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1972: Rhodesian separatists launch a guerrilla war against the Rhodesian government. Two years later, to quell some of that nationalist fervor, the government agrees to release some of the political prisoners they had held captive for over a decade, including the founder of the National Democratic Party, Joseph Nkomo, and the face of the revolutionary movement, a 51-yo former teacher by the name of Robert Mugabe (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1969: Libyan Coup; Ghaddafi, aged 27, rises to power in Libya in a bloodless coup (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1969: Somalia military coup; General Said Barre takes power in a bloodless coup. The previous president, Dr Abdirashid Ali Shermarke, had been murdered by his own bodyguard in what is believed to have been a personal attack. Barre bans political parties, suspends the constitution and dismantles the judiciary. In the first year of his rule, Barre declared Somalia as a socialist country based on Marxist principles. He developed a state ideology that would adhere him to the USSR and build a strong sense of Somali nationalism (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1968-1979: Reign of Macías as President of Equatorial Guinea. Orphaned at a young age and insecure about his lack of education, he effectively banned reading and purged the country of academics. At religious services, Equatoguineans were required to repeat the mantra ‘God created Equatorial Guinea thanks to Macías – without Macías Equatorial Guinea would not exist.’ Macías later abolished all religious gatherings, including funerals, and demanded that only he was worshipped. He bestowed upon himself the title of Unique Miracle. Eventually, his full title would become: President for Life, Head of the Nation and Party, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, and Grand Master of Education, Science and Culture. He had thousands executed – about a third of the population were either killed or fled the country in his eleven-year rule (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1968: Equatorial Guinea gains independence from Spain. Macías is elected the countries first president (Africa by Faloyin).

  • May, 1967: Following failed peace talks between Nigeria’s majority factions, the head of the Eastern delegation, the Oxford-educated LTC Odumegwu Ojukwu, announces that the Igbo and the Eastern Region would secede from Nigeria to form a country of their own: the Republic of Biafra. One problem: the Eastern Region had all the oil. There was no way the Nigerian government was going to allow them to leave. This impasse sparks an almost 3 yr civil war that leads to the deaths of ~1M people, mainly Igbos. The Nigerian government implements an extremely effective food blockade, starving the Eastern Region, which eventually lead to Biafra’s surrender (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Jul, 1966: Nigerian Military Counter-coup; in retaliation for the Igbo military coup against the Nigerian government, northern officers stage a violent counter-coup; in turn murdering Aguiyi-Ironsi and replacing him with LTC Yakubu Gowon. Not content with seizing back power, tens of thousands of Igbos living in the north were massacred in revenge attacks, forcing Igbos to flee for their lives back to the Eastern Region, where they commanded. Peace talks to save Nigeria fail (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Jan, 1966: Nigerian Military Coup; a group of mostly Igbo army officers execute a military coup against the Nigerian government, in the process killing the two most prominent Northerners: PM Tafawa Balewa, and the head of the Northern Region, Ahmadu Bello. Major General Johnson Aguiyi-Ironsi, an Igbo, then took power (Africa by Faloyin).

    • The next three decades in Nigeria saw a succession of Northern generals seize power from each other. On average, Nigeria would suffer a coup every three and a half years. This would continue until the mysterious death of Sani Abacha in the middle of the night in 1998 (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Jul, 1964: The OAU meets in Cairo (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1964: Northern Rhodesia is granted independence. Nationalists change the country’s name to Zambia (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1964: Robert Mugabe is imprisoned and sentenced to 21 months. In the end, he spends 11 yrs in prison (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1963: The Organisation of African Unity (OAU) is formed to foster cooperation across the African continent, and offer support to independence movements (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1962: Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN)- the country’s leading nationalist political party- defeats France. The FLN became the governing (and only political) party (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1 Oct, 1960: Nigeria gains independence from Great Britain (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1960: The Belgian Congo gains its independence from Belgium as the nation of Zaire (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1959: Rwanda Coup; Hutu’s, who represent ~70% of Rwanda’s population, violently seize power from a Tutsi monarchy that had ruled Rwanda for centuries (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 2 Jun, 1953: Coronation of English Queen Elizabeth II (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1948: South Africa institutionalizes apartheid, which remains in place for the next 46 yrs (1994) (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1914: Nigeria is formed as the amalgamation of Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria. Nigeria now featured >250 different ethnic groups. Three made up 65% of the population and would come to dominate the country: the predominantly Muslim Hausa-Fulani in the N, the Yoruba in the SW and the Igbo in the SE. In the ensuing years, the Hausa-Fulani’s formed the Northern People’s Congress, the Action Group was for Yorubas, and The National Convention of Nigerian Citizens was led by Igbos in the Eastern Region (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1911: Italy goes to war with the Ottoman Empire to claim the two colonies of Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, which it merges to create Libya (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1908: Belgium takes control of the Congo Free State from the King, turning it into the Belgian Congo (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1904: Namib ethnic Herero and Nama revolt against German occupation, killing dozens of settlers. The German government appoints Lothar von Trotha- an experienced colonial general to repress the uprisings. 80% of the Herero population and 50% of the Nama people are murdered by the German colonial army. Estimates put the death toll in the range of 100K. Thousands died of dehydration when the Herero were forced to flee into the desert, while the Germans poisoned water wells. Others were taken as prisoners and sent to concentration camps- effectively death camps- where 75% of the Herero and Nama sent there, died (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1904: France’ claims of Mauritania are recognized by England in exchange for France’ recognition of Britain’s grip on Egypt (Africa by Faloyin).

  • Jan, 1897: Death of British diplomat James Phillips and nine other British officers during an ambush in the British Niger Coast Protectorate (the Kingdom of Benin). A month later, the British deploy a 5K man and 10 naval ship military force to siege the Kingdom. The great walls were destroyed and the Oba fled into exile (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1895: The British East Indies Company sells the areas of Lake Victoria, Kenya, Uganda, and parts of Tanzania to the British Government for £250,000 (£33M today) (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1891: A border agreement with Portugal gives the British South Africa Company control over land Rhodes would later name after himself (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1890-1892: Fall of the Dahomey; French forces battle the Dahomey (modern Benin), which include the all-women Mino, led by King Béhanzin. The Dahomey suffer heavy defeats before retreating back to Abomey. They try to rearm. But so do the French, led by General Dodds, who march on the palaces at Abomey in 1892. The two-year war ends when King Béhanzin, refuses to surrender, sets fire to his palace and flees (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 15 Nov, 1884-26 Feb, 1885: The Berlin Conference; 14 countries- Britain, France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Sweden-Norway, the Ottoman Empire, the US and Germany meet in Berlin over three months towards an amicable agreement for how to partition the African continent (Africa by Faloyin).

    • Bismarck laid out the aims of the conference, which were: To regulate the conditions most favorable to the development of trade and civilisation in certain regions of Africa, and to assure to all nations the advantages of free navigation on the two chief rivers of Africa flowing into the Atlantic Ocean [the Congo and the Niger]…to obviate the misunderstanding and disputes which might in the future arise from new acts of occupation on the coast of Africa…[and to further] the moral and material well-being of the native populations (Africa by Faloyin).

    • To colonize an area, you needed to: i) inform the other European powers of your claim, and ii) prove you’d established some governance, forced or otherwise (Africa by Faloyin).

    • 1885: Britain purchases the land that would eventually make modern Nigeria from the Royal Niger Company. The northern region formed the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, while the south became the Protectorate of Southern Nigeria. The two regions were then amalgamated in 1914 to form Nigeria (Africa by Faloyin).

    • 1885: Belgian King Leopold purchases the DRC. In the 20 yrs that follow, ~10M people, half the population, die (Africa by Faloyin).

    • 1884: The UK and Germany partition hundreds of societies into Cameroon and Nigeria (Africa by Faloyin).

    • 1884: Germany occupies modern Namibia. ~30K Germans settle in the colony (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1879: The United African Company is formed. It rebrands in 1881 as the National African Company, before changing its name to the Royal Niger Company in 1886. The Royal Niger Company focuses its mission on the territories around the lower half of the Niger River. The agreements the company collated gave it control over a series of ancient local empires, which the company eventually sold to the British government, who later amalgamated them to form Nigeria in 1914 (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1872: British forces led by General Wolseley march on the Asante capital in E Africa (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1869: The Suez Canal opens (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1868: The British launch an expeditionary force against Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros to free captured diplomats. Desperate and increasingly isolated, Tewodros launched an ill-advised counteroffensive against the encroaching British military in an attempt to catch them unaware. The subsequent battle lasted 90 minutes. Hundreds of Ethiopian soldiers were killed, thousands more injured. There wasn’t a single British casualty. As a final act of defiance, Tewodros took his own life rather than be taken as a prisoner. Leaderless, the few remaining Maqdala troops quickly laid down their weapons (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1863: Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros requests military support from British Queen Victoria to quell Islamic expansion in the region. Disappointed to find no help- or even a response- from Queen Victoria, Tewodros took multiple British diplomats’ hostage, including the British ambassador to the region. The British sent more diplomats to negotiate their release. Tewodros took them hostage, too. The standoff continued until 1868, when the British government launched an expedition to free them (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1854: France combines multiple kingdoms of W. Africa into Senegal (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 1830: French forces invade Algeria (Africa by Faloyin).

  • 14c: Jollof (‘Thieboudienne’- Nigerian) is invented in Jolof- a state that was part of the Wolof Empire (modern Senegal and parts of Gambia). Jolof was home to the Dyula travelling traders, believed to have carried their delicacy throughout West Africa (Africa by Faloyin).

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