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Archaic humans emerged out of Africa between 0.5 and 1.8 million years ago. This was followed by the emergence of modern humans (Homo sapiens) in East Africa around 300,000–250,000 years ago. In the 4th millenium BC written history arose in Ancient Egypt,[1] and later in Nubia’s Kush, the Horn of Africa’s Dʿmt, and the Maghreb and Ifrikiya’s Carthage.[2] Sub-Saharan societies are generally termed oral rather than literate civilisations, owing to their use of oral tradition even when a writing system has historically been accessed or developed; the tradition of the Ghana Empire is thought to contain content from prehistory. Between around 1000 BC and 1000 AD, the Bantu expansion swept from north-western Central Africa (modern day Cameroon) across much of sub-Saharan Africa in waves, laying the foundations for future states in Central, Eastern, and Southern regions of the continent.[3]
Africa was home to many kingdoms and empires in all regions of the continent, with historical change commonplace. Many states were created through conquest and insecurity, while others developed through the borrowing and assimilation of ideas and institutions, and some through internal, largely isolated development, stimulated by population growth and economic development.[4] Many societies maintained an egalitarian way of life, such as the Jola or Hadza peoples, while others did not centralise further into complex societies, such as the Boorana and the chiefdoms of Sierra Leone, and are rarely discussed in political history. At its peak it is estimated that Africa had up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups having distinct languages and customs, with most following African traditional religions.[5]
Many empires achieved hegemony in their respective regions, such as Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Bamana/Ségou, Massina, Sokoto, and the Toucouleur in West Africa; Ancient Egypt, Kush, Carthage, the Fatimids, Almoravids, Almohads, Ayyubids, and Mamluks in North Africa; Aksum, Ethiopia, Adal, Kitara, Kilwa, and Imerina in East Africa; Kanem-Bornu, Kongo, Luba, Lunda, and Utetera in Central Africa; and Mapungubwe, Zimbabwe, Mutapa, Rozvi, Maravi, Mthwakazi, and Zulu in Southern Africa. In sub-Saharan African societies, history was generally recorded orally, serving a different function to the academic discipline of history, with the diversity of languages and narratives, and academic scepticism making general histories of Africa rare. Academic disciplines such as the study of oral traditions, historical linguistics, archaeology, and genetics have been vital in compiling written histories of Africa.[6]
From the 7th century AD, Islam spread west from Arabia via conquest and proselytisation to North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and later southwards to the Swahili coast assisted by Muslim dominance of the Indian Ocean trade, then from the Maghreb traversing the Sahara into the western Sahel and Sudan, catalysed by the Fulani Jihad in the 18th and 19th centuries. Systems of servitude and slavery were historically widespread and commonplace in parts of Africa, as they were in much of the ancient, medieval, and early modern world.[7] When the trans-Saharan, Red Sea, Indian Ocean and Atlantic slave trades began, many of the pre-existing local slave systems started supplying captives for slave markets outside Africa.[8][9] The Atlantic slave trade was narrowly the most exploited of these, and over a shorter period between 1450 and 1900 transported upwards of 12 million enslaved people overseas.[10][11]
From 1870 to 1914, driven by the great force and voracity of the Second Industrial Revolution, European colonisation of Africa developed rapidly from one-tenth of the continent being under European imperial control to over nine-tenths in the Scramble for Africa, with the major European powers partitioning the continent in the 1884 Berlin Conference.[12][13] European rule had significant impacts on Africa's societies and the suppression of communal autonomy disrupted local customary practices and caused the irreversible transformation of Africa's socioeconomic systems.[14] While Christianity has a long history in north and east Africa, there were few Christian states preceding the colonial period, other than Ethiopia and Kongo. Widespread conversion occurred in southern West Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa under European rule due to efficacious missions, with peoples merging Christianity with their local beliefs.[15]
Following struggles for independence in many parts of the continent, and a weakened Europe after the Second World War, waves of decolonisation took place across the continent. This culminated in the 1960 Year of Africa and the establishment of the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 (the predecessor to the African Union), with countries deciding to keep their colonial borders.[16] Traditional power structures remain partly in place in many parts of Africa, and their roles, powers, and influence vary greatly between countries, especially regarding governance.
For most Africans between 10000 BCE to 500 CE, the use of slaves was not an optimal political or economic strategy. But in some places, Africans came to see the value of slavery. In the large parts of the continent where Africans lived in relatively decentralized and small-scale communities, some big men used slavery to grab power to get around broader governing ideas about reciprocity and kinship, but were still bound by those ideas to some degree. In other parts of the continent early political centralization and commercialization led to expanded use of slaves as soldiers, officials, and workers.