Ancient Ghana ruled from around 300 to 1100 CE. The empire first formed when a number of tribes of the Soninke peoples were united under their first king, Dinga Cisse. The government of the empire was a feudal government with local kings who paid tribute to the high king, but ruled their lands as they saw fit.

What did these African Kingdoms have in common? First, they used salt and gold for their trade. Salt was used to persevere food and gold was used as money. Second, they were all kingdoms with many rulers.

Answer: The West African Kingdom would trade gold, ivory and slaves, for salt , manufactured goods, and cloth. This kingdom followed the same pattern of trading gold, ivory and slaves with the north. The Niger River continued to be the main source of trade within Western Africa.

Ghana and Mali were similar in that each kingdom was located in West Africa, and their power depended on control of the gold-salt trade routes stretching east to the Sahara Desert. They were different in that Ghana was an older polity, having collapsed before Mali would rise to power.

10 things Africa has given the world

• Coffee. Italians gave it to us short and strong, Americans served it filtered then ratcheted up the calories by adding syrups, whipped cream and even pumpkin.
• Modern art.
• Mathematics.
• Mobile phones.
• Nando’s.
• Ubuntu.
• Jazz.
• Shea butter.

Many advances in metallurgy and tool making were made across the entirety of ancient Africa. These include steam engines, metal chisels and saws, copper and iron tools and weapons, nails, glue, carbon steel and bronze weapons and art (2, 7).

European exploration of Africa began with Ancient Greeks and Romans. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great was welcomed as a liberator in Persian-occupied Egypt. He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the prosperous capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death.

7 Influential African Empires

• The Kingdom of Kush. Meroë is an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile app.
• The Land of Punt. Papyrus showing preparations for an Egyptian journey to Punt. (
• Carthage. Tunisia, Carthage. (
• The Kingdom of Aksum.
• The Mali Empire.
• The Songhai Empire.
• The Great Zimbabwe.
• 7 Brutal Sieges.

The most powerful of these states was the Songhai Empire, which expanded rapidly beginning with king Sonni Ali in the 1460s. By 1500, it had risen to stretch from Cameroon to the Maghreb, the largest state in African history. It too was quite short-lived and collapsed in 1591 as a result of Moroccan musketry.

The European countries were able to colonise African countries rapidly because there were rivalries between African leaders. European powers could easily take control of any source of land by using force and violence.

Niger

South Sudan

The oldest formed about 3.4 billion years ago, the second some 3 to 2.9 billion years ago, and the third some 2.7 to 2.6 billion years ago. Some of the oldest traces of life are preserved as unicellular algae in Precambrian cherts of the Barberton greenstone belt in the Transvaal region of South Africa.

One of the most popular suggestions for the origins of the term ‘Africa’ is that it is derived from the Roman name for a tribe living in the northern reaches of Tunisia, believed to possibly be the Berber people. The Romans variously named these people ‘Afri’, ‘Afer’ and ‘Ifir’.

Poverty in Africa is the lack of provision to satisfy the basic human needs of certain people in Africa. African nations typically fall toward the bottom of any list measuring small size economic activity, such as income per capita or GDP per capita, despite a wealth of natural resources.

15 of Africa’s favorite dishes

• Pap en vleis/Shisa nyama, South Africa. Feast your eyes on these succulent steaks.
• Piri piri chicken, Mozambique. Stop.
• Jollof rice and egusi soup, Nigeria.
• Bunny chow, South Africa.
• Kapenta with sadza, Zimbabwe.
• Chambo with nsima, Malawi.
• Namibian venison, Namibia.
• Muamba de Galinha, Angola.

Horn of Africa (Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya)

Horn of Africa 2nd to Strait of Malacca as World’s Most Dangerous Place for Ships. In the past year, pirates have attacked more than 35 vessels off the coast of Somalia, in the Horn of Africa, making the region second only to the Strait of Malacca in Asia as the world’s most dangerous place for ships.

The Afar Triangle sits at the north end of the Great Rift Valley, a 3,700-mile trench that is splitting the African continent into two new plates, the Somali Plate and the Nubian Plate.