Snapshot of Past and Present Historical Events in African Countries

By Funso E. Oluyitan Ed.D. Ph.D.

In this book you will read about the 57 African countries. The history of each country begins with the original settlers followed by the European invasion and rule. You will read about the countries’ struggle for independence, indigenous governments after independence, the emergence of military governments, followed by democracy as practiced in Africa today. The snapshot of each country is written in less than 1000 words. Enjoy the reading.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 17, 2019
• ISBN: 9781728304939

Funso E. Oluyitan Ed.D. Ph.D.

Dr. Funso Oluyitan is a retired professor of communications and for over a decade was the executive director of ASE African Center, in Dayton, Ohio. A journalist by profession, Dr. Oluyitan started a career in journalism, as a reporter with the Nigerian national newspaper, The Morning Post. He was one of the reporters that covered the 1964 Nigerian Federal Election.. From 1965 to 1969 Dr. Oluyitan worked for the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Nigeria, Ibadan as a music librarian, news translator and a producer. He received Regional Controller’s Letter of Commendation for Excellent Performance in Broadcasting in 1968. A political science graduate of Bowie State University, Bowie, Maryland, Dr. Oluyitan also attended Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana where he earned a master’s degree in public affairs/journalism and in 1980, a doctor of education degree in instructional technology. Thirty-four years later, 2014, Dr. Oluyitan earned a second doctoral degree, a Ph.D. in Leadershp and Change (anti-corruption) from Antioch University. At the completion of his master’s degree, Dr. Oluyitan was employed by the Indianapolis Police Department as a victim assistance officer. In November 1976 he received an Award of Worthiness and Accomplishments at the Indianapolis Police Department as an Officer of the Month. Dr. Oluyitan returned to Nigeria in 1980 to work for the Nigerian Television Authority where he also bagged an award of Excellence as a Training Officer. Dr. Oluyitan taught at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria from 1981 to 1988, where he served as a senior lecturer, head of Instructional Technology and assistant dean postgraduate for the Faculty of Education. In 1988, Dr. Oluyitan returned to the United States to work as a program officer for the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), an educational organization representing the 117 Historically Black Colleges and Universities. In this position, he liaised extensively with the United States Congress and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Dr. Oluyitan also worked as director of public relations at Lincoln University, Pennsylvania (alma matter of Dr. Nnamdi Azikiwe, first executive president of Nigeria and Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, first prime minister of Ghana). Dr. Oluyitan was also director, integrated information technology processing at Bennett College, Greensboro, North Carolina. Dr. Oluyitan ended his academic stint at Wilberforce University, Wilberforce, Ohio where he was a professor of communications from 1997 to 2006. He received Wilberforce University Faculty Merit Award Teaching Excellence in 1999. Dr. Oluyitan has received many awards and honors. He is listed in Who’s Who in Nigeria, 1990; Who’s Who in American Education, 1996-97; and Who’s Who in America, 1997. Dr. Oluyitan is the founder and director of the Association of Nigerians against Corruption founded in 1984 at Ahmadu Bello University. The NG campaigns against bribery and corruption in all its ramifications in Nigeria and imbibe in the Nigerian youths in colleges, polytechnics, universities and other tertiary institutions, and in diaspora to embrace the virtues of corruption free society (www.anachq.org). A prolific writer and communication expert, his photography work was selected as one of the top 7% in an international photo contest for Best Photography: Annual 2002. Dr. Oluyitan has written extensively on information and communication techniques and has also produced for radio and television broadcast. He hosted and produced International Insight, a weekly talk show and Sermon from the Studio, monthly on Time Warner cable television station broadcast in the Miami Valley area of Dayton, Ohio. Dr. Oluyitan wrote bi-weekly column on Africa for West African News, a newspaper published in New York. He also wrote columns on Africa in Carolina Peacemaker, Greensboro, North Carolina; The Black Voice, of Riverside, California; and Tennessee Tribune, Nashville, Tennesse, of which he served as a member of editorial board. Dr. Oluyitan has contributed chapters in a number of books and has made academic presentations in conferences around the globe. He is the author of Combatting Corruption at the Grassroots Level in Nigeria (Palgrave-Macmillan,.2017).

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© 2019 Funso E. Oluyitan, Ed.D.; Ph.D. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse  05/01/2019

ISBN: 978-1-7283-0494-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-0492-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-7283-0493-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019903286

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Dedication

This second edition is dedicated to all Africans suffering under the yoke of poverty, diseases, and hunger in the midst of stolen and mismanaged plenty by fellow Africans and their cohorts around the globe.

CONTENTS

Preface

Foreword

Chapter 1     Africa Land of Kingdoms, Blessings, Freedom

Chapter 2     Algeria

Chapter 3     Angola

Chapter 4     Benin

Chapter 5     Botswana

Chapter 6     Burkina Faso

Chapter 7     Burundi

Chapter 8     Cameroon

Chapter 9     Cape Verde

Chapter 10   Central African Republic

Chapter 11   Chad

Chapter 12   Comoros

Chapter 13   Congo

Chapter 14   Democratic Republic Of Congo

Chapter 15   Cote d’Ivoire

Chapter 16   Djibouti

Chapter 17   Egypt

Chapter 18   Equatorial Guinea

Chapter 19   Eritrea

Chapter 20   Eswatini (formerly Swaziland)

Chapter 21   Ethiopia

Chapter 22   Gabon

Chapter 23   The Gambia

Chapter 24   Ghana

Chapter 25   Guinea

Chapter 26   Guinea Bissau

Chapter 27   Kenya

Chapter 28   Lesotho

Chapter 29   Liberia

Chapter 30   Libya

Chapter 31   Madagascar

Chapter 32   Malawi

Chapter 33   Mali

Chapter 34   Mauritania

Chapter 35   Mauritius

Chapter 36   Morocco

Chapter 37   Mozambique

Chapter 38   Namibia

Chapter 39   Niger

Chapter 40   Nigeria

Chapter 41   Reunion

Chapter 42   Rwanda

Chapter 43   Sahrawi Republic

Chapter 44   Sao Tome and Principe

Chapter 45   Senegal

Chapter 46   Seychelles

Chapter 47   Sierra Leone

Chapter 48   Somalia

Chapter 49   South Africa

Chapter 50   South Sudan

Chapter 51   Sudan

Chapter 52   Tanzania

Chapter 53   Togo

Chapter 54   Tunisia

Chapter 55   Uganda

Chapter 56   Zambia

Chapter 57   Zimbabwe

Bibliography

Appendix 1   Save Africa

About The Author

PREFACE

T his book is a second edition of Africa Yesterday and Today, 2007. This is an update to April 2019. The events of yesterday are the history of today. Likewise, the events of today are the history of tomorrow. This is an historical snapshot of the past and present of 56 African countries (55 independent, while one is still a colony of France). Writing this book is a result of rigorous research I did for a period of five years as a columnist on Africa for African-American newspapers in California, New York, North Carolina, and Tennessee, USA. I honor the various authors of history and literatures that I cited in the bibliography. They are the sources of information for this book.

I embarked on writing about the history of Africa some 50 years ago as an undergraduate political science student. As a journalist just arriving in the United States of America in 1969, I was regularly invited by schools, churches, and organizational gatherings to speak about Africa. I became aware of the perverse ignorance of African history among the rank and file in the American communities I was addressing. African knowledge of my hosts was limited to what Hollywood was able to project. Hence I started writing columns on Africa, beginning from my college newspaper Ebony, at Bowie State University, Bowie, Maryland. Later on under the auspices of African Students Organization at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, I founded and edited African Insight, a quarterly journal devoted to topics on Africa. I have not relented in my desire to enlighten the people of this great nation about Africa. For more than a decade my wife and I were owners of ASE African Center in Dayton, Ohio promoting the culture of Africa through photo gallery, weekly television production and availability of African groceries, clothes, books, and music.

This book provides opportunity for more people globally to know about these 56 African countries. The history of each country begins with the original settlers followed by the European invasion, rule, and struggle for independence. You will read about the countries struggle for independence, indigenous governments after independence and the emergence of military governments. Democracy as practiced in Africa followed the surge of military governments as more leaders attempt to rule indefinitely. You will read, for each country, the latest elections result up to 2019. The historical facts of each country are written in less than 1000 words. Enjoy the reading.

FOREWORD

by

Dr. Ebere Onwudiwe

I n this day and age, the continuing necessity to write books that appropriately introduce Africa to foreign and particularly American public says a lot about media portrayal of and scholarship on the world’s oldest continent. Dr. Funso Oluyitan’s Snapshots on African Countries is another excellent counterpoint to a culture of unintended ignorance about Africa and Africans. Lest anyone think the subject superfluous, I will start with an in-house poll on the perception of Africa at a premier American university. Not long ago, a journalism professor at an elite American university shared a poll of her largely privileged students as follows: Each semester when I ask my students, the majority of whom are white and middle class, to describe for me their images and ideas of Africa, I get the usual litany of stereotypical, negative and often condescending descriptions. To my students, Africa is ‘a basket case,’ ‘jungle-covered,’ ‘big-game safari,’ ‘impoverished,’ ‘falling apart,’ ‘famine-plagued,’ ‘full of war,’ ‘AIDS-ridden,’ ‘torn by apartheid,’ ‘weird,’ ‘brutal,’ ‘tribal,’ ‘underdeveloped’ and ‘black.’ Moreover, my students describe Africans as ‘having AIDS, EBOLA,’ ‘lazy,’ ‘crazy,’ ‘corrupt,’ ‘troubled,’ ‘underdeveloped’ ‘fighting all the time,’ ‘brutal,’ ‘savage,’ ‘exotic,’ ‘sexually active,’ ‘backward,’ ‘tribal, ‘primitive’ and, again, ‘black.This, therefore, is a snap shot of the American idea of Africa. And lately-sheath-hole countries.

You wonder how many of these ‘bright’ students know that Africa is a continent of more countries than there are states in the United States. You wonder how many of them know that there are over 1,500 nationalities living in different countries with different experiences and levels of development. That some of their counterparts in Africa are far from ‘impoverished’ or ‘torn by apartheid,’ have never been ‘famine-plagued’ in a jungle. Dr. Oluyitan’s short histories of 56 African countries is a necessary corrective for the kind of scandalous lack of knowledge exposed by the American idea of Africa.

Snap shots of past and present historical events in African countries is a brilliantly conceived group of essays that offers teachers, students and the general public a unique comparative tool for thinking about and judging African countries. This is certainly superior to the prevailing method of thinking of that complex continent and its heterogeneous peoples and politics as one country. Because each essay is both historical and contemporary, and because the writing is lively, students of introductory courses on Africa will find the book to be a very friendly supplementary text that will make the learning about Africa much easier for the beginning student. Prof. Oluyitan has introduced in this book an extremely useful approach for a general text on Africa, one that will most likely reward all readers, student or not.

Professor Ebere Onwudiwe, former Director, Center for African Studies, CentralStateUniversity, Wilberforce, Ohio. Currently, CEO, O-Analytics Research and Development Initiative, Abuja.

CHAPTER 1

AFRICA! LAND OF KINGDOMS AFRICA! LAND OF BLESSINGS AFRICA! LAND OF FREEDOM

There is no place like Africa to me

Motherland Africa.

Ye! Ye! Ye! Africa,

Africa is my Home.

- Ebenezer (Obey) Fabiyi (popular Juju music Artist, Nigeria)

Africa accounts for about a quarter of the land area of the world. In 2019 the United Nations estimate the population of Africa to be 1,308,867,923, second largest of the seven continents. Its area of over 11.5 million square miles is bigger than the total land of East and West Europe, the United States, India, Japan, New Zealand, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay put together. It has a coastline of 18,976 miles. A continent in its own right, Africa from Algeria to Zimbabwe consists of 56 countries, leading other continents, 55 of them independent, one still a colony of France and one still disputed for its declaration of independence.

Land of Kingdoms:Kingdoms in Africa are among the oldest political institutions anywhere. They emerged in Africa from times even before Time began. They loom out in the mists of Antiquity like the unknown ghosts of ancestral nations which have no certain place or name, and yet are not to be denied. - Basil Davidson

Cheikh Anta Diop writing about human images of the prehistoric period indicated, The study of human images made by Flinders Petric on another plane shows that the ethnic type was black… The natives of the country are always represented with unmistakingly chiefly emblems. One of the world’s first great civilizations, the ancient Egypt, arose along the banks of the Nile River more than 5,000 years ago. In the Amhara Tigre area, the Kingdom of Aksum flourished from the 1st to the 8th centuries AD. The Kingdom of Saba was closely linked with that of Aksum. The Queen of Saba is believed to be the Sheba who visited King Solomon and that Queen grew up in Ethiopia saying that Solomon seduced her and had by her a son, Menelik I, according to legend, the first King of Ethiopia. Kingdoms south of Sahara gained power and wealth through the control of the Saharahan trade. Cities like Gao and Timbuktu were commercial centers of which kingdoms and state of Ashanti, Benin, Mossi, Oyo, Hausa used as trading posts with empires north of Sahara. Empires of Mali, Ga, Shongai reigned during the 700s and lasted more than 1000 years. The Congo Empire, the Mwanamutapa Empire, the Zulu Empire dominated the central and southern part of Africa for centuries.

Land of Blessings: Africa is a land of immense plateau broken by a few mountain ranges and bordered by the South Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean to the west and east respectively. It is capped by the Mediterranean Sea while the Red Sea bordered its north east area. Africa is a land of striking contrasts, great natural resources. It minerals wealth include huge deposits of gold, diamond, copper, and petroleum. The Equator running across its belly help produce the natural wonders of the tropical rain forest of western and central Africa as towering treetops form a thick green canopy. Africa has the world’s largest desert, the Sahara, stretches across northern Africa in an area almost as large as the entire United States. The continent’s grassland to the east and south are abode for the world famous Africa’s wild animals. There are thousands of kinds of mammals, reptiles, amphibians: fishes, birds, and insects that are of blessing to the continent.

The European’s conquer of Africa began in the late 1400’s when the Portuguese established trading posts along the coast of Africa. Gold and slaves became two of the most valuable commodities exported from the continent. The first stage of colonization was treaty making. Most African traditional rulers welcomed the initial treaties of friendship and protection, as some of them needed such protection and assistance either against their more powerful neighboring African rulers or a more hostile imperial power or even their own subjects. The second stage of the scramble was the inter-European treaties of delimitation which took place in Europe without the participation or even the knowledge of the Africans. By the late 1800’s the Europeans competed fiercely for control of Africa’s resources and the late 1900’s had carved almost all of Africa into colonial empires. While some African rulers readily submitted to the European invaders, some formed alliance with them while others put up militant confrontation. The end of World War II ushered in an era of nationalism.

Land of Freedom: The first five years following the World War II was a proliferation of political parties in British and French African colonies, and in the Portuguese and Belgian colonies later. Demagogic and charismatic leaders emerged as the battle cry for ‘Freedom from the Colonial Regime’ was echoed throughout Africa. For some African countries, independence came as a result of constitutional conferences with the colonial government, Nigeria and Ghana for example. For others like Kenya, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa independence was gained through bloodshed. Africa’s land of Freedom now consists of 56 independent countries.

On May 25, 1963, thirty-two (32) African heads of state and government gathered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, under the chairmanship of Emperor Halie Selassie and approved a Charter establishing the Organization of African Unity. The organization had programs on collective defense, de-colonization, and cooperation among African states in the economic, social, educational, cultural and scientific fields. A new rebirth took place on March 2, 2001 when the Heads of State at an Extraordinary OAU summit in Sirte, Libya declared the establishment of the African Union based on the unanimous will of the member states of the OAU. On July 9, 2002, fifty-three (53) member countries approved the formation of African Union to replace the OAU. The goals of the AU are economic progress and good governance. The AU will have its peacekeeping force, its own central bank and court of justice and work towards creating a single currency.

As Africa continues to remove the yoke of poverty, disease, and hunger being portrait by the western media, it is the responsibility of all Africans at home and in Diaspora to be ambassador of goodwill and exhibit positive character in our daily life.

The Kingdoms, the Blessings, and the Freedom reflected above are well symbolized in African art. The past, the present, and the future generations of Africa are well linked by great works of art, communicating vital messages, created long ago, whose meaning reflects the survival of the people. As the web of myth that has long been spread over Africa is being stripped, one hopes that the reality of Africa will emerge in the mind of Americans and people of other nations.

CHAPTER 2

ALGERIA

A lgeria ( al JEER ee-uh) , slightly less than three and half times the size of Texas, is located in the north west of Africa sharing land borders with six other African countries, clockwise from the north east with Tunisia, Libya, Niger, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Regarded as an Arab country, nine of the twenty-two Arab League countries are in Africa with seventy-five per cent of the total Arab population living in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia. The majority of these African Arabs are derived from a racial mix: Arab and Berber in the north; Arab and Negro in the north-west and east; Arab and Mamitic Nubians or Cushites in the upper reaches of the River Nile and Red Sea, (Mansour Khalid, Africa Today, p. 327). Arabic culture remains a predominant authentic culture in Africa, with the Arabic language widely spoken or having had an impact on many African languages. Therefore the stereotype perception that the northern Africa is not really part of Africa but an extension of the Arab world should be dismissed.

Algeria has three major land