Peter Randall (1935-2024).
Courtesy the Randall family
Ravan Press published many black authors who wrote against apartheid, leading to Peter Randall being banned by the state.
Eugen Sandow stopped in South Africa on a world tour.
Wellcome Collection/Wikimedia Commons
Eugen Sandow’s visit to South Africa in 1904 was a triumph of colonial display and racism. Despite its prejudices it influenced the development of bodybuilding in South Africa.
LGBTIQ+ Angolans share their stories in an oral history project: (from left) David Kanga, Roquiana Gunza, Ema Domingos.
Courtesy Mwana Pwo/GALA Queer Archive
LGBTIQ+ life in Angola can be traced to before colonialism, though it has not been well documented. A recent project brings these stories to life.
Winnie Madikizela Mandela and Nelson Mandela were mythologised for the greater good.
Shawn Walker/Getty Images
Would South Africa have been torn apart by civil war without the myth of Nelson Mandela?
Several campaigns have been waged against statues linked to Africa’s colonial past.
Rodger Bosch/Getty Images
The fate of several colonial statues in Africa continues to be a subject of controversy.
Ghana’s men’s relay team celebrates gold at the last games, in Morocco.
Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images
Studies reveal a chequered history when it comes to the benefits of hosting the event.
Former Tanzanian President Ali Hassan Mwinyi died on 29 February aged 98.
ALEXANDER JOE/AFP via Getty Images
Ali Hassan Mwinyi successfully drove economic and political reforms in Tanzania, all in the shadow of his predecessor, Julius Nyerere.
Portuguese map of the east coast of Africa, 1630.
Joao Teixeira Albernaz/Buyenlarge/Getty Images
The history of the coastal communities of east Africa shows how ethnic groups and their languages were shaped.
Detail from the cover of Langabi.
Mother/Jacana Media
Christopher Mlalazi, award-winning novelist, was inspired by the stories he was told by his grandparents as a child.
One of the gold items being loaned back to Ghana.
Victoria and Albert Museum
The elephant in the room is the existing legal framework, forged in period of decolonisation and diminishing western influence, that forbids the repatriation of antiquities.
A hand painted advertisement for Coke in Arusha, Tanzania.
Derek Hudson/Getty Images
Coca-Cola has often been entangled with key political moments in Africa since its arrival in the early 1900s.
Getty Images
The plant’s African past provides insight into emerging issues in humanity’s interactions with cannabis.
Victor Ekpuk (centre) became the first African artist to show a public sculpture in the United Arab Emirates.
Courtesy Courtesy Efiɛ Gallery
INTERwoven TEXTures is a breakthrough exhibition. Here’s a review of it.
Moroccan defender Jawad El Yamiq waves the Palestinian flag at the Qatar 2022 football World Cup.
Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP/Getty Images
Morocco, Spain and Portugal will co-host in a symbol of unity, but history reveals sharp new tensions.
Detail of an illustration of Theodosia Okoh, who designed Ghana’s flag.
Illustrations by Denyse Gawu-Mensah/Black and Bold Queens
Women who shaped modern Ghana have been erased from history. A children’s book aims to restore them to their rightful place.
Stone obelisks stand tall in Aksum, Ethiopia. This city was once the capital of a kingdom spanning northeast Africa and the Arabian peninsula.
Shutterstock / Artist
DNA analysis sheds light on important societies within Africa that existed before colonialism.
Archaeologists excavate inside and outside Little Muck Shelter, in the Mapungubwe National Park, South Africa.
Photo: Tim Forssman
Hunter-gatherers were an important part of the development of the Mapungubwe Kingdom in southern Africa – a fact that history has tended to neglect.
Toyin Falola has turned 70.
Image courtesy Olusegun Olopade
With over 200 publications to his name, his three most recent books give a sense of why he is so famous as a historian.
After colonial contact, indigenous Africans acquired horses and guns, and raided settlers as a means of resistance.
Courtesy Sam Challis
Changes in southern African rock art reflect the mixing of groups of people after they came into contact with each other.
Regina Twala in a rare photograph with her first husband Percy Kumalo, 1936.
Courtesy Ohio University Press
A powerful new book restores the writer and feminist politician to her rightful place in history.