Africa Timeline

  • 1400

    1400s

    Europeans began to make long sea, they also learned of the richest of Africa beyond the Sahara and began to set up colonies.
  • 1500

    1500s

    African traders began selling enslaved people for guns and other European goods.
  • 1500

    1500s

    Europeans had built trading posts on the African coast.
  • 1600s

    Southern and Eastern Africa were also colonized.
  • 1800s

    The slave trade was mostly outlawed, but Europeans interference in Africa.
  • 1800s

    Europeans power began actively colonizing Africa.
  • 1900s

    Africans regained power over their own lands.
  • 1900s

    European nations had divided most of Africa into colonies.
  • 1910s

    In South Africa, independence came as early.
  • 1910s

    South Africa gained independence from Britain.
  • 1920s

    In Kenya, the Kikuyu people started a political organization.
  • 1930s

    The only country that was never colonized was Ethiopia, though ut was invaded by Italy.
  • 1940s

    African independence movements gained momentum.
  • 1948s

    They adopted apartheid, a former South African policy of strict separation of races.
  • 1950s

    Most of Africa gained independence.
  • 1956s

    Southerns rebelled against northern rule.
  • 1957s

    Ghana became independent.
  • 1960s

    Nigeria became independent.
  • 1960s

    Most of Africa gained independence.
  • 1960s

    Belgium abruptly granted independence to the Belgium Congo.
  • 1962s

    Nelson Mandela was an ANC leader who was jailed.
  • 1963s

    After years of negotiation and finally violence between the British and Kenyan fighter, Kenya gained independence.
  • 1965s

    Army leader Joseph Mobutu seized power and changed the country's name to Zaire, after a traditional name for the Congo River.
  • 1967s

    An oil-rich region controlled by the Igbo ethnic group attended to leave Nigeria.
  • 1989s

    F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's president.
  • 1990s

    He released Mandela from prison and agreed to end apartheid.
  • 1994s

    F.W. de Klerk, South Africa's president stopped being president.
  • 1994s

    South Africans of all races voted together and Mandela became president.
  • 1994s

    During a few months, Hutu military and military groups killed 800,000 to 1 million Tutsis.
  • 2000s

    Hundreds of thousand of people, mostly black farmers, were killed.
  • 2005s

    Civil war was raged, and killed several million people.
  • 2010s

    A movement for more democracy that came to be known as the Arab Springs began in Tunisia.
  • 2011s

    South Sudan became independent.
  • 2011s

    Issued a new constitution that voters approved.
  • 2011s

    Qaddafi was killed in October, but the new government that formed did not have the support of all the rebel groups.
  • 2011s

    Arab Springs protests forced him to resign.
  • 2012s

    Egyptians elected an Islamist president, Mohammed Moris.
  • 2013s

    The military imprisoned Morsi and banned his political party.