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Around 2000 B.C. people feeling a dramatic shift in climate joined others in Africa sount of the Sahara
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Around 3000 B.C. to 2500 B.C. the climate became hotter and drier. Many people migrated south, taking with them their knowledge of raising crops and animals.
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The Nile Valley remained fertile and gave life to the great Egyptian civilization. Between 2000 B.C. and 1000 B.C., the Egyptians pressed south, bringing various cultures along the Nile under their culture.
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Kush flourished until the A.D. 300s, when its trades routes were attacked by Axum, a trtading empire in Ethiopia.
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By the 1600s and 1700s, Europeans were trading extensively with African. They traded for gold and other goods, and for enslaved people.
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In the 1800s European powers regarded the region as a source of raw materials and as a potential market for finished goods.
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By the 1900s , educated Africans had launched independence movements, and in the second half of the century the colonies became independent.
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The western region of Darfur is involved in a conflict between agrarian non-Arab black African Muslims and government-backed militias. This conflict had led to the death of tens of thousands of people and the overcrowding of refugee camps. Although a peace deal was signed in 2005 to end the conflict between groups in the north and the south, it did not address the conflict in Darfur.
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The early kingdom of Axum emerged in Ethiopia around the A.D. 100s as a trading economy. It controlled much of the Red Sea coast, linking Axum to Mediterranean cultures.
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Arab traders settled along the coast of East Africa in the A.D. 700s bringing their language and customs. Persians also began settling along coastal areas from about the A.D. 700s until the Portuguese claimed control in the late 1400s.
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In the mid 1900s, independence movements were more successful in calling for self-government . Under increasing pressure, European powers granted colonies independence in the 1960s.
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By the 1400s, the Portuguese, who were seeking gold and later, enslaved Africans, had set up trading post along the African coast.
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In 1914 the Britsh formed the colony of Nigeria from several smaller ethnic territories.
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When European explorers landed along Central Africa's coasts in the late 1400s, they were interested in trade. They built new trade relationships mostly based on the slave trade.
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People in Madagascar were trading with outsiders as early as the A.D. 600s.
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In the case of Angola, forces fighting for Independence overthrew the Portuguese forces in 1975.
