Africa Timeline of Events

Home / Timelines / Africa

Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...

Timeline of Events

1909

3.23.1909

Theodore Roosevelt leaves New York for a post-presidency safari in Africa. The trip is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution and National Geographic Society.

1914

9.13.1914

World War I: South African troops open hostilities in German south-west Africa (Namibia) with an assault on the Ramansdrift police station.

1940

6.17.1940

World War II: the British Army's 11th Hussars assault and take Fort Capuzzo in Libya, Africa from Italian forces.

1955

4.24.1955

The Bandung Conference ends: Twenty-nine non-aligned nations of Asia and Africa finish a meeting that condemns colonialism, racism, and the Cold War.

1960

2.3.1960

British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan speaks of the "a wind of change" of increasing national consciousness blowing through colonial Africa, signalling that his Government was likely to support decolonisation.

1983

9.23.1983

Gerrie Coetzee of South Africa becomes the first African boxing world heavyweight champion.

1996

11.19.1996

Lt. Gen. Maurice Baril of Canada arrives in Africa to lead a multi-national policing force in Zaire.

2002

6.24.2002

The Igandu train disaster in Tanzania kills 281, the worst train accident in African history.

2005

11.23.2005

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is elected president of Liberia and becomes the first woman to lead an African country.

2006

1.16.2006

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is sworn in as Liberia's new president. She becomes Africa's first female elected head of state.