At Addis Ababa, the African Union keeps faith with a continent that straddles the equator and the prime meridian, a landmass of about 30.3 million km2. It is the world’s second-largest continent, home to 54 fully recognised sovereign states, with Algeria the largest by area and Nigeria the largest by population. By 2021, nearly 1.4 billion people lived here, and the median age in 2012 was just 19.7, a strikingly young population that still shapes the century ahead.

Long before borders, Africa was already making history. Eastern Africa is widely accepted as the place where humans and the great apes emerged, with early hominids dated to around 7 million years ago and Homo sapiens appearing between 350,000 and 260,000 years ago. From there came the Out of Africa migration about 50,000 years ago, and on the continent itself rose Ancient Egypt, Kerma, Punt, the Tichitt Tradition, and the long Bantu expansion that began around 3000 BCE and carried peoples from modern-day Cameroon across Central, East, and Southern Africa.

In the 4th millennium BC, Upper Egypt and Lower Egypt were drawn together under the 1st dynasty, while Kerma grew powerful in Nubia. Later came the New Kingdom of Egypt in 1550 BC, the Kushite Empire in 754 BC, and Aksum in the 1st century AD, which Mani named among the four great powers. In the west, Carthage rose from Phoenician settlement, and in the Sahel the Ghana Empire, Mali, Songhai, and Kanem-Bornu turned trade routes into power, while Ife and Oyo built Yoruba states of art and rule.

Africa’s societies were never one thing. Some were empires, some were city-states, and many were stateless or organised through kinship and custom. The oral word mattered as much as any archive, and history travelled through memory, music, proverbs, and performance. By the 9th century AD, Hausa states were growing across the savannah, and by the 11th century Islam had reached Kanem, while in the forested coast the Kingdom of Nri and the bronzes of Igbo-Ukwu announced a different kind of wealth.

Then came the great rupture of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when most of Africa was conquered and colonised by European powers, with Ethiopia and Liberia the chief exceptions. Colonies were ruled for extraction, and the effects were lasting: altered borders, forced economies, and deep political strain. After World War II, decolonisation surged. Libya gained independence in 1951, Tunisia and Morocco in 1956, Ghana in March 1957, and the 1960 Year of Africa led to the Organisation of African Unity in 1963.