The Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria) has completed its protective wall system. The wall is four times longer than the Great Wall of China and by volume is hundreds of times larger than Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Cheops. Dug by the Edo people, the wall took an estimated 150 million hours to dig and build.

The cornerstone is laid for an Executive Mansion in the District of Columbia, the new capital of the United States of America, where the U.S. President will work and reside. Enslaved Africans leased by their owners to the U.S. government do the construction: carpentry, masonry, rafting, plastering, glazing, and painting -- skilled and unskilled work for which they are paid nothing.

Construction of South Africa’s first mosque, in Bo-Kaap, in Cape Town. The Auwal Mosque is built on land donated by the daughter of the land’s original owner, Coridon van Ceylon. He was a Vryezwarten (freed former black Muslim slave). Qadi Abdussalam will be the mosque’s first iman.

German missionary Carl Hugo Hahn arrives in Cape Town with the intent to work with the Herero people of German South West Africa (Namibia). However, it will be his work as a linguist that will prove his most enduring contribution as he documents the Herero language.

Elders Colonial Airlines begins service in West Africa. The first flight from Accra, Gold Coast (Ghana) to Lagos, British Nigeria uses a de Havilland Express aircraft. The inaugural flight has been delayed for months until a way was found to rid the plane’s passenger compartment of mosquitoes, which alarmed colonial health authorities.

Mohammed Tlili ben Abdallah becomes the first Tunisian to win a gold medal at an Olympics when he takes first place in the Men’s 5000 metres at the Summer Olympic Games.

South Africa’s first Gay Pride Parade is held, in Johannesburg. This is also the first Pride Parade held on the African continent

The first recipients of the new UNESCO Félix Houphouët-Boigny Peace Prize, named for the first president of Côte d’Ivoire and intended for “those individuals and institutions that have made significant contribution to promoting, seeking, safeguarding or maintaining peace,” is given to South Africa’s anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela and South Africa’s president F.W. de Klerk. They are recognised for their work to establish a multi-racial democratic state. They will share the award money of US$150,000.

Egyptian Ahmed Zewail is awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering work using laser technology to reveal the workings of chemical reactions.

The trend of African leaders buying luxury jets for themselves at public expense draws criticism. After Zambia's President Edgar Lungu buys himself a Russian-built luxury jet that is outfitted with laser canons to shoot down missiles, Norway halts billions of dollars in aid that the country is providing Zambia's government to assist the 55% of Zambians living in poverty.