A pentagon-shaped fort, the Castle of Good Hope, is built to protect the Dutch Cape Colony (South Africa). Constructed on the coastline of Table Bay, the fortification, after centuries of landfill extending Cape Town into the bay, will by the 21st century no longer overlook the bay but will be located close to the centre of downtown.
Morocco accepts defeat in the six-month Hispano-Moroccan War, and allows Spain to keep its city Ceuta along Morocco’s Mediterranean Coast. In the 21st century, Ceuta will used by African migrants seeking entry into Europe, resulting in deadly clashes with Moroccan and Spanish security forces.
The idea of an indigenous Egyptian bank is first proposed in an article in the Cairo newspaper Al-Tijara. 41 years will pass before Egypt’s first bank opens.
South Africa’s Bantu/Native Building Workers Act goes into effect to shield white and mixed-race workers in the construction industry from competition from black workers. Black workers are subject to arrest if they perform jobs like bricklaying and carpentry.
Nigeria’s first women police officers graduate in a Passing Out ceremony Ikeja, British Nigeria. 20 women have completed six months’ training. They are not issued guns while on duty.
King Idris of Libya decrees the end of the country’s feudal system, and establishes the Kingdom of Libya as a centralised state. Ended also are the legislatures of the three provinces that have formed Libya as a federal state since 1951.
The United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar is formed from a merger of the Indian Ocean archipelago Zanzibar and the mainland country Tanganyika. In October, the name will be changed to Tanzania.
The world’s first successful ocean-based rocket launch facility opens, in Kenya. Using an off-shore platform, the San Marco Equatorial Mobile Range that was established through a 1964 partnership agreement with Kenya and Italy launches a satellite-bearing rocket. The launch makes Italy the third space-faring nation, behind the U.S.S.R. and U.S. This is the first of nine rockets and 20 sounding rockets that will be launched from the facility.
After Tanzania’s government forces the country’s popular newspaper The Standard to merge with the government owned newspaper The Nationalist, the new hybrid newspaper, the Daily News, produces its first edition.
Crown Prince Makhosetive is crowned King Mswati III, ruler of Swaziland (Eswatini). At age 18, he is the world’s youngest head of state.
Despite her recent divorce from South Africa’s President Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, a powerful anti-apartheid icon, is overwhelmingly re-elected as president of the Women's League of the liberation party (and current ruling party) the African National Congress.
A new mountain bike race in South Africa, the 900km joBerg2c, gets underway in Heidelberg in Gauteng Province. The race will end after nine days in Scottburgh on the KwaZulu-Natal coast. The longest mountain bike race in the country and possibly the world, the event highlights the growing popularity of mountain biking.
Nigerian journalist, in Lagos Island, British Nigeria. A reporter and editor, he laid the groundwork for the modernisation of the journalism profession to meet the challenges of post-colonial Nigeria when he found the Nigerian Union of Journalism in 1954. CROP PIC
Cameroonian writer whose fiction examines African life under colonialism, in Sanaga-Maritime Division, Littoral Province, French Cameroon. Multi-lingual, he wrote his two most famous books Cette Afrique là! in French in 1963, and Adler und Lilie in Kamerun: Lebensbericht eines Afrikaners in German in 1966.
