The artists of the Nok people of West Africa are creating enchanting terracotta figures that are among the most wonderful sculptures of this time. This figure will be stolen when Europeans colonise Africa, and will be sold for a high price as an artwork of exceptional quality. Today, in the year 2014, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts in the U.S. will return this and other looted artworks to the National Commission for Museums and Monuments in Nigeria.

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British explorers Richard Burton and John Speke depart Zanzibar and move inland from the East African coast to begin their map survey and scientific study of the East African interior.

Railway service begins in South Africa, as the Natal Railway starts operations out of Durban. The first steam locomotive, named the Natal, replaces previous trains on the line that were pulled by oxen.

The University of South Africa (Unisa) is founded, as the University of the Cape of Good Hope, by an act of Parliament of Cape Colony. The name will be changed to the University of South Africa in 1916, and through mergers, Unisa will incorporate several other colleges and universities. By 2023, Unisa will be Africa’s first mega-university, with more than 400,000 students (one out of three South African University students and international students via distance learning).

Bangui, the future capital of the Central African Republic, is founded, in the upper regions of French Congo, by Albert Dolise and Alfre Uzas.

The Catholic Archdiocese of Benin is established as the Apostolic Prefecture of Dahomey from the Apostolic Vicariate of Benin Coast. (pic: Cotonou Cathedral in 1969)

Citroën’s Croisière Noire Expedition ends in Cape Town, South Africa. For publicity, the French automaker has organised the trip to Africa’s southern-most city from Algeria in North Africa. The cars have taken nine months to complete the trip after departing Colomb-Béchar on 28 October 1924.

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Tripoli (Libya) is made a separate colony within Italy’s North African possessions.

A national stay-away in South Africa to protest government’s racial segregation Groups Areas Act is the first major anti-apartheid act of civil disobedience. The memories of 18 people killed by police during a protest action on 1 May 1950 are also honoured in the demonstrations.

The Defiance Campaign begins in South Africa. Black South Africans protest their subjugation under apartheid with non-violent acts like “trespassing” into whites’ only areas, with the hope that mass imprisonments will overwhelm government.

In Kliptown, South Africa, the Congress of the People vote to adopt the Freedom Charter. The document is a milestone affirmation of the rights of non-white peoples, and will become the manifesto for the struggle against racist apartheid policies.

British Somaliland becomes an independent country, the State of Somaliland. The state's autonomy will last for four days, and during this time it will be recognised by 35 other sovereign nations, before it is absorbed along with the former Italian Somaliland into the pre-planned Somali Republic.

Madagascar achieves national independence, from France. The capital is Antananarivo. The national population is five million people.

As Zaire (the Democratic Republic of Congo) slides further into poverty, ruler Mobutu Sese Seko ramps up his extravagant lifestyle by hiring a supersonic Concord jet to fly him to New York. The trip is the first of four times this year that he will rent a Concord. Photos of his large new palaces begin to circulate outside Zaire.

Mauritania voters overwhelmingly approve a new national constitution that limits the president’s time in office. Limiting time in office, it is hoped, will discourage autocrats from manipulating elections to stay in power indefinitely.

Terror attack strikes a beach resort near Sousse, Tunisia. An ISIS jihadist (pic) kills 38 people with an assault rifle. The massacre will cripple Tunisia’s tourism industry for two years.