A submarine telegraph cable running beneath the Mediterranean Sea from Malta reaches Alexandria, Egypt (pic). The steamship laying the cable departed Malta on 26 September. The cable will be so extensively utiilsed that a second Malta-Alexandria cable will be laid in 1870.

Facing cruelly oppressive rule by Germany, the Nama people of Namibia declare war on the German occupiers of their lands. Germany responds with the 20th Century’s first genocide. The slaughter that will result will be from shootings, bayonetting, hanging and mass starvation as well as dehydration when German forces destroy their water sources.

Italian forces under orders from dictator Benito Mussolini invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia), beginning the 2nd Italo-Ethiopian War. The Italian Air Force flies 150 modern aircraft against the Ethiopian Air Force’s three obsolete biplanes.

Huge new uranium deposits are confirmed in the Belgian Congo (Democratic Republic of Congo), just as the demand grows for uranium for the production of atomic bombs. Since 1921, billions of dollars of uranium have been exported (and used for the Hiroshima bomb), with no benefit to the Congolese people other than low-paying, dangerous mining work.

The first European dies during the anti-colonial Mau Mau Rebellion in British Kenya. A British woman is stabbed to death on her farm near Thika.

Anger is high among nationalist groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo over government’s pro-West ties, which they consider “neo-colonial.” Opposition groups meet across the Congo River in Brazzaville, and form the National Liberation Council. Led by Christophe Gbenye (pic), the heirs to the political philosophy of Patrice Lumumba seek a “second independence.” Gbenye will assemble a guerilla army, the Armée Populaire de Libération, to fight what will be the Simba Rebellion (Orientale Revolt).

Maurice Yaméogo, dictator of Upper Volta (Burkina Faso), runs unopposed in a presidential “election.” He calls the 99.97% vote in his favor a “triumph.”

South African writer and anti-apartheid activist Nadine Gordimer is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Nobel committee notes, “Through her magnificent epic writing she has—in the words of Alfred Nobel—been of very great benefit to humanity.”

The Battle of Mogadishu begins in Somalia’s capital, pitting U.S. troops against the fighters of Somali warlords. The chaotic combat will be the subject of the 2002 movie Black Hawk Down.

South African author JM Coetzee is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Already one of the most critically-acclaimed writers in the English language, he was the leading writer in Afrikaans to attack the apartheid system of black oppression and white supremacy, which he wrote "deformed and stunted relations between human beings" and that led to writers like himself producing "exactly the kind of literature you would expect people to write from prison."

In the past year, investors in new African companies spent US$1 billion on technology start-ups, up from US$40 million in 2012. The huge rise is tied to the explosive growth in the use of mobile money by Africans, which benefits tech start-ups. Kenya is Africa's leading attraction for technology company investors.