Barghash bin Said begins his 18 year-rule as Sultan of Zanzibar. During his administration he will build much of the island’s infrastructure, including piped water, telegraph cables, roads, government buildings and the beautiful Stone Town community.  He signs an agreement with Britain prohibiting the slave trade in the sultanate, an area which includes portions of the East African mainland, and he closes the slave market at Mkunazini.

With the end of the First Anglo-Boer War, which interrupted trade between the Boer Transvaal Republic and Portuguese Mozambique, the trade treaty between the countries can now be fully utilised. The treaty drops customs duties for Transvaal exports through the port at Lourenço Marques (Maputo). A new railroad is also advancing trade from the landlocked Transvaal.

The Times of Swazieland (Eswatini), the only newspaper of the southern African territory, shuts down as the town where the weekly is published, Bremersdorp (Manzini) is evacuated. All white settlers in Swazieland are leaving as a safety precaution against marauding Afrikaner soldiers, as a second Anglo-Boer War seems about to begin. The Swazis have always considered the settlement a foreign outpost in their territory, but Queen Regent Ndlovukati Labotsibeni Mdluli is sorry to see her friends depart.

Morocco’s fate to become a French protectorate is sealed with a secret agreement that Paris signs with Spain, which gives Spain portions of northern and southern Moroccan territory in exchange for Spain’s approval of France’s takeover of Morocco. Paris will now begin to squeeze Morocco financially until Morocco’s debt-ridden government surrenders the country’s sovereignty in 1912. (pic: the gate of Fez, Morocco, 1904)

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Burkina Faso dictator Maurice Yaméogo chooses the candidates he wants for parliament, and presents the slate to voters in an “election” for MPs. Despite intimidation tactics to make them participate, only 41% of voters show up at the polls.

After the airing of globally-televised images of dead soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu by supporters of Somali warlords, U.S. President Bill Clinton announces an end to U.S. military support of U.N. food relief work in Somalia.

U.S. pop star Michael Jackson brings his world tour concerts to Tunisia. More than 90,000 of his fans manage to fit into Tunis’ Stade El Menzah, which has only 39,858 seats, by filling the football pitch.

Ugandan doctor Mathew Lukwiya (pic), identifies viral haemorrhagic fever as the cause of death for student nurses at his hospital and at nearby villages. He takes immediate action to contain the Ebola outbreak, telling terrified hospital workers, “It is our vocation to save lives.” He will die himself of Ebola within two months.

South African Sydney Brenner is awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on how genes regulate cell growth and organ development.

Morocco’s King Mohammed VI dedicates the Mohammed VI Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, in Rabat. The exquisite, airy building updating traditional Moroccan architectural stylings is the first museum built in Morocco since national independence in 1956.

Abdulrazak Gurnah, Tanzania/British author born in the Sultanate of Zanzibar is awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.”   He is only the second male African writer to receive the award. Although he fled the Zanzibar Revolution in 1968 at age 20, he says, “In my mind, I still live there.”