Spain and Portugal make peace with the Treaty of Pardo, which gives to Spain control over what will become Equatorial Guinea, including the country’s islands in the Gulf of Guinea. Africans of the area will not regain control of their lands for 200 years.

Freetown, Sierra Leone is founded by a group of former enslaved African-Americans who earned their freedom by fighting for the colonial British government against the American forces seeking independence from England. The Americans they fought against included their slave masters, and they were more focused on their personal freedom than the independence of their enslavers. When America won its independence, the so-called Black Loyalists fled to Nova Scotia, Canada before seeking new lives in West Africa.

The Sultan of the Afar people (Djibouti), Sultan Raieta Dini Ahmet, signs an agreement in Paris conceding to France the area of Obock, a port on the Gulf of Tadjoura. In exchange, he receives 55,000 francs. France has been using the port for years, and the agreement merely formalised the reality on the ground. However, French adventurers will use the treaty as a pretext to claim more Djiboutian territory.

Scottish missionary Frederick Arnot, 22, arrives in Shoshong (Botswana) with a goal of converting Africans and whites alike. Because other missionaries have been active there, Tswana King Kama has already converted to Christianity. Looking for new peoples to convert, Arnot will travel for three months northward into Barotseland (Zambia). He will be befriended by Litunga (king) Lewanika, who will keep him as his guest for a year and a half, to advise him on an alliance with Britain. When rebellion breaks out, Arnot will be sent away for his safety by Lewanika. He will travels further into the highlands, and happen upon the source of the Zambezi River.

An air disaster is averted when two explosions go off aboard an Ethiopian Airlines passenger jet while the plane is still on the ground, in Frankfurt, Germany, although several cleaning women are injured. The Eritrean Liberation Front claims responsibility, saying the bombing is a reprisal for the airline transporting Ethiopian troops into Eritrea during the Eritrean War for Independence.

Air Tanzania is formed, as a wholly-owned government company. Tanzania requires a national airline to replace East African Airways that served the country until it went out of business two months ago (January 1977).

The Battle of Lukaya is the largest engagement of the Uganda-Tanzania War. Tanzanian forces strike to reclaim the Ugandan town lost yesterday to Libyan and Palestinian soldiers, who are allies of Uganda and are fighting with tanks and superior weaponry. An attack from the front and behind along with devastating artillery fire causes chaos in the Ugandan ranks. The Libyans retreat. Ugandan dictator Idi Amin’s commander of the battle, Lieutenant Colonel Godwin Sule, is killed when he is run over by one of his own army tanks. The Ugandan command structure collapses, and the Ugandan troops who have thus far survived run away. Uganda loses 200 soldiers, and the Libyan dead also number 200.

After 50 people are killed in demonstrations demanding the immediate reincorporation of the “independent country” of Bophuthatswana into South Africa, South African soldiers are deployed in the “capital” Mmabatho to restore order.

Mauritania’s first fully democratic elections are held. Power is transferred from the military that gained control of the country in a 2005 coup d’état.

A NATO-led coalition begins a military intervention of Libya to enforce an UN-ordered end of hostilities. The chaos of the Libyan Revolution is creating crimes against humanity. Air attacks on Tripoli target Muammar Gaddafi’s heavily-fortified compound.

International newsmagazine Time puts South Africa’s paralympian hero Oscar Pistorius, arrested for murder, on its cover with the caption, “Pistorius and South Africa’s Culture of Violence,” linking his crime to a current wave of violent crime in the country.