The reign begins of Muhammad Ali Pasha al-Mas’ud ibn Agh, the founder of modern Egypt. At the height of his rule he will control Lower and Upper Egypt, Sudan, parts of Arabia and all of the Levant. Witnessing how Napoleon Bonapart’s French army had only been driven out of Egypt with British help, he will modernise the country militarily and economically to compete with European powers. He will also institute reforms to end outdated agricultural and social practices.
The Johannesburg campus of the Transvaal University splits from the university’s main campus in Pretoria, and becomes the South African School of Mines and Technology. The institution will later become the University of Witwatersrand.
The first elections are held in South Africa where women (white women only) may vote and run for office. Leila Reitz is elected the first female MP, representing Parktown.
For the majority of Africa’s rivers, passage across for motor vehicles is by pole-propelled barges tethered to ropes, on a continent in great need of new bridges. (pic: Kilfifi River ferry, British Kenya)
In an effort to control the narrative of its response to the Mau Mau Uprising, colonial authorities in British Kenya screen propaganda films in villages using trucks that carry the equipment for mobile cinemas.
Kariba Dam on the Zambezi River separating Northern and Southern Rhodesia (Zambia and Zimbabwe) is officially opened by Britain’s Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth. 57,000 Tonga people lost their homes and land, submerged beneath the giant Lake Kariba, and the colonial government’s resettlement scheme has proved flawed.
Morocco holds its first parliamentary elections, following a constitutional referendum. Visitors to Casablanca find all taxis are now painted bright red.
In Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), two Canadian female tourists are shot dead and one American female tourist is wounded by gunfire from the Zambia side of the Zambezi River. The women are hiking beneath the Mosi-oa-Tunya waterfall. (Pic: a 1973 tourist photo of the falls.) The result will be the devastation of the tourism industries in Rhodesia and Zambia as visitors drop to a fraction of their 1970 numbers for the next few years, as militant activity intensifies against Rhodesia’s white minority government.
Angola insurrection leader Jonas Sivimbi (pic: left), now that his guerilla insurgency supported by apartheid South Africa has become a relic from the Cold War, meets South African President Nelson Mandela (pic: right) in Cape Town to discuss ending Angola’s Civil War.
Zaire dictator Mobuto Sese Seko (pic) flees to Morocco, forced out of power by the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL) led by Lauarent-Désiré Kabila. Kabila names himself the country’s new president.
A statue of Burkina Faso pan-Africanist icon Thomas Sankara, President from 1983 until his assassination in 1987, is unveiled in Ouagadougou. The 5-metre tall statue replaces a controversial earlier attempt that was rejected by the public as ugly and looking nothing like the charismatic nationalist hero.
Pioneering Kenyan conservationist and zoologist, in Gem, Siaya County, Kenya. The first East African to earn a science degree, in 1951, studying at Oxford University and the University of London, he was Professor and Dean of Faculty at the University of Nairobi and Chancellor of Great Lakes University of Kisumu. His research focused on East African fish and invertebrate animals.
Pioneering naval officer who helped form Ghana’s navy, in Accra, Gold Coast. In 1961, he received the appointment to command the Ghana Navy.
Author, historian and creator/editor of Africa Today/Yesterday, in Evanston, Illinois, U.S. Given the Swazi warrior name Tjekisa when he was initiated into the Swazi Inyatsi regiment in 1990, he made Eswatini his home in 1988 after South African singer Miriam Makeba, whose autobiography he wrote, encouraged him to explore African spiritualism. He has written seven books on Africa, and more than 8,000 articles, including Eswatini’s longest-running newspaper column.
