Kanyembo Keleka Mayi, the fourth king of the powerful Kazembe Kingdom centered on Southern Africa’s Luapula River (Zambia) has been the ruler of the Kiluba-Chibemba people for a year and will continue to reign until 1850. Today, he captures two Portuguese slave traders, Pedro Baptisa and Amaro José. They are held as his prisoners for four years. (pic: present-day Kazembe king Kanyembo Keleka Mayi, in 2017)

The city of Cape Town in Cape Colony, South Africa unveils a landmark statue of the colony’s founder Jan van Riebeeck. The monument (pic: top right) will still stand in 2023. The statue is donated by British imperialist Cecil Rhodes, who seeks to finish van Riebeeck’s colonising ambitions by subjugating Africans and taking possession of their mineral wealth.

The German dirigible the Graf Zeppelin passes over the Canary Islands off Africa’s northwest coast on the first of its scheduled trans-Atlantic flights to Brazil.

As air travel grows throughout Africa following World War II, accidents also increase. East African Airways Flight 104 flying from Dar es Salaam to Nairobi crashes into Mount Kilimanjaro, killing 20 passengers.

Litunga, the King of Barotseland, the empire of the Lozi people that once stretched over a wide area of central Southern Africa, signs an agreement with Zambian President Kenneth Kaunda to incorporate Barotseland into Zambia. In return, he is promised autonomous self-rule. In 1969, Zambia’s parliament will nullify the agreement, and change the name from Barotseland to Western Province.

After threatening to make Rwanda a communist state if the West interferes with his rule, Grégoire Kayibanda is re-elected president in the third election where he runs unopposed. He has revised the constitution, dropping presidential term limit and the presidential age limit, paving the way for a life presidency.  Preventing this will be the military, which will depose him in a coup d’état in July.

Under the Nigerian constitution, the percentage that government receives from the sale of all minerals increases significantly. Government's share of oil and gas extracted from the country rises from 35% to 55%, and will rise to 60% in 1979.

Zaire’s dictator Mobuto Sese Seko, a U.S. ally, sends 1,200 troops into Angola to aid the Angola government's National Liberation Army of Angola. The government army is also supported by South Africa’s apartheid regime, which is fighting the rebel People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola, backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. The Angolan Civil War is one of the bloodiest and lengthiest proxy wars fought between East and West during the Cold War that uses Africa as a battlefield.

The influential U.S. TV news programme Nightline runs a week-long series on the crisis in South Africa. This is the first time the show is broadcast from a remote location, live via satellite linkup. (pic: interview with anti-apartheid activist Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned liberation leader Nelson Mandela)

South Africa prepares for democracy by welcoming its future leaders with the commencement of the Indemnity Act No. 35. The law gives temporary or permanent indemnity against prosecution to exiles returning from abroad.

Somaliland formally declares its independence from the Republic of Somalia. Abdirahman Ahmed Ali Tuur becomes president. After his term ends in 1993, he will renounce separatism in 1994 and seek reconciliation with southern Somalia.

Barotseland, which seeks the self-rule it was promised when it joined Ghana, becomes a member of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organisation. Barotseland joins Tibet and Taiwan in the organisation that seeks international recognition and autonomous rule for their states.

Although no foreign country recognises Somaliland, political supporters for the breakaway republic include the U.K. Independent Party, which hails Somaliland as “a beacon of peace, democracy and Rule of Law in the Horn of Africa for the past 24 years.”