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1680

The Kingdom of Loango has reached the height of its power in West Africa. Expanding inland from the mouth of the Congo River, the kingdom is less powerful than the giant Kingdom of Kongo to the south, but does thriving business exporting copper and textiles to Europe. (pic: a 17th century European artists’ depiction - or imagining - of the City of Loango)

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1680

1932

British aviator Jim Mollison sets forth from the U.K. on a solo flight to Cape Town, flying a de Havilland Puss Moth airplane. He arrives in South Africa on 28 March, setting a speed record of 4 days and 17 hours.

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1932

1934

Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) gets a new capital, Lusaka, to replace Livingstone, as Prince George of England lays the cornerstone for government administrative buildings (pic: the existing Government House) and dedicates new roads laid out for the city. Africans are not permitted to live in the town without temporary employment permits, and their family members are not allowed in at all. By 1938, 10,000 Africans will work in the city, but only 1,500 will live in houses. The others live in shacks of wood and cardboard.

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1934

1949

At the 21st Academy Awards (Oscars) in Hollywood, the first African to be nominated for cinema’s top honour is South African-born Cecil Kellaway, as Best Supporting Actor for the 1948 movie The Luck of the Irish.

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1949

1952

Mali experiences its worst air disaster to date when a Société Africaine des Transports Tropicaus (SATT) Lockheed Lodestar crashes immediately after departing Gao Airport, killing 17 of the 21 people on board.

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1952

1957

In Belgian controlled Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda and Burundi), ten Hutu intellectuals including Grégoire Kayibanda, a future revolutionary who will be Rwanda’s first elected president, deliver to colonial authorities the Bahutu Manifesto. The manifesto demands the end of colonialism and the exploitation of the Hutu and Twa peoples by the Tutsi. The Belgians have placed Tutsi in positions of economic and political power, and the manifesto condemns the “monopoly which is held by one race, the Tutsi.” The ethnic imbalance will not be corrected by the colonial power, and this will lead to cycles of violence after Rwanda’s independence in 1962.

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1957

1972

The University of Mauritius is opened, by Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II. Britain's Princess Alexandra is the university’s first chancellor.

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1972

1979

As Tanzania’s victory in the Uganda-Tanzania War becomes clear and the fall of Kampala is imminent, Ugandan opposition leaders in exile and heads of rebel forces fighting dictator Idi Amin meet in the Tanzanian town Moshi to discuss a framework for post-Amin governance in Uganda. (pic: future Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni 2nd from left)

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1979

2003

The first International Nomads Festival is organized at the Moroccan village of M'hamid El Ghizlane by the Association Nomades du Monde. Celebrating the nomadic culture of Southern Morocco – from dance, music and handicraft to baking bread on hot desert sands – the festival will become one of the country’s most important cultural events.

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2003

2013

Séléka rebels capture Central African Republic’s capital Bangui. President François Bozizé flees across the Congo River into the Democratic Republic of Congo.

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2013

Births

1930
David Dacko

First President of the Central African Republic, in Lobaye, French Equatorial Africa. He served from national Independence in 1960 until his overthrown in a military coup d’état led by Jean-Bédel Bokassa in 1965. France removed Bokassa in 1979 and restored Dacko, who then served until he was again removed by a military coup d’état in 1981.

1935
Lourdes Van-Dúnem

From the 1960s through the 1990s the queen of Angolan music, in Luanda, Portuguese West Africa. The members of her first band, Ngola Ritmos, all became Angolan musical legends (Liceu Vieira Dias, José de Fontes Pereira, Amadeu Amorim and Belita Palma) and, along with her, supporters of Angola’s independence cause. In the 1980s, she was made Secretary of State for Culture. Angola’s President José Eduardo dos Santos attended her funeral in 2006.

1976
Aliou Cissé

Senegalese football player and coach, in Ziguinchor, Senegal. While playing for the Senegal national teach, he was the first Senegalese captain to reach an Africa Cup of Nations final, in 2002. As coach for the same team, he was the first Senegal manager to win the African Cup of Nations, in 2022.