After a difficult trans-Atlantic voyage from Gambia, the American slaveship Lord Ligonier arrives at Annapolis, Maryland in the U.S. with a cargo of 96 enslaved Africans and 18 crew, after departing West Africa with 140 enslaved people and 26 crew members. In his 1976 book Roots, African-American author Alex Haley will claim his ancestor Kunta Kinte was aboard the ship. A 1977 TV adaptation of the book will invent a fictional slave uprising during the voyage, inspired by an actual uprising aboard the slave ship Amistad.

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Samori Touré, Emperor of the Islamic Empire of Wassoulou, is captured by the the colonial forces of France, which has been waging war against him since 1892 in order to subdue the Sahel from Senegal to Sudan. The Wassoulou Empire reached its greatest power in 1881, when it extended over parts of what will become Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali and Sierra Leone. Touré is the great-grandfather of Guinea’s first president Sékou Touré, who will infuriate the French by rejecting France’s condition for Guinea’s independence, and instead chose an independent course that will honour his great-grandfather’s memory.

Claiming its citizens living in Tripoli are under threat, Italy declares war on the Ottoman Empire, which controls Libya. Italy's intention is to annex Libya as its own colony.

A French pioneer in urban planning, Henri Proust, arrives in French Morocco at the invitation of the colonial government to work on the development of the major cities Casablanca, Fes, Marrakesh, Meknes and Rabat. He will spend a decade in the country. Casablanca will become a major success at urban design.

The time is ending for private for-profit companies owned by Britain’s Cecil Rhodes, King Leopold II of Belgium (who was forced out of business in 1908) and other adventurers who have assumed the powers of colonial governments over large areas of Southern Africa. Rhode’s British South Africa Company gives up Northern Rhodesia (Zambia) to the British government, to administer as a British colony until independence in 1964.

He was once the target of an international manhunt and assassination attempt by France, but now having overwhelmingly won Algeria’s national election on 20 September, independence fighter Ben Bella receives international recognition for his election victory from the U.S. and other powers. He forms a government, and Algeria will join the U.N. on 8 October.

Kenya’s national team returns from the Summer Olympic Games in Mexico City to a hero’s welcome. Kenya ended the games ranked 14 among all competing countries in medals, winning 3 gold, 4 silver and 2 bronze. Kenya entered the games having won no previous gold medals.

A rare powerful earthquake shakes South Africa east of Cape Town. Measuring a magnitude of 6.3, and striking a populated area, the Ceres earthquake is the country’s most damaging, killing nine people and causing widespread destruction.

One of history’s bloodiest dictators, Macias Nguema, is found guilty of mass murder and other crimes by an Equatorial Guinea military tribunal. He is executed by firing squad within hours at Black Beach Prison, where tens of thousands of innocent Equatoguineans were tortured and killed under the supervision of Nguema’s nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. The nephew takes over as a new dictator, and will continue to run the country in 2022.

South Africa’s apartheid regime is thrown an economic lifeline, and earns money it needs to pursue wars with neighbouring countries and expand its programme to relocate black South Africans to “homelands.” The price of gold surpasses US$400 an ounce. (It will hit US$437 on 2 October.) South Africa provides 60% of the non-Communist world’s gold. The gold boom will pay for oil and other commodities that have been cut off by international sanctions against South Africa, and must be obtained from other sources. To dig the gold, 400,000 black miners do the hard, dangerous work underground for US$180 a month (the equivalent of US$761 in 2023).

A Three Dikosi Monument is dedicated in Gaborone by Botswana President Festus Mogae, featuring statues of the dikosi (chiefs) Bathoen I, Khama III and Sebele I. The three chiefs ensured national sovereignty for the country by travelling to London in 1895 and successfully petitioning Britain’s Queen Victoria to keep their lands free of Cecil Rhodes’ company’s control.

The Gujba College Massacre, one of Nigeria’s terror group Boko Harem’s bloodiest attacks yet, occurs when the terrorists enter a male dormitory at the College of Agriculture in Gugba, Nigeria and kill 44 students and teachers.

Nigeria’s Warri–Itakpe Railway is dedicated, after 33 years of construction that began in 1987. However, the reason for the railroad, to carry steel from Itakpe to the sea, remains unfulfilled. Construction on the Ajaokuta Steel Mill began in 1979, but as of 2023 not one kilo of steel has been produced.

Amid a political crisis in which Tunisian President Kais Saied is accused of a power grab, he asks university professor and geologist Najla Bouden Romdhan, an authority with the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, to form a new government. She will take office on 11 October as Tunisia's first female prime minister, as well as the Arab world's first female prime minister.