The Home for Freed Black Slave Women opens in Cairo, Egypt, to teach skills like domestic service to formerly enslaved Ethiopian and Sudanese women, so they might enter the workforce. Slavery is banned in Egypt under British rule, and Cairo’s slave markets are being closed. (pic: young Sudanese women enslaved in Cairo)
Nigeria’s first bank, the African Banking Corporation (British Bank of West Africa), is founded in Lagos by a consortium of British Banks. Its investors will soon lose interest in Nigeria, and the bank’s assets will be sold to form Nigeria’s oldest surviving bank, the First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) in 1894.
The Battle of Lioma of World War I is fought in Portuguese Mozambique between Germany’s last forces in East Africa, and the British King’s African Rifles corps, which inflicts heavy damage but fails to entirely eradicate the Germans. The German survivors will engage in guerilla warfare until the war ends in Europe in November.
A photographer whose identity will be lost to history creates an astonishing portfolio of portraits that record the urbanisation of Senegalese society in the 1920s, as Western fashions and attitudes are adapted by a young generation.
French Togoland becomes an autonomous state, the Republic of Togo, in the run-up to national independence in 1960. (pic: The flag of the Togoland featuring France’s tricolour flag)
The first edition of The Namibian newspaper is published, in Windhoek, South West Africa. 10,000 copies are printed of the weekly publication, which will be produced daily starting April 1989. The war for independence for the territory is still ongoing, with the South West People’s Organisation insurgents battling South African forces. The newspaper’s name suggests the inevitability of the conflict’s outcome: the country of South West Africa becoming Namibia.
Construction is underway on the World’s Biggest Pineapple, in Bathurst, South Africa. A painted fiberglass coating is being applied to a steel framework rising nearly 17 metres. When opened next year (pic: 1991), the first floor will be a gift shop, the second level will be a pineapple museum, the third level will show videos on the history of pineapple cultivation, and an observatory gives views of the surrounding pineapple plantations stretching to the Indian Ocean.
Lesotho’s military again intrudes into governance with a coup d’état that, while aborted before being fully carried out, nonetheless forces Prime Minister Thomas Thabane to flee to South Africa.
Ethiopian Airlines, Africa's most successful air company, reaches an agreement with Chad’s government to re-launch Chad Airlines. Ethiopian Airlines now owns a 49% stake to government's 51%. Ethiopian Airlines made a similar agreement in 2016 when it took over and then revitalised Rwanda’s RwandAir.
Zanzibari princess and author, in Stone Town, Sultanate of Zanzibar. She inherited great wealth from her father, the Omar of Zanzibar, got caught in the power rivalries of her brothers and sisters, and fled to Europe after becoming pregnant by a German merchant. As a girl she taught herself to write, defying custom against the education of Muslim girls, and in 1886 published the best-seller Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, the world’s first autobiography written by an Arab woman.
Kenyan big game hunter, in Nairobi, British Kenya. At a time when big game hunting was considered an adventuresome, romantic sport, he was responsible for the shooting deaths of countless animals as he led wealthy clients across the savannah in custom-built cars. In the 1950s, he was the first Muslim to be given the prestigious title “Great White Hunter.” He was killed when he was gored by a buffalo he intended to shoot.
Nigerian painter and sculptor, in Agbarha-Otor, Delta State, British Nigeria. Although trained as a representational artist who portrayed his subjects literally, he developed his own style when he incorporated elements of traditional African sculpture and art for themes dealing with African folklore and spiritualism. As part of the 1958 “Zaria Rebels” of art students, he sought to “decolonize” Nigerian art from practices and theories that were taught by Europeans. His work has been exhibited in some of the world’s most prestigious galleries and museums.
Lawyer and Zambia’s first woman Speaker of the National Assembly, in Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. A well-known human rights lawyer, she served as the Chairperson of the Anti-Corruption Commission (2002-2006) and as Commissioner of the Constitution Review Commission of Zambia (2003-2005). She was elected unopposed as Speaker of Zambia’s legislature.
