The Treaty of Paris that settles territorial claims arising from the Neopoleonic Wars awards Seychelles to Britain, which chooses to administer the islands as a dependency of its Crown Colony of Mauritius.

Construction begins on the Uganda Railway, which will run the length of Kenya from Mombasa’s port and inland to Uganda. The line will be completed in 1901.

The British parliament passes a resolution on the atrocities and human rights abuses carried out by Belgium’s King Leopold II through his personal colonial businesses in the Belgian Congo. (Pic: Children who fail to meet the daily rubber harvesting quota have their hands cut off.) The resolution asks that “measures may be adopted to abate the evils prevalent in that State (Belgian Congo).”

The opening of the Municipal Art Museum of Algiers, French Algeria. What will one day develop into the National Museum of Fine Arts of Algiers is housed in a former army barracks that is poorly lit and situated in a dilapidated part of town, discouraging visitors. It will be replaced in 1930.

Belgium and Britain sign the Anglo-Belgium agreement where Britain gives Belgium Ruanda-Urundi (Rwanda and Burundi) in exchange for control of German East Africa (Tanzania). No Africans are consulted about the change of ownership over their lands.

In Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe), the Legislative Assembly is founded as a unicameral parliament (no Upper House of Senate is ever created despite being mentioned in the constitution). Two MPs are elected from 15 districts. “Natives” are technically allowed to vote, but a required literacy test and a property and financial requirement effectively disenfranchises Africans.

In British Nigeria, the Sultan of Sokoto in Kaduna and the Emir of Gwandu inform the British colonial Lieutenant-Governor they wish to donate part of their government salaries to pay for the salaries of European school teachers, in order to support the education of Nigerian children. The global depression has hit hard colonial government revenue (which dropped from £8,268,928 in 1926 to £4,857,612 in 1931) and Governor Cameron has slashed the education budget by a third between 1920 and 1934, requiring the dismissal of European teachers.

U.S. jazz legend Louis Armstrong (pic: fourth from left) arrives in Accra, Gold Coast (Ghana) on a goodwill visit, and leads his band and local trumpeters on the airport tarmac in a rousing When the Saints Go Marching In. Armstrong will both influence local Highlife music, a fusion of African rhythm and American jazz, and be influenced himself by the style. Four years ago, English activist against South Africa's apartheid system, Father Trevor Huddleston, told Armstrong about a talented South African boy who wished to be a musician, and Armstrong gifted one of his trumpets to teenage Hugh Masekela, who will become South Africa’s foremost jazz trumpeter.

Although politically and economically a puppet of South Africa’s apartheid government, the “independent homeland” of Transkei commences “self-government.” The scheme is part of the Grand Apartheid plan to strip black South Africans of their citizenships and make them “citizens” of fictional “countries,” leaving ownership of South Africa to the white minority.

After negotiations fail in Ghana to prevent civil war in Nigeira, Colonel Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu declares that the Eastern Nigeria state is now the sovereign state of Biafara.

The Basketball Africa League, the new top-tier continental professional basketball league, begins its first season with 12 teams playing. The first champion will be Egypt’s Zamalek, after playing Tunisia’s US Monastir in the season finals held at Kigali Arena in Rwanda.