African history

The Axum Obelisk was looted by Italian soldiers in 1937 on the orders of Benito Mussolini

The first African lifestyle magazine Drum, was first printed in 1951

In 1980, Abebech Gobena founded an orphanage in Ethiopia to save children from starvation

In 1953, Marie-José Loshi was forcibly taken from her family because of her skin colour

In 1994, a college student discovered a 4.4 million-year-old skeleton in Ethiopia

In 1987, rugged pickup trucks provided a turning point in the decades-long war in Chad

In 1936, the Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie was exiled in Bath in the UK

South Africa’s first musical with an all-black cast opened to critical acclaim in 1959

In September 1974, a military junta launched a coup against Ethiopia's monarchy

A specially commissioned portrait of Nelson Mandela by Harold Riley was unveiled in 2005

In 2014, Boko Haram drove into Gwoza in Nigeria and began an assault that killed hundreds

President Goodluck Jonathan's call to Muhammadu Buhari to concede election defeat in 2015

In 1984, 11 Dunnes store workers walked out after refusing to handle South African goods

In March 2015, 22 people were killed when two gunmen stormed the building

The last whites-only vote in South Africa was held in 1992

In 1966, Ethiopian musician Mulatu Astatke recorded a new genre of music, Ethio-jazz

Oliver Tambo returned to South Africa in 1990 after 30 years in exile.

In 1908, the first Kolmanskop diamond was found. It's now abandoned, buried in the desert

Brenda Fassie was a popular South African pop star, dubbed the 'Madonna of the townships'

In 1995, a United Nations mission to restore peace in Somalia ended in disaster

The campaign to return Sarah Baartman to South Africa nearly 200 years after her death

In 2002, a nun was sent to northern Uganda to help those suffering from a bloody conflict

In 2003, human rights lawyer Hauwa Ibrahim defended Amina Lawal from death by stoning

Bob Golding turned Ibadan Zoo into one of Nigeria's biggest attractions in the 1970s