Is South Africa safe for tourists? Yes, with planning: violent crime is real but concentrated, and millions visit safely each year. This honest guide covers advisories, cities, and precautions.
Around 1600 BC, an Egyptian surgeon wrote down 48 trauma cases with examinations, diagnoses, and honest prognoses. It holds the first written use of the word "brain" and is the oldest surgical text on Earth.
Around 1550 BC, Egyptian physicians filled a 20-metre scroll with more than 700 remedies, from dentistry to contraception. It is the most complete record of ancient Egyptian medicine, and it sat in Europe while textbooks credited medicine to Greece.
When to go to Africa depends on the region: West Africa is best November to March, East and Southern Africa June to October, and North Africa in spring and autumn. This honest region-by-region guide matches the month to the trip.
Nearly 4,700 years ago, an Egyptian named Imhotep designed the first pyramid and practiced medicine more than 2,000 years before Hippocrates was born. History class skipped him. Here is his story.
Timbuktu was one of the great university cities of the world, and its scholars mapped the stars while Europe insisted Africa had no written knowledge. The manuscripts prove otherwise.
Ethiopia's Ge'ez script is nearly 2,000 years old and still in daily use. Born in the Aksumite kingdom, it survived empires, colonization, and the alphabet age, and millions still read and write in its descendant scripts today.
In 951, an Arab geographer named the king of Ghana the wealthiest ruler on earth because of his stores of gold. Nearly four centuries later, Mansa Musa of Mali gave away so much gold in Cairo that its price there fell.
An Algerian chickpea flan, said to have been invented by Spanish soldiers under siege in Oran, beat every other street food in Africa in TasteAtlas's 2026 ratings. North African snacks filled the top ten.
Is Kenya safe for tourists? For most visitors on the main safari and coastal circuits, yes, with sensible precautions. But the US raised Kenya to Level 3 in October 2026, so check the latest advisories before you book.
For centuries, African villages were laid out in patterns that repeat at every scale, rings within rings and rectangles within rectangles. Europeans called it disorganized. It was fractal geometry, centuries before the West gave it a name.
In 2024, about 2.5 million immigrants from sub-Saharan Africa lived in the United States, more than triple the number in 2000. In their kitchens, a grain dish recorded in 13th-century North African cookbooks sits beside a curry-filled loaf invented in 1940s Durban.
