From the Zulu's buffalo-horn charges to Dahomey's all-female elite corps and the musketeers of Kanem-Bornu: ten pre-colonial African military systems whose organization, tactics, and logistics still astound.
From the Grand Egyptian Museum's 100,000 artifacts to Benin's Voodoo Festival and Lalibela's rock-hewn churches: ten destinations where Africa's living culture — its festivals, faiths, crafts and cuisines — takes center stage in 2026.
Kush ruled Egypt. Aksum was named one of the four great kingdoms of its age. Songhai became the largest empire West Africa has ever had. These are seven of Africa's most powerful kingdoms, what made each one strong, and how each one ended.
Before colonial courts and classrooms, Africa's secret societies ran the schools, the courts and the police: ten institutions — from Poro bush schools to the Ogboni judges and the Ekpe leopard men — that governed millions of lives.
The story of Osiris — the murdered king who became judge of the dead — organised the entire Egyptian worldview, from the throne to the weighing of the heart. This is the myth that shaped Kemet.
They fought with holy water, with spears against machine guns, with guerrilla armies that humiliated European empires — ten anti-colonial wars in Africa, from the Maji Maji Rebellion to the Rif War, that history class never taught you.
Africa holds the oldest fossils of our species, has more pyramids than Egypt, and is home to about 30 per cent of the world's living languages. Here are ten facts, each checked against a named source, running from 300,000 years ago to September 2026.
They were soldiers, administrators, missionaries, and company men — ten Europeans whose treaties, charters, and gunboats redrew Africa’s map between 1880 and 1914. Meet the colonial agents, from Cecil Rhodes to King Leopold II, and the machinery they built.
From Vodun's healing shrines in Benin to the Mursi lip plate in Ethiopia, the all-night mbira ceremonies of the Shona to the kola nut diplomacy of the Igbo — African practices outsiders called primitive, barbaric, or bizarre were sophisticated systems of law, medicine, and meaning all along.
Between 1874 and 1919, European powers put new names on African land: Gold Coast, Congo Free State, Rhodesia, Upper Volta. This is what stood on that land before, who chose each colonial name, and what ten countries call themselves today.
The Shadow of the Sun is a collection of stories gathered from different parts of Africa by the narrator based on his individual experiences, observations, analyses and conclusions.
What’s your common idea about Nigeria – email scams and overall instability? Well, it’s time to rethink. Beyond all that, there’s a glowing side of Nigeria most travelers never see.
