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  3. African History
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African History - Topics

Africa is a large and diverse continent that extends from South Africa northward to the Mediterranean Sea. The continent makes up one-fifth of the total land surface of Earth. Widely recognized as the birthplace of humankind, Africa saw the rise of great kingdoms, faced the trans-Atlantic slave trade, colonization and Apartheid.

44:58 min

Black Gold

The team joins forces with a rag-tag group of park rangers who are trying to stop the destruction of Congo’s most critical national forest. Rebel crime units are cutting down the forest to manufacture charcoal and killing anyone who gets in their way. The park is the last holdout for rare mountain gorillas: and it’s […]

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44:59 minTV-14

Gorilla War

Poachers are killing the rare Gorillas of Congo, and they are paying Rwanda’s genocidal maniacs to protect them while they practice their deadly trade. For the park rangers protecting the Gorillas, it’s all out war and they are heavily outnumbered. The team brings in special communications equipment that allows the rangers to track the Gorilla […]

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EGYPT-POLITICS-TRANSPORT-SUEZ-CANAL-HISTORYThis picture taken on November 17, 2019 shows the Liberia-flagged container ship RDO Concord sailing through Egypt's Suez Canal in the canal's central hub city of Ismailia on the 150th anniversary of the canal's inauguration. - One hundred and fifty years after the Suez Canal opened, the international waterway is hugely significant to the economy of modern-day Egypt, which nationalised it in 1956. The canal, dug in the 19th century using "rudimentary tools" and which links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, was opened to navigation in 1869 and was expanded in 2015 to accommodate larger ships. (Photo by Khaled DESOUKI / AFP) (Photo by KHALED DESOUKI/AFP via Getty Images)

Suez Canal

Where Is the Suez Canal? The Suez Canal stretches 120 miles from Port Said on the Mediterranean Sea in Egypt southward to the city of Suez (located on the northern shores of the Gulf of Suez). The canal separates the bulk of Egypt from the Sinai Peninsula. It took 10 years to build, and was […]

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Colorized illustration of Saladin (1138 - 1193), the first Sultan of Egypt and Syria.

Saladin

Early Life and Rise to Power in Egypt Saladin was born Yusuf Ibn Ayyub in the central Iraqi city of Tikrit in 1137 or 1138. His family was of Kurdish descent, and his father Ayyub and uncle Shirkuh were elite military leaders under Imad al-Din Zangi, a powerful ruler who governed northern Syria at the […]

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A protest at Johannesburg's Wits Medical School during South African Apartheid in 1989.

Apartheid

Apartheid in South Africa Racial segregation and white supremacy had become central aspects of South African policy long before apartheid began. The controversial 1913 Land Act, passed three years after South Africa gained its independence, marked the beginning of territorial segregation by forcing Black Africans to live in reserves and making it illegal for them […]

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President of Uganda, Idi Amin pictured attending a lunch with British High Commissioner Richard Slater, the Indian High Commissioner, Pakistan's Ambassador and leaders of Uganda's Asian community at his house, known as 'The Command Post' in Kampala, Uganda in August 1972.

Idi Amin

Idi Amin: Early Life and Military Career Idi Amin Dada was born c. 1925 in Koboko, in northwestern Uganda, to a Kakwa father and Lugbara mother, who separated shortly afterwards. In 1946, after receiving only a rudimentary education, Amin joined the King’s African Rifles (KAR), a regiment of the British colonial army, and quickly rose […]

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President of Zimbabwe Robert Mugabe. (Credit: Patrick Durand/Sygma via Getty Images)

Robert Mugabe

Robert Mugabe: From Teacher to Freedom Fighter Robert Gabriel Mugabe was born February 21, 1924, in Katuma, a Jesuit mission station 50 miles west of the Southern Rhodesian capital. His father, Gabriel Matibili, was a carpenter from Nyasaland (later Malawi). His mother, Bona, belonged to the prominent Shona ethnic group. Did you know? Originally known […]

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Nelson Mandela(Original Caption) Nelson Mandela outside his Soweto home three days after his release. (Photo by Gideon Mendel/Corbis via Getty Images)

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela’s Childhood and Education Nelson Mandela was born on July 18, 1918, into a royal family of the Xhosa-speaking Thembu tribe in the South African village of Mvezo, where his father, Gadla Henry Mphakanyiswa (c. 1880-1928), served as chief. His mother, Nosekeni Fanny, was the third of Mphakanyiswa’s four wives, who together bore him […]

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Scenes in Rwanda following the civil war, 30th July 1994.

Rwandan Genocide

The Rwandan genocide, also known as the genocide against the Tutsi, occured in 1994 when members of the Hutu ethnic majority in the east-central African nation of Rwanda murdered as many as 800,000 people, mostly of the Tutsi minority.

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