History of West Africa

The partial history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods:

  1. Its prehistory, in which the first human settlers arrived, agriculture developed, and contact made with the Mediterranean civilizations to the north.
  2. The empires that consolidated trade and developed centralized states.
  3. The slave-trading kingdoms, jihads, and colonial invaders of the 18th and 19th centuries.
  4. The colonial period, in which France and Great Britain controlled nearly the whole of the region.
  5. The post-independence era, in which the current nations were formed.

Read more about History Of West Africa:  Prehistory, Empires, Jihad and Colonization, Postcolonial West Africa

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