Key figures in African history

How these eight were chosen, and why Egypt and North Africa count

Egypt, Carthage, Alexandria and Morocco are in Africa, and their history is African history, even though school timetables often file it under “the ancient Near East” or “the classical world”. This list puts them back on the map of Africa, next to the Mali Empire of West Africa. All eight left solid evidence: monuments and inscriptions, books, or detailed accounts by people who met them.

Two cautions. First, people in these places did not think of themselves as “African” in the modern sense; they were Egyptians, Carthaginians, Alexandrians, Malians. Euclid and Hypatia wrote in Greek, and Carthage was founded by Phoenicians from Tyre, so these were mixed, connected societies. Second, modern arguments about the skin colour of ancient Egyptians often project today’s racial categories onto a diverse population of the Nile valley; the evidence is better used to describe what people did than to settle those arguments.

Many key figures are not in these eight, among them Taharqa of Kush, Ezana of Aksum, Sundiata Keita, founder of Mali, Askia Muhammad of Songhai, Queen Amina of Zazzau and Queen Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba. Cleopatra VII and Augustine of Hippo were Africans of the Mediterranean world too.

Hatshepsut (ruled about 1479 to 1458 BCE): the pharaoh who traded with Punt

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt first as regent for her stepson Thutmose III and then as crowned pharaoh for about twenty years. Her reign was peaceful and rich. She built the terraced temple at Deir el-Bahri near Thebes (Luxor).

Most lists miss: her best-known expedition went south, within Africa. Reliefs at Deir el-Bahri show ships returning from the land of Punt with myrrh trees, ebony, gold and animals. Punt was probably on the Red Sea coast of the Horn of Africa, somewhere around modern Eritrea, Sudan or Somalia; scholars still debate exactly where. See ancient Egypt key figures.

Nefertiti (about 1370 to 1330 BCE): queen of Amarna

Nefertiti was Great Royal Wife of the pharaoh Akhenaten, who made the sun disc, the Aten, the centre of worship and built a new capital at Amarna in Middle Egypt. Reliefs show her with unusual power, even striking enemies like a king.

Most lists miss: a quarry inscription at Deir el-Bersha, published in 2012, shows she was still queen in Akhenaten’s 16th year, later than once believed. Her painted limestone bust, found at Amarna in 1912 by a German expedition, is in Berlin, and Egypt has asked for its return.

Ramesses II (reigned 1279 to 1213 BCE): Kadesh and the first peace treaty

Ramesses II ruled Egypt for 66 years and built on a huge scale, including the temples of Abu Simbel in Nubia, Egypt’s far south. In about 1274 BCE he fought the Hittites at Kadesh in Syria and proclaimed a great victory on temple walls across Egypt.

Most lists miss: the battle was really a draw, and about sixteen years later Ramesses signed a peace treaty with the Hittite king Hattusili III. Both versions survive, the Egyptian one at Karnak and the Hittite one on clay tablets from Hattusa, and a copy of the Hittite tablet is displayed at the United Nations in New York. Abu Simbel was cut apart and moved uphill in the 1960s to save it from the waters of the Aswan High Dam.

Euclid (active about 300 BCE): geometry in Alexandria

Euclid worked in Alexandria, the Egyptian city founded by Alexander the Great and ruled by the Ptolemies, whose Museum and Library drew scholars from across the Greek-speaking world. His Elements built geometry and number theory as a chain of proofs and was used as a textbook for more than two thousand years.

Most lists miss: we know almost nothing about his life, not even where he was born. Some of the oldest surviving pieces of the Elements were found in Egypt itself: a papyrus scrap from Oxyrhynchus, from around 100 CE, carries a proposition from Book II with its diagram. See famous mathematicians in history.

Hannibal Barca (247 to about 183 BCE): the general from Carthage

Hannibal Barca came from Carthage, a city near modern Tunis in Tunisia, founded by Phoenician settlers and for centuries the leading power of the western Mediterranean. In 218 BCE he led an army with elephants from Spain over the Alps into Italy and destroyed a Roman army at Cannae in 216 BCE, but Rome defeated him at Zama, in North Africa, in 202 BCE.

Most lists miss: after the war he turned reformer. As a chief magistrate (suffete) of Carthage he limited the terms of corrupt judges and exposed embezzlement so the city could pay its war debt to Rome without new taxes (Livy 33.46 to 47). Every surviving account of him was written by Greeks and Romans, his enemies. He died in exile, by poison, to avoid being handed to Rome.

Hypatia of Alexandria (about 355 to 415 CE): teacher and mathematician

Hypatia taught philosophy, mathematics and astronomy in Roman Alexandria and helped edit her father Theon’s commentary on Ptolemy’s Almagest. In March 415 she was murdered by a Christian mob during a political conflict between the city’s prefect and its bishop.

Most lists miss: much of what we know comes from her student Synesius, from Cyrene in modern Libya, who later became a bishop and whose letters to her survive. Her school drew students from across North Africa and beyond, Christians and pagans alike. See women scientists in history.

Mansa Musa (ruled about 1312 to 1337): the Mali Empire and the pilgrimage of 1324

Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire of West Africa, which controlled much of the gold trade of the medieval world. In 1324 he made the pilgrimage to Mecca, passing through Cairo with a vast retinue and so much gold that, according to the Cairo official al-Umari writing about twelve years later, its value there had still not recovered. He brought back scholars and the architect al-Sahili, and built mosques, including in Timbuktu.

Most lists miss: Europe noticed. The Catalan Atlas, made in Majorca in 1375, shows a crowned African king, labelled Musse Melly, holding a gold nugget, with a note calling him the richest and noblest king of the region because of the abundance of gold in his land. He also told Cairo officials that the ruler before him had sailed into the Atlantic with a great fleet and never returned. Claims that he was the “richest person ever”, with dollar figures, cannot be checked and are best avoided.

Ibn Battuta (1304 to about 1369): from Tangier to Kilwa and Mali

Ibn Battuta, a legal scholar from Tangier in Morocco, left home in 1325 and travelled for nearly thirty years across Africa, Arabia and Asia. His book, the Rihla, was dictated in Fez and completed in 1355.

Most lists miss: he saw more of Africa than most travellers of his age. In 1331 he sailed down the East African coast to Mogadishu, Mombasa and Kilwa, which he called one of the most beautiful cities; in 1352 to 1353 he crossed the Sahara to Mali, then ruled by Mansa Musa’s brother Mansa Sulayman. He praised Mali’s safety and justice and criticised some of its customs. See greatest explorers in history.

Summary table: key figures in African history

Project ideas on African history figures

• Map of connections: mark Thebes, Punt, Abu Simbel, Alexandria, Carthage, Cyrene, Timbuktu, Kilwa and Tangier on one map of Africa and draw the trade or travel routes that link them.
• Whose voice: for Hannibal and Mansa Musa, list who wrote our sources (Romans, Arab officials, later chroniclers). How might the story change if told from Carthage or Mali?
• Propaganda check: compare Ramesses II’s Kadesh inscription with the peace treaty that followed. What does each want the reader to believe?
• Interview practice: prepare questions for Mansa Musa or Ibn Battuta and try them by voice on Yuga. The AI recreations are built from the sources and the historical record, but they are not the real people and can be wrong, so cite the sources above, not the app.

Related: Black History Month figures, Marco Polo vs Ibn Battuta and women rulers in history.