Seven Ancient African Civilizations and the Legacy They Left Behind

Africa's pre-colonial history includes states that ruled Egypt, controlled global gold supplies, and built stone monuments without mortar. The seven kingdoms below are ordered by the geographic and economic reach historians attribute to them at their peak, from a rival of pharaonic Egypt to a West African royal court whose bronze art is still being returned by Western museums today.

1. The Kingdom of Kush (c. 1069 BCE–350 CE)

Centered in Nubia along the Nile in what is now Sudan, Kush ruled Egypt itself as the 25th Dynasty beginning around 750 BCE, according to National Geographic. Sources differ on when that rule ended: the World History Encyclopedia dates the dynasty's fall to 666 BCE, while National Geographic gives 656 BCE. King Piye conquered Egypt around 730 BCE, according to National Geographic. After Napata was sacked around 590 BCE, the capital moved to Meroë, where the kingdom built more than 200 pyramids — more pyramids than all of Egypt, according to National Geographic — before collapsing around 350 CE under pressure from an Aksumite invasion and resource depletion, according to National Geographic and the World History Encyclopedia.

2. The Kingdom of Aksum (1st–8th centuries CE)

Based in what is now Ethiopia and Eritrea, Aksum controlled Red Sea trade in gold and ivory, serving as a link between Europe and the Far East, according to HISTORY. In the 4th century it adopted Christianity, according to HISTORY. Its rulers raised monolithic granite stelae to mark royal graves; one such obelisk, built around 327 CE, stands roughly 21 metres (70 feet) tall and is carved to resemble a nine-storey building, according to the United Nations. It was removed from Ethiopia in 1937 and was not returned and re-erected in Aksum until 2008, a project completed by UNESCO, according to the United Nations.

3. Carthage (c. 9th century BCE–146 BCE)

Founded on the North African coast in what is now Tunisia, Carthage grew into a seafaring power that dominated trade in textiles, gold, silver and copper, according to HISTORY. At its height its capital held close to 500,000 people. Carthage was destroyed by Rome in 146 BCE at the end of the Punic Wars.

4. The Mali Empire (c. 1240–16th century)

Sundiata Keita founded the Mali Empire around 1240 after defeating the Sosso kingdom, according to the World History Encyclopedia, which describes the resulting state as one of the largest sub-Saharan African powers of its time. Under Mansa Musa (1312–1337), Mali's wealth became proverbial in Europe and the Middle East: his 1324 pilgrimage to Cairo reportedly caused the regional price of gold bullion to crash by around 20 percent, according to the World History Encyclopedia. Mansa Musa's patronage also turned Timbuktu into a center of trade and Islamic scholarship; HISTORY cites estimates that its Sankore complex eventually held around 700,000 manuscripts. The empire fragmented during the second half of the 15th century amid civil wars and the rise of Songhai, which had conquered most of Mali's remaining territory by 1468, according to the World History Encyclopedia.

5. The Songhai Empire (15th century–late 16th century)

Songhai formed in the 15th century from former Mali territories and grew larger than Western Europe, spanning parts of roughly a dozen modern countries, according to HISTORY. Under Askia Muhammad I in the early 16th century, the empire built a bureaucratic system that divided its territory into provinces run by governors and established hundreds of Islamic schools in Timbuktu, according to HISTORY. It collapsed in the late 1500s after civil war and internal strife left it open to invasion by the Sultan of Morocco, according to HISTORY.

6. Great Zimbabwe (c. 1100–1550 CE)

Built by Shona-speaking peoples in what is now Zimbabwe, the city flourished between roughly 1300 and 1450 CE, according to the World History Encyclopedia. Its Great Enclosure has granite walls up to 5.5 metres thick and 9.7 metres high, assembled without mortar. At its height the city may have held around 18,000 people and traded gold, ivory and copper with Indian Ocean ports such as Kilwa and Sofala, receiving Chinese porcelain and Persian faience in return, according to the World History Encyclopedia. UNESCO listed the site as a World Heritage Site in 1986. The civilization declined in the 15th century, reportedly after exhausting local gold deposits, and its people migrated north to found the Mutapa kingdom.

7. The Kingdom of Benin (c. 13th century–1897)

In what is now southern Nigeria, the Kingdom of Benin was ruled by an Oba (king) whose court held a royal monopoly on bronze casting, carried out by specialist guilds using the lost-wax technique, according to a history compiled by the Museum of African Art (momaa.org). Portuguese traders arrived in the 1480s and traded with Benin for centuries. That ended in February 1897, when a British naval force invaded after the killing of a British delegation, burned Benin City, and looted an estimated 5,000 bronze plaques, ivory carvings and ceremonial objects, which were dispersed to more than 165 museums worldwide, according to momaa.org. Repatriation has accelerated since 2022, when Germany transferred more than 1,100 bronzes to Nigeria; the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art later announced the return of more than 39 bronzes under a new ethical-returns policy, while the British Museum has not returned its collection, according to momaa.org.

Why these figures are compared

The ranking criterion is territorial and economic reach at each civilization's peak, as described in the sources above — not later colonial-era judgments about the continent's history.