---
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
chunk: 12/21
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:12:40.805209+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Central Africa ===
Among Kuba people, in present-day Democratic Republic of Congo, raffia clothes were woven. They used the fibers of the leaves on the raffia palm tree.
Weaving with palm leaves was a highly developed art in Central Africa, and European travelers and missionaries compared woven palm-leaf cloth to the finest European-made silks. Filippo Pigafetta praised the "marvelous arte" of "making cloaths of sundry sortes, as Velvets shorne and unshorne, Sattens, Taffata, Damaskes, Sarcenettes and such like" in the eastern provinces and areas adjoining Kongo. Sarcenet was a fine silk, but, unlike that made in Europe, the type made in "this countrey and other places thereabouts" was "not of any silken stuffe" but "of the leaves of Palme trees." Indeed, the finest specimens were too "precious" for any but "the king, and such as it pleaseth him". Cavazzi wrote that the beaten leaves of one type of palm resulted in such fine, soft fibers that the weave of the cloth thus produced brought him to "astonishment". To produce such finely woven luxury cloth, the leaves had to be worked to a greater degree than the tying and laying required for thatching. Pigafetta noted that the process started with keeping the palms "under and lowe to the grounde, euery yeare cutting them, and watering them, to the ende they may grow smal and tender against the new spring". Once those "tender" leaves were "cleansed & purged after their manner," techniques that he did not further specify, "they drawe forth their threedes, which are all very fine and dainty, and all of one evennesses, saving that those which are longest, are best esteemed. For of those they weave their greatest peeces."  Italian travellers of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century did African cloth the considerable honor of comparing it with the best cloth produced in their own land, itself regarded as being among the best in Europe. Thus, Antonio Gradisca da Zucchelli (an Italian Capuchin priest) thought that the libongos (monetary cloth) he saw produced in Nsoyo, a coastal province of Kongo around 1705, "even though made of vile material like palm leaves", were "well worked and woven ... that it resembled velvet ... and is just as strong and durable."
John K. Thornton argues, using the reports of contemporary European travellers in Africa and the findings of archaeologists, that African textile manufacturing was far more advanced than has been recognized. Large quantities of textiles were produced. By the standards of the seventeenth or eighteenth century world, he concludes, African textile manufacturers were producing their goods at the same or higher levels of productivity as their European counterparts. For example, Leiden, one of the leading European centres of textile production which had almost the same population as Momboares in the eastern Congo, produced about 100,000 metres of cloth per year in the early seventeenth century, as compared to 400,000 metres in Momboares. Not only were these products traded widely within the continent by African merchants, as European merchants along the West African coast, African textiles were exported to the Caribbean and South America.

=== East Africa ===
Barkcloth was used by the Baganda in Uganda from the Mutuba tree (Ficus natalensis). Kanga are Swahili pieces of fabric that come in rectangular shapes, made of pure cotton, and put together to make clothing. It is as long as ones outstretch hand and wide to cover the length of ones neck. Kitenge are similar to kangas and kikoy, but are of a thicker cloth, and have an edging only on a long side. Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, and Sudan are some of the African countries where kitenge are worn. In Malawi, Namibia and Zambia, kitenge are known as Chitenge. Lamba Mpanjaka was cloth made of multicolored silk, worn like a toga on the island of Madagascar.
Shemma, shama, and kuta are all cotton-based cloths used for making Ethiopian clothing. Three types of looms are used in Africa: the double heddle loom for narrow strips of cloth, the single heddle loom for wider spans of cloth, and the ground or pit loom. The double heddle loom and single heddle loom might be of African origin. The ground or pit loom is used in the Horn of Africa, Madagascar, and North Africa and is of Middle Eastern origins.

=== Southern Africa ===
In southern Africa one finds numerous use of animal hide and skins for clothing. The Ndau in central Mozambique and the Shona mixed hide with barkcloth and cotton cloth. Cotton weaving was practiced by the Ndau and Shona. Cotton cloth was referred to as machira. The Venda, Swazi, Basotho, Zulu, Ndebele, and Xhosa also made extensive use of hides. Hides came from cattle, sheep, goat, elephant, and from jangwa( part of the mongoose family). Leopard skins were coveted and was a symbol of kingship in Zulu society. Skins were tanned to form leather, dyed, and embedded with beads.

== Maritime technology ==

In 1987, the third oldest canoe in the world and the oldest in Africa, the Dufuna canoe, was discovered in Nigeria by Fulani herdsmen near the Yobe river and the village of Dufuna. It dates to approximately 8000 years ago, and was made from African mahogany.