---
title: "History of science and technology in Africa"
chunk: 15/21
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology_in_Africa"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:40:31.520269+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== East Africa ===
It is known that ancient Axum traded with India, and there is evidence that ships from Northeast Africa may have sailed back and forth between India/Sri Lanka and Nubia trading goods and even to Persia, Himyar and Rome. Aksum was known by the Greeks for having seaports for ships from Greece and Yemen. Elsewhere in Northeast Africa, the 1st century CE Greek travelogue Periplus of the Red Sea reports that Somalis, through their northern ports such as Zeila and Berbera, were trading frankincense and other items with the inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula as well as with the then Roman-controlled Egypt.
Middle Age Swahili kingdoms are known to have had trade port islands and trade routes with the Islamic world and Asia and were described by Greek historians are "metropolises". Famous African trade ports such as Mombasa, Zanzibar, Mogadishu and Kilwa were known to Chinese sailors such as Zheng He and medieval Islamic historians such as the Berber Islamic voyager Abu Abdullah ibn Battuta. The dhow was the ship of trade used by the Swahili. They could be massive. It was a dhow that transported a giraffe to Chinese Emperor Yong Le's court, in 1414.
Few kingdoms south of the Sahara possessed a more developed naval organization than that of Buganda, which dominated Lake Victoria with its navy of up to 20,000 men and war canoes as long as seventy two feet....

== Architecture ==

=== West Africa ===
The Walls of Benin City are collectively the world's largest man-made structure and were semi-destroyed by the British in 1897. Fred Pearce wrote in New Scientist:They extend for some 16,000 kilometres in all, in a mosaic of more than 500 interconnected settlement boundaries. They cover 6500 square kilometres and were all dug by the Edo people. In all, they are four times longer than the Great Wall of China, and consumed a hundred times more material than the Great Pyramid of Cheops. They took an estimated 150 million hours of digging to construct, and are perhaps the largest single archaeological phenomenon on the planet.Sungbo's Eredo is the second largest pre-colonial monument in Africa, larger than the Great Pyramids or Great Zimbabwe. Built by the Yoruba people in honour of one of their titled personages, an aristocratic widow known as the Oloye Bilikisu Sungbo, it is made up of sprawling rammed earth walls and the valleys that surrounded the town of Ijebu-Ode in Ogun state, Nigeria.
Tichit is the oldest surviving archaeological settlements in the Sahel and is the oldest all-stone settlement south of the Sahara. It is thought to have been built by Soninke people and is thought to be the precursor of the Ghana empire.
The Great Mosque of Djenné is the largest mud brick or adobe building in the world and is considered by many architects to be the greatest achievement of the Sudano-Sahelian architectural style, albeit with definite Islamic influences.

=== Northern Africa and the Nile Valley ===
Around 1000 CE, cob (tabya) first appears in the Maghreb and al-Andalus.
The Egyptian step pyramid built at Saqqara is the oldest major stone building in the world.
The Great Pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years.
The earliest style of Nubian architecture included the speos,  structures carved out of solid rock, an A-Group (3700–3250 BCE) achievement. Egyptians made extensive use of the process at Speos Artemidos and Abu Simbel.
Sudan, site of ancient Nubia, has more pyramids than anywhere in the world, even more than Egypt, with 223 pyramids
Around 1100, the ventilator is invented in Egypt.

=== East Africa ===
Aksumites built in stone. Monolithic stelae on top of the graves of kings like King Ezana's Stele. Later, during the Zagwe dynasty Churches carved out of solid rocks like Church of Saint George at Lalibela.
Thimlich Ohinga, a World Heritage Site  is a complex of stone-built ruins located in Kenya.

=== Southern Africa ===
In southern Africa one finds ancient and widespread traditions of building in stone. Two broad categories of these traditions have been noted: 1. Zimbabwean style 2. Transvaal Free State style. North of the Zambezi one finds very few stone ruins. Great Zimbabwe, Khami, and Thulamela uses the Zimbabwean style. Tsotho/Tswana architecture represents the Transvaal Free State style. ||Khauxa!nas stone settlement in Namibia represents both traditions. The Kingdom of Mapungubwe (1075–1220) was a pre-colonial Southern African state located at the confluence of the Shashe and Limpopo rivers which marked the center of a pre-Shona kingdom which preceded the culmination of southeast African urban civilization in Great Zimbabwe.
The tswana lived in City states with stone walls and complex sociopolitical structures that they built in the 1300s or earlier. These cities had a populations of up to 20,000 people which at the time, rivalled Cape Town in size.

== Communication systems ==
Griots are repositories of African history, especially in African societies with no written language. Griots can recite genealogies going back centuries. They recite epics that reveal historical occurrences and events. Griots can go for hours and even days reciting the histories and genealogies of societies. They have been described as living history books.