Africa: The Definitive Visual History of a Continent

Immerse yourself in Africa's vast and intricate story and discover Africa’s true place in world history, written and authenticated by experts of African heritage.

Spanning more than 200,000 years, from the emergence of the first humans to the rise of megacities, Africa explores the history and cultures of the world’s second-largest continent in vivid detail. It brings to life the stories that shaped Africa and the world around it, from powerful and influential empires and kingdoms such as Mali and Benin, through the struggle against colonization and the fight for independence to Africa’s place on the global stage today.

You will meet some of Africa’s most important political and military leaders, including Hannibal, Mansa Musa, Oba Ewuare, Queen Nzinga, Kwame Nkrumah, Nelson Mandela, and Ellen Sirleaf. Brilliant photography showcases the great art and architecture that African civilizations have created while engaging text written by experts of African heritage covers every facet of African cultures, from music and literature to oral traditions and languages. Specially commissioned CGI artworks recreate iconic buildings and life in lost cities like Timbuktu and Great Zimbabwe.

Explore the pages of this awe-inspiring African history book to discover:

• The whole story of the African continent, covering every aspect from culture and trade to politics and society
• Chapters explore developments in religion, languages, music, literature, and mythology.
• Biography sections portray the lives, impact, and legacy of influential figures in African history.
• Detailed maps set the main sites in context and showcase vast empires and key trade routes
• An Optional 80-page reference section provides a directory of the histories and cultures of all the sovereign states in Africa.

Beautifully illustrated and unparalleled in scope, Africa is the perfect book for anyone looking to deepen their understanding of Africa’s vital and inspiring history.

Dr. Nemata Blyden (consultant) is Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University. A product of many places in the Black world, she received her PhD from Yale University and now teaches and publishes on various aspects of African and African diaspora history, imperialism, colonialism, women, and gender. Her books include West Indians in West Africa, 1808-1880: A Diaspora in Reverse (2000) and African Americans and Africa: A New History (2019). She recently served as a consultant and contributor for DK’s The Black History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (2021).
Dr. Morenikeji Asaaju is a Cadbury Postdoctoral Fellow in African Studies at the University of Birmingham. She received her PhD from the University of Bayreuth, and was a Leventis Scholar at SOAS and a Leventis Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge. She is a historian of Africa with research interests in gender, marriage, family, and social change; slavery, emancipation, and the slave trade; and political and legal changes in 20th-century Africa. She is currently working on her first book, which explores the social and cultural processes of heterosexual relationships as African societies confront changes imposed by the colonial order and by changing political regimes and conventions of masculinity and femininity.
Dr. Abidemi Babatunde Babalola received his PhD from Rice University and is a Smuts Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge and an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the British Museum. His research interests include African archaeology and prehistory, the emergence of complex societies, early craft production, landscape studies, material culture, cultural resource management, and African/ African diaspora studies. His recent publications include Glass Beads in West Africa in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Anthropology (2022); Creativity, Improvisation, Resilience, and Glassmaking in Early Ile-Ife in the International Journal of African Historical Studies (2021); and an essay in Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa (2019).
Dr. Obert Mlambo is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and History at the University of Zimbabwe. He received his PhD from the University of Zimbabwe, and was a Humboldt Fellow at the University of Cologne’s Institute of African Studies and Egyptology and a Visiting Scholar at the university’s Global South Studies Center. His research and publications cover multidisciplinary perspectives and relate the Classics to African cultures and contexts. His most recent publications include Land Expropriation in Ancient Rome and Contemporary Zimbabwe: Veterans, Masculinity and War (2022) and chapters in Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Zimbabwe’s Liberation Struggle (2022) and (u)Mzantsi Classics: Dialogues in Decolonisation from Southern Africa (2022).
Patience Motsatsi studied sociology at the University of Pretoria and is now Junior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of South Africa, with interests in culture and identity, colonization and decolonization, and media studies.
Butholezwe Mtombeni is Lecturer in History at the University of South Africa, with research interests that include the political history of sub-Saharan Africa, agrarian history, land policy and its impact, and sports history. His publications include chapters in the Palgrave Handbook of African Women's Studies (2021) and The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Change (2022).
Dr. Raphael Chijioke Njoku is Professor of African History and Culture at Idaho State University. He received his PhD from Dalhousie University and specializes in African intellectual history, African social and political history, African philosophy, culture and development, democratization, social movements, and comparative politics. His books include West African Masking Tradition and Diaspora Masquerade Carnivals (2020), United States and African Relations: 1400 to the Present (2020), and The History of Somalia (2013). He recently served as a contributor to DK’s The Black History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (2021).
Philip Parker is a historian, consultant, and writer who specializes in ancient and medieval political and military systems. He studied history at the University of Cambridge and has written, edited, and contributed to several books for DK, Penguin, and other publishers, including The Empire Stops Here (2009), The Great Trade Routes (2012), the Sunday Times bestseller The Northmen's Fury (2014), History of Britain in Maps (2016), History of World Trade in Maps (2020), History of War in Maps (2022), and the DK Eyewitness Companion Guide to World History (2010). As a publisher he ran The Times books list, including works on ancient civilizations and The Times History of the World.
Luke Pepera is an anthropologist, historian, writer, and broadcaster, and an expert on ancient and medieval African history and cultures, about which he has written and spoken extensively. He studied Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Oxford and is currently working on his first book, Motherland: 500,000 Years of African History, Cultures, and Identity, due to be published in 2024. He recently served as a contributor to DK’s The Black History Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained (2021).
Dr. Girma Negash Ture is Associate Professor of History and the Chair of the Department of History at the University of Addis Ababa. His most recent publications include The Economics of Khat Trade and its Dynamic Institutions (2020) and The Education of Children Entangled in Khat Trade in Ethiopia (2019), which is focused on children trapped in the khat trade in Ethiopia.
Dr. Marilee Wood received her PhD from the University of Uppsala and is an Honorary Research Fellow at the School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a specialist in beadwork and glasswork and her primary research interests lie in African and Islamic beads (especially glass beads that were traded into Africa in the Islamic period between the 7th and 17th centuries) and trade patterns in Africa and the Indian Ocean. Her wider interests include regions where the beads traded into Africa may have been made, including India, Sri Lanka, the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia, and China.