What was the most powerful kingdom in West Africa?

Long before Europeans arrived in Africa, great kingdoms and empires ruled over many parts of the continent. Their rulers presided over magnificent courts where art, music, and dance flourished. Their merchants traded in gold, salt, and other goods with faraway countries. The last of the powerful African kingdoms came to an end during the colonial era. Some kingdoms, however, still exist on the continent today.

The earliest kingdom in Africa was ancient Egypt. It was also one of the first civilizations in all of human history. The kingdom developed about 3000 bc in the valley of the Nile River. The achievements of the ancient Egyptians are remarkable. They lived under an orderly government. They built great pyramids, temples, and other stone structures. And, most important of all, they invented a writing system.

South of ancient Egypt was the region called Nubia. Egypt ruled over Nubia for many centuries. In about 800 bc, however, the people of southern Nubia created their own strong kingdom. This kingdom, called Kush, conquered Egypt by about 715 bc. The Kush kingdom lasted until about ad 350, when it was invaded by another kingdom, called Aksum. Located in northern Ethiopia, Aksum introduced Christianity to the area and remained a wealthy trading power in northeastern Africa until about 600. After that, power shifted southward to the Agew people, who began a new Christian state called the Zagwe dynasty. The Zagwe kings in turn were replaced in the 1200s by a new line of emperors who claimed descent from King Solomon and the queen of Sheba. The Solomonic dynasty ruled Ethiopia until 1974.

Morocco, in western North Africa, is a modern-day kingdom. The country is a constitutional monarchy with an elected parliament. According to the constitution, political power is to be shared between the hereditary monarch and the parliament. In practice, however, the king holds broad political authority over all branches of government.

Several of the most famous kingdoms and empires of western Africa were located in the Sudan, a region that lies between the Sahara to the north and the rainforests to the south. Ancient Ghana was a powerful trading empire in what are now Mali and Mauritania. Led by the Soninke people, Ghana was at its strongest from the 600s to the 1200s. As Ghana collapsed, the Mali Empire grew. Mali was a trading state of the Malinke people. It reached its height during the reign of the emperor Musa in the early 1300s.

In the late 1400s Mali gave way to the Songhai Empire. This empire was centered in what is now central Mali, but through warfare it expanded its control far to the east and west. Songhai grew wealthy trading gold and salt. East of Songhai, the Kanem-Bornu Empire controlled trade around Lake Chad from the 800s to the 1800s.

To the south, the land that is now Nigeria was the site of several early kingdoms. The Yoruba people developed a kingdom centered on the ancient city of Ife. Later, in the 1600s, the kingdom of Oyo grew to become the largest of the Yoruba kingdoms. To the south of Ife was Benin, a kingdom of the Edo people. Northern Nigeria was the site of the Hausa states, which lay between the Mali and Songhai empires in the west and the Kanem-Bornu empire in the east. This location gave the Hausa access to a number of trade routes and encouraged the development of the states.

In the 1700s and 1800s the Ashanti Empire controlled what is now southern Ghana, and the Dahomey kingdom dominated what is now southern Benin. Both of these kingdoms grew rich through the slave trade.

By 1500 several kingdoms occupied west-central Africa. The largest and most powerful of them was Kongo, located south of the Congo River and covering parts of what are now Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of the Congo. The Portuguese reached Kongo in 1483 and established strong ties with the kingdom. Soon, however, disputes over control of the slave trade led the Portuguese to look for new allies. For a time the Portuguese cooperated with Ndongo, a kingdom of the of the Mbundu people that was centered in the highlands east of Luanda, Angola, but again conflicts arose over the slave trade. War with the Portuguese, along with civil wars within the kingdoms, led to the downfall of Kongo and Ndongo in the 1600s. The Kasanje kingdom, in the nearby Kwango (or Cuango) River valley, then became an important Portuguese ally in the slave trade. Kasanje was eventually conquered by Portugal and integrated into Angola about 1911.

Farther inland, the Luba and Lunda peoples established neighboring states on land that today is in the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo and northeastern Angola. The Luba-Lunda states flourished from the late 1400s through the late 1800s. They traded enslaved people and ivory to the Portuguese in exchange for cloth and other goods. Between 1600 and 1750, groups of Lunda adventurers established numerous satellite kingdoms, one of which was Kasanje. Another was Kazembe, which became the largest of all the Luba-Lunda states. It extended south into what is now Zambia.

Two powerful kingdoms in the Lake Victoria area were Buganda and Rwanda. Buganda was founded in the late 1300s in what is now Uganda. By the 1800s it had become the largest kingdom in the region. The Tutsi people founded the kingdom of Rwanda in the 1500s. The kingdom grew steadily until the arrival of Europeans in the 1800s. In 1962 it became the independent country of Rwanda.

The stone ruins of the city of Great Zimbabwe, in the country of Zimbabwe, are a reminder of an old trading empire in southern Africa. The Great Zimbabwe empire lasted from about 1100 to 1500. It grew wealthy from trading gold. After Great Zimbabwe declined, the Torwa kingdom arose to the southwest, and the Matapa empire developed in the north. The Torwa and Matapa rulers continued the gold trade.

A number of kingdoms were created in southern Africa in the early 1800s. The most powerful of these was the Zulu kingdom built by Shaka. Others were the Swazi kingdom (led by Sobhuza), the Sotho kingdom (led by Moshoeshoe), and the Ndebele kingdom (led by Mzilikazi). The Swazi kingdom is now the country of Eswatini. The Sotho kingdom is now the country of Lesotho. Both Eswatini and Lesotho are still kingdoms today.