Browse the year
April
30 days, 30 stories. Pick a date — or jump straight to one:
- 1 1966 The First World Festival of Black Arts
On April 1, 1966, Dakar opened its doors to the First World Festival of Black Arts. Poet-president Léopold Sédar Senghor welcomed some 2,500 artists, musicians, and…
- 2 2015 The Garissa University Attack
At dawn on April 2, 2015, four al-Shabaab gunmen stormed Garissa University College in northeastern Kenya, seizing more than 700 students and executing those who professed…
- 3 1984 Lansana Conté Seizes Power
On April 3, 1984, Colonel Lansana Conté struck before dawn, seizing power in Guinea hours before the ruling party's Politburo could choose a successor to Ahmed…
- 4 1960 Senegal Independence Day
On April 4, 1960, Senegal, joined with French Sudan as the Mali Federation, signed its transfer of power from France in Paris, winning full independence. Poet…
- 5 1999 Libya Hands Over the Lockerbie Suspects
On April 5, 1999, Libya finally surrendered two accused intelligence agents, Abdel Basset al-Megrahi and Lamen Khalifa Fhimah, to face trial under Scottish law in the…
- 6 1994 The Plane Crash That Ignited a Genocide
On the evening of April 6, 1994, the presidential jet carrying Rwanda's Juvénal Habyarimana and Burundi's Cyprien Ntaryamira was shot down as it approached Kigali, killing…
- 7 1994 The World Vows Never Again
April 7 marks the United Nations' International Day of Reflection on the 1994 Genocide Against the Tutsi in Rwanda. It is the day the mass killing…
- 8 1938 Kofi Annan, the Ghanaian Who Ran the World
On April 8, 1938, Kofi Atta Annan was born in Kumasi, in what was then the Gold Coast. He was a Friday-born boy, named Kofi in…
- 9 2017 Egypt's Palm Sunday Church Bombings
On Palm Sunday, April 9, 2017, suicide bombers struck two Coptic Orthodox churches in Egypt. At St. George's Church in Tanta, 27 worshippers died during the…
- 10 2000 The Gambia's Student Massacre
On April 10, 2000, schoolchildren across The Gambia took to the streets in peaceful protest against alleged brutality by the security forces. They were met with…
- 11 2011 Gbagbo's Capture
On April 11, 2011, the four-month siege of Abidjan came to an end when Laurent Gbagbo was pulled from an underground bunker at his presidential residence.…
- 12 1980 Doe's Coup
In the early hours of April 12, 1980, seventeen low-ranking soldiers led by Master Sergeant Samuel Doe stormed Liberia's Executive Mansion, killing President William Tolbert. The…
- 13 1968 Tanzania Recognizes Biafra
On April 13, 1968, President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania issued a statement recognizing the Republic of Biafra as a sovereign entity, the first nation in the…
- 14 1967 Eyadéma Seizes Togo
On April 14, 1967, Gnassingbé Eyadéma became president of Togo, months after his second military coup. He had already helped overthrow the country's first president in…
- 15 1958 African Freedom Day
On April 15, 1958, the First Conference of Independent African States opened in Accra, the first pan-African summit ever held on African soil. Eight independent states…
- 16 2004 The Blombos Cave Beads
On April 16, 2004, researchers reported that tiny shell beads found in Blombos Cave on South Africa's southern coast were roughly 75,000 years old. The drilled…
- 17 1954 The Federation of South African Women
On April 17, 1954, 164 delegates representing 230,000 women gathered in Johannesburg to found the Federation of South African Women, a multiracial alliance against apartheid. There…
- 18 1980 Zimbabwe Independence
At midnight on April 18, 1980, the white-minority state of Rhodesia was reborn as the Republic of Zimbabwe, ending a ninety-year colonial project and a brutal…
- 19 1994 Inkatha Joins the 1994 Elections
On April 19, 1994, just eight days before South Africa's first democratic vote, Nelson Mandela, F. W. de Klerk, and Inkatha leader Mangosuthu Buthelezi signed the…
- 20 2021 A President Dies on the Battlefield
On April 20, 2021, Chad's army announced that President Idriss Déby had died of wounds suffered while commanding his troops against rebels in the country's north.…
- 21 1878 The Azor Sails for Liberia
On April 21, 1878, the bark Azor sailed out of Charleston, South Carolina, carrying 206 African Americans who had pooled six thousand dollars to take themselves…
- 22 1819 The Battle of Graham's Town
On April 22, 1819, the Xhosa prophet-warrior Makhanda led some ten thousand warriors in a daylight assault on the British garrison at Graham's Town, one of…
- 23 1993 Eritrea Votes for Independence
On April 23, 1993, polling stations opened across Eritrea for a three-day referendum on independence from Ethiopia, capping a 30-year liberation war. More than 1.1 million…
- 24 1970 The Gambia Becomes a Republic
On April 24, 1970, The Gambia became a republic. Five years after independence, Queen Elizabeth II ceased to be head of state. A referendum delivered a…
- 25 1974 The Carnation Revolution
On April 25, 1974, junior officers of Portugal's Armed Forces Movement rolled tanks into Lisbon and toppled Europe's longest-running dictatorship, almost without firing a shot. Civilians…
- 26 1964 Tanzania Is Born
On April 26, 1964, Tanganyika and the island of Zanzibar merged into a single republic, the United Republic of Tanzania. The union came months after Zanzibar's…
- 27 1961 Sierra Leone Independence Day
On April 27, 1961, Sierra Leone's new flag rose over Freetown as one of Britain's oldest West African colonies became independent. Dr. Milton Margai, the gentle…
- 28 1992 Ghana's Fourth Republic
On April 28, 1992, Ghanaians went to the polls to decide their country's future, voting yes or no on a brand-new constitution. After eleven years of…
- 29 1992 The Coup That Made a 25-Year-Old Ruler
On April 29, 1992, soldiers from the war front seized Freetown's State House, and 25-year-old Captain Valentine Strasser, one of Africa's youngest-ever rulers, took power in…
- 30 2025 Burkina Faso Backs Traoré
On April 30, 2025, thousands poured into Ouagadougou's Place de la Révolution to show support for Captain Ibrahim Traoré, and rallies spread across more than twenty…