On this day: September 29 in African history

Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire, beginning the Italo-Turkish War that resulted in Italy seizing control of Libya.

Sources: H.M. Stationery Office / Foreign Office Handbook No. 127 (Library of Congress digitised copy) ; TTAD (Turkish journal, via DergiPark) ; Encyclopedia.com (Gale, Encyclopedia of the Modern Middle East and North Africa)

Public Domain (U.S. DoD), Wikimedia Commons

Samora Machel, the guerrilla commander who led Mozambique's independence struggle and became its first president, was born in Chilembene, Portuguese Mozambique.

Sources: South African History Online ; Encyclopedia.com (Gale, Encyclopedia of World Biography)

Francisco Macías Nguema was executed by firing squad at Black Beach prison, eight weeks after his nephew Teodoro Obiang overthrew him. A military tribunal had tried him for genocide, mass murder, embezzlement and treason. Estimates of the toll of his eleven years vary: accounts put the dead at between 50,000 and 80,000 and the exiles at 100,000 to 125,000, out of a population the International Commission of Jurists, whose observer attended the trial, put at about 300,000. The tribunal's own list named 474 victims, which its president said was far from the true number.

Sources: BlackPast ; International Commission of Jurists ; JSTOR Daily

Corrected twice in September 2026 · change 1 · change 2

Gunmen, some of them in Nigerian army uniforms, attacked the College of Agriculture at Gujba in Yobe State at about one in the morning and shot students asleep in their dormitories. A military spokesman put the dead at as many as 50, most of them aged between 18 and 22. The attackers went through four male hostels and left the female hostel alone. The attack was attributed to Boko Haram.

Sources: Al Jazeera ; Reuters (carried by France 24)

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed

Shyima Hall, who was trafficked into domestic servitude as a child in Egypt and later became an American advocate against modern slavery, was born in a small town near Alexandria.

Sources: Jurnal Albion (Universitas Pakuan) ; Africa Access Review

Corrected in September 2026 · see what changed