Africans were already present on the European mainland by the time Herodotus —the so called father of history— wrote his monumental work, The Histories.

Among the groups of foreigners present in the Assyrian capital of Nimrud in 732 BC, was a community of horse experts from the kingdom of Kush led by an official who supplied horses to the armies of Tiglath-Pileser III.

Less than six years following their victory over the armies of Queen Cleopatra in Egypt in 31 BC, the Romans marched their forces south to conquer the kingdom of Kush, which was also ruled by a Queen, known to her subjects as Amanirenas and to the Romans as the ‘Candace’.

Journal of African cities: chapter 16.

When the German adventurer Gerhard Rohlfs visited the city of Ibadan in 1867, he described it as “one of the greatest cities of the interior of Africa” with “endlessly long and wide streets made up of trading stalls.” However, unlike many of the West African cities he had encountered which were centuries old, Ibadan was only about as old as the 36-year-old explorer, yet it quickly surpassed its peers to be counted among the largest cities on the continent by the end of the century.