For much of African history, the construction of fortresses and fortified structures was a mostly urban phenomenon associated with large states.

The westernmost region of Africa which forms the watershed of the great rivers of the Senegal, the Volta and the Niger, is home to one of the world's oldest surviving building traditions, called the ‘Sudano-Sahelian’ architecture.

While West Africa has been part of the Muslim world since the late Middle Ages, as famously demonstrated by the golden pilgrimage of Mali's Mansa Musa in 1324, Islam had only arrived in the region at the close of the 1st millennium.

The Meroitic writing system of the kingdom of Kush is one of the best-known, yet most enigmatic scripts of the ancient world.