Formation
Africa contains five major climate zones, including this enormous desert in the continent’s north.
What is the Sahara?
This wealthy ruler of Mali completed a famous hajj to Mecca in 1324.
Who was Mansa Musa?
These prestigious historians, storytellers, and musicians preserved the histories of West African communities.
Who were griots?
Ancient Ghana, Mali, and Songhai became famous for possessing and trading this precious resource.
What is gold?
Before beginning her solo career, Beyoncé rose to fame as the lead singer of this successful girl group.
Who are Destiny’s Child?
The Portuguese built a fort at this important Akan gold-trading location in 1482.
What is Elmina?
Beyoncé released “Formation” in February 2016 as a song connected to this visual album.
What is Lemonade?
This East African empire developed its own currency and the Ge’ez script.
What was Aksum?
A university, book trade, and scholarly community flourished in this important city of Mali.
What is Timbuktu?
Great Zimbabwe’s Shona population gained wealth by trading gold, ivory, and this domesticated resource.
What are cattle?
Women in West and Central Africa worked as agriculturalists, educators, market traders, political advisors, and these religious authorities.
What are spiritual leaders?
The Portuguese established large-scale sugar production using enslaved African labor on this island colony.
What is São Tomé?
From approximately 1500 BCE to 500 CE, population growth contributed to this widespread movement of people, languages, and culture.
What was the Bantu Expansion?
Beyoncé’s 2020 visual album Black Is King was inspired by the music from this companion album to Disney’s The Lion King.
What is The Lion King: The Gift?
This term describes the blending of an introduced religion with indigenous spiritual beliefs and practices.
What is religious syncretism?
The Swahili Coast connected Africa’s interior to Arab, Persian, Indian, and this East Asian trading community.
Who were Chinese traders?
This woman became the first iyoba, or queen mother, of Benin and advised her son, the king.
Who was Queen Mother Idia?
This Central African kingdom voluntarily adopted Roman Catholicism after forming relations with Portugal.
What was the Kingdom of Kongo?
Fertile land, access to water routes, and this economic connection between the Sahara and tropical regions encouraged settlement in the Sahel and savannas.
What is trade?
Around 750 BCE, this African kingdom conquered Egypt and established the 25th Dynasty of Black Pharaohs.
What was Nubia, or Kush?
Asking a priest or spiritual leader to predict the future through supernatural means is known by this term.
What is divination?
In 2018, Beyoncé made history as the first Black woman to headline this major California music festival.
What is Coachella?
Queen Njinga fought approximately 30 years of guerrilla warfare against this European power.
What is Portugal?
In a 1526 letter, this Christian king of Kongo protested Portugal’s increasingly destructive trade in enslaved people.
Who was Nzinga Mbemba, or Afonso I?
Xhosa, Swahili, Kikongo, and Zulu demonstrate the long-term effects of the Bantu Expansion on this form of African diversity.
What is ethnolinguistic diversity?
Following Ghana and Mali, this empire became the last and largest of the Sudanic empires.
What was Songhai?
Ancestor veneration, divination, healing, and collective singing and dancing survived in the Americas partly through these blended African diasporic religions. Name one example.
What is Vodun/Voodoo, Regla de Ocha-Ifá, or Candomblé?
Portuguese exploration contributed to the decline of Songhai by shifting commerce away from trans-Saharan routes toward these routes.
What were Atlantic trade routes?
Queen Idia’s image became an international symbol of Black women’s leadership when her ivory mask was selected to represent this 1977 festival.
What is FESTAC, or the Second Festival of Black Arts and Culture?
This Pulitzer Prize–winning rapper joined Beyoncé on the 2023 remix of “America Has a Problem.”
Who is Kendrick Lamar?
Located between the Sahara and the savanna, this semiarid region became an important center of settlement and trade.
What is the Sahel?
This ancient West African society is known for ironworking and terracotta sculptures.
What was the Nok society?
“Move Your Body” was used to encourage students to exercise as part of this First Lady’s “Let’s Move!” campaign.
Who is Michelle Obama?
The Swahili Coast city-states were culturally united by Islam and this Bantu lingua franca.
What is Swahili?
Name one important difference between the leadership of Queen Idia and Queen Njinga.
What is: Idia advised her son and helped defend Benin, while Njinga ruled Ndongo-Matamba and fought Portuguese expansion?
São Tomé represented a major turning point because its combination of racialized slavery, plantation agriculture, and export production became this.
What was a model for slave-based plantation economies in the Americas?