This Week On The Continent

18 September 1961: The former UN Secretary-General, Dag Hammarskjold killed in a plane crash while making every effort to negotiate peace in Congo.

19 September 1967: Nigerian government initiated attacks against Biafra, which represented the nationalist aspirations of the Igbo people, and whose leadership felt they could no longer coexist with the Northern-dominated federal government. The conflict resulted from political, economic, ethnic, cultural and religious tensions which preceded Britain's formal decolonisation of Nigeria in the early1960s.

20 September 1909: The British Parliament passed the law which called for union of Cape Colony, Natal, Orange River Colony, and Transvaal; and both English and Dutch to be recognised as official languages.

21 September 2016: Three genetic studies published in "Nature" established that all non-African descended from one migration out of Africa about 50-80,000 years ago.

22 September 1913: The first group of Indian passive resisters, consisting of 12 men and 4 women, in which Mrs. Kasturba Gandhi was one of them were arrested at Volksrust and confined in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

23 September 1913: Women protests burst out in the Free State, South Africa, under the leadership of Charlotte Maxeke, against the government attempts to impose passes on women. Passes were burnt in front of the municipal offices.

24 September 2015: Burkina Faso's interim President Michel Kafando was re-instated a week after a military revolution.