ABSTRACT
Africa is a large, culturally diverse region bounding, until recently, with wildlife. There were few early African civilizations, such as the Ghana kingdom during the 700s to the 1000s in what is now Mali and the Songhai kingdom of Timbuktu during the 1400s to the 1500s. These few early civilizations were short-lived, and it is not known if they had animal collections. Egypt is the only African country to have maintained animal collections throughout its history. Many African collections were not established until colonial botanical stations began holding animals in the 1600s. Colonial officials and naturalists also started private collections, as they did elsewhere. Few of these collections survived, and most extant African zoos and aquariums were established during the 1900s, many since colonial independence began in the 1960s.
