In the savannas and along the coast of southern Benin live the Fon, the principal people of the country and heirs to the great kingdom of Dahomey, one of the

On the floodplain of the Niger River in Mali stand the mounds of a city that rewrote the history of Africa, the oldest known urban center south of the Sahara,

In the far south of Burkina Faso, hidden in the bush near the borders with Ghana and Ivory Coast, stand the tall stone walls of an ancient fortress. Built of

At the westernmost edge of the African continent, where the Sahel savanna runs down to meet the Atlantic surf, lives a people whose name has become almost synonymous with their

In the forests and cities of southwestern Nigeria arose one of Africa’s most brilliant civilizations, a nation of crowned cities that produced sculpture to rival the world’s finest, a religious