East Africa

John Hanning Speke discovered the source of the Nile on August 3rd, 1858.

Clive Foss introduces the Kharijites, a radical sect from the first century of Islam based in southern Iraq and Iran, who adopted an extreme interpretation of the Koran, ruthless tactics and opposed hereditary political leadership. After causing centuries of problems to the caliphate, they survive in a quietist form in East Africa and Oman.

David Anderson, Huw Bennett and Daniel Branch believe that the Freedom of Information Act is being used to protect the perpetrators of a war crime that took place in Kenya fifty years ago.

David Anderson looks at the contentious issues raised as Kenya comes to terms with the colonial past.

The first-ever parliament of the Sudan was opened by the British governor-general, Sir Robert Howe, on January 1st, 1954.

Started in 1947, to grow peanuts in Tanganyika as a contribution to both the African and British economies, the Groundnuts Scheme was abandoned four years later on January 9th, 1951.

The massacre of the army of Sudanese Dervishes on a plain near Omdurman on September 2nd, 1898, was an occasion that a new military technology by Britain in battle.