The Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland is dissolved, as the three colonies go their separate ways

Ian Smith, now prime minister of Rhodesia, arrests leading black politicians Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe

Nelson Mandela is sentenced to life imprisonment and is sent to a gaol on Robben Island

Hastings Banda is prime minister of the newly independent nation of Malawi, formerly Nyasaland

Kenneth Kaunda becomes president of the independent republic of Zambia, previously Northern Rhodesia

The Gambia becomes an independent member of the Commonwealth, with Dawda Jawara as prime minister

Defence minister Houari Boumédienne leads a coup to oust President Ben Bella in Algeria

Mobutu stages his second coup in the Congo and this time takes power as president

Ian Smith makes a unilateral declaration of Rhodesia's independence

Kwame Nkrumah, the founding father of Ghana, is toppled in a coup while away on a state visit to China

Jean-Bedel Bokassa takes power in a coup in the Central African Republic

UNITA, led by Jonas Savimbi, joins the fight for Angolan independence

Prime minister Hendrik Verwoerd is stabbed to death in the South African parliament

Former chief Seretse Khama becomes the first president of an independent Botswana

The Ibo of eastern Nigeria claim independence for their region – as the republic of Biafra

A pre-emptive air strike by Israel destroys almost all Egypt's aircraft and launches the Six-Day War

South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, in Cape Town, transplants the heart of a young woman into a 55-year-old grocer, Louis Washkansky

Spanish Guinea becomes an independent republic as Equatorial Guinea, with Francisco Macias Nguema as president

The United Nations, with the approval of Britain as the colonial power, imposes economic sanctions on Rhodesia

At a congress in Cairo, Yasser Arafat is appointed leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO)

Idris I, king of Libya, is deposed in a bloodless coup led by Muammar al-Gaddafi

Paintings discovered on stone slabs in a cave in Namibia are dated to about 28,000 years ago

The breakaway province of Biafra surrenders after three years of devastating civil war in Nigeria

Nasser dies of a sudden heart attack and is succeeded as Egypt's president by Anwar el-Sadat

Idi Amin leads a successful coup against the president of Uganda, Milton Obote