More than a million Hutus, escaping from the backlash after the genocide in Rwanda, are in refugee camps in Zaire

Asian and African UN troops withdraw from Somalia, though the country is still in a state of violent civil war

Ethiopians have their first experience of democracy in a free presidential election, won by Meles Zenawi

Ken Saro-Wiwa, playwright and pro-democracy campaigner in Nigeria, is among a group hanged by the ruling junta

Mozambique joins the Commonwealth, as the first member not to have emerged from the British empire

Expelled from Sudan, Osama bin Laden moves to Afghanistan where he builds training camps for al-Qaeda

Archbishop Desmond Tutu chairs South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Jerry Rawlings has a convincing electoral victory after seventeen years in power in Ghana

Ghanaian diplomat Kofi Annan is appointed secretary-general of the United Nations, becoming the first black African in the post

After thirty-two years as the corrupt dictator of Zaire, Mobutu Sese Seko is driven out by Laurent Kabila

The civilian president of Sierra Leone, Ahmad Kabbah, is ousted in a military coup led by Johnny Koroma

The name of Zaire is changed once again, reverting to the Democratic Republic of Congo

Nigerian forces expel Johnny Koroma from Freetown and reinstate Sierra Leone's elected civilian president, Ahmad Kabbah

A UN peacekeeping force takes responsibility for maintaining order in the Central African Republic

Civil war breaks out again in the Congo, after a Tutsi uprising against Laurent Kabila's government

Bitter and devastating warfare breaks out again between Eritrea and Ethiopia as the result of a border dispute

Neighbouring African nations, with an interest in Congo's mineral wealth, take part on both sides in a developing civil war

Violent gangs, calling themselves the Mugabe War Veterans Association, start to 'liberate' more than 100,000 sq km of white-owned farmland in Zimbabwe

224 deaths in simultaneous attacks on US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania are linked to al-Qaeda

US cruise missiles attack al-Qaeda bases in Afghanistan and a suspected chemical factory in Khartoum

Steps are taken to end Sudan's fifteen-year civil war, with an undated government promise of a referendum in the south

Libya hands over, for trial in the Hague, two men suspected of causing the Lockerbie disaster of 1988

Abdelaziz Bouteflika, the new president of Algeria, reveals that as many as 100,000 people have died in seven years of civil war and massacre

UNITA's widespread advance in Angola's long civil war brings terror and starvation

Nelson Mandela retires from active politics and is succeeded by Thabo Mbeki as South Africa's president