many call them kingdoms but i prefer calling them african states that existed before colonial time in this video we bring you the most powerful african kingdoms before colonial time and we'll be looking at those that were most powerful according to the african regions that is west africa east africa and the southern part of africa but if you're new here my name is ghani and this is the african myth show why i spread good vibes about the african continent so if you want to learn more about the african continent and african culture in general please consider subscribing turn the bell notification on as well so that whenever i have a new video out i get you notified and also remember that towards every end of my videos i share free swahili lesson this is simply because swahili is the most spoken african language on the african continent so be sure to look out for that [Music] the kingdom of matapa this existed in the southern part of africa between the 15th and the 17th century this kingdom was founded by king mutota in 1450 stories say that he had been sent to the northern part of river zambezi to basically find out what was existing there and also to get salt so as he got to this area he actually started conquering the areas and places that were around this area and this is how the kingdom got into existence the kingdom headquarters were around the mukaranga region in the present day zimbabwe and this kingdom was able to spread out throughout the entire southern africa region king mututa and his people heavily relied on trade around the east african region with the arabs and majorly the things they dealt in were gold and also the ivory from the animals in some of the stories in the ancient history they say that he had quite a very young army because many of these people or many of the warriors that were in his army they had been trained in his palace these young men first worked as his helpers and later when they became of age at around 20 they were recruited into the army with already pre-existing skills on how to handle everything about military in the latters of the kingdom it experienced so many civils amongst itself and this weekend it more and more leading to so many deaths of its people and then when the portuguese came in to conquer this area under the guidance of vasco da gama they were finally able to lead to the collapse of this kingdom and by 1633 they finally took charge of this kingdom and finally it was able to submit to portuguese role [Music] the kingdom of abyssinia was a major force in the east african region around the horn of africa it was founded in the 13th century and later it became the ethiopian empire after a series of conquests around this area and this kingdom lasted up to the 20th century the kingdom is believed to have been established by the kings of the solomonid dynasty whose descent traces back to king solomon from the holy bible it was mainly a christian kingdom and this helped spread christianity via military conquest and expanding the kingdom to far wide areas around this region so as they kept spreading christianity also they were spreading the kingdom values to all the areas around this region of the east african horn area and this led to further expansion of this kingdom and later they were able to conquer many of these areas around this region as we all know today ethiopia is the second most populated african country so this partly tells you how much of how father this kingdom was able to expand and spread around this area the kingdom's later history there were continued rivalries among us the solomonids and also many of the communities around the east african region and also southern arabia had fully organized and this finally led to the fall of the abyssinian empire the egyptians and portuguese also got more interested in east africa history also tells us that many of the christian churches that had been put up around this area they were burnt down and this finally also led to the collapse of the abyssinian empire [Music] the sungai empire of west africa existed and reigned between the 15th and the 16th century this was the strongest and biggest empire in the entire west african region and to be exact it was at its strongest between 1460 and 1591 [Music] it came after the fall of the mali empire that had existed between 12 40 and 1645 through the guidance and great leadership of king sunni ali the sungai empire expanded its territories throughout west africa and it was able to conquer and capture most of the already existing chief dorms in this area and king soon is also remembered to have had some of the lenient ways of leadership in that many of the soldiers and warriors from these chiefdoms that they had captured he was able to bring them in as his own soldiers and he was able to dialogue and basically move on with them the headquarters of the sungai empire were in gao this is the present day mali and they were able to control the niger river using great marine and naval tactics this greatly helped them control the trade along this river because this river runs through so many countries like nigeria benin nija burkina mali and guinness so this really helped them control this entire area because all these places or all these areas depended on this river to carry out their trade and also do other activities like farming by 1469 the sungai empire had an absolute control over the trade port of timbuktu where they heavily traded in gold unfortunately in the litters the portuguese under the leadership of fenal gomez strongly took over most of the trade around this west african region this partly led to the collapse of the sungai empire and also the other reason that led to the collapse of the empire were the continued civil wars amongst its people it is said that many of the kings that ruled this empire only ruled for short spells of time because they faced very strong resistance from their subjects and this kept going on and on and finally the empire had to come to an end [Music] i cannot finish this great history without mentioning some of these other great kingdoms that were on the african continent for example the kingdom of gosh in north africa the great zimbabwe in south africa the mali empire in west africa the ghana empire in west africa the buganda kingdom in east africa and by the way this is still existent to this day and for our swahili lesson for today it is a white to mean hair in the swahili language so if i'm to put this into a sentence i would say maybe nyenda katangeliango so this is basically a translation that i'm going for a haircut so that's our swahili lesson for today and if you found this video very helpful please give it that thumbs up and don't forget to also consider subscribing to the channel and also thank you so much for watching please watch this next video on the card