Eleven African Cities in Order of Recorded Founding, from Ogbomosho to Chitungwiza

Ogbomosho is placed first because its page dates its founding to the mid 17th century, by the hunter Ogunlola around the Ajagbon tree. It grew in the 19th century when people from about 147 towns and villages abandoned during the Fulani wars sought refuge there, and its urban population reached approximately 744,835 by 2024.

Kankan, on the Milo River in eastern Guinea, is credited by oral tradition to Daouda Kaba in 1690. It became an important Islamic and trade center in the 18th century, was visited by the French explorer Rene Caillie in 1827, and was linked by railway to Conakry in 1914.

Bata has a recorded founding year of 1851 and is now the most populous city in Equatorial Guinea, with 309,345 residents at the 2015 census. It is a port on the Rio Muni coast with ferry connections to Malabo and Douala, and it relies on a constructed jetty because it has no natural harbor.

Thies began as a French military post established in 1864 and was made a commune in 1904. The Dakar to Saint-Louis railway, French West Africa's first rail line, opened a stop there in 1885, and Leopold Sedar Senghor, later Senegal's first president, was elected its mayor in 1956.

Franceville was founded on 13 June 1880 by the explorer Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza as a settlement for formerly enslaved Africans, first called Francheville. It is the capital of Haut-Ogooue Province in Gabon and lies near the Oklo site, the only known natural nuclear fission reactors on Earth.

Pointe-Noire was founded in 1883 following a treaty between France and the Kingdom of Loango, and takes its name from black rocks that Portuguese navigators observed on the headland in 1484. The Congo-Ocean Railway, completed in 1934, links it to Brazzaville, and its 2023 census population was 1,420,612.

Cabinda shares the 1883 date with Pointe-Noire, when it was formally founded after the Treaty of Simulambuco, although a fishing settlement existed there from around 1490 and a Portuguese trading post from 1620. It is the capital of an Angolan exclave on the Atlantic coast and received city status in 1956.

Kananga was founded in 1884 by the German explorer Hermann Wissmann near the Lulua River, and was known as Luluabourg until a 1966 Africanization campaign gave it its present name, which means a place for peace or love in Tshiluba. The first Congolese-written constitution was drafted there in 1964.

Ondangwa began as a mission station of the Finnish Missionary Society in 1890 and became a local seat of government in 1914. Today it is a transit hub and district capital in the Oshana Region of northern Namibia, with a recorded 2023 population of 30,364.

Gweru was founded in 1894 as a military outpost by Leander Starr Jameson and incorporated as a city in 1971. Known as the City of Progress, it is the capital of Zimbabwe's Midlands Province and had an urban population of 161,292 at the 2022 census.

Chitungwiza closes the path as the youngest city, officially established in 1978 on the southern outskirts of Harare. It had 371,244 residents at the 2022 census, making it Zimbabwe's third most populous urban centre, and it was heavily affected by the 2005 slum-clearance campaign Operation Murambatsvina.