Planet Africa – exhibition locations and background
Now On Display
Nairobi National Museum- Nairobi, Kenya – 29th November 2024 until 31st May 2025
James Simon Galerie- Berlin, Germany – 5th December 2024 until 27th April 2025
Coming Soon
University Museum, University of Ghana- Accra, Ghana – set to open in March 2025
Eswatini National Museum- Lobamba, Eswatini – opening 3rd April 2025
Archaeological State Collection- Munich, Germany – opening 16th May 2025
Ntsindya Cultural Center- Maputo, Mozambique – opening 10th September 2025
More locations to be announced soon.
Past Exhibition Venues
National Library Rabat- Rabat, Morocco – 19th until 29th November 2024
The Project
Africa is the cradle of humanity with a unique cultural heritage – a hotspot of research, a continent as rich in nature, history and cultural change as an entire planet.
“Planet Africa – An Archaeological Time Travel” kicked off in Germany on December 5, 2024 with the opening at the James Simon Gallery on Berlin's Museum Island. From there, the exhibition will tour throughout Germany. It is also be on display in various African locations, including Accra (Ghana), Lobamba (Eswatini), Maputo (Mozambique), Nairobi (Kenya), and Rabat (Morocco).
“Planet Africa” was created under the direction of Jörg Linstädter (KAAK), Gerd-Christian Weniger (University of Cologne) and Wazi Apoh (University of Accra) in cooperation with the Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte (museum for early and prehistory), Berlin. The exhibition was produced in close collaboration with Africancolleagues and the DFG priority program “Entangled Africa”. African street artists have designed illustrations for the individual thematic modules. The exhibition was funded by the Federal Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Research Foundation (DFG).
Africa has the longest and most exciting history of humans and their ancestors on our planet and thus a unique cultural heritage. This extraordinary history is presented in six modules. It ranges from the first representatives of the genus Homo to the more recent development of new cultural techniques and nutritional strategies that have been carried from Africa to the whole world. In this way, the panorama of a continent emerges that fascinates with its natural diversity and which, with continuous (environmental) changes, adaptation processes and migratory movements, has always required new survival strategies. In addition to archaeological finds, images and written signs provide comprehensive testimony to the arts, crafts, technology and environment of times long past - and to the connections between humans across enormous distances. Excavations of settlements and urban centers reveal social and political structures, for a condensed coexistence, while at the same time large-scale nomadic ways of life existed. In addition, the modern use of ancient knowledge and the archaeological exploration of their own past by the African researchers and artists involved in the research projects and the exhibition are shown. Thus, the exhibition also explores the capacity of archaeology to serve as a unifying link for pan-African commonality and intercontinental connectedness.
Africa today covers 22% of the Earth's land mass. Despite this, its spatial extent is regularly underestimated. Its biodiversity is extraordinary. From north to south, over 45,000 plant species and more than 1,100 mammal species live in 7 ecozones. This diversity of nature goes hand in hand with a diversity of human culture: nowhere are more languages spoken; nowhere is the genetic diversity of humans greater.
At least a dozen different human forms have existed in Africa over the past 4 million years. About 90% of the species in the human lineage originated in Africa, and most have also lived only in Africa while the rest of the world was deserted. Without this unique African history, there would be no humanity on the globe today.
The beginning of the production economy, in which farm animals and crops were bred and cultivated for the first time, marked the beginning of an epochal change. It remains the foundation of our society today. African communities used the new knowledge in very different ways as the four pillars of food production, domestic animals, wild animals, cultivated plants and wild plants were continually remixed across the continent.
Africa is the rock art continent. Thousands and thousands of evidence of this form of communication can be found in 36 of Africa's 54 states. They were created initially by hunter-gatherers, later and to this day also by pastoralists or farmers. The reading of tracks and rock paintings began long before the first writings appeared in Africa about 6,000 years ago.
Africa has always been a rich continent full of raw materials. They were transported by land and sea across the continent: along the great river systems and the coasts or by caravans across the Sahara. Complex societies developed at the nodes of the trade networks. Thus, over the past 3,000 years, a fertile coexistence of hunter-gatherers, cultivators, pastoralists, artisans, traders, and rulers emerged.
Nearly 150 UNESCO World Heritage sites are located in 46 African countries. Africa's rich archaeological heritage, as elsewhere, is threatened by factors such as climate change, violence, or economic interests. Countless universities, research institutions and museums across the continent have put themselves at the service of archaeology. It can inspire the idea of pan-African connectedness across national borders.
