major iron centres in africa

It is located on the Atlantic Ocean's coastline. [51], MetalAfrica: a Scientific Network on African Metalworking, Archaeological evidence for the origins and spread of iron production in Africa, Duncan E. Miller and N.J. Van Der Merwe, 'Early Metal Working in Sub Saharan Africa', Minze Stuiver and N.J. Van Der Merwe, 'Radiocarbon Chronology of the Iron Age in Sub-Saharan Africa'. [35] Bloomery furnaces were less productive than blast furnaces, but were far more versatile. The second issue was the possible effect of "old carbon": wood or charcoal much older than the time at which iron was smelted. W.W. Cline's compilation of eye-witness records of bloomery iron smelting over the past 250 years in Africa[34] is invaluable, and has been supplemented by more recent ethnoarchaeological and archaeological studies. Some specialists accept this interpretation, but archaeologist Bernard Clist has suggested that Oboui is a highly disturbed site, with older charcoal having been brought up to the level of the forge by the digging of pits into older levels. All indigenous African iron smelting processes are variants of the bloomery process. The population grows at an annual rate of 2 to 3 %. 10.2788/17215 (online) - This poster map depicts the diversity of soil types across Africa. [3] Evidence also exists for earlier iron metallurgy in parts Nigeria, Cameroon, and Central Africa, possibly from as early as around 2,000 BC. (1979). Africa (excluding South Africa) has iron ore reserve estimated at over 34 billion tons (or some 15 percent of the world’s total), with 11 countries having reserve greater than one billion tons. Iron weapons also influenced warfare. de Barros, P. (1985). These items, in addition to the production of other iron goods helped stimulate economic activity, the rise of chiefdoms and even states. Person, G. Quéchon and J.-F. Saliège (1992). The control of iron production was often by ironworkers themselves, or a "central power" in larger societies such as kingdoms or states (Barros 2000, p. Simandou, a 110-kilometer range of hills deep in the hinterland of Guinea in Western Africa, boasts the world's largest untapped iron ore reserves. In other cultures the skills are often passed down through family and would receive great social status (sometimes even considered as witchdoctors) within their community. In. There are many strict taboos surrounding the process. Rio Tinto Kelley (Eds.). Prospection archéologique du massif du Termit (Niger). African ironworkers did however invent a way to increase the size of their furnaces, and thus the amount of metal produced per charge, without using bellows. Exploring the Natural Wealth of Africa. They alone should be grinning over the … Their powerful knowledge allowed them to produce materials on which the whole community relied. Unlike bloomery iron-workers in Europe, India or China, African metalworkers did not make use of water power to blow bellows in furnaces too large to be blown by hand-powered bellows. Semi-finished bars of iron or steel were widely traded in some parts of West Africa, as for example at Sukur on the Nigeria-Cameroon border, which in the nineteenth century exported thousands of bars per year north to the Lake Chad Basin. Buleli, N'S., 1993. JSW is also contemplating to build third EAF, but first, assess the market conditions. Radimilahy, C., 1993 "Ancient Iron-Working in Madagascar". Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). In some communities they were believed to have such strong supernatural powers that they were regarded as highly as the king or chief. Pringle, H. 2009. "Iron Metallurgy: Sociocultural Context". [9][10] These dates preceded the known antiquity of ironworking in Carthage or Meroe, weakening the diffusion hypothesis. "Metaphors and Representations Associated with Precolonial Iron-Smelting in Eastern and Southern Africa". [4], In 2014, archaeo-metallurgist Manfred Eggert argued that, though still inconclusive, the evidence overall suggests an independent invention of iron metallurgy in Sub-Saharan Africa. Controversy flared again with the publication of excavations by Étienne Zangato and colleagues in the Central African Republic. Its major part, however, consists of drier surfaces (low plateaus or alluvial terraces). Furnaces used in the 19th and 20th centuries ranges from small bowl furnaces, dug down from the ground surface and powered by bellows, through bellows-powered shaft furnaces up to 1.5 m tall, to 6.5m natural-draft furnaces (i.e. The government is currently focused on new-job creation as a pillar of economic development: The New Growth Yoruba civilization was supported by cities surrounded by farmed land, but extensive trade development made it wealthy. At Engaruka, for example, in that same region of the Rift Valley in northern Tanzania, a major Iron Age site, which was both an important and concentrated agricultural settlement using irrigation, seems to have been occupied for over a thousand years. [13], From the mid-1970s there were new claims for independent invention of iron smelting in central Niger[14][15][16] and from 1994 to 1999 UNESCO funded an initiative "Les Routes du Fer en Afrique/The Iron Routes in Africa" to investigate the origins and spread of iron metallurgy in Africa. In the 1990s, evidence was found of Phoenician iron smelting in the western Mediterranean (900–800 BC),[11] though specifically in North Africa it seems to date only to the 5th to 4th centuries BC, or the 7th century BC at the earliest, contemporary to or later than the oldest known iron metallurgy dates from sub-Saharan Africa. info@commodityinside.com +44 (0) 208 123 7812, Steel production capacity in Africa by country (Algeria, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and  Zimbabwe ) and by equipmentÂ, Algeria steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Cameroon steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Congo steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Egypt steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Ethiopia steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Ghana steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Ivory Coast steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Kenya steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Libya steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Mauritius steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Morocco steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Mozambique steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Nigeria steel production capacity by plant and equipment, South Africa steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Sudan steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Tanzania steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Tunisia steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Uganda steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Zambia steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Zimbabwe steel production capacity by plant and equipment, Ironmaking and steelmaking capacity in Africa, Semi-finished (crude steel) steel production capacity in Africa, Flats steel production capacity in Africa, Coated steel production capacity in Africa, The full coverage of the African steelmaking capacity by plant and by equipment types, Detailed capacity segmentation by around 20 equipment by plant, Information about the future planned capacity, All data is available in excel and ready for customised analysis, Steel service centre, distributors and traders, Suppliers of raw materials such as iron ore, metallurgical coal, scrap and, ferroalloys, End users of flat steel such as automotive, construction and packaging. Shinnie, P.L. A third issue is the weaker precision of the radiocarbon method for dates between 800 and 400 BC, attributable to irregular production of radiocarbon in the upper atmosphere. van der Merwe, N. J. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). [42] All of the large-scale iron smelting recorded so far are in the Sahelian and Sudanic zones that stretch from Senegal in the west to Sudan in the east; there were no iron-smelting concentrations like these in central or southern Africa. 2005 pg 288). However, not every region benefited from industrialising iron production, others created environmental problems that arose due to the massive deforestation required to provide the charcoal for fuelling furnaces (for example the ecological crisis of the Mema Region (Holl 2000, pg48)). Killick, D. J. West and Central Africa: the new iron ore frontier. We constantly consult key stakeholders in the industry and incorporate their views into our analysis. In Australia, Simandou is known “the Pilbara killer.” Australia, the world’s largest iron ore exporter, produces more than 90% of its ore exports in the western region of Pilbara. of the Lake Victoria region. W.W. Cline's compilation of eye-witness records of bloomer… [citation needed]. [29] In a 2018 study, Archaeologist Augustin Holl also argues that an independent invention is most likely.[4]. Commodity Inside Limited is registered at UK Companies House. Trade among European and African precolonial nations developed relatively recently in the economic history of the African continent. Iron use, in smelting and forging for tools, appears in West Africa by 1200 BCE, making it one of the first places for the birth of the Iron Age. For example, an excavation at the royal tomb of King Rugira (Great Lakes, Eastern Africa) found two iron anvils placed at his head (Childs et al. Killick, D.J. La Niece, S., Hook, D., and Craddock, P., (eds). (2012) Vers une réduction des prejugés et la fonte des antagonisms: un bilan de l’expansion de la métallurgie du fer en Afrique sud-Saharienne. Iron Mountain South Africa Information Technology and Services Midrand, Gauteng 1,365 followers We connect your company to its true potential and protect your most valuable assets. Over much of tropical Africa the ore used was laterite, which is widely available on the old continental cratons in West, Central and Southern Africa. It is home to pyramids, temples, and domestic buildings, among other vestiges. Higher plateaus, which extend through older sedimentary strata around the centre of the Congo basin, reach an elevation of 2,600 to 3,000 feet (790 to 900 metres) north of Brazzaville and exceed 3,000 feet near the Angolan border to the south. Classement comparatif et tendances", in, Martinelli, B., 2004, "On the Threshold of Intensive Metallurgy – The choice of Slow Combustion in the Niger River Bend (Burkina Faso and Mali)". Much of the evidence for cultural significance comes from the practises still carried out today by different African cultures. ... citing a proposed iron and ore mining concession inside the park's boundaries and the apparition of refugees. The drying up of the Sahara had pushed many peoples to the south into sub-Saharan Africa. The natural-draft furnace was the one African innovation in ferrous metallurgy that spread widely. "Ideology and the Archaeological Record in Africa: Interpreting Symbolism in Iron Smelting Technology". 2. Examples of these date back as far as the early Iron Age in Tanzania and Rwanda (Schmidt 1997 in Childs et al., 2005 p. It is possible that this also led to tradesmen specialising in transporting and trading iron (Barros 2000, pg152). Johannesburg, the largest urban area in the country and a centre of commerce, lies at the heart of the populous Gauteng province. Martinelli, B., 1993, "Fonderies ouest-africaines. Meroe was a capital of a powerful Kingdom called Kush. Archaeologists have found evidence of objects that date as far back as 100,000 years. or for the manufacture of composite tools combining a hard steel cutting edge with a soft but tough iron body. [49] The demand for trade is believed to have resulted in some societies working only as smelters or smiths, specialising in just one of the many skills necessary to the production process. African ironworkers regularly produced inhomogeneous steel blooms, especially in the large natural-draft furnaces. Okafor, E.E., 1993. Iron was used for personal adornment in jewelry, impressive pieces of artwork and even instruments. "Decisions set in slag: the human factor in African iron smelting". It has a population of 21 million. (ed. Tools for cultivation and farming made production far more efficient and possible on much larger scales. [6] Although some nineteenth-century European scholars favored an indigenous invention of iron working in sub-Saharan Africa, archaeologists writing between 1945 and 1965 mostly favored diffusion of iron smelting technology from Carthage across the Sahara to West Africa and/or from Meroe on the upper Nile to central Africa. "Iron Technology in the Middle Sahel/Savanna: With Emphasis on Central Darfur". This funded both the conference on early iron in Africa and the Mediterranean[17] and a volume, published by UNESCO, that generated some controversy because it included only authors sympathetic to the independent-invention view.[18]. The smelting process was often carried out away from the rest of the community. de Barros, P., 2000. Clist, B. In some cultures mythical stories have been built around the premise of the iron smelter emphasising their godlike significance. The latter are usually put in the furnace itself or buried under the base of the furnace. Two reviews of the evidence from the mid-2000s found major technical flaws in the studies claiming independent invention, raising three major issues. [26][27][28] According to Augustin Holl (2018), there is evidence of ironworking dated to 2,153–2,044 BC and 2,368–2,200 BC from the site of Gbatoro, Cameroon. [25], In the Nsukka region of southeast Nigeria (now Igboland), archaeological sites containing iron smelting furnaces and slag have been excavated dating to 750 BC in Opi (Augustin Holl 2009) and 2,000 BC in Lejja (Pamela Eze-Uzomaka 2009). The advent of iron in Africa. In most regions of Africa they fell out of use before 1950. China, the largest producer, consumer and importer of iron ore, produced 1.3 billion tonne (bt) of iron ore in 2012, accounting for about 44% of the world’s output. Killick, D. (2014) Cairo to Cape: the spread of metallurgy through eastern and southern Africa. The ore is distributed with 20.4 percent in Northern Africa, 40% in Western Africa, 24.5% Cahiérs ORSTOM, Série Sciences Humaines 11:85-104. The linguist Christopher Ehret argues that the first words for iron-working in Bantu languages were borrowed from Central Sudanic languages in the vicinity of modern Uganda and Kenya,[31] while Jan Vansina[32] argues instead that they originated in non-Bantu languages in Nigeria, and that iron metallurgy spread southwards and eastwards to Bantu speakers, who had already dispersed into the Congo rainforest and the Great Lakes region. Magnetite sand, concentrated in streams by flowing water, was often used in more mountainous areas, after beneficiation to raise the concentration of iron. A major iron smelting site (14 iron smelting locations) was found 6km from the town. Africa's total iron ore reserves (measured plus inferred) contain an estimated 34.9bt of haematite and 17.3bt of magnetite (see Appendix 1). Many historians believe that Iron Age people reached the lake of central Africa in about 300 bc. A much wider range of bloomery smelting processes has been recorded on the African continent than elsewhere in the Old World, probably because bloomeries remained in use into the 20th century in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, whereas in Europe and most parts of Asia they were replaced by the blast furnacebefore most varieties of bloomeries could be recorded. Alpern, S. B. 8th century BCE: Phoenicians bring iron to North Africa (Lepcis Magna, Carthage) 8th–7th century BCE: First iron smelting in Ethiopia; 671 BCE: Hyksos invasion of Egypt; 7th–6th century BCE: First iron smelting in Sudan (Meroe, Jebel Moya) 5th century BCE: First iron smelting in West Africa (Jenne-Jeno, Taruka) Durban, a port on the Indian Ocean, is a major industrial centre. China’s run-of-mine iron ore output is, however, of low quality, containing about 22% iron. In Algeria, JSW has planned to install two new EAF furnaces with a combined capacity of 3 million/year. [50], Some cultures associated sexual symbolism with iron production. The oldest natural-draft furnaces yet found are in Burkina Faso and date to the seventh/eight centuries [38] The large masses of slag (10,000 to 60,000 tons) noted in some locations in Togo, Burkina Faso and Mali reflect the great expansion of iron production in West Africa after 1000 AD that is associated with the spread of natural-draft furnace technology. Smelting is integrated with the fertility of their society, as with natural reproduction the production of the bloom is compared to the conception and birth. Agriculture may have developed independently in Africa, but many scholars believe that the spread of agriculture and iron throughout Africa linked that continent to the major centers of civilization in the Near East and Mediterranean world. [39][40] But not all large scale iron production in Africa was associated with natural draft furnaces – those of Meroe (Sudan, first to fifth centuries AD) were produced by slag-tapping bellows-driven furnaces,[41] and the large 18th-19th century iron industry of the Cameroon grasslands by non-tapping bellows-driven furnaces. The Sao civilization is the earliest known civilizati… The Bantu expansion spread the technology to Eastern and Southern Africa during c. 500 BC to AD 400, as shown in the Urewe culture[5] Blacksmiths still work in rural areas of Africa to make and repair agricultural tools, but the iron that they use is imported, or recycled from old motor vehicles. Collet, D.P., 1993. Lagos Sta… In the 1960s it was suggested that iron working was spread by speakers of Bantu languages, whose original homeland has been located by linguists in the Benue River valley of eastern Nigeria and Western Cameroon. It may have developed independently, but many scholars believe that the spread of agriculture and iron throughout Africa linked it to the major centers of the Near East and Mediterranean world. (2006) Linguistic evidence for the introduction of ironworking into Bantu-speaking Africa. Schmidt, P.R., Mapunda, B.B., 1996. In this section we will explore many aspects of these resources. [23] Clist also raised questions about the unusually good state of preservation of metallic iron from the site. There is also evidence that carbon steel was made in Western Tanzania by the ancestors of the Haya people as early as 2,300-2,000 years ago by a complex process of "pre-heating" allowing temperatures inside a furnace to reach 1300 to 1400 Â°C.[43][44][45][46][47][48]. Killick, D.J. Zangato, E. and Holl, A.F.C. What do we know about African iron working? "New Evidence on Early Iron-Smelting from Southeastern Nigeria". ©2020 Commodity Inside Limited I All rights reserved. 6.0 The History of Iron Mining in South Africa ... (Statistics South Africa, 2011). 293). Journal de la Société des Africanistes 62:55-68. The main reason for this was the increasing availability of iron imported from Europe. The eastern tradition of smelting used furnaces as well as bellows to create the necessary draft with which to turn charcoal and ironstone into wrought iron and molten waste. Over half of the nation’s domestic iron ore production comes from mines locat… Iron was not the only metal to be used in Africa; copper and brass were widely utilised too. The smelting process is carried out entirely by men and often away from the village. L’usage du fer en Afrique. Opinion among African archaeologists is sharply divided. They are twisted iron rods ranging from <30 cm to >2m in length. Although some assert that no words for iron or ironworking can be traced to reconstructed proto-Bantu,[30] place-names in West Africa suggest otherwise, for example (Okuta) Ilorin, literally "site of iron-work". and F.J. Kense (1982) Meroitic iron working, in: N.B. The furnaces are also often extravagantly adorned to resemble a woman, the mother of the bloom. and D. Miller (2014). A nineteenth-century Ruhr in central Africa. While the origins of iron smelting are difficult to date by radiocarbon, there are fewer problems with using it to track the spread of ironworking after 400 BC. Ehret, C. (2000) The establishment of iron-working in Eastern, Central and South Africa: linguistic Inferences on technological history. [50] [51] [52] Before the 19th century, African methods of extracting iron were employed in Brazil , until more advanced European methods were instituted. Kiriama, H.O., 1993. There is also evidence of activities such as iron smelting that goes even further back to between 3000 and 2500 BCE. [4] Fishing hooks, arrow heads and spears aided hunting. de Maret, P and F. Nsuka (1977) History of Bantu metallurgy: some linguistic aspects. Quéchon, G. and J.-P. Roset (1974). Iron smelters and smiths received different social status depending on their culture. This would make Oboui the oldest iron-working site in the world, and more than a thousand years older than any other dated evidence of iron in Central Africa. [21][22] At Oboui they excavated an undated iron forge yielding eight consistent radiocarbon dates of 2000 BC. Unlike other states dependent on oil revenues, Lagos has a diversified economy with prosperous manufacturing, transport, construction, service, wholesale, and retail sectors. A much wider range of bloomery smelting processes has been recorded on the African continent than elsewhere in the Old World, probably because bloomeries remained in use into the 20th century in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa, whereas in Europe and most parts of Asia they were replaced by the blast furnace before most varieties of bloomeries could be recorded. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). For example, kisi pennies; a traditional form of iron currency used for trading in West Africa. The myth of Meroe and the African Iron Age. (1976). In the period from 1400 to 1600, iron technology appears to have been one of a series of fundamental social assets that facilitated the growth of significant centralized kingdoms in the western Sudan and along the Guinea coast of West Africa. Given the multitude of potential problems with radiocarbon dating in the first millennium BC, archaeologists trying to date the earliest African metallurgy need to make routine use of luminescence dating of the baked clay from smelting furnaces. 3. It is … ON THE flanks of the Simandou mountains in south-eastern Guinea live remote colonies of West African chimpanzees. Some evidence from historical linguistics suggests that the Nok culture of Nigeria may have practiced iron smelting from as early as 1000 BC;[1][2] archaeological evidence dates this not later than 550 BC. Vansina, J. Rehren, T., Charlton, M., Shadrek, C., Humphris, J., Ige, A., Veldhuijen, H.A. Suggestions for their uses vary from marital transactions, or simply that they were a convenient shape for transportation, melting down and reshaping into a desired object. [8][4], The invention of radiocarbon dating in the late 1950s enabled dating of metallurgical sites by the charcoal fuel used for smelting and forging. Bassar: a quantified, chronologically controlled, regional approach to a traditional iron production centre in West Africa. The plant is expected to start production with a year time. 1980. It will produce semi-finished steel for longs and flats steel production. "Changing Perspectives on Traditional Iron Production in West Africa". Iron in sub-Saharan Africa. This page was last edited on 1 March 2021, at 13:47. The nearby Djenné-Djenno culture of the Niger Valley in Mali shows evidence of iron production from c. 250 BC. In. The region later became a centre for cotton-cloth and iron manufacture. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). Kush became the centre of Iron working and trade and later the ideas spread to other parts to central Africa.In the study of history in Malawi, central Africa includes Malawi, Zimbabwe and Zambia. 730 BCE. towns such as Kanem-Borno. Steel production capacity in Africa by country (Algeria, Cameroon, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Libya, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe ) and by equipment Some developments [33] It seems highly probable that this occurred through migrations of Bantu-speaking peoples. (Natural-draft furnaces should not be confused with wind-powered furnaces, which were invariably small). Anglo-Australian mining giant Rio Tinto Group is a major stakeholder in the Simandou project since 1997 but has moved slowly to develop the project. Trigger, B. G. (1969). South Korea: South Korea is the 6th leading country of the world in iron and steel production. Muhammed, I.M., 1993. 154). Precolonial iron workers in present South Africa even smelted iron-titanium ores that modern blast furnaces are not designed to use. Additionally, Holl, regarding the state of preservation, argues that this observation was based on published illustrations representing a small unrepresentative number of atypically well-preserved objects selected for publication. ), Ferrous metallurgy § Africa south of the Sahara, "Iron and its influence on the prehistoric site of Lejja", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Iron_metallurgy_in_Africa&oldid=1009621032, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2016, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Killick, D. 2004. Review Essay: "What Do We Know About African Iron Working?". In summary, there is no proof that iron working technology was taken across the Sahara into sub-Saharan Africa; nor is there proof of independent invention. Warnier, J.-P. and Fowler, I. Some were lower in society due to the aspect of manual labour and associations with witchcraft, for example in the Maasai and Tuareg (Childs et al. Millet, A.L. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). Ifé's location also placed it near Benin and the Atlantic Ocean. Archaeological evidence clearly indicates that starting in the first century BC, iron and cereal agriculture (millet and sorghum) spread together southward from southern Tanzania and northern Zambia, all the way to the eastern Cape region of present South Africa by the third of fourth century AD. Seeking Africa's first iron men. The site was the centre of the Kingdom of Kush, a major force active from the 8th century BCE to the 4th century CE. 1000 CE – ca.1880 CE. Prior to the European voyages of exploration in the fifteenth century, African rulers and merchants had established trade links with the Mediterranean world, western Asia, and the Indian Ocean region. The nation still faces major challenges regarding poverty, unemployment and inequality. This is partly because sub-Saharan Africa has much less potential for water power than these other regions, but also because there were no engineering techniques developed for converting rotary motion to linear motion. It is the 7th fastest growing city in the world. Another factor of urbanization in West Africa was the presence of mineral resources, such as gold and iron, which helped to initiate the growth of a number of urban centres in the region. Taken from: Iron metallurgy along the Tanzanian coast by Bertram B. Mapunda in Southern Africa and the Swahili world. Shaw, T., Sinclair, P., Bassey, A., Okpoko, A (eds). Iron-Making Techniques in the Kivu Region of Zaire: Some of the Differences Between the South Maniema Region and North Kivu. (2004) Review Essay. [4] According to archaeometallurgist Manfred Eggert, "Carthage cannot be reliably considered the point of origin for sub-Saharan iron ore reduction. Smelting of magnetite and magnetite-ilmenite ores in the northern Lowveld, South Africa, ca. Kense, F.J., and Okora, J.A., 1993. 1 There is evidence of agriculture in Africa prior to 3000 b.c. Improved agricultural techniques and trading activities in the past are what led to the establishment of initial civilizations of Wadai, Sao, Bornu, Kanem, Baguirmi, Shilluk, and Bornu.
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