When explorations began in Africa looking for new itineraries for the trades, motivations and memorable historical enterprises of navigators.
Shipping Africa
The beginning of Europeans' exploration of Africa coincides with the attempts, in the late medieval era, to find new trade routes with the East by circumnavigating Africa to avoid Muslim countries.
First of all attempts to find a route around Africa was the unfortunate one of the Genoese brothers Ugolino and Guido Vivaldi in 1281.
Two centuries later the enterprises, very important for the recognition of the African coasts, of the Portuguese Bartolomeo Diaz, who in 1488 reached the Cape of Good Hope, and of his compatriot Vasco da Gama, who in the years 1497-98 completed the circumnavigation of the 'Africa.
Geographical searches within Black Africa began towards the end of the 18th century with expeditions of the Scottish Park along the course of the Niger River.
The exploration activity was concentrated in that period on the itineraries between the Mediterranean and Guinea coasts, the Sahara desert and the Chad basin, and along the courses of the great rivers Niger, Congo and Nile.
The second half of the nineteenth century is characterized by the long search for the sources of the Nile, in which the names of the English Livingstone, Stanley and Speke stand out.
Among the Italian explorers present in those expeditions we must mention Miani, who went up the Nile in 1860, Massaia, missionary and explorer in Ethiopia, as well as Gessi, Piaggia, Casati and Bottego who worked in Ethiopia between 1891 and 1897.
