The concept of nation states in Africa is only a bit over a century old, arising after the 1884 Berlin Conference and the subsequent Scramble for Africa by European superpowers of the time. It is therefore not surprising that the names of most African countries are remnants of a colonial legacy.
Nearly every country on earth is named after after one of four things—a directional description of the country, a feature of the land, a tribe name or an important person, most likely a man. For the most part, Africa mirrors this trend with a few exceptions. The stories of how African countries got their names ranges from the more mundane, to the fantastical and sometimes even the mind-boggling.
Cameroon, a country that has the complicated legacy of first having been colonized by the Germans, then later partitioned by the French and British, was actually named by a Portuguese explorer in the 15th century. Coming across the Wouri river, one of Cameroon’s largest rivers, he renamed it, Rio dos Camarões (shrimp river,) for the abundance of shrimp in it. The name stuck and evolved to become the country name.
Another 15th century Portuguese explorer would find his way further West where either the mountains that looked like a lion’s teeth or the impressive roar of thunderstorms would lead him to name the place, Sierra Lyoa (lion mountains.) In time, the name would change to Sierra Leone.
Centuries later, another mountain would yield a country’s name in East Africa, when the British came upon an imposing snow-capped mountain that the Kikuyu people called Kirinyaga (Where God dwells.) As they struggled to pronounce, Kirinyaga, they called it Mt. Kenya – the country would be named after this mountain.