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Top 10 Largest Museums in Africa 2023

This is the list of the top largest museums in Africa that tell the stories of the African people the way it has never been told before!

Published

2 years ago

May 1, 2023

Oluwafemi Afolayan

Top 10 Largest Museums in Africa 2023 - RNN

The African continent is so blessed with rich culture and great heritage some of which were mixed suffering, persecution, and ill feeling that the ancestors of this great land endured with the hardship that they brought with them, so what better place is there to learn and see firsthand the beautiful history of the African people than the largest museums in Africa.

Additionally, irrespective of where you are from, if you wish to learn about a people’s history, museums are one of the places that hold important memories of the past and significant events that happened in history in their raw form undiluted by the change in dispensations.

What are the largest museums in Africa? this is one of the questions this article will answer as well as the location, the country where this museum is the size, and the number of artifacts and arts that these museums house. Furthermore, for record sake, Africans have so many museums to house their history because of their rich cultures. The museums listed in this article house around 40,000 to more than 100,000 artifacts, and cultural objects of historical scientific interest.

1. Grand Egyptian Museum – Egypt

Grand Egyptian Museum - Egypt - Largest museums in Africa

Largest museum in Africa

Egypt has some of the best museums in Africa and it is filled with some of the most fascinating historical objects dating back to the earliest civilizations of humans. The Grand Egyptian Museum which was completed in February 2023 is the largest museum in Africa. It covers an area of 480,000 square meters which is about 1.2 miles from the Giza Pyramid. According to reports, the project cost about $550 million and it is filled with over 3,000 years old of artifacts and objects from way back to the 5th millennium BC.

Additionally, the Grand Egyptian Museum houses more than 50,000 items which about 30,000 of which have never before been seen by the public. Also, among the artifacts is the treasures of the Golden King Tutankhamun, the statue of Djoser, the Palette of Narmer, or the Narmer Palette including the 3,200 years old Statue of Ramesses II among several other items.

2. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo – Egypt

Another big museum located on the continent of Africa is the one in Cairo Egypt, Egyptian museum in Cairo houses over 120,000 items. This museum was the largest in Africa before the Grand Egyptian Museum take over as the largest. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo was built in 1901 and it houses some of the most important Egyptian antiquities and it also holds the largest collection of the ancient world.

3. Bardo National Museum – Tunisia

Bardo National Museum - Tunisia - Largest Museums in Africa

national museum of Africa

Aside from being one of the best museums in Africa, it is also one of the best in Africa as well as Tunisia and it is located in Le Bardo, Tunis, Tunisia. Aside from its size as one of the largest museums in Africa, it is one of the museums in Africa that is rich in its collections after the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. The museum houses some of the finest artifacts and objects from different times in history.

Additionally, the museum was established on May 7, 1888, in the old beylical palace and boasts of artifacts way back to the 4th century which dates back to over 40,000 years ago with thousands of objects imbibed with a rich history of Tunisia spanning millennia.

4. Nairobi National Museum – Kenya

The Nairobi Nationation Museum was originally established in 1911 as Natural History Museum and library with an honorary curator and on 22 September 1930, the museum was officially opened after the construction of the new site was done in 1929. The museum is located in Museum Hill, near Uhuru Highway between Central Business District and Westlands, Nairobi, Kenya is the oldest and one of the largest in Kenya and Africa.

Nairobi National Museum houses some cool and impressive early human artifacts found around Kenya and more than 350,000 fossils in its collection, 700 of which belong to ancient humans. Additionally, it has the skeleton of the Turkana boy who is believed to have lived about 1.6 million years old according to the archaeological discovery.

5. Musee National Museum – Cameroon

While the origin of this museum dates back to the 1930s just before the beginning of the second world war, it did not become a museum until 2014 following a prime ministerial decree. This museum boasts some of the artifacts and objects of antiquities from earlier civilizations it is also the largest museum in Cameroon and safe to say the fifth largest in Africa. Meanwhile, there are about 850 artifacts on display in the museum, unlike some other museums that have appeared on this list.

6. The Museum of Contemporary African Art Al Maaden – Morocco

biggest museums in Africa

Al Maaden Museum is the first Morrocan museum to appear on this list and as well as the largest in the country. Although, unlike the other museums on this list this museum serves to disseminate, educate, and popularise art in Morocco and within the continent, namely among younger audiences. It features art from across the country and Africa as a whole, with new exhibitions.

7. National Museum of Ethiopia – Ethiopia

In this list, this museum comes third as one of the best you will ever want to visit and one that has a large collection of artifacts objects. The museum is located in the capital city of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The national museum of Ethiopia was established in 1958 and it is one of the most famous museums aside from being one of the largest museums in Africa due to some of its important collections of artifacts and objects.

Additionally, the most famous collection on display is the fossilized remains of early hominids popularly called Lucy who have been estimated to date to about 3.3 million years ago and Selam, which was found between 2000 and 2004 is believed to be Lucy’s baby. Furthermore, other collections include the Solomonic dynasty, pieces of the ancient Kingdom of Aksum, and Ethiopian arts and crafts among many other items.

8. Nigerian National Museum – Lagos

largest museums in Africa

The Nigerian National Museum is located in Onikan, Lagos Island, Lagos and it is the largest in Nigeria according to its size and number of items in its collection. In addition to its size and variety of objects, the museum is one of the richest in the African continent which boasts about 47,000 or more items in its collection it was founded in the year 1957 by Kenneth Murray.

Artifacts in the museum range from all parts of the country and the whole of Africa and some date back to far back as 200 BC which includes part of the Nok culture. According to Wikipedia, the museum contains jewelry and crafts, as well as a collection of textiles including Akwete cloth and other textiles from the Okene, Bida, and Western States areas of Nigeria.

9. Benin City National Museum – Nigeria

Benin City National Museum - Nigeria - Largest Museums in Africa

best museums in Africa 2023

The Benin City National Museum is located in Benin City, Nigeria, located in the city center of King’s Square called the ring road. Although in size, some other museums in Africa may be larger than this museum but the Benin city museum is distinct in itself with a significant number of artifacts related to the Benin Empire which was one of the most powerful and oldest pre-colonial African empires that ruled from 1240–1897. Along with cultural artifacts which are related to the Benin people, it also has ancient art related to the early times.

10. Iziko Museums – South Africa

Lastly, Iziko Museum is another South African museum to appear on this list as one of the largest in Africa. The museum which is founded in 1825 and is located in the Company’s Garden, Cape Town city center. Iziko Museum is the first founded museum in South Africa which was established almost 200 years ago by Lord Charles Somerset who was once a governor of the Cape colony under the British administration.

Among its collections are the artifacts from the early Iron Age, the Karoo fossils which are estimated to have lived about 250 million years ago among many cool interesting items to see like the collection of whale casts and skeletons, and the Lydenburg Heads.