Scholars previously believed that sub-Saharan Africans either did not have a period of using copper until the nineteenth century (going from the Stone Age directly into the Iron Age), or that they started smelting iron and copper at the same time. Copper smelting is thought to have been practiced in Nubia, during the early Old Kingdom c. 2686–2181 BC.
The principal evidence for this claim is an Egyptian outpost established in Buhen (near today's Sudanese-Egyptian border) around 2600 BC to smelt copper ores from Nubia. Alongside this, a crucible furnace dating to 2300–1900 BC for bronze casting has been found at the temple precinct at Kerma (in present-day northern Sudan), however the source of the tin remains unknown. Over the next millennium Nubians developed great skill in working copper and other known metals.
Discoveries in the Agadez Region of Niger evidence signs of copper metallurgy as early as 2000 BC. This date pre-dates the use of iron by a thousand years. Copper metallurgy seems to have been an indigenous invention in this area, because there is no clear evidence of influences from Northern Africa, and the Saharan wet phase was coming to an end, hindering human interactions across the Saharan region. It appeared to not be fully developed copper metallurgy, which suggests it was not from external origins. The people used native copper at first, and experimented with different furnace styles in order to smelt the ore between 2500 and 1500 BC.
Copper metallurgy has been recorded at Akjoujt in western Mauritania. The Akjoujt site is later than Agadez, dating back to around 850 BC. There is evidence of mining between 850 and 300 BC. Radiocarbon dates from the Grotte aux Chauves-souris mine shows that the extraction and smelting of malachite goes back to the early fifth century BC. A number of copper artifacts—including arrow points, spearheads, chisels, awls and plano-convex axes as well as bracelets, bead and earrings—were found at Neolithic sites in the region.
Collecting dates from Tropical Africa has been extremely difficult. No dates are available for the copper mine in pre-colonial Nigeria, and the earliest dates available south of the equator are around 345 AD at Naviundu springs near Lubumbashi in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Kansanshi mine in Zambia and Kipushi mine in the DRC date to between the fifth and twelfth centuries. Sites further south have produced later dates, for example the Thakadu mines in Botswana date to between 1480 and 1680; other major mines in Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa remain undated.