News Finding: This closely mirrors the European colonial history in Africa south of the Sahara with early Portuguese forts and trading posts established on the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in 1482, which was followed by European colonial expansion and internal African migration.
Paper Finding: These findings closely mirror the European colonial history in Africa south of the Sahara, with early Portuguese forts and trading posts established on the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in 1482, followed by an ever increasing European presence and influence in African coastal regions over the next centuries.
News Context: They show that the earliest introductions of Lineage 4 into Africa happened in the Republic of Congo in the 15th century before spreading across the continent into South Africa, Uganda and Malawi in the late 17th century. This closely mirrors the European colonial history in Africa south of the Sahara with early Portuguese forts and trading posts established on the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in 1482, which was followed by European colonial expansion and internal African migration. "In Western Africa, Lineage 4 is the dominant form of TB but Lineages 5 and 6 are also common.
Paper Context: The plots also show within-continent migration/transmission in the receiving continents to illustrate the relative importance of repeated L4 import on continental L4 load over time. These findings closely mirror the European colonial history in Africa south of the Sahara, with early Portuguese forts and trading posts established on the Gold Coast (present-day Ghana) in 1482, followed by an ever increasing European presence and influence in African coastal regions over the next centuries. Our findings thus suggest an intimate relationship between European colonial expansion and the spread of L4 TB on the African continent.