Botswana

In the northern part of Botswana, tribal women in the villages of Etsha and Gumare are noted for their skill at crafting baskets from Mokola Palm and local dyes. The baskets are generally woven into three types: large, lidded baskets used for storage large, open baskets for carrying objects on the head or for winnowing threshed grain, and smaller plates for winnowing pounded grain. The artistry of these baskets is being steadily enhanced through color use and improved designs as they are increasingly produced for commercial use.

Although baskets were traditionally created to serve a utilitarian rather than an aesthetic purpose, the practice of basket making has evolved into an art. Artistic freedom allows basket makers a wide choice of colors, materials, sizes, patterns and details.

Archaeological sites in the Middle East show that weaving techniques were used to make mats and possibly also baskets, circa 8 000 BC. Baskets made with several interwoven techniques were common at 3 000 BC.

The carrying of a basket on the head, particularly by rural women, has long been practiced. Representations of this in Ancient Greek art are called Canephorae.

The oldest evidence of ancient paintings is from both Botswana and South Africa. Depictions of hunting, both animal and human figures were made by the Khosian dating to before civilization over 20,000 years ago within the Kalahari desert.

Côte d'Ivoire

The Baoulé, the Senoufo and the Dan peoples are skilled at carving wood and each culture produces wooden masks in wide variety. The Côte d'Ivorian peoples use masks to represent animals in caricature to depict deities, or to represent the souls of the departed.

Masks have been used since antiquity for both ceremonial and practical purposes.

The word mask came via French masque and either Italian maschera or Spanish máscara. Possible ancestors are Latin (not classical) mascus, masca = "ghost", and Arabic maskharah = "jester", "man in masquerade".

The 5000-year-old Mask of Warka is believed to be the oldest surviving mask.

Masks are typically made from wood and may use rope, animal horns or teeth, or rubber from tire inner tubes.

As the masks are held to be of great spiritual power, it is considered a taboo for anyone other than specially trained persons to wear or possess certain masks.

These ceremonial masks each are thought to have a soul, or life force, and wearing these masks is thought to transform the wearer into the entity the mask represents.

Côte d'Ivoire also has modern painters and iIlustrators. Gilbert G. Groud critics the ancient believes in black magic, to which the above masks belong, in his illustrated book magie noire.

Egypt

Persisting for 3000 years and thirty dynasties, the "official" art of Egypt was centred on the state religion of the time. The art ranged from stone carvings of both massive statues and small statuettes, to wall art that depicted both history and mythology. In 2600 BC the maturity of Egyptian carving reached a peak it did not reach again for another 1500 years during the reign of Rameses II.

A lot of the art possesses a certain stiffness, with figures poised upright and rigid in a most regal fashion. Bodily proportions also appear to be mathematically derived, giving rise to a sense of fantastic perfection in the figures depicted. This most likely was used to reinforce the godliness of the ruling caste.