Has there ever been a African civilization.

[ofafrique]

Go read a book.

[gurey25]

what is your definition of civilization?

civilization is a society that builds an organized state, that has technological innovation and arts.

whats a good indicator of technological innovation? i say an example is independent discovery of agriculture and metal working.

It is now agreed that agriculture was invented independently at least 7 times.
one of those was west africa on the sahel, northern nigreria towards mali and the lake chad basin.
This is thr air mountains in niger and the nok culture in nigeria.
It was here that one of the earliest copper smelting was done 3000BC and bronze, this was before the egyptians because we know they got the technology from Mesopotamia. The technology is different so egypt is not the source.
The same with steel and iron.
The earliest iron smelting was as late as 2000BC just as old as the middle east and earlier than China.
Nearly all the bantu tribes during the bantu expansion had steel, of a quality that europe did not get till after 700AD and steel making filtered in through the middle east.
The bantu tribes had a different design of open heart process smelting, one of the later discoveries was among the haya tribe in tanzania. It was discovered through carbon dating that their steel was from the first century BC,
around the time of Julius ceaser, and we all know the romans did not have this quality of steel.
only the Indians had it and india is the source of this technology transfer to the middle east and then to europe.