Unfortunately, I'm not. Growing up in the inner-city (Detroit), the ONLY thing we learned about our ancestors' history was slavery. No desire to thread-jack, but being influenced by such an education system does wonders for one's self-esteem (especially at such a young age)... Seems I have a research topic for the day!

">I was under the impression Africa had no native written languages

Are you kidding me? Ethiopia alone has multiple scripts."

Ah well, when I was living in the United States people used to ask me if we all used elephants for transport in India. I used to answer "Sure, we had this big stable of elephants and I went to school on one, as did all the kids in the neighbourhood. Actually I went to the airport for my trip here on the house elephant .. "

(Fwiw, my great grandfather did own an elephant in the early 1900s but it used to haul lumber and take part in temple processions, not so much provide transport from point A to B ... )

Well known are Amharic :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amharic

and Tifinagh (now taught in Morocco and Algeria) :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tifinagh