Roman Africa

Government

The Roman Imperial and later the Byzantine presence manifested in a series of evolving but defined administrative provinces. In the late Republic (starting in the mid-2nd century BC) through the Principate and the Crisis of the Third Century, these were:

• the original province of Africa, organized around the metropolis of Carthage under the first Roman governor of Africa, Scipio Aemilianus;
• from 25 BC, Africa Proconsularis, from which the province of Numidia (northeastern Algeria) was detached;
• Mauretania, colonized under the first Roman emperor, Augustus, and annexed as a province under Claudius in AD 44, from which the provinces Mauretania Tingitana (in northern Morocco) and Mauretania Caesariensis (in Algeria) were created and retained until the Vandal conquest in AD 429;
• Tripolitania (Libya) and Africa Byzacena (Tunisia), subdivided from proconsular Africa (thereafter also known as Africa Zeugitana) under the emperor Diocletian.

After Diocletian's formation of the Tetrarchy, the Diocese of Africa was the overarching imperial administration of North Africa, excluding Mauretania Tingitana.

Byzantine North Africa (AD 533 through ca. 698/700) was governed as:

• Praetorian prefecture of Africa (AD 534–591);
• Exarchate of Africa (AD 591–698).