The board game was first published year 1951 in Helsinki, Finland. Stories of the world's largest diamond ? the Star of Africa ? had inspired the imagination of young Kari Mannerla. He managed to get a hold of a map of Africa in the English language and picked exotic sounding places. He then drafted land, sea and air routes arbitrarily across and around the continent. During his design process, an important innovation was that players could pick their route of choice, instead of following a pre-set course. A further revelation was the tokens that are shuffled before each game and placed randomly throughout the board. None of the players know which surprise is hidden under each token. The robbers and horseshoes were considered to add to the excitement of the game. Afrikan tahti was the last of Kari Mannerla's games. He was then already an ?experienced? 19-year-old game designer and he intuitively sensed that this one was unique. He offered it to the large book publishing company Tilgmann. Price negotiations took a few years and finally he accepted a modest compensation for 10,000 printed games. His condition to the publisher was that any further prints would be negotiated separately. This was not an issue to the publisher because board games typically didn't get printed again. This time it was different. Already the following year another 10,000 were printed and after that every year more and more. Over 100,000 games were sold in seven years, which is a record amount even today. Afrikan tahti has remained one of the most sold board games in Finland for 65 years. During this time it has been translated to over 16 languages. It is most popular in the Nordic countries, where it became widely marketed in Sweden, Norway and Denmark in 1960. In Sweden the game is called Den Forsvunna Diamanten, in Norway Den Forsvunne Diamanten (both meaning "The Lost or, Vanished Diamond") and in Denmark Afrikas Stjerne (Star of Africa). In Finland over two million games have been sold.