Africa is an unincorporated community located in Orange Township of southern Delaware County, Ohio, United States, by Alum Creek.

A historic marker in the area recounts the history of how the community was divided by the slavery question and of how Africa received its name: Samuel Patterson arrived in East Orange in 1824 and, within a few years, began to hide runaway slaves in his home.

He also invited anti-slavery speakers to the pulpit of the East Orange Methodist Church, which brought Patterson and his neighbors into conflict with the bishop.

These slaves moved to the community of Africa, lived in log homes, were employed by the anti-slavery farmers and joined the Wesleyan Methodist Church.

After the Civil War the freed slaves left Africa and settled in the communities of Delaware and Westerville, and Van Wert and Paulding counties.The Patterson family built their original double log cabin in the 1820s.

Here Benjamin Hanby, an Otterbein College student, heard the story a sick slave had told about his sweetheart, Nelly Gray, who had been sold down the river.

"[3] The song recounts the tale of Nelly, who white men bound in chains and took to Georgia, working her in the cotton as she slowly died.

Songs such as these and writings, such as those of Ohioan Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, sensitized northerners to the conditions of slavery and helped to initiate the anti-slavery movement.

[citation needed] Africa, Ohio was "saluted" on the country music television show "Hee Haw" in 1973.