According to some scholars, the name may have derived from the Latin name apricus (airy and sunny) which is from the Greek aprokos.

The Grecanici are a Greek ethnic and linguistic minority in the Calabria region of Italy, remnants of a population that has resided there since late antiquity.

In 1195 the town became a fief of the Archbishop of Reggio Calabria granted by the king of Sicily, Henry VI.

[3] Africo has become the symbol of hunger, floods, wandering and the dispersion of the inhabitants of inland Calabria.

[5] In 1948 the journalist Tommaso Besozzi and photographer Tino Petrelli published a report in the magazine L’Europeo, showing the misery and hunger of the people of Africo.

[5][6] The article, entitled Africo, symbol of disparity, and the series of documentary photographs produced an outrage from national public opinion which, at the time, was rediscovering the dramatic situation of the "southern question".

People were evacuated to Bova Marina, Reggio Calabria and Fiumara di Muro.

Africo Nuovo has been constructed around 15 kilometres (9 mi) away from the old town, on the Ionian coast, near Bianco.