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Gustav Nachtigal (; born 23 February 1834 – 20 April 1885) was a Germans military surgeon and Exploration of Central Africa and West Africa. He is also known as the German Empire's consul-general for French Tunisia and Commissioner for West Africa. His mission as commissioner resulted in Togoland and Kamerun becoming the first colonies of a German colonial empire.
After early education, Nachtigal studied medicine at the universities of Halle, Würzburg, and Greifswald.
He returned to Germany and met Friedrich Gerhard Rohlfs. Rohlfs asked him to go to the Bornu Empire. He was commissioned by King Wilhelm I of Prussia to carry gifts to Umar Kura, ruler of the Bornu Empire, in acknowledgment of kindness shown to German travellers, such as Heinrich Barth.
Nachtigal set out in 1869 from Ottoman Tripoli and accomplished his mission after a two years' journey. During this period, he visited Tibesti and Borku, regions of the central Sahara not previously known to Europeans, and reached the region of the Toubou people. He travelled with eight and six men.
From Bornu Empire, he travelled to Baguirmi, an independent state to the southeast of Bornu. From there, he proceeded to Ouaddai Kingdom (a powerful Muslim kingdom to the northeast of Baguirmi) and to Kordofan (a former province of central Sudan).
Nachtigal finally emerged from his journey through the Sahel at Khartoum (then the centre of Turkish Sudan) in the winter of 1874, after having been given up as lost. His journey, described in his Sahara and Sudan, earned him a reputation as a discoverer. In 1882, he was awarded the Royal Geographical Society's Founder's Medal.
After the establishment of a France protectorate over Tunisia, Nachtigal was sent as consul-general for the German Empire and served there until 1884. Thereafter, he was appointed by Chancellor Otto von Bismarck as special commissioner for West Africa. Local German business interests in that region began advocating for protection by the German Empire, after they had acquired huge properties in West Africa. Nachtigal’s task was to establish a claim for Germany, before the British could advance their own interests. He established Togoland and Kamerun as Germany’s first colonial possessions.
On his return, he died at sea aboard the gunboat off Cape Palmas on 20 April 1885. He was initially interred at Grand Bassam (now in Ivory Coast). In 1888 Nachtigal’s remains were exhumed and reburied in a ceremonial grave in Douala (then a German protectorate) in front of the Kamerun colonial government building.
He had witnessed slave hunts performed by African rulers and the cruelties inflicted by them upon other Africans. The horror that he felt about these atrocities made him enter colonial endeavours, because he believed that European domination of the African continent might stop slave-hunting and slave ownership.
The Gustav Nachtigal Medal, awarded by the Berlin Geographical Society from 1896 until the 1990s, was named in his honour.
In 2022, "Nachtigalplatz" (Nachtigal Square) in Berlin was renamed "Manga-Bell-Platz", in honor of Duala people king and resistance leader Rudolf Duala Manga Bell.
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