Afrikan tähti

Afrikan tahti, Finnish for "Star of Africa" and known in Swedish as Den forsvunna diamanten, "The Missing Diamond," is a Finnish board game designed by Kari Mannerla and first published in 1951 by Peliko. Two to six players move pieces across a map of Africa, choosing their own routes between cities rather than following one fixed track, in a race to find a hidden diamond token and carry it safely home before their rivals. Mannerla, then a young designer drawing on stories about the real Star of Africa diamond and on Humphrey Bogart adventure films, built the game around dice-driven movement and a high element of luck, with a full round typically taking sixteen to sixty minutes. Its route-choice mechanic set it apart from earlier fixed-path race games and helped make it one of the most popular board games across the Nordic countries for decades.