Were birth and census records kept in African countries historically?

I am having trouble researching this. I know Africa is a large continent, and we can’t generalize one country to another. At the time before the major slave trade that brought Africans to the United States, were there good records of those people having been born and that type of information for generations back?

I know several Black Americans who feel a great loss that they don’t know their family surnames or have no way to trace back their ancestors. I am wondering how traceable it even is, even if they knew the surnames. Also, maybe they did not have surnames? If I remember correctly, Jewish people started having surnames around the 11th century; I assume it varies from culture to culture.