Although djembes made their way to the U.S. and Europe in the last century and became known to the rest of the world in the last decades, it is generally agreed that these instruments were invented several centuries ago in Africa.
The iconic African drums are associated with an ethnic group known as Numu or Mandinka, a group that was primarily found in northern Ivory Coast, southern Mali, and eastern Guinea. During the first millennium AD, this group migrated and thus might have dispersed this instrument throughout West Africa.
Thus, the distribution of this drum is associated with the Mali Empire. This empire dates back to 1230 AD, but since there are no written records in West Africa, it is still unknown whether the djembes were already there when the Mali Empire formed, or they were invented after that.