Portal:Africa
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surface area. With nearly 1.4 billion people as of 2021, it accounts for about 18% of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest among all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Based on 2024 projections, Africa's population will reach 3.8 billion people by 2099. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita and second-least wealthy by total wealth, ahead of Oceania. Scholars have attributed this to different factors including geography, climate, corruption, colonialism, the Cold War, and neocolonialism. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and a large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context. Africa has a large quantity of natural resources and food resources, including diamonds, sugar, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum, natural gas, cocoa beans, and.
Africa straddles the equator and the prime meridian. It is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to the southern temperate zones. The majority of the continent and its countries are in the Northern Hemisphere, with a substantial portion and a number of countries in the Southern Hemisphere. Most of the continent lies in the tropics, except for a large part of Western Sahara, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, the northern tip of Mauritania, and the entire territories of Morocco, Ceuta, Melilla, and Tunisia, which in turn are located above the tropic of Cancer, in the northern temperate zone. In the other extreme of the continent, southern Namibia, southern Botswana, great parts of South Africa, the entire territories of Lesotho and Eswatini and the southern tips of Mozambique and Madagascar are located below the tropic of Capricorn, in the southern temperate zone.
Africa is highly biodiverse; it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least affected by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. However, Africa also is heavily affected by a wide range of environmental issues, including desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, and pollution. These entrenched environmental concerns are expected to worsen as climate change impacts Africa. The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has identified Africa as the continent most vulnerable to climate change.
The history of Africa is long, complex, and varied, and has often been under-appreciated by the global historical community. In African societies, the historical process is largely a communal one, with eyewitness accounts, hearsay, reminiscences, and occasionally visions, dreams, and hallucinations, crafted into oral traditions, leading some to term them oral civilisations. Time is sometimes mythical and social, and truth generally viewed as relativist. The lack of comprehensive written records has meant that African history used to largely be written by outsiders, Europeans and Arabs, with contemporary historians tasked with decolonising African historiography. (Full article...)
Selected article –
The sitatunga (Tragelaphus spekii) or marshbuck is a swamp-dwelling medium-sized antelope found throughout central Africa, centering on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Cameroon, parts of Southern Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, Burundi, Ghana, Botswana, Rwanda, Zambia, Gabon, the Central African Republic, Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. The sitatunga is mostly confined to swampy and marshy habitats. Here they occur in tall and dense vegetation as well as seasonal swamps, marshy clearings in forests, riparian thickets and mangrove swamps. (Full article...)
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Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Kobe and Vanessa Bryant were founding donors of the National Museum of African American History and Culture?
- ... that scientists tested the age of an African termite's inhabited mound—and found it to be 34,000 years old?
- ... that during the First World War the East African Mounted Rifles sometimes painted stripes on their horses to camouflage them as zebras?
- ... that members of The Links, an elite organization of upper-class Black women, include Betty Shabazz, Marian Wright Edelman, and Kamala Harris?
- ... that actress Dorothy Van Engle starred in the 1935 movie Murder in Harlem with a "proto-feminist role" that was then a primary source of positive representation for African Americans in film?
- ... that in a study for UNICEF, Reginald Green found that more than two million children under the age of five had died in Angola and Mozambique due to the South African apartheid regime's economic policies?
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Selected biography –
Augustine of Hippo (/ɔːˈɡʌstɪn/ aw-GUST-in, US also /ˈɔːɡəstiːn/ AW-gə-steen; Latin: Aurelius Augustinus Hipponensis; 13 November 354 – 28 August 430), also known as Saint Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. His writings influenced the development of Western philosophy and Western Christianity, and he is viewed as one of the most important Church Fathers of the Latin Church in the Patristic Period. His many important works include The City of God, On Christian Doctrine, and Confessions.
According to his contemporary, Jerome of Stridon, Augustine "established anew the ancient Faith". In his youth he was drawn to the Manichaean faith, and later to the Hellenistic philosophy of Neoplatonism. After his conversion to Christianity and baptism in 386, Augustine developed his own approach to philosophy and theology, accommodating a variety of methods and perspectives. Believing the grace of Christ was indispensable to human freedom, he helped formulate the doctrine of original sin and made significant contributions to the development of just war theory. When the Western Roman Empire began to disintegrate, Augustine imagined the Church as a spiritual City of God, distinct from the material Earthly City. The segment of the Church that adhered to the concept of the Trinity as defined by the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Constantinople closely identified with Augustine's On the Trinity. (Full article...)
Selected country –
Equatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea, is a country in Central Africa. One of the smallest countries in continental Africa, Equatorial Guinea comprises a mainland territory known as Río Muni (including several offshore islands), the island of Bioko (formerly Fernando Pó), where the capital Malabo (formerly Santa Isabel) is located, and the island of Annobón in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is bordered by Cameroon on the north, Gabon on the south and east, and the Gulf of Guinea on the west, where the island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe is located.
Formerly the Spanish colony of Spanish Guinea, its post-independence name is suggestive of its location near both the equator and the Gulf of Guinea. It is the only country in mainland Africa where Spanish is an official language, excluding the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, and the UN-recognised but Moroccan-occupied Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (Western Sahara). The discovery of sizeable petroleum reserves in recent years is altering the economic and political status of the country. (Read more...)
Selected city –
Lubumbashi (former names: Élisabethville (French); 2= (Full article...)
In the news
- 12 February 2024 –
- Two boats collide on the Congo River near Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; with the death toll remains unclear. (AP)
- 11 February 2024 – 2023 Africa Cup of Nations
- In association football, hosts Ivory Coast win their third Africa Cup of Nations by defeating Nigeria 2–1 in the final. Sébastien Haller scores the winning goal in the 81st minute. (The Guardian)
- 10 February 2024 – Somali civil war
- Four Emirati soldiers and a Bahraini military officer are killed, while ten other people are injured, when a soldier opens fire at a military base in Mogadishu, Somalia, before being killed in the ensuing shootout. Al-Shabaab claims responsibility. (AP)
- 10 February 2024 –
- A Eurocopter EC130 helicopter crashes near Nipton, California, United States, killing all the six people on board, including Nigerian banker Herbert Wigwe. (CBS News)
- 10 February 2024 – 2023–2024 Senegalese protests
- Violent protests occur in Senegal following an announcement by President Macky Sall that presidential elections have been delayed from February 25 to December 15. (Sky News)
- 9 February 2024 –
- At least 18 people are killed during a collision between a bus and a truck on a road in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo. (AP)
Updated: 16:33, 14 February 2024
General images -
Africa topics
More did you know –
- ... that Liberia College in the country of Liberia was authorized by the legislature in 1851, but did not start classes until 1863?
- ... that the forced removal of 700,000 people from slums in Zimbabwe in 2005 was called "a crime against humanity" by the UN?
- ... that the supreme god of the southern African Bushmen is Cagn, a trickster who shapeshifts into a praying mantis?
- ... that Bahá'í Faith in Niger began during a period of wide scale growth in the religion across Sub-Saharan Africa near the end of its colonial period?
Related portals
Major Religions in Africa
North Africa
West Africa
Central Africa
East Africa
Southern Africa
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