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 1.4 billion people0 as of 2021, it accounts for about 18% of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. 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, tribalism, colonialism, the Cold War, neocolonialism, lack of democracy, and corruption. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context.
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 has often been under-appreciated by the global historical community. Africa, particularly Eastern Africa, is widely accepted as the place of origin of humans and the Hominidae clade (great apes). The earliest hominids and their ancestors have been dated to around 7 million years ago, including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster—the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human) remains, found in Ethiopia, South Africa, and Morocco, date to circa 233,000, 259,000, and 300,000 years ago, respectively, and Homo sapiens is believed to have originated in Africa around 350,000–260,000 years ago. Africa is also considered by anthropologists to be the most genetically diverse continent as a result of being the longest inhabited. (Full article...)
Selected article –
Featured pictures –
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that despite the United States outlawing slavery in 1865, historian Antoinette Harrell found examples of African-American families who remained enslaved through debt bondage as recently as the 1970s?
- ... that geographer Hildegard Binder Johnson fled Third Reich Germany after the Nazi Party destroyed her scientific paper criticizing the development of European colonies in Africa?
- ... that Frank Jeremiah Armstrong, the first African-American graduate of Cornell College, became an assistant to Booker T. Washington?
- ... that the 51st Defense Battalion, formed during World War II, was the first African-American unit in the United States Marine Corps?
- ... that one way to tell the African dusky flycatcher apart from the ashy flycatcher is that the former is "cuter"?
- ... 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?
Categories
Selected biography –
Fatima Massaquoi-Fahnbulleh (/ˈmæsækwɑː/; 25 December 1911 – 26 November 1978) was a Liberian writer and academic. After completing her education in the United States, she returned to Liberia in 1946, making significant contributions to the cultural and social life of the country.
Born into a family of African royalty, Massaquoi grew up in the care of an aunt in Njagbacca, in the Garwula District of Grand Cape Mount County of southern Liberia. After seven years, she returned to the northwestern part of the country in Montserrado County, where she began her schooling. In 1922 she accompanied her father, a diplomat, to Hamburg, Germany, where she completed her school education and started a course in biology at the University of Hamburg. In 1937 she moved to the United States for further education, studying sociology and anthropology at Lane College, Fisk University and Boston University. While in the US, she collaborated on a dictionary of the Vai language and wrote her autobiography, though a legal battle ensued over the rights to her story. She won an injunction barring others from publishing it, and returned to Liberia in 1946, immediately beginning collaboration to establish a university there, which would become the University of Liberia. (Full article...)Selected country –
Guinea-Bissau, officially the Republic of Guinea-Bissau (Portuguese: República da Guiné-Bissau), is a country in western Africa, and one of the smallest nations in continental Africa. It is bordered by Senegal to the north, Guinea to the south and east, and the Atlantic Ocean to its west. Formerly the Portuguese colony of Portuguese Guinea, the name of its capital, Bissau, was added to the country's official name upon independence in order to prevent confusion between itself and the Republic of Guinea. Portuguese, the official language, is spoken by only 14% of the population.
The protracted liberation war against Portugal brought tremendous damage to the country’s economic infrastructure. The civil war that took place in 1998 and 1999 and a military coup in September 2003 again disrupted economic activity. Guinea-Bissau is one of the world's poorest countries, with more than two-thirds of its population living below the poverty threshold. The economy depends mainly on agriculture and fishing, and cashew nuts are its major exports. (Read more...)
Selected city –
Casablanca (Arabic: الدار البيضاء, romanized: al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, lit. 'the White House', IPA: [adˈdaːru ɫbajdˤaːʔ]) is the largest city in Morocco and the country's economic and business centre. Located on the Atlantic coast of the Chaouia plain in the central-western part of Morocco, the city has a population of about 3.71 million in the urban area, and over 4.27 million in Greater Casablanca, making it the most populous city in the Maghreb region, and the eighth-largest in the Arab world.
Casablanca is Morocco's chief port, with the Port of Casablanca being one of the largest artificial ports in Africa, and the third-largest port in North Africa, after Tanger-Med (40 km (25 mi) east of Tangier) and Port Said. Casablanca also hosts the primary naval base for the Royal Moroccan Navy. (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 members of the Senegalese rap group Daara J were hired by campaigners in the Senegalese election of 2000 to edit their speeches?
- ...that Senegalese hip hop group Positive Black Soul's name abbreviation, PBS, is a play on that of the Parti Démocratique Sénégalais, PDS?
- ...that Mamadou Diabaté, a Malian kora player, was nominated for a Grammy Award in 2005, but lost to his cousin Toumani Diabaté?
- ...that, in November 2007, The Sowetan published an article which erroneously claimed that South African political activist Dan Mokonyane had died?
Related portals
Major Religions in Africa
North Africa
West Africa
Central Africa
East Africa
Southern Africa
Associated Wikimedia
The following Wikimedia Foundation sister projects provide more on this subject:
-
Commons
Free media repository -
Wikibooks
Free textbooks and manuals -
Wikidata
Free knowledge base -
Wikinews
Free-content news -
Wikiquote
Collection of quotations -
Wikisource
Free-content library -
Wikispecies
Directory of species -
Wikiversity
Free learning tools -
Wikivoyage
Free travel guide -
Wiktionary
Dictionary and thesaurus