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 talking drum is an hourglass-shaped drum from West Africa, whose pitch can be regulated to mimic the tone and prosody of human speech. It has two drumheads connected by leather tension cords, which allow the player to change the pitch of the drum by scraping the cords between their arm and body.
Originating from the 18th century, talking drum players used tones to disseminate messages, such as news of ceremonies and commands, over 4-5 mile distances. (Full article...)
Featured pictures –
Did you know (auto-generated) -
- ... that Kenyan coffee farmer "Pinkie" Jackson amassed Africa's largest collection of native butterflies?
- ... that Malabo Mosque cost about two billion Central African CFA francs to build?
- ... that the son of an engine fitter from England became Director of Education in part of modern-day South Africa for almost twenty years?
- ... that the book Love Falls On Us, about the LGBTQ movement in Africa, was praised by author Uzodinma Iweala for "elevating the extraordinary ordinariness of L.G.B.T.Q. Africans"?
- ... that nursing educator Helen Turner Watson was one of the first African-American women to become a commissioned officer in the United States Navy?
- ... that Mackay Davashe wrote "Lakutshona Ilanga", the English version of which, sung by Miriam Makeba, became the first South African piece to chart on the Billboard Hot 100?
Categories
Selected biography –
Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela (/mænˈdɛlə/ man-DEH-lə; Xhosa: [xolíɬaɬa mandɛ̂ːla]; born Rolihlahla Mandela; 18 July 1918 – 5 December 2013) was a South African anti-apartheid activist and politician who served as the first president of South Africa from 1994 to 1999. He was the country's first black head of state and the first elected in a fully representative democratic election. His government focused on dismantling the legacy of apartheid by fostering racial reconciliation. Ideologically an African nationalist and socialist, he served as the president of the African National Congress (ANC) party from 1991 to 1997.
A Xhosa, Mandela was born into the Thembu royal family in Mvezo, South Africa. He studied law at the University of Fort Hare and the University of Witwatersrand before working as a lawyer in Johannesburg. There he became involved in anti-colonial and African nationalist politics, joining the ANC in 1943 and co-founding its Youth League in 1944. After the National Party's white-only government established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that privileged whites, Mandela and the ANC committed themselves to its overthrow. He was appointed president of the ANC's Transvaal branch, rising to prominence for his involvement in the 1952 Defiance Campaign and the 1955 Congress of the People. He was repeatedly arrested for seditious activities and was unsuccessfully prosecuted in the 1956 Treason Trial. Influenced by Marxism, he secretly joined the banned South African Communist Party (SACP). Although initially committed to non-violent protest, in association with the SACP he co-founded the militant uMkhonto we Sizwe in 1961 that led a sabotage campaign against the apartheid government. He was arrested and imprisoned in 1962, and, following the Rivonia Trial, was sentenced to life imprisonment for conspiring to overthrow the state. (Full article...)
Selected country –
Liberia, officially the Republic of Liberia, is a country on the west coast of Africa, bordered by Sierra Leone, Guinea, and Côte d'Ivoire. Liberia, which means "Land of the Free", was founded as an independent nation, with support of the American government, for free-born and formerly enslaved Blacks and, thus, is one of only two nations in Africa (along with Ethiopia) that didn't fall under European domination. Since 1989, it has witnessed two civil wars, the First Liberian Civil War (1989 – 1996), and the Second Liberian Civil War (1999 – 2003), that have displaced hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed the country's economy.
The population of over 3 million comprises 16 indigenous ethnic groups and various foreign minorities. Indigenous peoples comprise about 95% of the population, the largest of which are the Kpelle in central and western Liberia. Americo-Liberians, who are descendants of freed slaves that arrived after 1821, make up an estimated 5% of the population. As of 2006, Liberia has the highest population growth rate in the world (4.91%). (Read more...)
Selected city –
Dar es Salaam (/ˌdɑːr ɛs səˈlɑːm/; from Arabic: دَار السَّلَام, romanized: Dār as-Salām, lit. 'Abode of Peace') is the largest city and financial hub of Tanzania. It is also the capital of the Dar es Salaam Region. With a population of over five million people, Dar es Salaam is the largest city in East Africa and the sixth-largest in Africa. Located on the Swahili coast, Dar es Salaam is an important economic center and one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.
The town was founded by Majid bin Said, the first Sultan of Zanzibar, in 1865 or 1866. It was the main administrative and commercial center of German East Africa, Tanganyika, and Tanzania. The decision was made in 1974 to move the capital to Dodoma which was officially completed in 1996. (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 Rukwanzi Island, an island in Lake Albert, one of the African Great Lakes, is the subject of a territorial dispute between the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda?
- ...that Oumarou Sidikou, vice-governor of the Central Bank of West African States from 1988 to 1993, was a minister in the government of Nigerien Prime Minister Hama Amadou, which was ousted by a military coup in 1996?
- ...that Jason Dunford, an All-Africa Games gold medalist and runner-up for the 2006 Kenyan Sportsman of the Year award, has a younger brother who was selected "most promising sportsman" at the same awards?
- ...that Sam Mbakwe, governor of Imo State from 1979 to 1983, served in the army of the Republic of Biafra, an Igbo secessionist state in southeastern Nigeria, during the Nigerian Civil War?
Related portals
Major Religions in Africa
North Africa
West Africa
Central Africa
East Africa
Southern Africa
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