Africa, a continent that is made up of a simple tectonic plate with various islands and archipelagos which cover about 30,370,000 square kilometers, about 20.4% of Earth’s total land area. It is the second largest and second populous continent in the world.
As estimated in 2018, about 12.87 billion people live in Africa, about 16.9% of the world’s total population. The majority of Africa as well as its countries are located in the Northern Hemisphere, about one third of the continent and less than half of its countries are located in the Southern Hemisphere.
Africa is bordered by Mediterranean Sea in the North, by Red Sea in the Northeast and Isthmus of Suez, by Indian Ocean in the Southeast and by Atlantic Ocean in the West. The African continent contains 54 sovereign states (or countries), 10 non-sovereign territories and 2 de facto independent states. Among all African countries, Algeria is the largest country area and Nigeria is the largest country by population.
The African continent is commonly considered as the birthplace of modern humans, as evidenced by the discovery of Hominins that diverged from other primates about 6 to 7 million years ago. Today, it is also the continent that has the youngest median age with 18 years old, while the median age of each other continent is at least 13 years older.
Africa is a land that has been suffered and affected by slave trade. Slavery has been practiced in almost all human cultures in recorded history, but the numbers involved in the African slave trade has left an infamous legacy which cannot be ignored. Between the 7th century and around 1960s, 18 million Africans were took and sold by the imperial Muslims via the trans-Saharan, Red and Indian Ocean trade route; Between the 16th and the 20th century, about 7 to 12 million Africans were took by the imperial Christian Europeans from Africa and sold through the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Besides the Africans, a million or more Europeans were captured and taken to Barbary by pirates from 1500 to 1650.
The African continent is the hottest one on Earth that the hottest temperature record is 57.8 °C at Aziziya in Libya on 13th September 1922, 60% of its land surface is consisted of dry lands and deserts. It straddles the equator and contains numerous climate areas range from subarctic to tropical, the northern half is mostly desert and arid land, while the central and southern part are composed both dense jungle and savanna plain regions. Between the desert and the savanna areas, there is a bio-geographical and ecoclimatic zone of transition known as Sahel, which has a semi-arid climate and is mostly covered in grass lands, savannas and shrublands.
The Afrotropic ecozone of Africa is perhaps the world’s largest combination of wild animal populations and diversity, it lies almost entirely within the tropics which creates a wide range of different habitat types such as savanna grasslands, dense jungles, desserts and Fynbos of the Cape Floral Kingdom, each of these habitats provides favorable conditions for a variety of wild animals and plants.
Besides the famous Big Five (lion, leopard, rhinoceros, elephant and Cape buffalo), more than 22000 species of indigenous plants has been recorded in South Africa; 297 species of mammal including large carnivores (lions, cheetahs and hyenas) and large herbivores (Buffalos, elephants, giraffes and camels); 849 species of birds (Blue Korhaan, Knysna Turaco, Forest Buzzard); 447 species of reptile (Zululand dwarf chameleon, Yellow-bellied house snake, Nile crocodile) and 132 species of amphibian (Western leopard toad, Natal diving frog).
As variously estimated, the total number of languages natively spoken is between 1,250 and 2,000. Besides the colonial languages, there currently 23 languages that are official at the national level in Africa, and around a hundred languages are spoken widely for inter-ethnic communication. So it is common for an individual in Africa to speak at least one African language, but also one or more European languages. That makes Africa the most linguistically diverse continent.
After our brief introduction, do you have a better understanding of the African continent? But there is always more to discover, take this AFRICA QUIZ, and find out more amazing facts about the origin place of Human. We have 15 geography questions such as naming countries on a map, guessing the capitals of African countries and identify the African flags. Let’s see if you can score a 15/15.
