![Wikipedia portal Africa logo.png](https://web.archive.org/web/20220807065545im_/https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8a/Wikipedia_portal_Africa_logo.png/740px-Wikipedia_portal_Africa_logo.png)
Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land 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, behind 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 southern temperate zones. The majority of the continent and its countries are in the Northern Hemisphere, with a substantial portion and 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, 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, pollution and other issues. 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. Due to being the longest inhabited continent, Africa is also considered by anthropologists to be the most genetically diverse continent on the planet. (Full article...)
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Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous and diaspora ethnic groups of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic Slave Trade, the movement extends beyond continental Africans with a substantial support base among the African diaspora in the Americas and Europe.
Pan-Africanism can be said to have its origins in the struggles of the African people against enslavement and colonization and this struggle may be traced back to the first resistance on slave ships—rebellions and suicides—through the constant plantation and colonial uprisings and the "Back to Africa" movements of the 19th century. Based on the belief that unity is vital to economic, social, and political progress and aims to "unify and uplift" people of African ancestry. (Full article...)Featured pictures –
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?
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Selected biography –
Pieter Kenyon Fleming-Voltelyn van der Byl GLM ID (11 November 1923 – 15 November 1999) was a Rhodesian politician who served as his country's Foreign Minister from 1974 to 1979 as a member of the Rhodesian Front (RF). A close associate of Prime Minister Ian Smith, Van der Byl opposed attempts to compromise with the British government and domestic black nationalist opposition on the issue of majority rule throughout most of his time in government. However, in the late 1970s he supported the moves which led to majority rule and internationally recognised independence for Zimbabwe.
Van der Byl was born and raised in Cape Town, the son of the South African politician P V van der Byl, and served in the Middle East and Europe during the Second World War. After a high-flying international education, he moved to the self-governing British colony of Southern Rhodesia in 1950 to manage family farms. He went into politics in the early 1960s through his involvement with farming trade bodies, and became a government minister responsible for propaganda. One of the leading agitators for Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, Van der Byl was afterwards responsible for introducing press censorship. He was unsuccessful in his attempt to persuade international opinion to recognise Rhodesia, but was popular among members of his own party. (Full article...)Selected country –
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The Comoros (Arabic: جزر القمر, Ğuzur al-Qamar), officially the Union of the Comoros (French: 'Union des Comores', Arabic: الإتّحاد القمريّ, Al-Ittiḥād al-Qamariyy) is an island nation in the Indian Ocean, located off the eastern coast of Africa on the northern end of the Mozambique Channel between northern Madagascar and northeastern Mozambique. Prior to 2002, it was known officially as the Islamic Federal Republic of the Comoros. At 2,235 km² and with a population estimated at 798,000, the Comoros is the third smallest African nation by area and the sixth smallest by population.
The country officially consists of the four islands in the volcanic Comoros archipelago: Ngazidja (French: Grande Comore), Mwali (French: Mohéli), Nzwani (French: Anjouan), and Mahoré (French: Mayotte), as well as many smaller islands. However, the government of the Union of the Comoros (or its predecessors since independence) has never administered the island of Mayotte, which France considers an overseas community and still administers. (Read more...)
Selected city –
Kinshasa (/kɪnˈʃɑːsə/; French: [kinʃasa]; Lingala: Kinsásá), formerly Léopoldville (Dutch: Leopoldstad), is the capital and the largest city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and is the largest francophone city in the world, and largest city in Africa. Kinshasa has the third most populous metropolitan area in Africa behind Lagos and Cairo.
Once a site of fishing and trading villages situated along the Congo River, Kinshasa is now one of the world's fastest growing megacities. It faces Brazzaville, the capital of the neighbouring Republic of the Congo; the two cities are the world's second-closest pair of capital cities (after Vatican City and Rome). The city of Kinshasa is also one of the DRC's 26 provinces. Because the administrative boundaries of the city-province cover a vast area, over 90 percent of the city-province's land is rural in nature, and the urban area occupies a small but expanding section on the western side. (Full article...)In the news
- 19 March 2022 – Politics of Australia
- Preliminary election results show Peter Malinauskas and his Labor Party winning a majority. (ABC News Australia)
- 15 March 2022 –
- Burkinabè architect Diébédo Francis Kéré wins the 2022 Pritzker Architecture Prize, becoming the first African and black person to do so. (The Guardian)
- 15 March 2022 – COVID-19 pandemic
- COVID-19 pandemic in Namibia
- Namibia drops its requirement of face mask and mandatory PCR COVID-19 test for vaccinated visitors as the number of cases falls. (Reuters)
- 14 March 2022 –
- Cameroon bans shisha smoking, becoming the sixth African country to do so. (Africanews)
- 13 March 2022 – Insurgency in Northern Chad; aftermath of the 2021 Northern Chad offensive
- The Transitional Military Council of Chad meets with 44 different armed rebel and opposition groups, including the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, Movement for Democracy and Justice in Chad, and the Union of Forces for Democracy and Development in Doha, Qatar for peace talks. The President of Chad, Mahamat Déby, hopes that the talks will be the first step towards agreeing on a new constitution and holding free elections. (ABC News) (France24)
Updated: 7:33, 20 March 2022
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