AFRICA

Africa is the world's 2nd-largest and 2d-most populous continent, after Asia in each
cases. At about 30.Three million km2 (11.7 million rectangular miles) including adjoining
islands, it covers 6% of Earth's general surface place and 20% of its land location. With 1.Three
billion human beings as of 2018, it money owed for about 16% of the sector's human population.
Africa's populace is the youngest among all the continents; the median age in 2012 became 19.7,
whilst the global median age was 30.Four.Despite a extensive range of herbal resources, Africa
is the least rich continent according to capita, in component due to geographic impediments,
legacies of European colonization in Africa and the Cold War, predatory/neo-colonialistic sports
with the aid of Western countries and China, and undemocratic rule and deleterious policies.
Despite this low concentration of wealth, latest monetary growth and the massive and younger
populace make Africa an important financial marketplace in the broader international context.

The continent is surrounded by using the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Isthmus of
Suez and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean
to the west. The continent consists of Madagascar and diverse archipelagos. It contains fifty four
fully regarded sovereign states (nations), eight territories and de facto independent states with
restrained or no recognition. Algeria is Africa's largest u . S . A . By means of region, and
Nigeria is its largest by using populace. African countries cooperate via the status quo of the
African Union, that's situated in Addis Ababa.

Africa straddles the equator and the prime meridian making it the best continent in the
world to be situated in all 4 cardinal hemispheres. It is the handiest continent to stretch from the
northern temperate to southern temperate zones. The majority of the continent and its nations are
in the Northern Hemisphere, with a significant portion and range of nations within the Southern
Hemisphere. Most of the continent lies inside the tropics, except for a large part of Western
Sahara, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, the northern tip of Mauritania, the whole territories of
Morocco, Ceuta, Melilla, and Tunisia which in flip are positioned above the tropic of Cancer,
inside the northern temperate zone. In the opposite extreme of the continent, southern Namibia,
southern Botswana, excellent components of South Africa, the entire territories of Lesotho and
Eswatini and the southern guidelines of Mozambique and Madagascar are placed beneath the
tropic of Capricorn, within the southern temperate sector.

Africa is domestic to plenty biodiversity; it is the continent with the biggest variety of
megafauna species, because it was least laid low with the extinction of the Pleistocene
megafauna. However, Africa is also heavily tormented by a wide range of environmental
troubles, consisting of desertification, deforestation, water shortage, and other issues. These
entrenched environmental concerns are predicted to worsen as weather change affects Africa.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has diagnosed Africa as the continent most
liable to weather alternate.

The history of Africa is long, complicated, and has regularly been below-appreciated
through the global ancient community.[20] Africa, mainly Eastern Africa, is widely normal as
the area of foundation of human beings and the Hominidae clade (super apes). The earliest
hominids and their ancestors have been dated to round 7 million years in the past, including
Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. Afarensis, Homo erectus, H. Habilis
and H. Ergaster— the earliest Homo sapiens (contemporary human) stays, discovered 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 round 350,000–260,000
years in the past. Due to being the longest inhabited continent, Africa is likewise considered by
way of anthropologists to be the most genetically various continent on earth.

Early human civilizations, including Ancient Egypt and Carthage emerged in North
Africa. Following a next long and complex records of civilizations, migration and trade, Africa
hosts a giant diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. The ultimate 400 years have
witnessed an growing European impact on the continent. Starting within the 16th century, this
become driven by using exchange, which include the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which created
giant African diaspora populations within the Americas. In the late nineteenth century, European
nations colonized nearly all of Africa, extracting sources from the continent and exploiting local
communities; maximum gift states in Africa emerged from a system of decolonisation within the
twentieth century.