continent

Africa is the world ‘s second-largest and second-most populous celibate, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 ( 11.7 million feather miles ) including adjacent islands, it covers 6 % of Earth ‘s sum surface area and 20 % of its land sphere. [ 7 ] With 1.3 billion people [ 1 ] [ 2 ] as of 2018, it accounts for about 16 % of the world ‘s human population. Africa ‘s population is the youngest amongst all the continents ; [ 8 ] [ 9 ] the median historic period in 2012 was 19.7, when the global median age was 30.4. [ 10 ] Despite a wide-eyed range of natural resources, Africa is the least affluent continent per head, in separate due to geographic impediments, [ 11 ] legacies of european colonization in Africa and the Cold War, [ 12 ] [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 16 ] predatory/neo-colonialistic activities by western nations and China, and undemocratic rule and deleterious policies. [ 11 ] Despite this moo concentration of wealth, holocene economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context.

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The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the union, 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 includes Madagascar and versatile archipelagos. It contains 54 amply recognised sovereign states ( countries ), eight territories and two de facto autonomous states with limited or no recognition. Algeria is Africa ‘s largest country by area, and Nigeria is its largest by population. african nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa. Africa straddles the equator and the flower meridian making it the merely continent in the world to be situated in all four cardinal hemispheres. It is the merely celibate to stretch from the northern temperate to southerly moderate zones. [ 17 ] The majority of the continent and its countries are in the Northern Hemisphere, with a substantial helping and issue of countries in the Southern Hemisphere. Most of the continent lies in the tropics, except for a boastfully contribution of western Sahara, Algeria, Libya and Egypt, the northern lean of Mauritania, the entire territories of Morocco, Ceuta, Melilla, and Tunisia which in bend are located above the tropic of Cancer, in the northerly temperate zone. In the other extreme of the celibate, southern Namibia, southern Botswana, great parts of South Africa, the integral territories of Lesotho and Eswatini and the southerly tips of Mozambique and Madagascar are located below the tropic of Capricorn, in the southern temperate zone. Africa is home to much biodiversity ; it is the continent with the largest number of megafauna species, as it was least involve by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna. however, Africa besides is heavily affected by a wide roll of environmental issues, including desertification, deforestation, water scarcity, 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 celibate most vulnerable to climate transfer. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] The history of Africa is long, complex, and has frequently been under-appreciated by the global historical residential district. [ 20 ] Africa, particularly Eastern Africa, is widely accepted as the set of lineage of humans and the Hominidae clade ( bang-up 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 homo ) remains, found in Ethiopia, South Africa, and Morocco, go steady to circa 200,000, 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. [ 21 ] [ 22 ] [ 23 ] [ 24 ] [ 25 ] due to being the longest inhabited celibate, Africa is besides considered by anthropologists to be the most genetically diverse celibate on the planet. [ 26 ] [ 27 ] [ 28 ] early on human civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Carthage emerged in North Africa. Following a subsequent long and complex history of civilizations, migration and trade, Africa hosts a large diverseness of ethnicities, cultures and languages. The final 400 years have witnessed an increasing european influence on the continent. Starting in the sixteenth century, this was driven by craft, including the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, which created big African diaspora populations in the Americas. In the late nineteenth century, european countries colonized about all of Africa, extracting resources from the continent and exploiting local communities ; most present states in Africa emerged from a process of decolonization in the twentieth century .

etymology

Afri was a latin identify used to refer to the inhabitants of then-known northern Africa to the west of the Nile river, and in its widest feel referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean ( Ancient Libya ). [ 29 ] [ 30 ] This name seems to have in the first place referred to a native Libyan tribe, an ancestor of modern Berbers ; see Terence for discussion. The name had normally been connected with the phoenician son ʿafar meaning “ dust ”, [ 31 ] but a 1981 hypothesis [ 32 ] has asserted that it stems from the Berber parole ifri ( plural ifran ) mean “ cave ”, in reference to cave dwellers. [ 33 ] The same parole [ 33 ] may be found in the diagnose of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, a Berber kin primitively from Yafran ( besides known as Ifrane ) in northwestern Libya, [ 34 ] arsenic well as the city of Ifrane in Morocco. Under Roman rule, Carthage became the das kapital of the state it then named Africa Proconsularis, following its defeat of the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War in 146 BC, which besides included the coastal part of modern Libya. [ 35 ] The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a down ( for example, in Celtica from Celtae, as used by Julius Caesar ). The late Muslim region of Ifriqiya, following its seduction of the Byzantine ( Eastern Roman ) Empire ‘s Exarchatus Africae, besides preserved a form of the list. According to the Romans, Africa lies to the west of Egypt, while “ Asia ” was used to refer to Anatolia and lands to the east. A definite line was drawn between the two continents by the geographer Ptolemy ( 85–165 AD ), indicating Alexandria along the Prime Meridian and making the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the mind of “ Africa ” expanded with their cognition. other etymological hypotheses have been postulated for the ancient name “ Africa ” :

  • The 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher (‘calf’), grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
  • Isidore of Seville in his 7th-century Etymologiae XIV.5.2. suggests “Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning “sunny”.
  • Massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning “to turn toward the opening of the Ka.” The Ka is the energetic double of every person and the “opening of the Ka” refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, “the birthplace.”[36]
  • Michèle Fruyt in 1976 proposed[37] linking the Latin word with africus “south wind”, which would be of Umbrian origin and mean originally “rainy wind”.
  • Robert R. Stieglitz of Rutgers University in 1984 proposed: “The name Africa, derived from the Latin *Aphir-ic-a, is cognate to Hebrew Ophir [‘rich’].”[38]
  • Ibn Khallikan and some other historians claim that the name of Africa came from a Himyarite king called Afrikin ibn Kais ibn Saifi also called “Afrikus son of Abraham” who subdued Ifriqiya.[39][40][41]
  • Arabic afrīqā (feminine noun) and ifrīqiyā, now usually pronounced afrīqiyā (feminine) ‘Africa’, from ‘afara [‘ = ‘ain, not ’alif] ’to be dusty’ from ‘afar ‘dust, powder’ and ‘afir ‘dried, dried up by the sun, withered’ and ‘affara ‘to dry in the sun on hot sand’ or ‘to sprinkle with dust’.[42]
  • Possibly Phoenician faraqa in the sense of ‘colony, separation’.[43]

history

prehistory

Africa is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabit territory on Earth, with the Human species originating from the continent. [ 44 ] During the mid-20th century, anthropologists discovered many fossils and tell of human occupation possibly equally early as 7 million years ago ( BP=before present ). Fossil remains of respective species of early anthropoid humans thought to have evolved into modern valet, such as Australopithecus afarensis ( radiometrically dated to approximately 3.9–3.0 million years BP, [ 45 ] Paranthropus boisei ( c. 2.3–1.4 million years BP ) [ 46 ] and Homo ergaster ( c. 1.9 million–600,000 years BP ) have been discovered. [ 7 ] After the development of Homo sapiens approximately 350,000 to 260,000 years BP in Africa, [ 22 ] [ 23 ] [ 24 ] [ 25 ] the continent was chiefly populated by groups of hunter-gatherers. [ 47 ] [ 48 ] These first modern humans left Africa and populated the rest of the ball during the Out of Africa II migration dated to approximately 50,000 years BP, exiting the continent either across Bab-el-Mandeb over the Red Sea, [ 49 ] [ 50 ] the Strait of Gibraltar in Morocco, [ 51 ] [ 52 ] or the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt. [ 53 ] other migrations of modern humans within the african continent have been dated to that time, with testify of early human village found in Southern Africa, Southeast Africa, North Africa, and the Sahara. [ 54 ]

emergence of culture

The size of the Sahara has historically been highly variable, with its area quickly fluctuating and at times disappearing depending on global climatic conditions. [ 55 ] At the end of the Ice ages, estimated to have been around 10,500 BC, the Sahara had again become a k fecund valley, and its african populations returned from the home and coastal highlands in Sub-Saharan Africa, with rock artwork paintings depicting a fat Sahara and big populations discovered in Tassili n’Ajjer dating back possibly 10 millennium. [ 56 ] however, the thaw and drying climate meant that by 5000 BC, the Sahara region was becoming increasingly dry and hostile. Around 3500 BC, due to a rock in the land ‘s sphere, the Sahara experienced a time period of rapid desertification. [ 57 ] The population trekked out of the Sahara region towards the Nile Valley below the Second Cataract where they made permanent wave or semi-permanent settlements. A major climatic recession occurred, lessening the heavy and dogged rains in Central and Eastern Africa. Since this time, dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa and, increasingly during the stopping point 200 years, in Ethiopia. The tameness of cattle in Africa preceded farming and seems to have existed aboard hunter-gatherer cultures. It is speculated that by 6000 BC, cattle were domesticated in North Africa. [ 58 ] In the Sahara-Nile complex, people domesticated many animals, including the donkey and a modest screw-horned capricorn which was common from Algeria to Nubia. Between the 10,000–9,000 BC, pottery was independently invented in the region of Mali in the savannah of West Africa. [ 59 ] [ 60 ]
In the steppes and savannah of the Sahara and Sahel in Northern West Africa, the nilo-saharan speakers and Mandé peoples started to collect and domesticate raving mad millet, African rice and sorghum between 8,000 and 6,000 BC. Later, gourds, watermelons, beaver beans, and cotton were besides collected and domesticated. [ 61 ] They besides started making pottery and built stone settlements ( for example, Tichitt, Oualata ). fishing, using bone-tipped harpoons, became a major activity in the numerous streams and lakes formed from the increased rains. [ 62 ] Mande peoples have been credited with the independent exploitation of agriculture by about 3,000–4,000 BC. [ 63 ] In West Africa, the besotted phase ushered in an expanding rain forest and wooded savanna from Senegal to Cameroon. Between 9,000 and 5,000 BC, Niger–Congo speakers domesticated the oil palm and raffia palm. Black-eyed peas and voandzeia ( African groundnuts ), were domesticated, followed by gumbo and daba nuts. Since most of the plants grew in the forest, the Niger–Congo speakers invented polish stone axes for clearing forest. [ 64 ] Around 4000 BC, the Saharan climate started to become dry at an extremely fast pace. [ 65 ] This climate change caused lakes and rivers to shrink significantly and caused increasing desertification. This, in turn, decreased the amount of land conducive to settlements and helped to cause migrations of farming communities to the more tropical climate of West Africa. [ 65 ] By the first millennium BC, ironworking had been introduced in Northern Africa. Around that meter it besides became established in parts of sub-saharan Africa, either through independent invention there or dispersion from the north [ 66 ] [ 67 ] and vanished under strange circumstances around 500 AD, having lasted approximately 2,000 years, [ 68 ] and by 500 BC, metalworking began to become banal in West Africa. Ironworking was fully established by roughly 500 BC in many areas of East and West Africa, although other regions did n’t begin ironworking until the early centuries AD. Copper objects from Egypt, North Africa, Nubia, and Ethiopia dating from around 500 BC have been excavated in West Africa, suggesting that Trans-Saharan trade networks had been established by this date. [ 65 ]

early civilizations

Diachronic map showing african empires spanning approximately 500 BCE to 1500 CE At about 3300 BC, the diachronic record opens in Northern Africa with the rise of literacy in the Pharaonic civilization of Ancient Egypt. [ 69 ] One of the populace ‘s earliest and longest-lasting civilizations, the egyptian department of state continued, with varying levels of influence over other areas, until 343 BC. [ 70 ] [ 71 ] egyptian influence reached thick into contemporary Libya and Nubia, and, according to Martin Bernal, as far union as Crete. [ 72 ] An independent centre of refinement with deal links to Phoenicia was established by Phoenicians from Tyre on the northwest African seashore at Carthage. [ 73 ] [ 74 ] [ 75 ] european exploration of Africa began with Ancient Greeks and Romans. [ 76 ] [ 77 ] In 332 BC, Alexander the Great was welcomed as a liberator in Persian-occupied Egypt. He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the golden capital of the Ptolemaic dynasty after his death. [ 78 ] Following the conquest of North Africa ‘s Mediterranean coastline by the Roman Empire, the sphere was integrated economically and culturally into the Roman organization. Roman liquidation occurred in advanced Tunisia and elsewhere along the seashore. The first Roman emperor native to North Africa was Septimius Severus, born in Leptis Magna in contemporary Libya—his mother was italian Roman and his don was Punic. [ 79 ]
The Ezana Stone records King Ezana ‘s conversion to Christianity and his oppression of respective neighboring peoples, including Meroë Christianity spread across these areas at an early date, from Judaea via Egypt and beyond the borders of the Roman worldly concern into Nubia ; [ 80 ] by AD 340 at the latest, it had become the state religion of the Aksumite Empire. Syro-Greek missionaries, who arrived by manner of the Red Sea, were responsible for this theological development. [ 81 ] In the early seventh century, the newly formed arabian Islamic Caliphate expanded into Egypt, and then into North Africa. In a shortstop while, the local Berber elect had been integrated into Muslim Arab tribes. When the Umayyad capital Damascus fell in the eighth hundred, the Islamic center of the Mediterranean shifted from Syria to Qayrawan in North Africa. Islamic North Africa had become diverse, and a hub for mystics, scholars, jurists, and philosophers. During the above-mentioned period, Islam spread to sub-saharan Africa, chiefly through trade routes and migration. [ 82 ] In West Africa, Dhar Tichitt and Oualata in contemporary Mauritania calculate prominently among the early urban centers, dated to 2,000 BC. About 500 stone settlements litter the region in the erstwhile savannah of the Sahara. Its inhabitants fished and grew millet. It has been found by Augustin Holl that the Soninke of the Mandé peoples were likely creditworthy for constructing such settlements. Around 300 BC the region became more desiccated and the settlements began to decline, most probable relocating to Koumbi Saleh. [ 83 ] Architectural evidence and the comparison of pottery styles suggest that Dhar Tichitt was related to the subsequent Ghana Empire. Djenné-Djenno ( in contemporary Mali ) was settled approximately 300 BC, and the town grew to house a goodly Iron Age population, as evidenced by crowd cemeteries. Living structures were made of sun-dried mire. By 250 BC Djenné-Djenno had become a large, thriving market town. [ 84 ] [ 85 ] Farther south, in central Nigeria, around 1,500 BC, the Nok culture developed on the Jos Plateau. It was a highly centralized community. The Nok people produced lifelike representations in terracotta, including homo heads and human figures, elephants, and other animals. By 500 BC, and possibly earlier, they were smelting cast-iron. By 200 AD the Nok culture had vanished. [ 67 ] and vanished under stranger circumstances around 500 AD, having lasted approximately 2,000 years. Based on stylistic similarities with the Nok terracottas, the tan figurines of the Yoruba kingdom of Ife and those of the Bini kingdom of Benin are suggested to be continuations of the traditions of the earlier Nok culture. [ 68 ]

Ninth to eighteenth centuries

[87] The intricate 9th-century bronzes from Igbo-Ukwu, in Nigeria displayed a tied of technical skill that was notably more advanced than european bronze draw of the same period. Pre-colonial Africa possessed possibly a many as 10,000 different states and polities [ 88 ] characterized by many different sorts of political administration and principle. These included small kin groups of hunter-gatherers such as the San people of southerly Africa ; larger, more structure groups such as the family kin groupings of the Bantu-speaking peoples of central, southerly, and eastern Africa ; heavily structured kin groups in the Horn of Africa ; the large Sahelian kingdoms ; and autonomous city-states and kingdoms such as those of the Akan ; Edo, Yoruba, and Igbo people in West Africa ; and the Swahili coastal deal towns of Southeast Africa. By the one-ninth hundred AD, a string of dynastic states, including the earliest Hausa states, stretched across the sub-saharan savanna from the western regions to central Sudan. The most mighty of these states were Ghana, Gao, and the Kanem-Bornu Empire. Ghana declined in the eleventh hundred, but was succeeded by the Mali Empire which consolidated much of western Sudan in the thirteenth century. Kanem accepted Islam in the eleventh century. In the afforest regions of the west african seashore, mugwump kingdoms grew with little influence from the Muslim north. The Kingdom of Nri was established around the ninth hundred and was one of the beginning. It is besides one of the oldest kingdoms in contemporary Nigeria and was ruled by the Eze Nri. The Nri kingdom is celebrated for its elaborate bronzes, found at the town of Igbo-Ukwu. The bronzes have been dated from as far back as the ninth hundred. [ 89 ] The Kingdom of Ife, historically the first of these Yoruba city-states or kingdoms, established politics under a priestly oba ( ‘king ‘ or ‘ruler ‘ in the Yoruba lyric ), called the Ooni of Ife. Ife was noted as a major religious and cultural center in West Africa, and for its alone naturalistic tradition of bronze sculpture. The Ife model of government was adapted at the Oyo Empire, where its obas or kings, called the Alaafins of Oyo, once controlled a large number of other Yoruba and non-Yoruba city-states and kingdoms ; the Fon Kingdom of Dahomey was one of the non-Yoruba domains under Oyo control .
The Almoravids were a Berber dynasty from the Sahara that spread over a wide area of northwestern Africa and the iberian peninsula during the eleventh century. [ 90 ] The Banu Hilal and Banu Ma’qil were a collection of Arab Bedouin tribe from the arabian Peninsula who migrated westwards via Egypt between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries. Their migration resulted in the fusion of the Arabs and Berbers, where the locals were Arabized, [ 91 ] and arab culture absorbed elements of the local anesthetic culture, under the unite model of Islam. [ 92 ] Following the separation of Mali, a local leader named Sonni Ali ( 1464–1492 ) founded the Songhai Empire in the region of middle Niger and the western Sudan and took control of the trans-Saharan trade. Sonni Ali seized Timbuktu in 1468 and Jenne in 1473, building his regimen on trade revenues and the cooperation of Muslim merchants. His successor Askia Mohammad I ( 1493–1528 ) made Islam the official religion, built mosques, and brought to Gao Muslim scholars, including al-Maghili ( d.1504 ), the founder of an significant tradition of Sudanic African Muslim scholarship. [ 93 ] By the eleventh hundred, some Hausa states – such as Kano, jigawa, Katsina, and Gobir – had developed into wall towns engaging in trade, servicing caravans, and the manufacture of goods. Until the fifteenth hundred, these minor states were on the periphery of the major Sudanic empires of the era, paying protection to Songhai to the west and Kanem-Borno to the east .

Height of the slave deal

major slave trading regions of Africa, 15th–19th centuries. Slavery had retentive been practiced in Africa. [ 94 ] [ 95 ] Between the 15th and the 19th centuries, the Atlantic slave deal took an estimated 7–12 million slaves to the New World. [ 96 ] [ 97 ] [ 98 ] In addition, more than 1 million Europeans were captured by Barbary pirates and sold as slaves in North Africa between the 16th and 19th centuries. [ 99 ] In West Africa, the refuse of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1820s caused dramatic economic shifts in local anesthetic polities. The gradual worsen of slave-trading, prompted by a lack of necessitate for slaves in the New World, increasing anti-slavery legislation in Europe and America, and the british Royal Navy ‘s increasing presence off the west african coast, obliged african states to adopt new economies. between 1808 and 1860, the british West Africa Squadron seized approximately 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans who were aboard. [ 100 ] legal action was besides taken against african leaders who refused to agree to british treaties to outlaw the trade, for example against “ the assume King of Lagos “, deposed in 1851. Anti-slavery treaties were signed with over 50 african rulers. [ 101 ] The largest powers of West Africa ( the Asante Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Oyo Empire ) adopted unlike ways of adapting to the stir. Asante and Dahomey concentrated on the exploitation of “ legitimate commerce ” in the phase of palm anoint, cocoa, forest and gold, forming the bedrock of West Africa ‘s mod export deal. The Oyo Empire, unable to adapt, collapsed into civil wars. [ 102 ]

colonialism

Comparison of Africa in the years 1880 and 1913

independence struggles

 Belgian  Italian  British  Portuguese  French  Spanish

 

independent european control condition in 1939 imperial govern by Europeans would continue until after the decision of World War II, when about all remaining colonial territories gradually obtained formal independence. independence movements in Africa gained momentum following World War II, which left the major european powers weakened. In 1951, Libya, a former italian colony, gained independence. In 1956, Tunisia and Morocco won their independence from France. [ 106 ] Ghana followed suit the future class ( March 1957 ), [ 107 ] becoming the first gear of the sub-saharan colonies to be granted independence. Most of the rest of the continent became independent over the next decade. Portugal ‘s overseas bearing in Sub-Saharan Africa ( most notably in Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe ) lasted from the sixteenth century to 1975, after the Estado Novo government was overthrown in a military coup in Lisbon. Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from the United Kingdom in 1965, under the white minority government of Ian Smith, but was not internationally recognized as an freelancer state ( as Zimbabwe ) until 1980, when black nationalists gained ability after a bitterness guerrilla war. Although South Africa was one of the first african countries to gain independence, the department of state remained under the control of the state ‘s white minority through a organization of racial segregation known as apartheid until 1994 .

Post-colonial Africa

today, Africa contains 54 sovereign countries, most of which have borders that were drawn during the era of european colonialism. Since colonialism, african states have frequently been hampered by instability, corruption, violence, and dictatorship. The huge majority of african states are republics that engage under some shape of the presidential system of rule. however, few of them have been able to sustain democratic governments on a permanent basis, and many have alternatively cycled through a serial of coups, producing military dictatorships. Great imbalance was chiefly the consequence of marginalization of ethnic groups, and graft under these leaders. For political amplification, many leaders fanned cultural conflicts, some of which had been exacerbated, or even created, by colonial rule. In many countries, the military was perceived as being the only group that could efficaciously maintain order, and it ruled many nations in Africa during the 1970s and early 1980s. During the period from the early 1960s to the late 1980s, Africa had more than 70 coups and 13 presidential assassinations. Border and territorial disputes were besides common, with the European-imposed borders of many nations being widely contested through armed conflicts .
Africa ‘s wars and conflicts, 1980–1996 Cold War conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union, a well as the policies of the International Monetary Fund, [ 108 ] besides played a function in instability. When a area became mugwump for the first time, it was much expected to align with one of the two superpowers. many countries in Northern Africa received soviet military help, while others in Central and Southern Africa were supported by the United States, France or both. The 1970s saw an escalation of Cold War intrigues, as newly autonomous Angola and Mozambique aligned themselves with the Soviet Union, and the West and South Africa sought to contain soviet influence by supporting friendly regimes or insurgency movements. In Rhodesia, soviet and Chinese-backed leftist guerrillas of the Zimbabwe Patriotic Front waged a brutal guerrilla war against the state ‘s white politics. There was a major dearth in Ethiopia, when hundreds of thousands of people starved. Some claimed that marxist economic policies made the situation bad. [ 109 ] [ 110 ] [ 111 ] The most lay waste to military battle in modern freelancer Africa has been the Second Congo War ; this conflict and its consequence has killed an estimated 5.5 million people. [ 112 ] Since 2003 there has been an ongoing conflict in Darfur which has become a human-centered calamity. Another celebrated tragic event is the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which an estimated 800,000 people were murdered. In the twenty-first century, however, the count of armed conflicts in Africa has steadily declined. For example, the civil war in Angola came to an conclusion in 2002 after about 30 years. This coincided with many countries abandoning communist-style command economies and opening up for market reforms. The improved constancy and economic reforms have led to a bang-up increase in extraneous investment into many african nations, chiefly from China, [ 113 ] which has spurred quick economic emergence in many countries, apparently ending decades of stagnation and decline. several african economies are among the earth ‘s fastest growing as of 2016. A significant function of this emergence, which is sometimes referred to as Africa Rising, can besides be attributed to the help diffusion of information technologies and specifically the mobile call. [ 114 ] migration from african nations has increased dramatically in the last decade. [ 115 ]

Geology, geography, ecology and environment

topography of Africa Africa is the largest of the three big southbound projections from the largest landmass of the Earth. Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea, it is joined to Asia at its northeasterly extremity by the Isthmus of Suez ( transected by the Suez Canal ), 163 kilometer ( 101 security service ) wide. [ 116 ] ( Geopolitically, Egypt ‘s Sinai Peninsula east of the Suez Canal is frequently considered share of Africa, arsenic well. ) [ 117 ] The coastline is 26,000 kilometer ( 16,000 mile ) long, and the absence of deep indentations of the land is illustrated by the fact that Europe, which covers only 10,400,000 km2 ( 4,000,000 sq nautical mile ) – about a third of the surface of Africa – has a coastline of 32,000 km ( 20,000 nautical mile ). [ 118 ] From the most northerly point, Ras ben Sakka in Tunisia ( 37°21 ‘ N ), to the most southerly target, Cape Agulhas in South Africa ( 34°51’15 ” S ), is a outdistance of approximately 8,000 km ( 5,000 nautical mile ). [ 119 ] Cape Verde, 17°33’22 ” W, the westernmost item, is a distance of approximately 7,400 km ( 4,600 nautical mile ) to Ras Hafun, 51°27’52 ” einsteinium, the most easterly projection that neighbours Cape Guardafui, the tip of the Horn of Africa. [ 118 ] Africa ‘s largest country is Algeria, and its smallest country is Seychelles, an archipelago off the east coast. [ 120 ] The smallest state on the continental mainland is The Gambia .

african plate

nowadays, the african Plate is moving over Earth ‘s coat at a rush of 0.292° ± 0.007° per million years, relative to the “ median ” ground ( NNR-MORVEL56 ) The african Plate is a major tectonic plate straddling the equator vitamin a well as the prime meridian. It includes much of the celibate of Africa, angstrom well as oceanic crust which lies between the continent and assorted surrounding ocean ridges. Between and, the Somali Plate began rifting from the african Plate along the East african Rift. [ 121 ] Since the continent of Africa consists of crust from both the African and the Somali plates, some literature refers to the african Plate as the Nubian Plate to distinguish it from the continent as a whole. [ 122 ] geologically, Africa includes the arabian Peninsula ; the Zagros Mountains of Iran and the anatolian Plateau of Turkey commemorate where the African Plate collided with Eurasia. The Afrotropical region and the Saharo-Arabian abandon to its north unite the region biogeographically, and the afroasiatic language family unites the north linguistically .

climate

The climate of Africa ranges from tropical to subarctic on its highest peaks. Its northern half is chiefly desert, or arid, while its central and southern areas contain both savanna plains and dense jungle ( rainforest ) regions. In between, there is a convergence, where vegetation patterns such as sahel and steppe dominate. Africa is the hottest continent on Earth and 60 % of the entire down surface consists of drylands and deserts. [ 123 ] The record for the highest-ever recorded temperature, in Libya in 1922 ( 58 °C ( 136 °F ) ), was discredited in 2013. [ 124 ] [ 125 ]

ecology and biodiversity

The main biomes in Africa. Africa has over 3,000 protect areas, with 198 marine protected areas, 50 biosphere reserves, and 80 wetlands reserves. Significant habitat destruction, increases in human population and poaching are reducing Africa ‘s biological diversity and arable land. Human trespass, civil agitation and the insertion of non-native species threaten biodiversity in Africa. This has been exacerbated by administrative problems, inadequate personnel and funding problems. [ 123 ] deforestation is affecting Africa at doubly the world rate, according to the United Nations Environment Programme ( UNEP ). [ 126 ] According to the University of Pennsylvania African Studies Center, 31 % of Africa ‘s eatage lands and 19 % of its forests and woodlands are classified as degraded, and Africa is losing over four million hectares of forest per year, which is twice the average deforestation rate for the rest of the world. [ 123 ] Some sources claim that approximately 90 % of the master, virgo forests in West Africa have been destroyed. [ 127 ] Over 90 % of Madagascar ‘s original forests have been destroyed since the arrival of humans 2000 years ago. [ 128 ] About 65 % of Africa ‘s agrarian land suffers from soil degradation. [ 129 ]

environmental issues

water

Africa Water Precipitation

Climate transfer

Fauna

Africa boasts possibly the global ‘s largest combination of concentration and “ rate of exemption ” of rampantly animal populations and diverseness, with wild populations of large carnivores ( such as lions, hyenas, and cheetah ) and herbivores ( such as buffalo, elephants, camels, and giraffe ) ranging freely on chiefly overt non-private plains. It is besides dwelling to a variety of “ jungle ” animals including snakes and primates and aquatic liveliness such as crocodiles and amphibians. In addition, Africa has the largest numeral of megafauna species, as it was least feign by the extinction of the Pleistocene megafauna .

Politics

African Union

Regions of the African Union:
Northern Region ( Sahara ), Southern Region ( Kalahari ), Eastern Region ( Nile ), Western Regions A and B ( Niger and Volta Niger ), Central Region ( Congo ) The African Union ( AU ) is a continental union consist of 55 member states. The union was formed, with Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as its headquarters, on 26 June 2001. The marriage was officially established on 9 July 2002 [ 145 ] as a successor to the Organisation of African Unity ( OAU ). In July 2004, the African Union ‘s Pan-African Parliament ( PAP ) was relocated to Midrand, in South Africa, but the african Commission on Human and Peoples ‘ Rights remained in Addis Ababa. The African Union, not to be confused with the AU Commission, is formed by the Constitutive Act of the African Union, which aims to transform the african Economic Community, a federate democracy, into a express under established international conventions. The African Union has a parliamentary government, known as the African Union Government, consisting of legislative, judicial and executive organs. It is led by the African Union President and Head of State, who is besides the President of the Pan-African Parliament. A person becomes AU President by being elected to the PAP, and subsequently gaining majority back in the PAP. The powers and authority of the President of the African Parliament deduce from the Constitutive Act and the Protocol of the Pan-African Parliament, equally well as the inheritance of presidential assurance stipulated by african treaties and by international treaties, including those subordinating the Secretary General of the OAU Secretariat ( AU Commission ) to the PAP. The politics of the AU consists of all-union, regional, express, and municipal authorities, american samoa well as hundreds of institutions, that together manage the daily affairs of the institution. across-the-board human rights abuses even occur in several parts of Africa, much under the oversight of the state of matter. Most of such violations occur for political reasons, much as a english effect of civil war. Countries where major human rights violations have been reported in late times include the democratic Republic of the Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Ivory Coast .

boundary conflicts

This segment is an excerpt from military history of Africa § Post-colonial[146] Indeed, compared with the formation of European states, there have been fewer interstate conflicts in Africa for changing the borders, which has influenced the state formation there and has enabled some states to survive that might have been defeated and absorbed by others.[147] Yet interstate conflicts have played out by support for proxy armies or rebel movements. Many states have experienced civil wars: including Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Sierra Leone, Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia and Somalia.[148] african states have made big efforts to respect interstate borders as intact for a long time. For case, the Organization of African Unity ( OAU ), which was established in 1963 and replaced by the African Union in 2002, set the esteem for the territorial integrity of each state of matter as one of its principles in OAU Charter.Indeed, compared with the geological formation of european states, there have been fewer interstate conflicts in Africa for changing the borders, which has influenced the department of state formation there and has enabled some states to survive that might have been defeated and absorbed by others.Yet interstate conflicts have played out by support for proxy armies or rebel movements. many states have experienced civil wars : including Rwanda, Sudan, Angola, Sierra Leone, Congo, Liberia, Ethiopia and Somalia .

economy

Although it has abundant natural resources, Africa remains the world ‘s poorest and least-developed continent ( other than Antarctica ), the result of a kind of causes that may include defile governments that have often committed serious human rights violations, failed cardinal planning, high levels of illiteracy, lack of access to foreign capital, and frequent tribal and military conflict ( ranging from guerrilla war to genocide ). [ 149 ] Its sum noun phrase GDP remains behind that of the United States, China, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, India and France. According to the United Nations ‘ Human Development Report in 2003, the bottom 24 rank nations ( 151st to 175th ) were all African. [ 150 ] poverty, illiteracy, malnutrition and inadequate body of water provision and sanitation, adenine well as hapless health, affect a boastfully proportion of the people who reside in the african continent. In August 2008, the World Bank [ 151 ] announced revised ball-shaped poverty estimates based on a new international poverty line of $ 1.25 per day ( versus the previous standard of $ 1.00 ). 81 % of the Sub-Saharan Africa population was living on less than $ 2.50 ( PPP ) per day in 2005, compared with 86 % for India. [ 152 ] Sub-Saharan Africa is the least successful area of the global in reducing poverty ( $ 1.25 per day ) ; some 50 % of the population live in poverty in 1981 ( 200 million people ), a name that rose to 58 % in 1996 before dropping to 50 % in 2005 ( 380 million people ). The average poor people person in sub-saharan Africa is estimated to live on only 70 cents per day, and was poorer in 2003 than in 1973, [ 153 ] indicating increasing poverty in some areas. Some of it is attributed to unsuccessful economic liberalization programmes spearheaded by alien companies and governments, but other studies have cited bad domestic politics policies more than external factors. [ 154 ] [ 155 ] [ 156 ] Africa is now at risk of being in debt once again, particularly in sub-saharan african countries. The last debt crisis in 2005 was resolved with aid from the heavy indebted poor countries scheme ( HIPC ). The HIPC resulted in some positive and negative effects on the economy in Africa. About ten years after the 2005 debt crisis in Sub-Saharan Africa was resolved, Zambia fell back into debt. A small reason was due to the fall in copper prices in 2011, but the bigger reason was that a large measure of the money Zambia borrowed was wasted or pocketed by the elect. [ 157 ] From 1995 to 2005, Africa ‘s rate of economic growth increased, averaging 5 % in 2005. Some countries experienced still higher growth rates, notably Angola, Sudan and Equatorial Guinea, all of which had recently begun extracting their petroleum reserves or had expanded their petroleum origin capability. In a recently published analysis based on World Values Survey data, the austrian political scientist Arno Tausch maintained that several african countries, most notably Ghana, perform quite well on scales of batch digest for majority rule and the grocery store economy. [ 158 ]

Rank

Country

GDP (nominal, Peak Year)
millions of USD

Peak Year

1
 Nigeria
568,499
2014

2
 South Africa
458,708
2011

3
 Egypt
396,328
2021

4
 Algeria
213,810
2014

5
 Angola
145,712
2014

6
 Morocco
126,035
2021

7
 Kenya
109,491
2021

8
 Ethiopia
96,611
2020

9
 Libya
79,759
2012

10
 Ghana
75,487
2021

Rank

Country

GDP (PPP, Peak Year)
millions of USD

Peak Year

1
 Egypt
1,381,057
2021

2
 Nigeria
1,136,795
2021

3
 South Africa
861,929
2021

4
 Algeria
532,567
2021

5
 Morocco
302,765
2021

6
 Ethiopia
298,574
2021

7
 Kenya
269,286
2021

8
 Libya
228,452
2007

9
 Angola
221,164
2019

10
 Sudan
220,516
2016

Tausch ‘s global value comparison based on the World Values Survey derived the trace component analytic scales : 1. The non-violent and law-abiding club 2. Democracy motion 3. climate of personal non-violence 4. Trust in institutions 5. Happiness, well health 6. No redistributive religious fundamentalism 7. Accepting the market 8. feminist movement 9. engagement in politics 10. optimism and date 11. No wellbeing mentality, acceptancy of the Calvinist work ethics. The spread in the performance of african countries with complete data, Tausch concluded “ is truly perplex ”. While one should be specially aspirant about the development of future majority rule and the market economy in Ghana, the article suggests pessimistic tendencies for Egypt and Algeria, and particularly for Africa ‘s leading economy, South Africa. High Human Inequality, as measured by the UNDP ‘s Human Development Report ‘s Index of Human Inequality, far impairs the development of human security. Tausch besides maintains that the certain holocene optimism, corresponding to economic and human rights data, emerging from Africa, is reflected in the development of a civil company .
african countries by GDP ( PPP ) per caput in 2020 The continent is believed to hold 90 % of the world ‘s cobalt, 90 % of its platinum, 50 % of its gold, 98 % of its chromium, 70 % of its tantalite, [ 159 ] 64 % of its manganese and one-third of its uranium. [ 160 ] The democratic Republic of the Congo ( DRC ) has 70 % of the worldly concern ‘s columbite-tantalite, a mineral used in the production of tantalum capacitors for electronic devices such as cell phones. The DRC besides has more than 30 % of the world ‘s rhombus reserves. [ 161 ] Guinea is the populace ‘s largest exporter of bauxite. [ 162 ] As the growth in Africa has been driven chiefly by services and not manufacture or agriculture, it has been emergence without jobs and without reduction in poverty levels. In fact, the food security system crisis of 2008 which took set on the heels of the ball-shaped fiscal crisis pushed 100 million people into food insecurity. [ 163 ] In recent years, the People ‘s Republic of China has built increasingly stronger ties with african nations and is Africa ‘s largest trade spouse. In 2007, chinese companies invested a sum of US $ 1 billion in Africa. [ 113 ]

A Harvard University study led by professor Calestous Juma showed that Africa could feed itself by making the passage from importer to autonomy. “ african agriculture is at the crossroads ; we have come to the end of a century of policies that favoured Africa ‘s export of raw materials and import of food. Africa is starting to focus on agricultural invention as its newly locomotive for regional trade and prosperity. ” [ 164 ]

Demographics

proportion of total african population by state

 

Nigeria ( 15.38 % )

 

Ethiopia ( 8.37 % )

 

Egypt ( 7.65 % )

 

Democratic Republic of the Congo ( 6.57 % )

 

Tanzania ( 4.55 % )

 

South Africa ( 4.47 % )

 

Kenya ( 3.88 % )

 

Uganda ( 3.38 % )

 

Algeria ( 3.36 % )

 

early ( 42.39 % )
Africa ‘s population has quickly increased over the stopping point 40 years, and is consequently relatively youthful. In some african states, more than half the population is under 25 years of senesce. [ 165 ] The total number of people in Africa increased from 229 million in 1950 to 630 million in 1990. [ 166 ] As of 2018, the population of Africa is estimated at 1.3 billion [ 1 ] [ 2 ]. Africa ‘s entire population surpassing other continents is reasonably late ; african population surpassed Europe in the 1990s, while the Americas was overtaken sometime around the year 2000 ; Africa ‘s rapid population emergence is expected to overtake the only two nations presently larger than its population, at roughly the lapp time – India and China ‘s 1.4 billion people each will swap ranking around the class 2022. [ 167 ] This increase in number of babies born in Africa compared to the remainder of the worldly concern is expected to reach approximately 37 % in the year 2050, an increase of 21 % since 1990 alone. [ 168 ] Speakers of Bantu languages ( part of the Niger–Congo family ) are the majority in southerly, cardinal and southeasterly Africa. The bantu-speaking peoples from the Sahel increasingly expanded over most of Sub-Saharan Africa. [ 169 ] But there are besides several Nilotic groups in South Sudan and East Africa, the mix Swahili people on the Swahili Coast, and a few remaining autochthonal Khoisan ( “ San ” or “ Bushmen ” ) and Pygmy peoples in southerly and central Africa, respectively. bantu-speaking Africans besides predominate in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, and are found in parts of southern Cameroon. In the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, the distinct people known as the Bushmen ( besides “ San ”, close related to, but distinct from “ Hottentots “ ) have long been stage. The San are physically discrete from other Africans and are the autochthonal people of southern Africa. Pygmies are the pre-Bantu autochthonal peoples of cardinal Africa. [ 170 ] The peoples of West Africa chiefly speak Niger–Congo languages, belonging largely to its non-Bantu branches, though some nilo-saharan and afroasiatic talk groups are besides found. The Niger–Congo-speaking Yoruba, Igbo, Fulani, Akan and Wolof cultural groups are the largest and most influential. In the cardinal Sahara, Mandinka or Mande groups are most meaning. Chadic-speaking groups, including the Hausa, are found in more northerly parts of the region nearest to the Sahara, and Nilo-Saharan communities, such as the Songhai, Kanuri and Zarma, are found in the easterly parts of West Africa bordering Central Africa .
The peoples of North Africa consist of three main autochthonal groups : Berbers in the northwest, Egyptians in the northeast, and Nilo-Saharan-speaking peoples in the east. The Arabs who arrived in the seventh hundred AD introduced the Arabic lyric and Islam to North Africa. The semitic Phoenicians ( who founded Carthage ) and Hyksos, the indo-iranian Alans, the Indo- european Greeks, Romans, and Vandals settled in North Africa vitamin a well. significant Berber communities remain within Morocco and Algeria in the twenty-first hundred, while, to a lesser extent, Berber speakers are besides present in some regions of Tunisia and Libya. [ 171 ] The Berber-speaking Tuareg and other often- mobile peoples are the principal inhabitants of the Saharan home of North Africa. In Mauritania, there is a little but near-extinct Berber community in the north and Niger–Congo-speaking peoples in the south, though in both regions Arabic and Arab culture predominates. In Sudan, although Arabic and Arab culture loom, it is by and large inhabited by groups that in the first place spoke Nilo-Saharan, such as the Nubians, Fur, Masalit and Zaghawa, who, over the centuries, have variously intermixed with migrants from the arab peninsula. minor communities of Afro-Asiatic-speaking Beja nomads can besides be found in Egypt and Sudan. [ 172 ] In the Horn of Africa, some ethiopian and eritrean groups ( like the Amhara and Tigrayans, jointly known as Habesha ) speak languages from the Semitic branch of the afroasiatic linguistic process family, while the Oromo and Somali speak languages from the Cushitic branch of Afro-Asiatic. prior to the decolonization movements of the post- World War II era, Europeans were represented in every contribution of Africa. [ 173 ] Decolonization during the 1960s and 1970s much resulted in the aggregate emigration of white settlers – particularly from Algeria and Morocco ( 1.6 million pieds-noirs in North Africa ), [ 174 ] Kenya, Congo, [ 175 ] Rhodesia, Mozambique and Angola. [ 176 ] Between 1975 and 1977, over a million colonials returned to Portugal entirely. [ 177 ] Nevertheless, white Africans remain an important minority in many african states, peculiarly Zimbabwe, Namibia, Réunion, and the Republic of South Africa. [ 178 ] The state with the largest white african population is South Africa. [ 179 ] Dutch and British diasporas represent the largest communities of european lineage on the continent today. [ 180 ] european colonization besides brought goodly groups of Asians, particularly from the indian subcontinent, to british colonies. large indian communities are found in South Africa, and smaller ones are present in Kenya, Tanzania, and some other southern and southeast african countries. The large Indian community in Uganda was expelled by the dictator Idi Amin in 1972, though many have since returned. The islands in the amerind Ocean are besides populated primarily by people of asian lineage, often shuffle with Africans and Europeans. The Malagasy people of Madagascar are an austronesian people, but those along the coast are broadly interracial with Bantu, Arab, Indian and european origins. Malay and indian ancestries are besides important components in the group of people known in South Africa as Cape Coloureds ( people with origins in two or more races and continents ). During the twentieth century, small but economically authoritative communities of lebanese and chinese [ 113 ] have besides developed in the larger coastal cities of West and East Africa, respectively. [ 181 ]

religion

A function showing religious distribution in Africa While Africans profess a wide diverseness of religious beliefs, the majority of the people respect african religions or parts of them. however, in formal surveys or census, most people will identify with major religions that came from outside the continent, chiefly through colonization. There are respective reasons for this, the main one being the colonial mind that African religious beliefs and practices are not adept adequate. religious beliefs and statistics on religious affiliation are unmanageable to come by since they are often a sensitive subject for governments with mix religious populations. [ 182 ] [ 183 ] According to the World Book Encyclopedia, Islam and Christianity are the two largest religions in Africa. According to Encyclopædia Britannica, 45 % of the population are Christians, 40 % are Muslims, and 10 % follow traditional religions. [ citation needed ] A modest number of Africans are Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist, Baháʼí, or jewish. There is besides a minority of people in Africa who are irreligious .

Languages

By most estimates, well over a thousand languages ( UNESCO has estimated around two thousand ) are spoken in Africa. [ 184 ] Most are of African lineage, though some are of european or asian lineage. Africa is the most multilingual continent in the world, and it is not rare for individuals to fluently speak not only multiple African languages, but one or more european ones angstrom well. There are four major speech families autochthonal to Africa :
A simplistic watch of language families spoken in Africa

  • The Afroasiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and 285 million people widespread throughout the Horn of Africa, North Africa, the Sahel, and Southwest Asia.
  • The Nilo-Saharan language family consists of more than a hundred languages spoken by 30 million people. Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken by ethnic groups in Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, and northern Tanzania.
  • The Niger-Congo language family covers much of Sub-Saharan Africa. In terms of number of languages, it is the largest language family in Africa and perhaps one of the largest in the world.
  • The Khoisan languages number about fifty and are spoken in Southern Africa by approximately 400,000 people.[185] Many of the Khoisan languages are endangered. The Khoi and San peoples are considered the original inhabitants of this part of Africa.

Following the goal of colonialism, about all african countries adopted official languages that originated outside the continent, although several countries besides granted legal recognition to autochthonal languages ( such as Swahili, Yoruba, Igbo and Hausa ). In numerous countries, English and French ( see African French ) are used for communication in the public sphere such as government, commerce, education and the media. Arabic, Portuguese, Afrikaans and Spanish are examples of languages that trace their lineage to outside of Africa, and that are used by millions of Africans nowadays, both in the populace and individual spheres. italian is spoken by some in early italian colonies in Africa. German is spoken in Namibia, as it was a former german protectorate .

Health

 

over 15 %

 

5–15 %

 

2–5 %

 

1–2 %

 

0.5-1 %

 

0.1–0.5 %

 

not available prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Africa, sum ( % of population ages 15–49 ), in 2011 ( World Bank More than 85 % of individuals in Africa use traditional medicate as an option to much expensive allopathic checkup health care and costly pharmaceutical products. The Organization of African Unity ( OAU ) Heads of State and Government declared the 2000s decade as the African Decade on African traditional medicine in an effort to promote The world health organization African Region ‘s adopted resolution for institutionalizing traditional medicate in health worry systems across the celibate. [ 186 ] public policy makers in the area are challenged with retainer of the importance of traditional/indigenous health systems and whether their coexistence with the modern aesculapian and health sub-sector would improve the equitability and approachability of health care distribution, the health status of populations, and the social-economic development of nations within sub-saharan Africa. [ 187 ] AIDS in post-colonial Africa is a prevailing issue. Although the continent is home to about 15.2 percentage of the worldly concern ‘s population, [ 188 ] more than two-thirds of the sum septic worldwide – some 35 million people – were Africans, of whom 15 million have already died. [ 189 ] Sub-Saharan Africa alone accounted for an estimate 69 percentage of all people living with HIV [ 190 ] and 70 percentage of all AIDS deaths in 2011. [ 191 ] In the countries of sub-saharan Africa most involve, AIDS has raised death rates and lowered life anticipation among adults between the ages of 20 and 49 by about twenty years. [ 189 ] Furthermore, the life sentence anticipation in many parts of Africa is declining, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with life-expectancy in some countries reaching arsenic low as thirty-four years. [ 192 ]

culture

Some aspects of traditional african cultures have become less rehearse in recent years as a result of neglect and suppression by colonial and post-colonial regimes. For model, african customs were discouraged, and african languages were prohibited in deputation schools. [ 193 ] Leopold II of Belgium attempted to “ civilize ” Africans by discouraging polygamy and witchcraft. [ 193 ]
Obidoh Freeborn posits that colonialism is one chemical element that has created the quality of mod African art. [ 194 ] According to authors Douglas Fraser and Herbert M. Cole, “ The abrupt alterations in the might structure wrought by colonialism were promptly followed by drastic iconographic changes in the art. ” [ 195 ] Fraser and Cole assert that, in Igboland, some artwork objects “ lack the vigor and careful craft of the earlier artwork objects that served traditional functions. [ 195 ] Author Chika Okeke-Agulu states that “ the racist infrastructure of british imperial enterprise forced upon the political and cultural guardians of conglomerate a denial and suppression of an emergent autonomous Africa and modernist art. ” [ 196 ] Editors F. Abiola Irele and Simon Gikandi comment that the stream identity of african literature had its genesis in the “ traumatic meeting between Africa and Europe. ” [ 197 ] On the other hand, Mhoze Chikowero believes that Africans deployed music, dancing, spiritualty, and other performative cultures to ( re ) asset themselves as active agents and autochthonal intellectuals, to unmake their colonial marginalization and reshape their own destinies. ” [ 198 ] There is now a revival in the attempts to rediscover and revalue African traditional cultures, under such movements as the African Renaissance, led by Thabo Mbeki, Afrocentrism, led by a group of scholars, including Molefi Asante, a well as the increasing recognition of traditional spirituality through decriminalization of Vodou and early forms of spiritualty .

ocular art

architecture

cinema

music

A musician from South Africa

dance

This section is an excerpt from african dance The term African dancing refers chiefly to the numerous dance styles of Sub-Saharan Africa. These dances must be viewed in close connection with the traditional rhythm method of birth control and music traditions of the region. Music and dance is an integral partially of many traditional african societies. Songs and dances facilitate teaching and promoting social values, celebrating special events and major biography milestones, performing oral history and other recitations, and religious experiences. african dance utilizes the concepts of polyrhythm and total body articulation. african dances are a corporate activity performed in boastfully groups, with significant interaction between dancers and onlookers in the majority of styles .

Sports

Best results of african men ‘s home football teams at the FIFA World Cup fifty-four african countries have football teams in the Confederation of African Football. Egypt has won the african Cup seven times, and a record-making three times in a rowing. Cameroon, Nigeria, Senegal, Ghana, and Algeria have advanced to the knockout stage of recent FIFA World Cups. South Africa hosted the 2010 World Cup tournament, becoming the first african country to do so. In late years, the continent has made major advancement in terms of state-of-the-art basketball facilities which have been built in cites angstrom diverse as Cairo, Dakar, Johannesburg, Kigali, Luanda and Rades. [ 222 ] The number of african basketball players who drafted into the NBA has experienced major growth in the 2010s. [ 223 ] cricket is popular in some african nations. South Africa and Zimbabwe have Test condition, while Kenya is the leading non-test team and previously had One-Day International cricket ( ODI ) condition ( from 10 October 1997, until 30 January 2014 ). The three countries jointly hosted the 2003 Cricket World Cup. Namibia is the other african nation to have played in a World Cup. Morocco in northerly Africa has besides hosted the 2002 Morocco Cup, but the national team has never qualified for a major tournament. Rugby is popular in respective southern african nations. Namibia and Zimbabwe both have appeared on multiple occasions at the Rugby World Cup, while South Africa is the joint-most successful national team ( aboard New Zealand ) at the Rugby World Cup, having won the tournament on 3 occasions, in 1995, 2007, and 2019. [ 224 ]

Territories and regions

The countries in this board are categorized according to the outline for geographic subregions used by the United Nations, and data included are per sources in cross-referenced articles. Where they differ, provision are intelligibly indicated .

See besides

References

Sources

  • Malone, Jacqui (1996). Steppin’ on the Blues: the Visible Rhythms of African American Dance. University of Illinois Press. OCLC 891842452.
  • Welsh-Asante, Kariamu (2009). African Dance. Infobase Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4381-2427-8.
  • Shillington, Kevin (2005). History of Africa. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-333-59957-0.

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