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Africa

Second largest continent, population about 1.1 billion.
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Africa is the world's second largest and second most-populous continent (behind Asia in both categories). At about 30.3 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area. With 1.2 billion people as of 2016, it accounts for about 16% of the world's human population. The continent is surrounded by 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 includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognized sovereign states (countries), nine territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. 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.

Geographical type: Continent

Area: 30,370,000 km²

Notable Places

  • Africa, Central - Regions in the middle of the African continent
  • Africa, East - Eastermost regions of Africa
  • Africa, North - Northernmost region of Africa
  • Africa, Southern - Southernmost region of Africa
  • Africa, West - Area of western Africa between the Sahara Desert and the Gulf of Guinea
  • Botswana - Territory in south central Africa, ruled since 1966 by the Republic of Botswana
  • Egypt - Territory mostly in northeast Africa, ruled since 2011 by the Jumhūrīyat Miṣr al-ʿArabīyah
  • Ethiopia - Territory in northeast Africa, ruled since 1991 by the ye-Ītyōṗṗyā Fēdēralāwī Dīmōkrāsīyāwī Rīpeblīk
  • Ghana - Territory in western Africa, ruled since 1992 by the Republic of Ghana
  • Kenya - Territory in east central Africa, ruled since 1964 by the Republic of Kenya
  • Libya - Territory in northern Africa, ruled since 2016 by the Government of National Accord
  • Maghreb - Region of northwest Africa, west of Egypt
  • Morocco - Territory in northwest Africa, ruled since 1956 by the al Mamlakah al Maghribiyah
  • Nigeria - Territory in western Africa, ruled since 1960 by the Federal Republic of Nigeria
  • Senegal - Territory in western Africa, ruled since 1960 by the République du Sénégal
  • Somalia - Territory in eastern Africa, nominally ruled since 1960 by the Jamhuuriyadda Federaalka Soomaaliya
  • South Africa - Territory in southern Africa, ruled since 1994 by the Republic of South Africa
  • Tanzania - Territory in east central Africa, ruled since 1964 by the Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania
  • Zimbabwe - Territory in southern Africa, ruled since 1980 by the Republic of Zimbabwe

Articles

Clinton in Africa, by Thomas Sowell, 15 Apr 1998
Crititcizes Bill Clinton for his "apology for slavery" and suggests he was playing the "race card ... to escape the consequences of his own actions"
The idea that people in Africa are owed an apology ignores history as much as Clinton slavery ignored geography. It was the people of Africa who captured and sold the slaves who ended up in the Western Hemisphere. White men died like flies in Africa during the era of slavery. They were not about to linger around trying to capture Africans, even if the local rulers had let them. ... Africans, like most other non-Western peoples, saw nothing wrong with slavery. ... Children are still being bought and sold by the thousands in Nigeria and Benin, and 30,000 African slaves are at this very moment being held under brutal conditions in Mauritania.
Related Topics: Bill Clinton, Rule of Law

Interviews

Billions Served: Norman Borlaug interviewed by Ronald Bailey, by Norman Borlaug, Ronald Bailey, Reason, Apr 2000
Topics discussed include his current projects, Africa, roads, DDT, biotech, crossing genetic barriers in nature, biodiversity, monarch butterflies, organic produce, Lester Brown, Paul Ehrlich, India and the Green Revolution
Borlaug: Biotech has a big potential in Africa, not immediately, but down the road. Five to eight years from now, parts of it will play a role there ... Central African farmers don't have any animal power, because sleeping sickness kills all the animals–cattle, the horses, the burros and the mules ... Supplying food to sub-Saharan African countries is made very complex because of a lack of infrastructure. For example, you bring fertilizer into a country like Ethiopia, and the cost of transporting the fertilizer up the mountain a few hundred miles to Addis Ababa doubles its cost.

Books

Africa Betrayed
    by George Ayittey, 1992
Africa in Chaos: A Comparative History
    by George Ayittey, 1997
Africa Unchained: The Blueprint for Africa's Future
    by George Ayittey, 2004

The introductory paragraph uses material from the Wikipedia article "Africa" as of 19 Sep 2018, which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0.