Africa is the second largest continent on Earth (Asia is first), and has a current population of over 800 million people. Much of the region is comprised of either deserts or forests. The population in Africa is very unevenly distributed—much of it is uninhabitable, while other parts are heavily populated.
Africa is noted for natural wonders such as its tropical rainforests, the Sahara Desert (the world’s largest desert), and the Nile River (the world’s longest river).
The continent also contains a wide range of animals, including leopards, lions, cheetahs, hyenas, jackals, wildcats, antelope, buffalo, rhinos, hippos, zebras, giraffes, elephants, foxes, chimpanzees, gorillas, monkeys, seals, whales, dolphins, and fish.
Many archeologists and biologists consider Africa the birthplace of humankind. While numerous theories abound, many scientists believe that the earliest form of humans lived in Africa a few million years ago (the average estimate is about 3.5 million years ago) and spread throughout the world.
Most scientists also believe that the modern variation of human (Homo sapiens sapiens) also originated in Africa about 150,000 years ago, and later spread to the Middle East and Asia, and then to the rest of the world.
Africa has an immense variety of people and cultures. Just the Black Africans alone have over 1000 different distinct ethnic groups among them, most of which have different languages, traditions, and ways of life.
Africa contains a vast number of cultural background and population groups. Northern parts of Africa contain predominantly Arab Africans and Berbers, while sub-Saharan Africa is inhabited predominantly by Black Africans, who make up most of Africa’s population.
Other African ethnic groups include people of European dissent (most of whom live in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Kenya), and people of Asian ancestry (who are mainly of Indonesian and Indian backgrounds).
Africa was home to one of the world’s first known empires, Ancient Egypt, which lay along the Nile River and existed primarily from 3200 BC to 0 AD.
Many other empires later originated or existed in Africa, including Carthage (700s BC-600 AD), the Ghana Empire (400s-1000s), the Mali Empire (1200s-1400s), the Songhai Empire (1400s-1500s), the Kongo Kingdom (1200s-1600s), and many other kingdoms in the 2nd Millennium. Regions in Northern Africa have also been part of foreign Empires at various times, such as the Roman Empire from the 100s BC to the 400s AD.
Many large city-states also developed in Africa, such as Lepcis Magna (900s BC-500s AD), Axum (100s AD-400s AD), Mogadishu (900s AD-Present Day), and Mombasa (1000s AD-Present Day).
In the 600s AD, Muslim Arabs conquered much of Northern Africa and soon established trade with other parts of Africa. They also spread the Islamic religion throughout Northern Africa and parts of the rest of the continent, and caused the creation of an Arab / Bantu-African hybrid language known as Swahili.
Besides its city dwellers, most Africans have lived in smaller communities throughout most of African history. Those societies generally had one of these five themes dominant in its peoples’ lifestyles: hunting & gathering, fishing, grain growing, nomadic animal herding, or tropical forest village farming.
In the 1400s, Europeans (particularly the Spanish and Portuguese) established trading posts in Africa, and by the 1500s, they began taking Africans captive as slaves. (Slave labor had also existed in earlier times in Africa, particularly in Ancient Egypt, the Roman Empire, and in some African Islam states.)
The British (and the French and Dutch to lesser extents) soon became the main slave trading presence in Africa, and the slave trade grew steadily, particularly due to the plantation-based economy in the Southern United States that depended on slave labor. Some African cities later began capturing slaves to trade with the Europeans, and some of them also used slave labor within their own borders.
In the early 1800s, the British government issued laws making the slave trade illegal, but the trading continued to persist. By the 1860s, the United States had abolished slavery within its borders, and the slave trade lessened in Africa.
By the late 1800s, different European countries began competing for control of various African regions and resources, and began colonializing the continent. The European presence soon caused the slave trade to end.
By the early 1900s, Europeans (from Britain, Portugal, France, and Germany) controlled most of Africa (except Ethiopia and Liberia), and also caused Christianity to spread in the colonies. Some Europeans also settled in parts of Africa. For the most part, the European presence in Africa was to exploit the continent’s resources, particularly its diamonds and gold.
Africans resisted the European rulers, and throughout the 1900s, all African nations gained their independence. The first was Egypt in 1922 and the last was South Africa in 1988; while most others happened in the 1950s and 1960s.
Most Africans today inhabit farms and have a lifestyle similar to Africans generations ago. Others live in cities and have a modern lifestyle.
Although Africa varies greatly, some themes of Africa include religion (including traditional African religions as well as Christianity and Islam), textiles, sculptures, cultural ceremonies and festivals, rituals, music (especially drums), dancing, hot weather, folktales / storytelling, witchcraft, mineral and crop exporting, diamond and mineral mining, coffee, cotton, petroleum, fishing, poetry, spears, pottery, beadwork, poverty, famine, political turmoil, overcrowding, soccer, boxing, cricket, long distance running (particularly in Kenya), South African hero Nelson Mandela, Egyptian UN diplomat Boutros Boutros-Gali, and multiculturalism.
Most of the country divisions in current Africa are due cultural differences, political situations, and the effects of European colonialism.
The countries of Africa include Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo (Democratic Republic of the Congo, or Kinshasa—formerly known as Zaire), Congo Republic (Brazzaville), Cote d’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea–Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Reunion, Rwanda, Sao Tome e Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.