Africa

Africa is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At
about 30,221,532 km² (11,668,545 mi²) including adjacent islands, it covers 6.0% of the
Earth's total surface area, and 20.4% of the total land area. With more than 900,000,000
people (as of 2005) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14% of the world's human
population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Suez
Canal and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and the
Atlantic Ocean to the west. There are 46 countries including Madagascar, and 53
including all the island groups.

Africa is widely regarded in the scientific community to be the origin of humans and the
Hominidae tree.
Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only
continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. Because
of the lack of natural regular precipitation and irrigation as well as glaciers or mountain
aquifer systems, there is no natural moderating effect on the climate except near the
coasts.

Population Population
Name of region and Area
(1 July 2002 density Capital
territory, with flag (km²)
est.) (per km²)
Eastern Africa:
Burundi 27,830 6,373,002 229.0 Bujumbura
Comoros 2,170 614,382 283.1 Moroni
Djibouti 23,000 472,810 20.6 Djibouti
Eritrea 121,320 4,465,651 36.8 Asmara
Ethiopia 1,127,127 67,673,031 60.0 Addis Ababa
Kenya 582,650 31,138,735 53.4 Nairobi
Madagascar 587,040 16,473,477 28.1 Antananarivo
Malawi 118,480 10,701,824 90.3 Lilongwe
Mauritius 2,040 1,200,206 588.3 Port Louis
Mayotte (France) 374 170,879 456.9 Mamoudzou
Mozambique 801,590 19,607,519 24.5 Maputo
Réunion (France) 2,512 743,981 296.2 Saint-Denis
Rwanda 26,338 7,398,074 280.9 Kigali
Seychelles 455 80,098 176.0 Victoria
Somalia 637,657 7,753,310 12.2 Mogadishu
 Tanzania 945,087 37,187,939 39.3 Dodoma
Uganda 236,040 24,699,073 104.6 Kampala
Zambia 752,614 9,959,037 13.2 Lusaka
Zimbabwe 390,580 11,376,676 29.1 Harare
Middle Africa:
Angola 1,246,700 10,593,171 8.5 Luanda
Cameroon 475,440 16,184,748 34.0 Yaoundé
Central African
622,984 3,642,739 5.8 Bangui
Republic
Chad 1,284,000 8,997,237 7.0 N'Djamena
Congo 342,000 2,958,448 8.7 Brazzaville
Democratic
Republic of the 2,345,410 55,225,478 23.5 Kinshasa
Congo
Equatorial
28,051 498,144 17.8 Malabo
Guinea
Gabon 267,667 1,233,353 4.6 Libreville
São Tomé and
1,001 170,372 170.2 São Tomé
Príncipe
Northern Africa:
Algeria 2,381,740 32,277,942 13.6 Algiers
Egypt 1,001,450 70,712,345 70.6 Cairo
Libya 1,759,540 5,368,585 3.1 Tripoli
Morocco 446,550 31,167,783 69.8 Rabat
Sudan 2,505,810 37,090,298 14.8 Khartoum
Tunisia 163,610 9,815,644 60.0 Tunis
Western Sahara 266,000 256,177 1.0 El Aaiún
European dependencies in Northern Africa:
Las Palmas de Gran
Canary Islands Canaria,
7,492 1,694,477 226.2
(Spain) Santa Cruz de
Tenerife
Ceuta (Spain) 20 71,505 3,575.2 —
Madeira Islands
797 245,000 307.4 Funchal
(Portugal)
Melilla (Spain) 12 66,411 5,534.2 —
Southern Africa:
Botswana 600,370 1,591,232 2.7 Gaborone
Lesotho 30,355 2,207,954 72.7 Maseru
Namibia 825,418 1,820,916 2.2 Windhoek
Bloemfontein, Cape
South Africa 1,219,912 43,647,658 35.8
Town, Pretoria
Swaziland 17,363 1,123,605 64.7 Mbabane
Western Africa:
Benin 112,620 6,787,625 60.3 Porto-Novo
Burkina Faso 274,200 12,603,185 46.0 Ouagadougou
Cape Verde 4,033 408,760 101.4 Praia
Abidjan,
Côte d'Ivoire 322,460 16,804,784 52.1
Yamoussoukro
Gambia 11,300 1,455,842 128.8 Banjul
Ghana 239,460 20,244,154 84.5 Accra
Guinea 245,857 7,775,065 31.6 Conakry
Guinea-Bissau 36,120 1,345,479 37.3 Bissau
Liberia 111,370 3,288,198 29.5 Monrovia
Mali 1,240,000 11,340,480 9.1 Bamako
Mauritania 1,030,700 2,828,858 2.7 Nouakchott
Niger 1,267,000 10,639,744 8.4 Niamey
Nigeria 923,768 129,934,911 140.7 Abuja
Saint Helena
410 7,317 17.8 Jamestown
(UK)
Senegal 196,190 10,589,571 54.0 Dakar
Sierra Leone 71,740 5,614,743 78.3 Freetown
Togo 56,785 5,285,501 93.1 Lomé
Total 30,368,609 843,705,143 27.8

Etymology
Afri was the name of several peoples who dwelt in North Africa near the provincial
capital, Carthage. The Roman suffix "-ca" denotes "country or land".

Other etymologies that have been postulated for the ancient name 'Africa':
the Latin word aprica, meaning "sunny";
the Greek word aphrike, meaning "without cold." This was proposed by historian Leo
Africanus (1488-1554), who suggested the Greek word phrike (φρίκη, meaning "cold
and horror"), combined with the negating prefix "a-", thus indicating a land free of cold
and horror.

Geography
Africa is the largest of the three great southward projections from the main mass of the
Earth's exposed surface. Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea, it is joined to
Asia at its northeast extremity by the Isthmus of Suez (transected by the Suez Canal),
163 km (101 miles) wide. (Geopolitically, Egypt's Sinai Peninsula east of the Suez
Canal is often considered part of Africa, as well. From the most northerly point, Ras ben
Sakka in Tunisia (37°21' N), to the most southerly point, Cape Agulhas in South Africa
(34°51'15" S), is a distance of approximately 8,000 km (5,000 miles); from Cape Verde,
17°33'22" W, the westernmost point, to Ras Hafun in Somalia, 51°27'52" E, the most
easterly projection, is a distance of approximately 7,400 km (4,600 miles). The coastline
is 26,000 km (16,100 miles) long, and the absence of deep indentations of the shore is
illustrated by the fact that Europe, which covers only 10,400,000 km² (4,010,000 square
miles) — about a third of the surface of Africa — has a coastline of 32,000 km (19,800
miles).
Africa's largest country is Sudan, and its smallest country is the Seychelles, an
archipelago off the east coast. The smallest nation on the continental mainland is The
Gambia.
According to the ancient Romans, Africa lay 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 idea of Africa expanded with their knowledge.

• Climate, fauna, and flora

The climate of Africa ranges from tropical to subarctic on its highest peaks. Its northern
half is primarily desert or arid, while its central and southern areas contain both savanna
plains and very dense jungle (rainforest) regions. In between, there is a convergence
where vegetation patterns such as sahel, and steppe dominate.
Africa boasts perhaps the world's largest combination of density and "range of freedom"
of wild animal populations and diversity, with wild populations of large carnivores
(such as lions, hyenas, and cheetahs) and herbivores (such as buffalo, deer, elephants,
camels, and giraffes) ranging freely on primarily open non-private plains. It is also
home to a variety of jungle creatures (including snakes and primates) and aquatic life
(including crocodiles and amphibians).

• Demographics

The last 40 years have seen a rapid increase in population; hence, this population is
relatively young. In some African states half or more of the population is under 25 years
old.
Speakers of Bantu languages (part of the Niger-Congo family) are the majority in
southern, central and east Africa proper. But there are also several Nilotic groups in East
Africa, and a few remaining indigenous Khoisan ('San' or 'Bushmen') and Pygmy
peoples in southern and central Africa, respectively. Bantu-speaking Africans also
predominate in Gabon and Equatorial Guinea, and are found in parts of southern
Cameroon and southern Somalia. In the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa, the distinct
people known as the Bushmen (also "San", closely related to, but distinct from
"Hottentots") have long been present. The San are physically distinct from other
Africans and are the indigenous people of southern Africa. Pygmies are the pre-Bantu
indigenous peoples of central Africa.
The peoples of North Africa comprise two main groups; Berber and Arabic-speaking
peoples in the west, and Egyptians in the east. The Arabs who arrived in the seventh
century introduced the Arabic language and Islam to North Africa. The Semitic
Phoenicians, the European Greeks, Romans and Vandals settled in North Africa as well.
Berbers still make up the majority in Morocco, while they are a significant minority
within Algeria. They are also present in Tunisia and Libya. The Tuareg and other often-
nomadic peoples are the principal inhabitants of the Saharan interior of North Africa.
Nubians are a Nilo-Saharan-speaking group (though many also speak Arabic), who
developed an ancient civilisation in northeast Africa.
During the past century or so, small but economically important colonies of Lebanese
and Chinese have also developed in the larger coastal cities of West and East Africa,
respectively.
Some Ethiopian and Eritrean groups (like the Amhara and Tigrayans, collectively
known as "Habesha") speak Semitic languages. The Oromo and Somali peoples speak
Cushitic languages, but some Somali clans trace their founding to legendary Arab
founders. Sudan and Mauritania are divided between a mostly Arabized north and a
native African south (although the "Arabs" of Sudan clearly have a predominantly
native African ancestry themselves). Some areas of East Africa, particularly the island
of Zanzibar and the Kenyan island of Lamu, received Arab Muslim and Southwest
Asian settlers and merchants throughout the Middle Ages and in antiquity.
Beginning in the sixteenth century, Europeans such as the Portuguese and Dutch began
to establish trading posts and forts along the coasts of western and southern Africa.
Eventually, a large number of Dutch augmented by French Huguenots and Germans
settled in what is today South Africa. Their descendants, the Afrikaners and the
Coloureds, are the largest European-descended groups in Africa today. In the nineteenth
century, a second phase of colonisation brought a large number of French and British
settlers to Africa. The Portuguese settled mainly in Angola, but also in Mozambique.
The French settled in large numbers in Algeria where they became known collectively
as pieds-noirs, and on a smaller scale in other areas of North and West Africa as well as
in Madagascar. The British settled chiefly in South Africa as well as the colony of
Rhodesia, and in the highlands of what is now Kenya. Germans settled in what is now
Tanzania and Namibia, and there is still a population of German-speaking white
Namibians. Smaller numbers of European soldiers, businessmen, and officials also
established themselves in administrative centers such as Nairobi and Dakar.
Decolonisation during the 1960s often resulted in the mass emigration of European-
descended settlers out of Africa — especially from Algeria, Angola, Kenya and
Rhodesia. However, in South Africa and Namibia, the white minority remained
politically dominant after independence from Europe, and a significant population of
Europeans remained in these two countries even after democracy was finally instituted
at the end of the Cold War. South Africa has also become the preferred destination of
white Anglo-Zimbabweans, and of migrants from all over southern Africa.
European colonisation also brought sizeable groups of Asians, particularly people 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 east 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 Indian
Ocean are also populated primarily by people of Asian origin, often mixed with
Africans and Europeans. The Malagasy people of Madagascar are a Austronesian
people, but those along the coast are generally mixed with Bantu, Arab, Indian and
European origins. Malay and Indian ancestries are also important components in the
group of people known in South Africa as Cape Coloureds (people with origins in two
or more races and continents).

History
Africa is considered by most paleoanthropologists to be the oldest inhabited territory on
earth, with the human species originating from the continent. During the middle of the
twentieth century, anthropologists discovered many fossils and evidence of human
occupation perhaps as early as 7 million years ago. Fossil remains of several species of
early apelike humans thought to have evolved into modern man, such as
Australopithecus afarensis (radiometrically dated to c. 3.9-3.0 million years BC),
Paranthropus boisei (c. 2.3-1.4 million BC) and Homo ergaster (c. 600,000-1.9 million
BC) have been discovered.
The Ishango bone, dated to about 25,000 years ago, shows tallies in mathematical
notation. Throughout humanity's prehistory, Africa (like all other continents) had no
nation states, and was instead inhabited by groups of hunter-gatherers such as the Khoi
and San.
At the end of the Ice Ages, estimated to have been around 10,500 BC, the Sahara had
become a green fertile valley again, and its African populations returned from the
interior and coastal highlands in Sub-Saharan Africa. However, the warming and drying
climate meant that by 5000 BC the Sahara region was becoming increasingly drier. The
population trekked out of the Sahara region towards the Nile Valley below the Second
Cataract where they made permanent or semi-permanent settlements. A major climatic
recession occurred, lessening the heavy and persistent rains in Central and Eastern
Africa. Since then dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa, especially in
Ethiopia in the last 200 years.
The domestication of cattle in Africa precedes agriculture and seems to have existed
alongside hunter-gathering cultures. It is speculated that by 6000 BC cattle were already
domesticated in North Africa. In the Sahara-Nile complex, people domesticated many
animals including the pack ass, and a small screw horned goat which was common from
Algeria to Nubia.
Agriculturally, the first cases of domestication of plants for agricultural purposes
occurred in the Sahel region circa 5000 BC, when sorghum and African rice began to be
cultivated. Around this time, and in the same region, the small guinea fowl became
domesticated.
According to the Oxford Atlas of World History, in the year 4000 BC the climate of the
Sahara started to become drier at an exceedingly fast pace. This climate change caused
lakes and rivers to shrink rather 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.
By 3000 BC agriculture arose independently in both the tropical portions of West
Africa, where African yams and oil palms were domesticated, and in Ethiopia, where
coffee and teff became domesticated. No animals were independently domesticated in
these regions, although domestication did spread there from the Sahel and Nile regions.
Agricultural crops were also adopted from other regions around this time as pearl millet,
cowpea, groundnut, cotton, watermelon and bottle gourds began to be grown
agriculturally in both West Africa and the Sahel Region while finger millet, peas, lentil
and flax took hold in Ethiopia.
The international phenomenon known as the Beaker culture began to affect western
North Africa. Named for the distinctively shaped ceramics found in graves, the Beaker
culture is associated with the emergence of a warrior mentality. North African rock art
of this period depicts animals but also places a new emphasis on the human figure,
equipped with weapons and adornments. People from the Great Lakes Region of Africa
settled along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea to become the proto-Canaanites
who dominated the lowlands between the Jordan River, the Mediterranean and the Sinai
Desert.
By the 1st millennium BC ironworking had been introduced in Northern Africa and
quickly began spreading across the Sahara into the northern parts of sub-saharan Africa
and by 500 BC metalworking began to become commonplace in West Africa, possibly
after being introduced by the Carthaginians. Ironworking was fully established by
roughly 500 BC in areas of East and West Africa, though other regions didn't begin
ironworking until the early centuries AD. Some copper objects from Egypt, North
Africa, Nubia and Ethiopia have been excavated in West Africa dating from around 500
BC, suggesting that trade networks had been established by this time.

• Early civilisations and trade

About 3300 BC, the historical record opens in Africa with the rise of literacy in the
Pharaonic-ruled civilisation of Ancient Egypt, which continued, with varying levels of
influence over other areas, until 343 BC. Prominent civilisations at different times
include Carthage, the Kingdom of Aksum, the Nubian kingdoms, the empires of the
Sahel (Kanem-Bornu, Ghana, Mali, and Songhai), Great Zimbabwe, and the Kongo.
After the Sahara had become a desert it did not present an impenetrable barrier for
travellers between north and south. Even prior to the introduction of the camel the use
of oxen for desert crossing was common, and trade routes followed oases that were
strung across the desert. The camel was first brought to Egypt by the Persians after 525
BC, although large herds did not become common enough in North Africa to establish
the trans-Saharan trade until the eighth century AD. The Sanhaja Berbers were the first
to exploit this.

Pre-colonial Africa possessed perhaps as many as 10,000 different states and polities
characterised by different sorts of political organisation and rule. These included small
family groups of hunter-gatherers such as the San people of southern Africa; larger,
more structured groups such as the family clan groupings of the Bantu-speaking people
of central and southern Africa and heavily-structured clan groups in the Horn of Africa,
the Sahelian Kingdoms, and autonomous city-states such as the Swahili coastal trading
towns of the East African coast, whose trade network extended as far as China.
In 1414, the Chinese admiral Zheng He visited Africa's east coast. In 1482, the
Portuguese established the first of many trading stations along the coast of Ghana at
Elmina. The chief commodities dealt in were slaves, gold, ivory and spices. The
European discovery of the Americas in 1492 was followed by a great development of
the slave trade, which, before the Portuguese era, had been an overland trade almost
exclusively, and never confined to any one continent.
In West Africa, the decline of the Atlantic slave trade in the 1820s caused dramatic
economic shifts in local polities. The gradual decline of slave-trading, prompted by a
lack of demand for slaves in the New World, increasing anti-slavery legislation in
Europe and America, and the British navy's increasing presence off the West African
coast, obliged African states to adopt new economies. The largest powers of West
Africa: the Asante Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Oyo Empire,
adopted different ways of adapting to the shift. Asante and Dahomey concentrated on
the development of "legitimate commerce" in the form of palm oil, cocoa, timber and
gold, forming the bedrock of West Africa's modern export trade. The Oyo Empire,
unable to adapt, collapsed into civil wars.

• Pre-colonial exploration
In the mid-nineteenth century, European explorers became interested in exploring the
heart of the continent and opening the area for trade, mining and other commercial
exploitation. In addition, there was a desire to convert the inhabitants to Christianity.
The central area of Africa was still largely unknown to Europeans at this time. David
Livingstone explored the continent between 1852 and his death in 1873; amongst other
claims to fame, he was the first European to see the Victoria Falls. A prime goal for
explorers was to locate the source of the River Nile. Expeditions by Burton and Speke
(1857-1858) and Speke and Grant (1863) located Lake Tanganyika and Lake Victoria.
The latter was eventually proven as the main source of the Nile. With subsequent
expeditions by Baker and Stanley, Africa was well explored by the end of the century
and this was to lead the way for the colonization which followed.

• Colonialism and the "scramble for Africa"

In the late nineteenth century, the European imperial powers engaged in a major
territorial scramble and occupied most of the continent, creating many colonial nation
states, and leaving only two independent nations: Liberia, an independent state partly
settled by African Americans; and Orthodox Christian Ethiopia (known to Europeans as
"Abyssinia"). Colonial rule by Europeans would continue until after the conclusion of
World War II, when all colonial states gradually obtained formal independence.

Colonialism had a destabilising effect on a number of ethnic groups that is still being
felt in African politics. Before European influence, national borders were not much of a
concern, with Africans generally following the practice of other areas of the world, such
as the Arabian Peninsula, where a group's territory was congruent with its military or
trade influence. The European insistence of drawing borders around territories to isolate
them from those of other colonial powers often had the effect of separating otherwise
contiguous political groups, or forcing traditional enemies to live side by side with no
buffer between them. For example, although the Congo River appears to be a natural
geographic boundary, there were groups that otherwise shared a language, culture or
other similarity living on both sides. The division of the land between Belgium and
France along the river isolated these groups from each other. Those who lived in
Saharan or Sub-Saharan Africa and traded across the continent for centuries often found
themselves crossing borders that existed only on European maps.
In nations that had substantial European populations, for example Rhodesia (now
Zimbabwe) and South Africa, systems of second-class citizenship were often set up in
order to give Europeans political power far in excess of their numbers. In the Congo
Free State, personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium, the native population was
submitted to inhumane treatments, and a near slavery status assorted with forced labor.
However, the lines were not always drawn strictly across racial lines. In Liberia, citizens
who were descendants of American slaves had a political system for over 100 years that
gave ex-slaves and natives to the area roughly equal legislative power despite the fact
the ex-slaves were outnumbered ten to one in the general population. The inspiration for
this system was the United States Senate, which had balanced the power of free and
slave states despite the much-larger population of the former.

Europeans often altered the local balance of power, created ethnic divides where they
did not previously exist, and introduced a cultural dichotomy detrimental to the native
inhabitants in the areas they controlled. For example, in what are now Rwanda and
Burundi, two ethnic groups Hutus and Tutsis had merged into one culture by the time
German colonists had taken control of the region in the nineteenth century. No longer
divided by ethnicity as intermingling, intermarriage, and merging of cultural practices
over the centuries had long since erased visible signs of a culture divide, Belgium
instituted a policy of racial categorisation upon taking control of the region, as racial
based categorisation and philosophies was a fixture of the European culture of that time.
The term Hutu originally referred to the agricultural-based Bantu-speaking peoples that
moved into present day Rwanda and Burundi from the West, and the term Tutsi referred
to Northeastern cattle-based peoples that migrated into the region later. The terms
described a person's economic class; individuals who owned roughly 10 or more cattle
were considered Tutsi, and those with fewer were considered Hutu, regardless of
ancestral history. This was not a strict line but a general rule of thumb, and one could
move from Hutu to Tutsi and vice versa.
The Belgians introduced a racialized system; European-like features such as fairer skin,
ample height, narrow noses were seen as more ideally Hamitic, and belonged to those
people closest to Tutsi in ancestry, who were thus given power amongst the colonised
peoples. Identity cards were issued based on this philosophy.
Tunisia was the first country in Africa to gain Independence, doing so in 1956. The
decades-long struggle for independence from France was led by Habib Bourguiba,
founder of the Republic of Tunisia.
 • Post-colonial Africa
Today, Africa contains 53 independent and sovereign countries, which mostly still have
the borders drawn during the era of European colonialism.
Since colonialism, African states have frequently been hampered by instability,
corruption, violence, and authoritarianism. The vast majority of African nations are
republics that operate under some form of the presidential system of rule. However, few
of them have been able to sustain democratic governments, and many have instead
cycled through a series of coups, producing military dictatorships. A number of Africa's
post-colonial political leaders were military generals who were poorly educated and
ignorant on matters of governance. Great instability, however, was mainly the result of
marginalization of other ethnic groups and graft under these leaders. For political gain,
many leaders fanned ethnic conflicts that had been exacerbated, or even created, by
colonial rule. In many countries, the military was perceived as being the only group that
could effectively 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 also common, with the European-imposed borders of many nations being widely
contested through armed conflicts.
Cold War conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as the
policies of the International Monetary Fund, also played a role in instability. When a
country became independent for the first time, it was often expected to align with one of
the two superpowers. Many countries in Northern Africa received Soviet military aid,
while many in Central and Southern Africa were supported by the United States, France
or both. The 1970s saw an escalation, as newly independent Angola and Mozambique
aligned themselves with the Soviet Union and the West and South Africa sought to
contain Soviet influence by funding insurgency movements. Some countries were ruled
by communist parties that sought to impose Soviet policies resulting in atrocities such
as the Ethiopian famine of 1985-89.
AIDS has also been a prevelant issue in post-colonial africa. However, in the last year,
AIDS has been reduced about 25% due to new diagnostic and preventative measures.

Politics
The African Union (AU) is a federation consisting of all of Africa's states apart from
Morocco. The union was formed, with Addis Ababa as its capital, on June 26, 2001. In
July 2004, the capital of the African Union was relocated to Midrand, in the AU
Constituent Republic of South Africa. However, the AU Commission has its
headquarters at Addis Ababa. There is a policy in effect to decentralise the African
Federation's institutions so that they are shared by all the states
The African Union, not to be confused with the AU Commission, is formed by an Act
of Union which aims to transform the African Economic Community, a federated
commonwealth, into a state, under established international conventions. The African
Union has a parliamentary government, known as the African Union Government,
consisting of legislative, judicial and executive organs, and led by the African Union
President and Head of State, who is also the President of the Pan African Parliament. A
person becomes AU President by being elected to the PAP, and subsequently gaining
majority support in the PAP.
President Gertrude Ibengwe Mongella is the Head of State and Chief of Government of
the African Union, by virtue of the fact that she is the President of the Pan African
Parliament. She was elected by Parliament in its inaugural session in March 2004, for a
term of five years. The PAP consists of 265 legislators, five from each constituent state
of the African Union. Over 21% of the members of the PAP are female.
The powers and authority of the President of the African Parliament derive from the
Union Act, and the Protocol of the Pan African Parliament, as well as the inheritance of
presidential authority stipulated by African treaties and by international treaties,
including those subordinating the Secretary General of the OAU Secretariat (AU
Commission) to the PAP. The government of the AU consists of all-union (federal),
regional, state, and municipal authorities, as well as hundreds of institutions, that
together manage the day-to-day affairs of the institution.
Failed state policies, inequitable global trade practices, and the effects of global climate
change have resulted in many widespread famines, and significant portions of Africa
remain with distribution systems unable to disseminate enough food or water for the
population to survive. What had before colonialism been the source for 90% of the
world's gold has become the poorest continent on earth, its former riches enjoyed by
those on other continents. The spread of disease is also rampant, especially the spread of
the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and the associated acquired immune
deficiency syndrome (AIDS), which has become a deadly epidemic on the continent.
Despite numerous hardships, there have been some signs the continent has hope for the
future. Democratic governments seem to be spreading, though they are not yet the
majority (The National Geographic Society claims 13 African nations can be considered
truly democratic). Many nations have recognised basic human rights for all citizens and
have created independent judiciaries.
There are clear signs of increased networking among African organisations and states.
In the civil war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (former Zaire), rather than
rich, non-African countries intervening, neighbouring African countries became
involved (see also Second Congo War). Since the conflict began in 1998, the estimated
death toll has reached 4 million. Many observers suggest that the conflict played a role
similar to that of World War II, after which European countries integrated their societies
in such a way that war between them becomes unthinkable. Political associations such
as the African Union offer hope for greater co-operation and peace between the
continent's many countries. Extensive human rights abuses still occur in several parts of
Africa, often under the oversight of the state. Most of such violations occur for political
reasons, often as a side effect of civil war. Countries where major human rights
violations have been reported in recent times include the Democratic Republic of the
Congo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and Côte d'Ivoire.

Economy
Due largely to the effects of corrupt governments, despotism, and constant conflict,
Africa is the world's poorest inhabited continent. According to the United Nations'
Human Development Report in 2003, the bottom 25 ranked nations (151st to 175th)
were all African nations.
While rapid growth in China and India, and moderate growth in Latin America has
lifted millions beyond subsistence living, Africa has gone backwards in terms of foreign
trade, investment, and per capita income. This poverty has widespread effects, including
lower life expectancy, violence, and instability -- factors intertwined with the continent's
poverty.

Some areas, notably Botswana and South Africa, have experienced economic success.
The latter has a wealth of natural resources, being the world's leading producers of both
gold and diamonds, and a well-established legal system. South Africa also has access to
financial capital, numerous markets, skilled labor, and first world infrastructure in much
of the country and the opening of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

Over a quarter of Botswana's budget (also a major diamond producer) goes toward
improving the infrastructure of Gaborone, the nation's capital, largest city, and one of
the world's fastest growing cities. Other African countries are making comparable
progress, such as Ghana, Kenya, Cameroon and Egypt.
Nigeria sits on one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world and has the highest
population among nations in Africa, with one of the fastest-growing economies in the
world.
From 1995 to 2005, economic growth picked up, averaging 5% in 2005. However some
countries experienced much higher growth (10+%) in particular, Angola, Sudan and
Equatorial Guinea, all three of which have recently begun extracting their petroleum
reserves.
Zimbabwe is the only country in Africa experiencing negative economic growth.

Culture
African culture is characterised by a vastly diverse patchwork of social values, ranging
from extreme patriarchy to extreme matriarchy, sometimes in tribes existing side by
side.
Modern African culture is characterised by conflicted responses to Arab nationalism
and European imperialism. Increasingly, beginning in the late 1990s, Africans are
reasserting their identity. In North Africa especially the rejection of the label Arab or
European has resulted in an upsurge of demands for special protection of indigenous
Amazigh languages and culture in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. The
emergence of Pan-Africanism since the fall of apartheid has heightened calls for a
renewed sense of African identity. In South Africa, intellectuals from settler
communities of European descent increasingly identify as African for cultural rather
than geographical or racial reasons. Famously, some have undergone ritual ceremonies
to become members of the Zulu or other community.
Much of the traditional African cultures have become impoverished as a result of years
of neglect and suppression by colonial and neo-colonial regimes. There is now a
resurgence in the attempts to rediscover and revalourise African traditional cultures,
under such movements as the African Renaissance led by Thabo Mbeki, Afrocentrism
led by an influential group of scholars including Molefi Asante, as well as the
increasing recognition of traditional spiritualism through decriminalization of Voudoo
and other forms of spirituality. In recent years African traditional culture has become
synonymous with rural poverty and subsistence farming.
Urban culture in Africa, now associated with Western values, is a great contrast from
traditional African urban culture which was once rich and enviable even by modern
Western standards. African cities such as Loango, M'banza Congo, Timbuktu, Thebes,
Meroe and others had served as the world's most affluent urban and industrial centers,
clean, well-laid out, and full of universities, libraries, and temples. This image of
traditional African urban living is in deep contrast to European cities that were unclean,
crowded and disorganised...characteristics that they have retained for the most part.
The main and most enduring cultural fault-line in Africa is the divide between
traditional pastoralists and agriculturalists. The divide is not, and never was based on
economic competition, but rather on the colonial racial policy that identified pastoralists
as constituting a different race from agriculturalists, and enforcing a form of apartheid
between the two cultures beginning in the 1880s and lasting until the 1960s. Although
European colonial powers were largely industrial, many of the administrators and
philosophers, whose writings provided rationale for colonialism, applied quasi-scientific
eugenics policies and racist politics on Africans in experiments of misguided social
engineering.
Most of the racial recategorisation of Africans to fit European stereotypes was
contradictory and incoherent. However, because their legalism and laws that emanated
from these policies were backed by police force, the scientific establishment and
economic power, Africans reacted by either conforming to the new rules, or rejecting
them in favour of Pan-Africanism. All across Africa communities and individuals were
measured by colonial eugenics boards and reassigned identities and ethnicities based on
pseudoscience. The schools taught that in general Africans who resembled Europeans in
some physical or cultural aspect were superior to other Africans and deserved more
privileges. This caused animosity, incited by other Europeans - socialists and
communists - who identified Africans according to dubious classes also modeled on
European concerns.
The easiest way to divide Africans was along economic lines. Pastoralists,
agriculturalists, hunter-gatherers and Westernised Africans, all formed distinctly
identifiable cultures each of which came to play a different and disfiguring role in
Africa's modern politics. The Westernised Africans, specifically Senegalese and
Sudanese Nubians from urban centers such as Dakar and Khartoum, were used to serve
as the bulk of colonial troops against the rural Africans. Pastoralists were radicalised by
the wholesale confiscation of grazing lands in favour of plantations. Agriculturalists
came into conflict for land and water with pastoralists after the traditional sharing
arrangements had been destroyed by colonial policies.

In addition, a growing body of speculative anthropology and race science made false
claims about the superiority and inferiority of Africans with different cultural and
economic backgrounds. The vast majority of the scholarship on Africa was extraneous
and catered to the demand for exotic and outlandish representations of Africa. The
enforcement of the government decrees and policies tended to produce effects that
confirmed the prejudices of the European colonialists.
African art and architecture reflect the diversity of African cultures. The oldest existing
examples of art from Africa are 75,000 year old beads made from Nassarius shells that
were found in Blombos Cave. The Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt was the world's
tallest structure for 4,000 years until the completion of Lincoln Cathedral around 1300.
The Ethiopian complex of monolithic churches at Lalibela, of which the Church of St.
George is representative, is regarded as another marvel of engineering.

Languages
By most estimates, Africa contains well over a thousand languages, some have
estimated it to be over two thousand languages (most of African rather than European
origin). Africa is the most polyglot continent in the world; it is not rare to find
individuals there who fluently speak not only several African languages, but one or two
European ones as well. There are four major language families native to Africa.

• The Afro-Asiatic languages are a language family of about 240 languages and
285 million people widespread throughout East 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 mainly spoken in
Chad, Ethiopia, Kenya, Sudan, Uganda, and northern Tanzania.

• The Niger-Congo language family covers much of Sub-Saharan Africa and is

probably the largest language family in the world in terms of different
languages. A substantial number of them are the Bantu languages spoken in
much of sub-Saharan Africa.

• The Khoisan languages number about 50 and are spoken in Southern Africa by
approximately 120 000 people. Many of the Khoisan languages are endangered.
The Khoi and San peoples are considered the original inhabitants of this part of
Africa.

Following colonialism, nearly all African countries adopted official languages that
originated outside the continent, although several countries nowadays also use various
languages of native origin (such as Swahili) as their official language. In numerous
countries, English and French are used for communication in the public sphere such as
government, commerce, education and the media. Arabic, Portuguese, Afrikaans and
Malagasy are other examples of originally non-African languages that are used by
millions of Africans today, both in the public and private spheres.

Religion

Africans profess a wide variety of religious beliefs and it is difficult to conclude

accurate statistics about religious demography in Africa as a whole. Estimations from
World Book Encyclopedia claim that there are 150 million African Muslims and 130
million African Christians, while Encyclopedia Britannica estimates that approximately
46.5% of all Africans are Christians and another 40.5% are Muslims with roughly
11.8% of Africans following indigenous African religions. A small number of Africans
are Hindu or Baha'i, or have beliefs from the Judaic tradition. Examples of African Jews
are the Beta Israel, Lemba peoples and the Abayudaya of Eastern Uganda.
The indigenous Sub-Saharan African religions tend to revolve around animism and
ancestor worship. A common thread in traditional belief systems was the division of the
spiritual world into "helpful" and "harmful". Helpful spirits are usually deemed to
include ancestor spirits that help their descendants, and powerful spirits that protect
entire communities from natural disaster or attacks from enemies; whereas harmful
spirits include the souls of murdered victims who were buried without the proper
funeral rites, and spirits used by hostile spirit mediums to cause illness among their
enemies. While the effect of these early forms of worship continues to have a profound
influence, belief systems have evolved as they interact with other religions.
The formation of the Old Kingdom of Egypt in the third millennium BCE marked the
first known complex religious system on the continent. Around the ninth century BCE,
Carthage (in present-day Tunisia) was founded by the Phoenicians, and went on to
become a major cosmopolitan center where deities from neighboring Egypt, Rome and
the Etruscan city-states were worshipped. Today, many Jewish peoples also live in
North Africa, particularly in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.

The founding of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is traditionally dated to the
mid-first century, while the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and the Eritrean Orthodox
Church officially date from the fourth century. These are thus some of the first
established Christian churches in the world. At first, Christian Orthodoxy made gains in
modern-day Sudan and other neighbouring regions. However, after the spread of Islam,
growth was slow and restricted to the highlands.
Many Sub-Saharan Africans were converted to Western Christianity during the colonial
period. In the last decades of the twentieth century, various sects of Charismatic
Christianity rapidly grew. A number of Roman Catholic African bishops were
mentioned as possible papal candidates in 2005. African Christians appear to be more
socially conservative than their co-religionists in much of the industrialized world,
which has quite recently led to tension within denominations such as the Anglican and
Methodist Churches.

The African Initiated Churches have experienced significant growth in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries.
Islam entered Africa as Arab Muslims conquered North Africa between 640 and 710,
beginning with Egypt. They settled in Mogadishu, Melinde, Mombasa, Kilwa, and
Sofala, following the sea trade down the coast of East Africa, and diffusing through the
Sahara desert into the interior of Africa -- following in particular the paths of Muslim
traders. Muslims were also among the Asian peoples who later settled in British-ruled
Africa. During colonial times, Christianity had success in converting those who
followed traditional religions but had very little success in converting Muslims, who
took advantage of the urbanization and increase in trade to settle in new areas and
spread their faith. As a result, Islam in sub-Saharan Africa probably doubled between
1869 and 1914.
Islam continued this tremendous growth into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Today, backed by gulf oil cash, Muslims have increased success in proselytizing, with a
growth rate, by some estimates, that is twice as fast as Christianity in Africa.
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