The word Africa derives from the Tunisian word meaning sunny place. Africa is the second largest and the second most populous continent, at roughly 11.7 million sq mi / 1 billion people it covers six percent of the surface of this world and 20.4 percent of the total land area and 15% of the world’s human population.
Currently, the population of Africa is about a billion people. In many African states half of the population has not yet reached the age of 25. Although Africa has about 17% of the world’s population, a quarter of the languages spoken in the world, are only spoken in Africa. The most widely spoken language in Africa is arabic. 170 million people speaking it live mainly in North Africa. In addition to Arabic, the continent’s say another 2,000 languages. Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa with a population of up to 145 million people.
The Sahara desert in Africa and is the most extensive desert in the world, which is a larger area than the entire continental United States. Africa is home to some amazing creatures and boast the largest land animal to currently live on our planet – African Elephant and also the fastest fleet footed land animals – cheetah, lion etc. And the most dangerous mammal known to man lives here – the hippopotamus. Africa is synonymous with Safaris, and there are many different types of Safari – Savannah, forest, wetlands. Also with its massive coastline, Africa remains one of the top destinations for zoologists, botanists and anthropologists.
Africa is the poorest and most underdeveloped continent, despite its rich natural resources. The average poor person of non-Arab part of Africa lives on 70 cents a day. Africa also has the highest amount of people that have contracted the HIV virus – 25 million and around 90% of all malaria cases a year come from africa with around 3,000 children dying each day from it.
Africa is also known as the cradle of mankind and Charles Darwin was the first to propose this. The earliest remains of humankind (homo sapiens) have been discovered in Ethopia and the age of these fossils is considered to be around 200,000 years old. Though other fossils of hominids and their ancestors have been dated back to several million years ago.
Africa is a wash with so many melting pots of cultures, tribes and beliefs that have held on through numerous years of colonisation by many countries looking to exploit the wealth of natural resources Africa has to offer. Although Africa has theses abundant recourses (Gold, Diamonds, Cobalt and Oil) it is the poorest continent in the world.