*Africa as a whole is the world’s 2nd largest continent (covering about 11,677,240 square miles), and its 2nd most populous (with over 887 million people). 

*Africa has 54 independent states, as well as several colonies and territories held by non-African nations, and the disputed area of Western Sahara (which may or may not be a state).

*Africa’s states are confusing, because many of them have the same names:  there are two countries called Congo (Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo), and three named Guinea (Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, and Guinea-Bissau).  In addition, countries often change their names after revolutions, and many countries had old names as European colonies but have different names today.

*Africa is about 40% Moslem, particularly in North Africa and the more northern parts of Sub-Saharan Africa, about 40% Christian, especially in South Africa and in Ethiopia, and about 20% of African still follow traditional religions often characterised as animism (a belief in many different spirits, and the power of the human spirit) and as ancestor-worship.  There are also a few Jewish communities and groups that claim to have Jewish heritage.

*Africa can be divided into several different regions, and the textbook has chosen to present North Africa as part of the Middle East, and all the rest as another region: Sub-Saharan Africa.  This is largely for racial reasons, as Africa south of the Sahara is traditionally viewed as being the Black part of the world, although, in fact, it is home to many different ethnic groups, some of which are quite different from one another, and which sometimes wage terrible wars over ethnic and tribal differences.

*Traditionally, Sub-Saharan Africa was also more heavily influenced by European colonialism (and the slave trade), although all of Africa (including North Africa) was, at various times, controlled by foreign powers.  By 1914 (the start of WWI) only two countries in all of Africa were still independent:  Liberia (which had still been founded by Americans) and Ethiopia (which was taken over by Italy in 1936).  Most of these only became independent in the 1950s and 1960s, and some did not become independent until the 1970s, 80s, or even 1990 in the case of Namibia (controlled by South Africa since the end of WWI).

*There are over 2,000 African languages, although linguists have grouped these into six or seven different groups. 

*Afro-Asiatic languages (which include Semitic languages such as Arabic) are spoken in North Africa and East Africa. 

*Nilo-Saharan is the most diverse of the groups, so diverse, in fact, that some linguists question whether the languages comprising it are actually related or not.  Its languages are mostly spoken in places such as Ethiopia, Chad, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, and northern Tanzania.  In many of these countries, Nilo-Saharan peoples are minorities, and are sometimes mistreated.

*Niger-Congo is the most wide-spread of all these groups, being spoken in most of Western and Southern Africa.  It is such a large group that it is sometimes broken into two smaller (but still very large) groups, Niger-Congo A and Niger-Congo B (also known as Bantu).  A is spoken in West Africa, and Bantu is spoken in Central and Southern Africa.

*Khoi-San languages are spoken by the Khoi and San (formerly known as Hottentots and Bushmen), mostly around the Kalahari Desert of Southern Africa.  There are not many Khoi-San speakers left, and many of their languages are considered to be endangered.  These are the languages famous for their clicking sounds (although a few neighbouring Bantu languages have picked up clicks).

*The people of Madagascar do not speak an African language at all, and are thought to have come from Indonesia at some point, as their language, in the Austronesian family, most reselbles dialects now spoken in Borneo.  Despite this, most Malagasy are African in appearance.

*There is even a native Indo-European language in South Africa, Afrikaans, which is derived from Dutch, but has been separate for so long that it is now regarded as a separate language.

*In addition to Afrikaans, many other Indo-European languages are spoken in Africa due to the presence of Europe as a colonial power.  The most commonly-spoken European languages are French and English, but Spanish, Portuguese, are also official languages in some African countries, and occasional speakers of German, Italian, and other languages appear, too. 

*The largest country in Africa (and the 10th in the world, just behind Kazakhstan) is Sudan (967,498 square miles).  2nd is Algeria (919,595 square miles), 3rd is the Democratic Republic of the Congo (905,567 square miles), 4th is Libya (679,362 square miles), and 5th is Chad (495,755 square miles).  Niger, Angola, Mali, South Africa, and Ethiopia are just slightly smaller than that.

*The smallest African country is Seychelles (#180 worldwide), an island nation in the Indian Ocean (176 square miles), and the smallest mainland nation is The Gambia (4,007 square miles; #159 worldwide).

*Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the 9th most populous country in the world, with 133 million people.  Next is Egypt (74.7 million), 3rd is Ethiopia (67.6 million), 4th is Congo (58.3 million), and 5th is South Africa (43.6 million).

*Africa has the world’s highest birth rate and the highest death rate (due in large part to HIV and AIDS, which affect about 7.4% of Africans), and the population of sub-Saharan Africa is expected to double in just 35 years.

*Because of the rapid growth of its population, which has not been matched by a growth in the economy, most of Africa (unlike much of the rest of the world) is distinctly poorer than it was 25 years ago.

*Africa is a poor continent, with a combined GDP of $1.65 trillion, and a GDP/capita of $671 ($1,968 adjusted for purchasing power parity).  The wealthiest country by either measure is South Africa ($160 billion in 2003, about $10,000 per capita in 2002).  In terms of national GDP, Egypt is second ($82 billion), Algeria is third ($66 billion), Nigeria is fourth (50 billion), and Morrocco is fifth (44 billion).  Next are Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, Kenya, and the Ivory Coast—of the top ten nations, five are in North Africa. 

*The tiny islands of São Tomé and Príncipe have the lowest GDP, $50 million per year, while Burundi and Sierra Leone are estimated to be the lowest GDPs/capita, with each nation having $500 per person per year, although this is hardly definite.

*Africa’s poverty and the fact that most of its national borders were drawn by foreign powers with little regard for local ethnic, tribal, or cultural boundaries have meant that the continent has suffered terrible warfare since decolonisation.  Although this has declined slightly since the end of the Cold War (when the USA and USSR often played African countries off against one another), Africa remains one of the most unstable places in the world.