25 May: Africa Day

25 May is Africa Day, so here are 10 things you might not know about the continent of Africa:

1. Africa is the second largest continent in the world (after Asia), covering 6% of the Earth’s surface if you include all the islands off its coast.
2. It’s also the poorest and least developed continent with a continental GDP that accounts for just 2.4% of global GDP. 40% of Africa’s adults are illiterate – two thirds of these are women. There are fewer people in Africa with access to The Internet than there are in New York City.
3. The northernmost point of Africa is Iles de Chiens, an island belonging to Tunisia. The northernmost point on the mainland is Ras ben Sakka in Tunisia. The southernmost point is Cape Agulhas in South Africa. The westernmost point is Santo Antão, Cape Verde Islands. On the mainland it’s Pointe des Almadies, Cap Vert Peninsula in Senegal, and the furthest east is Rodrigues, Mauritius or, on the mainland, Ras Hafun in Somalia.
4. 16% of the Earth’s population lives here – that’s around 1.3 billion people. It’s also the youngest continent in terms of its population’s median age, which is 19.7 as opposed to the world wide median of 30.4.
5. How many countries are there in Africa? The simple answer is 54 – there are 54 internationally recognised states. However, there are also two self-declared states which are not internationally recognised at time of writing –Somaliland, which declared itself independent from Somalia, and Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, south of Morocco. There are two dependent territories – Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, which belongs to Britain and French Southern and Antarctic lands which belongs to – you guessed it – France. Then there are eight territories which are administered as parts of countries outside of Africa. These include the Canary Islands and Madeira.
6. The largest country in Africa is Algeria. Nigeria has the largest population.
7. Africa is believed to be where the human race began, around 7 million years ago, spreading out to populate the entire planet in two “Out of Africa” waves of migration.
8. Nobody is sure exactly how many native languages are spoken in Africa but most estimates are between 1,250 and 2,100, though it could be as many as 3,000. The most widely spoken language is Arabic, followed by English, French and Swahili.
9. The highest mountain in Africa is Kilimanjaro in Tanzania at 19,340ft/5,895m. The lowest point is Lake Asal, which is in Djibouti and is 153m/502ft below sea level.
10. Africa’s major rivers are the Congo, Nile, Niger, Orange, Limpopo and Zambezi.

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