Africa Day 2021: 10 Interesting Facts You Probably Don’t Know About Africa

1. Africa is the second largest continent. It is bigger than Europe, the US, China, India and Japan combined.

2. There are 5 regions:

North Africa
East Africa
Central Africa
West Africa
Southern Africa

You have to refer to the bottom region as Southern Africa because there’s a country in Southern Africa called South Africa.

South Africa is the country, Southern Africa is the region.

3. Egypt is in Africa, but is also part of the Middle East, which is not a continent but a smaller region of countries that are at the junction of Africa and Asia.

4. There are either 54 countries in Africa or 55 countries, depending on who you ask. The 55th country is Western Sahara. Well, Western Sahara considers itself an independent country but this is disputed by Morocco which considers the area as part of Morocco.

5. Africa has 6 Island countries. Of course there are hundreds of small islands that are part of other countries, but only 6 islands are independent nations: Cape Verde Sao Tome and Principe Comoros Mauritius Seychelles Madagascar

6. The most commonly spoken language in Africa is Arabic. Arabic is spoken by 170 million people, English by 130 million, French by 115 million, Swahili by 100 million, Berber and Hausa by 50 million each. See the most popular language in each country.

7. There are 18 billionaires in USD on the continent, spread out across 7 countries. These are the richest billionaires people in each country.

8. The country with the smallest population is Seychelles. There are only 98,000 people on this island. By contrast, the country with the largest population is Nigeria with 200 million people.

9. Even though Africa is made up of predominantly black people, there are almost 5 million white Africans. Majority of white Africans live in South Africa (almost 9% of South Africa is white).

10. This is the literal meaning of every African country’s name. Mali

Courtesy: Funmi Oyatogun