Geography
What is Africa like?
Quick answer
Africa is the world's second-largest continent, with 54 countries, the Sahara Desert, the River Nile, the Congo rainforest and savannas full of wildlife.
In one sentence
Africa is the second-largest continent on Earth, home to 54 countries, more than a billion people and an enormous variety of landscapes and cultures.
Explained
Africa is huge. You could fit the United States, China, India and much of Europe inside it. It sits across the equator, so it has hot rainforests near the middle, dry deserts to the north and south, and open grasslands called savannas in between.
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Notable places include the Sahara, the largest hot desert in the world; the Congo basin, with the second-largest rainforest after the Amazon; the Great Rift Valley, a huge crack in the land in East Africa; and Mount Kilimanjaro, the continent's highest peak at 5,895 metres. The longest river is the Nile, which flows north to the Mediterranean Sea. Other great rivers are the Congo, Niger and Zambezi.
More than 1.4 billion people live in Africa, and they speak over a thousand languages, including Arabic, Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Amharic, Zulu, French, English and Portuguese. The largest country by area is Algeria, and the largest by population is Nigeria. Some well-known capital cities are Cairo (Egypt), Abuja (Nigeria), Nairobi (Kenya) and Pretoria, Cape Town and Bloemfontein (South Africa has three).
Africa has some of the oldest human history. Early humans lived here, and ancient civilisations such as ancient Egypt grew up along the Nile. Today Africa has young, fast-growing cities as well as farms, villages and national parks. Africa is a continent, not a country, so no single description fits all of it.
Examples
| Feature | Where | Fact |
|---|---|---|
| Sahara | north Africa | the largest hot desert |
| Nile | north-east Africa | flows north to the sea |
| Kilimanjaro | Tanzania | 5,895 m, highest in Africa |
| Congo rainforest | central Africa | home to gorillas and okapis |
| Serengeti | Tanzania and Kenya | famous for wildebeest herds |
Common mistakes
- Treating Africa as one country. It has 54, with many languages and landscapes.
- "It is all desert or jungle." Savannas, mountains, farmland and cities cover much of the continent.
- "The Sahara is all sand." A lot of it is rock and gravel.
Quick quiz
Africa
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Question 1 of 4
How many countries are there in Africa?
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For grown-ups
Related topics
Continents
Continents are the very large areas of land on Earth. In English-speaking schools you usually learn seven, but some countries count six.
Deserts
A desert is a place that gets very little rain, usually under 250 millimetres a year. Deserts can be hot, like the Sahara, or cold, like the Gobi and Antarctica.
The River Nile
The Nile is a river in Africa, about 6,650 kilometres long. It flows north through Uganda, Sudan and Egypt to the Mediterranean Sea and is usually named the world's longest river.
Countries
A country is an area of land with its own borders, government and laws. Most lists count 195 countries in the world today.
Antarctica
Antarctica is the frozen continent around the South Pole. It is the coldest, windiest and driest continent, covered by ice, and has no permanent residents.
Asia
Asia is the largest continent, covering about a third of the world's land and holding around 60 percent of its people. It has Mount Everest, the Himalayas and the most populous countries.