During the 20th century, small but economically important communities of Lebanese and Chinese[105] have also developed in the larger coastal cities of West and East Africa, respectively.[180]. [167], Speakers of Bantu languages (part of the Niger–Congo family) are the majority in southern, central and southeast Africa. By 500 BC, and possibly earlier, they were smelting iron. Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, The vulnerability of Africa to climate change is driven by a range of factors that include weak adaptive capacity, high dependence on ecosystem goods for livelihoods, and less developed agricultural production systems. The size of the Sahara has historically been extremely variable, with its area rapidly fluctuating and at times disappearing depending on global climatic conditions. Field, D.J. Early human civilizations, such as Ancient Egypt and Phoenicia emerged in North Africa. Climate of personal non-violence 4. The vast majority of African states are republics that operate under some form of the presidential system of rule. [93] The largest powers of West Africa (the Asante Confederacy, the Kingdom of Dahomey, and the Oyo Empire) adopted different ways of adapting to the shift. Many countries in Northern Africa received Soviet military aid, while others in Central and Southern Africa were supported by the United States, France or both. The Bantu-speaking peoples from the Sahel progressively expanded over most of Sub-Saharan Africa. In Mauritania, there is a small but near-extinct Berber community in the north and Niger–Congo-speaking peoples in the south, though in both regions Arabic and Arab culture predominates. [188] Furthermore, the life expectancy in many parts of Africa is declining, largely as a result of the HIV/AIDS epidemic with life-expectancy in some countries reaching as low as thirty-four years. In the 21st century, however, the number of armed conflicts in Africa has steadily declined. Since this time, dry conditions have prevailed in Eastern Africa and, increasingly during the last 200 years, in Ethiopia. By 200 AD the Nok culture had vanished. The Scramble for Africa, also called the Partition of Africa or the Conquest of Africa, was the invasion, occupation, division, and colonisation of African territory by European powers during a short period known to historians as the New Imperialism (between 1881 and 1914). African Sculpture in Archaeological Context. More than 85% of individuals in Africa use traditional medicine as an alternative to often expensive allopathic medical health care and costly pharmaceutical products. Democracy movement 3. [123][124] [197]. [168] But there are also several Nilotic groups in South Sudan and East Africa, the mixed Swahili people on the Swahili Coast, and a few remaining indigenous Khoisan ("San" or "Bushmen") and Pygmy peoples in southern and central Africa, respectively. By 250 BC Djenné-Djenno had become a large, thriving market town. [98] Ghana followed suit the next year (March 1957),[99] becoming the first of the sub-Saharan colonies to be granted independence. [111] Cape Verde, 17°33'22" W, the westernmost point, is a distance of approximately 7,400 km (4,600 mi) to Ras Hafun, 51°27'52" E, the most easterly projection that neighbours Cape Guardafui, the tip of the Horn of Africa.[110]. There is also high evaporation rates in some parts of the region resulting in lower percentages of precipitation in such places. Following the breakup of Mali, a local leader named Sonni Ali (1464–1492) founded the Songhai Empire in the region of middle Niger and the western Sudan and took control of the trans-Saharan trade. Africa is a continent with 54 different countries that it supports. These dances must be viewed in close connection with Sub-Saharan African music traditions and Bantu cultivation of rhythm. It was a highly centralized community. By the end of the 19th century, from Algeria to Zimbabwe, and from Botswana to Niger, the continent was now all but controlled by European powers. It covers 11.7 square miles or 6% of the Earth and has a population of approximately 1.2 billion people or 16% of the world’s population. "Definitions of Styles and Genres: Traditional and Contemporary African Music", "Drones and satellites spot lost civilizations in unlikely places", Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN / SAD), Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS / EEAC), Southern African Development Community (SADC), Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS), Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC), List of countries where Arabic is an official language, Lower Gangetic Plains moist deciduous forests, Northwestern Himalayan alpine shrub and meadows, Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt pine–oak forests, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Africa&oldid=991021670, Wikipedia articles needing factual verification from September 2019, Pages containing links to subscription-only content, CS1 maint: BOT: original-url status unknown, Short description is different from Wikidata, Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages, Wikipedia indefinitely semi-protected pages, Articles containing Phoenician-language text, Articles containing potentially dated statements from 2016, All articles containing potentially dated statements, Articles with unsourced statements from December 2013, Articles with unsourced statements from October 2020, Wikipedia articles with SELIBR identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WorldCat-VIAF identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, Massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian, This page was last edited on 27 November 2020, at 21:17. However, few of them have been able to sustain democratic governments on a permanent basis, and many have instead cycled through a series of coups, producing military dictatorships. African dance utilizes the concept of as well as total body articulation.[209]. The Oyo Empire, unable to adapt, collapsed into civil wars.[94]. Roman settlement occurred in modern Tunisia and elsewhere along the coast. [26] The same word[26] may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, a Berber tribe originally from Yafran (also known as Ifrane) in northwestern Libya.[27]. Africa’s total land area is approximately 11,724,000 square miles (30,365,000 square km), and the continent measures about 5,000 miles (8,000 km) from north to south and about 4,600 miles (7,400 km) from east to west. The later Muslim region of Ifriqiya, following its conquest of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire's Exarchatus Africae, also preserved a form of the name.