Africa: Difference between revisions
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''It's gonna take some time to do the things we never haaaaa-aaad, woo-oo''|'''Toto's "Africa"''', a song about a white man trying to write about Africa but struggling because he's never been there. Appropriate, as that's what you probably are.}}
Africa covers one-fifth of the Earth's land surface and contains 54 countries,<ref>
Like Europe and South America, Africa has an institution that represents the continent as a
* [[African Union]]
Vaguely following the [[wikipedia:United Nations geoscheme for Africa|UN geoscheme for Africa]].
The majority of people in this part of Africa speak Arabic and often (but not always) feel closer affinity to other Arabic speakers in Asia than to other people of the African continent, or even to certain parts of southern Europe, with which they share the history and culture of the Mediterranean. Nevertheless, all these countries participate in various pan-African institutions, and all but Morocco are part of the African Union.
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We can subdivide this region further into the aforementioned Sahara/Sahel/Sudan states (mostly Muslim, containing much of the Sahara Desert and bordering dry plains, typically with large populations of Arabs and Berbers) and the Niger River and Coastal states (typically religiously mixed and geographically varied).
* [[Chad]]
* [[Useful Notes/Mali|Mali]]
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* [[Niger]]
* [[Benin]]
* [[Burkina Faso]]
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* [[Useful Notes/Togo|Togo]]
Can also be divided into sub-regions: the Horn of Africa, the East African Community, and the Indian Ocean islands. South Sudan is a new country and a special case, with both the Horn of Africa and the EAC having an influence.
All of these countries were at one point in time part of the ancient and medieval Ethiopian empires (the best-known of which is the Kingdom of Axum), and share in the heritage of ancient Ethiopian civilization. All also speak languages of the Afro-Asiatic family, primarily of the South Semitic and Cushitic branches.
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* [[Somalia]]
The [[wikipedia:East African Community|East African Community]] is an attempt to develop regional integration at a smaller level than Africa. As all of these countries have certain cultural elements and political interests in
* [[Useful Notes/Burundi|Burundi]]
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* [[Uganda]]
Several islands in the Indian Ocean are generally associated with the African continent; of these, the largest by far is Madagascar. Many if not most of these islands have quite unique cultures unrelated to anything on the African mainland.
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* [[Seychelles]]
* [[South Sudan]]
Dominated by the Congo River basin.
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* [[Useful Notes/Sao Tome And Principe|Sao Tome And Principe]]
Except for Mozambique and Namibia, all were once British colonies; Namibia, for its part, was administered as part of South Africa for the better part of a century. South Africa has a powerful influence on the region, acting as a regional bully during [[The Apartheid Era]], and as a sort of friendly-if-slightly-overbearing regional hegemon since 1994.
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* [[Zimbabwe]]
* [[That Dry Patch of Land Unrecognized]] (Western Sahara)
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Index Index]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Africa]]
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