Continents / Africa

Africa is a continent that, with about 30,370,000 km² (11,730,000 square miles) including adjacent islands, covers 6% of the Earth’s surface and 20% of the land surface. So is Africa the world’s second-largest continent (if we divide America in two continents).

With more than 1.3 billion inhabitants, Africa is the second most populous continent after Asia and, in other words, it represents 17.2% of the planet’s population in 2020. Most importantly, the African countries have the highest population growth on the planet

By 1914, with the rise of colonial empires, Africa had only two sovereign states, Abyssinia (or Ethiopia) and Liberia. Since World War II, the number of independent African states has grown steadily, from 4 in 1945 to 27 in 1960, reaching 53 in 1993 and finally 54 countries in 2011.