10 Random facts about Africa

The organisation was eventually replaced by the African Union in 2002.

Africa Day is also a celebration of African unity.

In honour of the day, get to know some random facts about this incredible continent.

•  Africa is the most centrally located of all of the continents with both the prime meridian and the equator passing through it.
•  While Africa makes up about 16 percent of the world’s population, one quarter of the world’s languages are spoken only in Africa.
•  The largest country in Africa is Algeria with a total area of 2.5 million square kilometers and the smallest country is the island nation of The Seychelles with a total area of just 453 square kilometers.
•  Four of the five fastest land animals reside in Africa, the cheetah, the wildebeest, the lion, and the Thomson’s gazelle.
•  Africa is home to the world’s largest living land animal, the African elephant, which can weigh between six and seven tons.
•  Ancient Greeks and Romans originally used the term “Africa” to apply only to the northern region of the continent. In Latin, the word Africa means “sunny” and the word Aphrike in Greek means “without cold”.
•  Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were kidnapped and sold into slavery in the Americas.
•  Only two African nations have never been under European colonial power. Liberia, an independent nation settled largely by African Americans and Ethiopia, an Orthodox Christian nation known in Europe as Abyssinia. The rest of the continent was colonised by European imperial powers in the nineteenth century in what was called the “scramble for Africa”.
•  While Africa is the second largest of the earth’s seven continents, it has the shortest coastline, due to very few jutting edges and bays in its landscape.
•  There are fewer people with Internet access in the entire continent of Africa than in New York City alone.

Sources: FactSlides; RandomFacts