Africa

Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km (11.7 million sq mi) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With 1.0 billion people (as of 2009, see table) in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.72% of the world's human population. The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, both the Suez Canal and theRed Sea along the Sinai Peninsula to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast, and theAtlantic Ocean to the west. The continent has 54 sovereign states, including Madagascar and various island groups. Africa, particularly central Eastern Africa, is widely regarded within the scientific community to be the origin of humans and the Hominidae clade (great apes), as evidenced by the discovery of the earliest hominids and their ancestors, as well as later ones that have been dated to around seven million years ago including Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis,Homo erectus, H. habilis and H. ergaster with the earliest Homo sapiens (modern human) found in Ethiopia being dated to circa 200,000 years ago.
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Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones. is at about 5.0% for 2010 and 5.5% in 2011.
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The African expected economic growth rate

Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the Carthaginians who dwelt in North Africa in modern-day Tunisia. Their name is usually connected withPhoenician afar, "dust", but a 1981 hypothesis
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has asserted that it

stems from the Berber word ifri or ifran meaning "cave" and "caves", in reference to cave dwellers. Africa or Ifri or Afer
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is the name of Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania (Berber Tribe

of Yafran).

Under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of Africa Province, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix "-ica" can sometimes be used to denote a land (e.g., in Celtica from Celtes, as used by Julius Caesar). The later Muslim kingdom of Ifriqiya, modernday Tunisia, also preserved a form of the name. Other etymological hypotheses that have been postulated for the ancient name "Africa": the 1st century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya. Latin word aprica ("sunny") mentioned by Isidore of Seville in Etymologiae XIV.5.2.
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the Greek word aphrike (), meaning "without cold." This was proposed by historian Leo Africanus (14881554), who suggested the Greek word phrike (, meaning "cold and horror"), combined with the privative prefix "a-", thus indicating a land free of cold and horror.

Massey, in 1881, derived an etymology from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."
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yet another hypothesis was proposed by Michle Fruyt in Revue de Philologie 50, 1976: 221238, linking the Latin word with africus 'south wind', which would be of Umbrian origin and mean originally 'rainy wind'.

The Irish female name Aifric is sometimes anglicised as Africa, but the given name is unrelated to the geonym.

Culture of Africa
The culture(s) of Africa encompasses and includes all cultures within the continent of Africa. There is a political or racial split between North Africa, and Sub-Saharan Africa, which is in turn divided into a great [1] [2][3][4] number of ethnic cultures. African cultures are diverse and varied and not static, and like most of the world have been impacted upon by both internal and external forces. Africas cultural regeneration has also been an integral aspect of post-independence nation-building on the continent, with a recognition of the need to harness the cultural resources of Africa to enrich the process of education, requiring the creation of an enabling environment in a number of ways. In recent times, the call for a much greater emphasis on the cultural dimension in all aspects of development has become increasingly vocal.
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During colonialism in Africa, Europeans possessed attitudes of superiority

and a sense of mission. The French were able to accept an African as French, if they gave up their African culture and adopted French ways. Knowledge of Portuguese language and culture and abandonment of traditional ways defined one as civilized. Kenyan social commentator Mwiti Mugambi pragmatically argues that the future of Africa can only be forged from accepting and mending the sociocultural present. For Mugambi, colonial cultural hangovers, pervasive Western cultural inundation, and aid-giving arm-twisting donors are, he argues, here to stay and no amount of looking into Africa's past will make them go away. However Karenga states that
Our culture provides us with an ethos we must honor in both thought and practice. By ethos, we mean a people's selfunderstanding as well as its self-presentation in the world through its thought and practice in the other six areas of culture. It is above all a cultural challenge. For culture is here defined as the totality of thought and practice by which a people creates itself, celebrates, sustains and develops itself and introduces itself to history and humanity Maulana Karenga , African Culture and the Ongoing Quest for Excellence
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The peoples of Africa

The African continent is home to many different ethnic and racial groups, with wide-ranging phenotypical [6] traits, both indigenous and foreign to the continent. Many of these populations have diverse origins, with differing cultural, linguistic and social traits and mores. Distinctions within Africa's geography, such as the varying climates across the continent, have also served to nurture diverse lifestyles among its various populations. The continent's inhabitants live amidst deserts and jungles, as well as in modern cities across the continent.

Prehistoric populations
Perhaps it is a function of the number of excavations actually performed in given areas, but it is at least suggestive that the five very earliest out of the twelve of earliest archaeological discoveries of Homo sapiens sapiens have been in Africa and the adjacent Arabian peninsula.
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As early as 1964, A. W. F. Edwards and others had discovered that three populations in Africa were related but distinguishable on the basis of a relatively small set of genetic information (20 alleles). Those populations were called Tigre (Ethiopians), Bantu (in southern Africa), and Ghanaian(West Africa). When general anthropometrics were taken as the criteria for grouping, the African population was split into a different three groups: the more closely related Pygmy (such as the Mbuti) and Bushmen (such as the Khoisan) and the Bantu.
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By 1988 more genetic detail were known, more groups could be distinguished on the basis of genetic information, but the relationships among these groups were accounted as different depending on which was the data was construed. The groups analyzed at this time were Bantu,Berber and North African, Ethiopian, Mbuti Pygmy, Nilotic, San (Bushman), West African.
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African Poems
The Pride to Be an African
My Africa My Africa My Africa My Africa of which everybody imitates My Africa of which culture exceed the Greek My Africa of which everyone is jealous of My Africa My Africa My Africa My Africa of enormous natural endowment My Africa of Non-Violence My Africa of Amorous populates My Africa My Africa My Africa My Africa of patriot men and women My Africa of shelter and vintage hospitality My Africa of great ancestral mythology My Africa My Africa My Africa My Africa that bore fruits of black diamonds My Africa which is a gift to the whole world My Africa of great leadership My Africa My Africa My Africa My Africa of learned youths My Africa of a bright generation My Africa true tradition My Africa My Africa My Africa My Africa of black pageant women My Africa of strong men My Africa from who we all hail from For every African deserves a Nobel Prize in Existence.

Africas Pain is my Pain

Africa dear Africa Your children are lonely and depressed Africa dear Africa Your children are at war with each other Africa dear Africa Your children are killing each other Africa dear Africa Your children are starving Africa dear Africa Your essence is pure but you are suffering Africa dear Africa your pain is my pain So i sit here crying.