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Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area and 20% of its land area. With 1.3 billion people as of 2018, it accounts for about 16% of the world's human population. Africa's population is the youngest amongst all the continents; the median age in 2012 was 19.7, when the worldwide median age was 30.4. Despite a wide range of natural resources, Africa is the least wealthy continent per capita, in part due to geographic impediments, legacies of European colonization in Africa and the Cold War, undemocratic rule and deleterious policies. Despite this low concentration of wealth, recent economic expansion and the large and young population make Africa an important economic market in the broader global context.
The continent is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognised sovereign states (countries), eight territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Algeria is Africa's largest country by area, and Nigeria is its largest by population. African nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa.
The economy of Africa consists of the trade, industry, agriculture, and human resources of the continent. As of 2019, approximately 1.3 billion people were living in 54 countries in Africa. Africa is a resource-rich continent. Recent growth has been due to growth in sales in commodities, services, and manufacturing. West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa and Southern Africa in particular, are expected to reach a combined GDP of $29 trillion by 2050.
Africa has approximately 30% of the earth’s remaining mineral resources. Its very large share of the world’s mineral resources includes coal, petroleum, natural gas, uranium, radium, low-cost thorium, iron ores, chromium, cobalt, copper, lead, zinc, tin, bauxite, titanium, antimony, gold, platinum, tantalum, germanium, lithium, phosphates, and diamonds.
Africa is a continent with a very high linguistic diversity, there are an estimated 1500-2000 African languages. gathering appoximately 140 languages with some eleven millions speakers scattered in Central and Eastern Africa. The most spoken languages for communication in Africa include Arabic, Swahili, English, West African Pidgin English, French, Yoruba, Hausa Language, Igbo, Portuguese and Fula.
Today, the continent's various populations and individuals are mostly adherents of Christianity, Islam, and to a lesser extent several traditional African religions. In Christian or Islamic communities, religious beliefs are also sometimes characterized with syncretism with the beliefs and practices of traditional religions.
Conflict, Banditry and Violence in different form is still Africa’s biggest challenge. This situation have placed some part of the continent into abject poverty, early death and low health situation
The African Union and Its member state have been working hard to ending all wars, civil conflicts, Banditry and preventing genocide in the continent but the pattern of new conflicts bubbling up alongside existing one calls for serious concern.
