Country Facts of Africa

Africa, second-largest of the Earth's seven continents - covering about 30,330,000 sq km

(11,699,000 sq mi), which makes up about 22 per cent of the world's total land area.

The largest country is Sudan, Republic of, republic in north-eastern Africa, the largest country of
the African continent. Sudan has a total area of 2,505,800 sq km (967,490 sq mi).

The smallest country is Seychelles (sey-shellz) covering an area of 453 sq km but Gambia is the
smallest of the mainland African states, covering an area of 11,300 sq km (4,363 sq mi).

The largest city in Africa is Egypt's capital city, Cairo, is the largest city in Africa with an
estimated 9.2 million population.

The current population of Africa is nearly one billion people. Due to rapid population growth in
the continent over the last 40 years, its general population is relatively young. In many African
states, more than half of the population is under the age of 25.

The Religion in Africa is multifaceted. Most Africans adhere to either Christianity or Islam.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

 In 332 BC, Alexander the Great was welcomed as a liberator in Persian-occupied Egypt.
He founded Alexandria in Egypt, which would become the prosperous capital of the
Ptolemaic dynasty after his death. Following the conquest of North Africa's
Mediterranean coastline by the Roman Empire, the area was integrated economically
and culturally into the Roman system. Roman settlement occurred in modern Tunisia
and elsewhere along the coast. Christianity spread across these areas from Palestine via
Egypt, also passing south, beyond the borders of the Roman world into Nubia and by at
least the 6th century into Ethiopia.

 In the early 7th century, the newly formed Arabian Islamic Caliphate expanded into
Egypt, and then into North Africa. In a short while the local Berber elite had been
integrated into Muslim Arab tribes. When the Ummayad capital Damascus fell in the 8th
century, the Islamic center of the Mediterranean shifted from Syria to Qayrawan in
North Africa. Islamic North Africa had become diverse, and a hub for mystics, scholars,
jurists and philosophers. During the above mentioned period, Islam spread to sub-
Saharan Africa, mainly through trade routes and migration.
Kinds of Literature

 Oral literature (or orature) may be in prose or verse.

◦ The prose is often mythological or historical and can include tales of the trickster
character.

◦ Storytellers in Africa sometimes use call-and-response techniques to tell their

stories. Poetry, often sung, includes: narrative epic, occupational verse, ritual
verse, praise poems to rulers and other prominent people.

◦ Praise singers, bards sometimes known as "griots", tell their stories with music.
Also recited, often sung, are: love songs, work songs, children's songs, along with
epigrams, proverbs and riddles.

 Precolonial Literature

◦ Examples of pre-colonial African literature are numerous. Oral literature of west

Africa includes the Epic of Sundiata (soon-jah-tuh) composed in medieval Mali.

These stories include folktales and songs of praise for the nations’ ancestors.

Essential facts of African Literature

 Anansi (Ah-nahn-see) the spider is one of the most recognizable trickster figures in West
African literature. Anansi is said to have created the sun, the stars, and the moon. He
taught the people to farm, but he is not always a good guy. Some stories tell of how
Anansi tried to hoard all of the world’s wisdom.

 The first African novel written in English was Ethiopia Unbound by Joseph Ephraim
Casely-Hayford (1911). The book combines fiction and political appeals.

 Nigerian author Wole Soyinka was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986.

 Nigerian author Chinua Achebe’s best-selling novel Things Fall Apart is remarkable for its
refusal to romanticize precolonial life in Africa.

Some of Africa’s most popular and respected poets include Lenrie Peters (Gambia), Kofi
Anyidoho (Ghana), and Dennis Brutus (South Africa).