[[quoteright:237:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/africa_8207.jpg]]

->''It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you''
->''There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do''
->''I bless the rains down in Africa''
->''Gonna take some time to do the things we never had''
-->-- '''Music/{{Toto}}'s "Africa"''', a song about a white man trying to write about Africa but struggling because he's never been there.

The second largest continent in the world after {{UsefulNotes/Asia}} in both geographic size and population, Africa covers one-fifth of the Earth's land surface and contains 54 countries[[note]]56 if you include the separatist states of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic/Western Sahara and Somaliland, from Morocco and Somalia respectively. While 46 nations recognize the Western Sahara, the arguably more legitimate Somaliland has absolutely no recognition from anybody at all[[/note]], 8 dependencies, two thousand languages and upwards of a billion people. Its primary cultural divide is between the largely Arabic-speaking Muslim states north of the Sahara plus the country of Sudan (known collectively as North Africa), which have more in common with the UsefulNotes/ArabWorld than the rest of the continent, and "Black Africa" or sub-Saharan Africa further south. There are ''a lot'' of other divisions, though, including the differences between Southern Africa and the rest of sub-Saharan Africa[[note]]Southern Africa is more Westernized than the rest of the continent, has more British, Dutch and German influences than the rest of Africa (which is more French and Portuguese influenced), is more temperate than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, has the largest number of Asians, coloureds (people of mixed Asian, African and European descent, mostly native to western South Africa) and whites in Africa, and is more developed and stable than the rest of sub-Saharan Africa along with having the world's largest platinum supply, though it still has its own problems, especially HIV/AIDS, income inequality and poverty[[/note]] and the transition zones just south of the Sahara: the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sahel Sahel]] and [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudan_(region) Sudan]] (which confusingly does not include the country of Sudan, where the people are for the most part culturally Arab but look "African" to outsiders).[[note]]This makes sense if you know Arabic; "Sudan" in Arabic means "Land of the Blacks", but historically this was purely a comment on skin color rather than identifying some "race" of people distinguished from Arabs. As there have always been dark-skinned Arabs--particularly in UsefulNotes/{{Yemen}} (which is strongly linked to the Horn of Africa)--the "Blacks" in question could also be Arab.[[/note]] Africa is sometimes also merged with UsefulNotes/{{Europe}} and UsefulNotes/{{Asia}} as Afro-Eurasia.

Africa is ''much'' bigger than most people realize, largely because of the distortions formed by creating a flat map of the round Earth, which also has the unfortunate side effect of making UsefulNotes/{{Greenland}} look a lot bigger than it actually is (in reality, Greenland is over 250 sq km (96.53 sq mi) smaller than Africa's second-largest country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo). To get an idea of Africa's scale, it is comparable to the continents of UsefulNotes/{{Antarctica}}, Europe and UsefulNotes/{{Oceania}} ''combined''. Of course, this could also be attributed to the fact that Africa quite possibly constitutes the world's biggest HufflepuffHouse despite housing a billion plus people. Out of about 55 countries, only Egypt, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, Madagascar, and South Africa are really known by the general Western public (and Madagascar has [[Franchise/{{Madagascar}} DreamWorks]] to thank for much of its recognition).

Africa is widely believed by paleoanthropologists to be the place where humans originated; ''Homo sapiens'' arose in the Horn of Africa 300,000 years ago, and began to emigrate from the continent possibly as early as 270,000 years ago. Migrations of ''H. sapiens'' occurred in waves, with all modern non-Africans descending from a single expansion 50,000 years ago. ''H. sapiens'' managed to outdo their archaic precursors ''Homo erectus'' (themselves originating from Africa 2 million years ago) by colonizing North Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, places their predecessors never reached.

Before the 4th millennium BCE, Africa was a very lush and green continent, a situation that remains today in parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. In the north, however, there was a gradual desertification caused by an abrupt climate shift, which transformed the area into a sandy wasteland, barring some areas in the far north, where fertile valleys are barricaded from the desert by the Atlas Mountains, well as the banks of the Nile river. The Sahara geographically, culturally, and racially separated Africans since ancient times, with North Africa being primarily inhabited by the olive-skinned Egyptians and Berbers, while black-skinned Sub-Saharan Africans predominate areas to the south of the Great Desert. As a result of continual climate change and environmental neglect, desertification is still a phenomenon that can be observed in Africa today, thus pushing the Sahara further and further south.

Africa entered history at a very early stage, with the Ancient Egyptian civilization arising in the 31st century BCE as an extension of the Neolithic Revolution in the Ancient Middle East. Thanks to the Sahara, for most of the ancient and medieval era, Europeans and Asians were only familiar with North Africa, even though there existed many advanced, flourishing civilizations in the south, like the Aksumites (one of the first civilizations to adopt Christianity as a state religion, but was cut off from the rest of the Christian world after the advent of Islam), the Mali Empire (an immensely wealthy trading power whose capital was the fabled Timbuktu), and Great Zimbabwe. Ignorance of this history has been further enforced by the fact that most pre-colonial African societies did not utilize writing, and so when their societies were disrupted by colonialism, many of their histories, usually maintained via oral transmission, were lost. During the early modern period, European navigators explored the African continent for the first time and brought news of its tremendous natural wealth -- and abundance of people -- back home. Already in the market for slaves for their plantations in the New World, the European powers saw Sub-Saharan Africa as the ideal place to find them and justified it by claiming that Africans were members of an 'inferior race of savages' and therefore it was morally acceptable to enslave them. Thus was born the Atlantic Slave Trade, which, over the course of roughly 300 years, ferried millions of captured Africans away from their homes and onto slave plantations in the Americas, and had tremendous political, economic, and demographic consequences for both Africa and the New World. Initially, with the noted exception of the Dutch Cape Colony, Europeans were only interested in trade with the existing African powers, and maintaining the slave trade. By the 19th century, however, with the advent of New Imperialism, the focus shifted to obtaining control of the continent's immense resources, and slowly but surely Africa came under the control of the European powers. This so-called Scramble for Africa left Liberia and Ethiopia as the only modern-day African countries never to be colonized by Europeans.[[note]]However, Liberia did get colonized -- [[ExactWords albeit by African-Americans rather than Europeans]], but the colonization of Liberia occurred in the 1820s and the country gained independence in 1847, 37 years before the Berlin Conference of 1884 (when the European powers officially divided up Africa amongst themselves). Moreover, the colony of Liberia was established less on the initiative of the United States government itself (who was mainly focused on UsefulNotes/ManifestDestiny and later [[UsefulNotes/AmericanCivilWar postbellum]] [[UsefulNotes/TheGildedAge Reconstruction]] during the Scramble), but rather private entities (the American Colonization Society), whose motivations were to repatriate freed black slaves to Africa. However, it should be noted the members of the American Colonization Society (which included ''both'' abolitionists and proslavery activists) were motivated to return freed black people to Africa largely because they didn't believe that they (the freed black people) could coexist with White Americans. Ethiopia, meanwhile, was annexed and controlled by Italy between 1939 and 1941, well after the Scramble had ended.[[/note]]

Following UsefulNotes/WorldWarII, calls for the decolonization of imperial colonies echoed throughout the world, and Africa was no exception. It took decades of negotiations, political bickering, and bloody independence wars, but one by one, the colonies gradually achieved de jure independence. Unfortunately, these independence movements were complicated by the fact that many of the colonies were drawn up from arbitrary borders without regard to the people who lived there. Africans, contrary to popular perception, are not a homogeneous people and are just as varied in ethnicity, culture, language, and religion as anyone else in the world, if not more so. But as a result of this misconception, ethnic and religious groups who varied greatly from each other, and in some cases were even outright enemies, were often forced to share a country, which led to inevitable conflict. This is before mentioning the European power's overexploitation of African resources, pervasive neglect of the state of affairs in the colonies thanks to years of racism, and their insistence on maintaining political and economic dominance over the continent even decades after independence, a form of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neocolonialism neocolonialism]]. Thus were created tropes of Africa being [[{{Bulungi}} a hot, dusty hellhole where people live in straw huts]], [[FunnyForeigner speak uncouth, dumb-sounding languages]], [[WhiteMansBurden are perpetually in need of assistance from mighty rich whites]], [[PeoplesRepublicOfTyranny are ruled by corrupt dictators]], and [[InvadingRefugees whose only contribution to the world is a mass of refugees who cross the Mediterranean yearly in search of a better life in utopian, civilized European countries]].

If you are curious about African-Americans, they are the American-born descendants of Africans brought over to the UsefulNotes/UnitedStates as slaves in the Atlantic slave trade, particularly West Africans. They are not to be confused with Africans from the continent itself, though African-Americans did establish a country in West Africa, Liberia, with that country having its own unique ethnic group, Americo-Liberians, as a result, and they also founded Freetown, the capital of Sierra Leone. Most Caribs are also descended from West Africans brought to the islands by Europeans in the same slave trade, with UsefulNotes/TheCaribbean having many aspects of West African culture in general as a result.

For Africa in fiction, see {{Afrofuturism}}, {{Bulungi}} and DarkestAfrica. See also AmoralAfrikaner, GreatWhiteHunter and MightyWhitey. And despite what you may have heard, [[AfricaIsACountry Africa is not a country]].

[[index]]
!Countries
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/african_regions.png]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Blue: North Africa, red: Southern Africa, green: West Africa, orange: East Africa, pink: Central Africa]]
!!North Africa
* UsefulNotes/{{Algeria}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Algiers
* [[UsefulNotes/ModernEgypt Egypt]] (Transcontinental)
->'''Capital & Largest City''': UsefulNotes/{{Cairo}}
* UsefulNotes/{{Libya}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Tripoli
* UsefulNotes/{{Morocco}}
->'''Capital''': Rabat
->'''Largest City''': Casablanca
* UsefulNotes/{{Sudan}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Khartoum
* UsefulNotes/{{Tunisia}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Tunis

!!Southern Africa
* UsefulNotes/{{Botswana}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Gaborone
* UsefulNotes/ESwatini
->'''Capitals''': Mbabane (executive), Lobamba (legislative)
->'''Largest City''': Mbabane
* UsefulNotes/{{Lesotho}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Maseru
* UsefulNotes/{{Namibia}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Windhoek
* UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica
->'''Capitals''': Pretoria (executive), Bloemfontein (judicial), Cape Town (legislative)
->'''Largest City''': Johannesburg

!!West Africa
* UsefulNotes/{{Benin}}
->'''Capital''': Porto-Novo
->'''Largest City''': Cotonou
* UsefulNotes/BurkinaFaso
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Ouagadougou
* UsefulNotes/CapeVerde
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Praia
* UsefulNotes/CoteDIvoire (Ivory Coast)
->'''Capitals''': Yamoussoukro (de jure), Abidjan (de facto)
->'''Largest City''': Abidjan
* UsefulNotes/TheGambia
->'''Capital & Largest Metropolitan Area''': Banjul
->'''Largest City''': Serekunda
* UsefulNotes/{{Ghana}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Accra
* UsefulNotes/{{Guinea}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Conakry
* UsefulNotes/GuineaBissau
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Bissau
* UsefulNotes/{{Liberia}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Monrovia
* UsefulNotes/{{Mali}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Bamako
* UsefulNotes/{{Mauritania}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Nouakchott
* UsefulNotes/{{Niger}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Niamey
* UsefulNotes/{{Nigeria}}
->'''Capital''': Abuja
->'''Largest City''': Lagos
* UsefulNotes/{{Senegal}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Dakar
* UsefulNotes/SierraLeone
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Freetown
* UsefulNotes/{{Togo}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Lomé

!!East Africa
* UsefulNotes/{{Burundi}}
->'''Capital''': Gitega
->'''Largest City''': Bujumbura
* UsefulNotes/{{Comoros}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Moroni
* UsefulNotes/{{Djibouti}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Djibouti
* UsefulNotes/{{Eritrea}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Asmara
* UsefulNotes/{{Ethiopia}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Addis Ababa
* UsefulNotes/{{Kenya}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Nairobi
* UsefulNotes/{{Madagascar}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Antananarivo
* UsefulNotes/{{Malawi}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Lilongwe
* UsefulNotes/{{Mauritius}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Port Louis
* UsefulNotes/{{Mozambique}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Maputo
* UsefulNotes/{{Rwanda}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Kigali
* UsefulNotes/{{Seychelles}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Victoria
* UsefulNotes/{{Somalia}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Mogadishu
* UsefulNotes/SouthSudan
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Juba
* UsefulNotes/{{Tanzania}}
->'''Capital''': Dodoma
->'''Largest City''': Dar es Salaam
* UsefulNotes/{{Uganda}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Kampala
* UsefulNotes/{{Zambia}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Lusaka
* UsefulNotes/{{Zimbabwe}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Harare

!!Central Africa
* UsefulNotes/{{Angola}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Luanda
* UsefulNotes/{{Cameroon}}
->'''Capital''': Yaoundé
->'''Largest City''': Douala
* UsefulNotes/CentralAfricanRepublic
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Bangui
* UsefulNotes/{{Chad}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': N'Djamena
* UsefulNotes/DemocraticRepublicOfTheCongo
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Kinshasa
* UsefulNotes/EquatorialGuinea
->'''Capitals''': Malabo (''current''), Ciudad de la Paz (''under construction'')
->'''Largest City''': Bata
* UsefulNotes/{{Gabon}}
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Libreville
* UsefulNotes/RepublicOfTheCongo
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Brazzaville
* UsefulNotes/SaoTomeAndPrincipe
->'''Capital & Largest City''': São Tomé

!Unrecognized Countries
!!North Africa
* [[UsefulNotes/ThatDryPatchOfLandUnrecognized Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic]] (Western Sahara) (''de facto'' independent country, claimed by Morocco)
->'''Capitals''': Laayoune (claimed), Tifariti (''de facto'')
->'''Largest City''': Laayoune

!!East Africa
* UsefulNotes/{{Somaliland}} (''de facto'' independent country, claimed by Somalia)
->'''Capital & Largest City''': Hargeisa

!Dependencies
!!West Africa
* UsefulNotes/SaintHelenaAscensionAndTristanDaCunha (owned by the United Kingdom)
->'''Capital''': Jamestown
->'''Largest City''': Half Tree Hollow

!!East Africa
* UsefulNotes/FrenchSouthernAndAntarcticLands (owned by France)
->'''Capital''': Saint-Pierre (headquarters, not geographically assigned)
->'''Largest Settlement''': Port-aux-Français
* UsefulNotes/{{Mayotte}} (''de facto'' owned by France, claimed by Comoros)
->'''Prefecture & Largest City''': Mamoudzou
* UsefulNotes/ReunionIsland (owned by France)
->'''Prefecture & Largest City''': Saint-Denis

!Defunct countries, empires, and other entities
* [[UsefulNotes/AncientEgyptianHistory Ancient Egypt]]
* [[UsefulNotes/TheApartheidEra Apartheid South Africa]]
* UsefulNotes/ByzantineEmpire
* UsefulNotes/{{Dahomey}}
* UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire
* UsefulNotes/TheRomanRepublic

!Useful Notes and other articles related to Africans and African Culture
!!Africa in General
* AardvarkTrunks
* AfricaIsACountry
* AfricanChant
* Myth/AfricanMythology
* AfricanTerrorists
* {{Afrobeat}}
* {{Afrofuturism}}
* UsefulNotes/{{Africans}}
* AngryAngryHippos
* UsefulNotes/ArabWorld
* UsefulNotes/ArabicLanguage
** ArabBeobleTalk
* BibleTimes
** SwordAndSandal
* {{Bulungi}}
* ChildSoldiers
* ClamshellCurrency
* CruelElephant
* DarkestAfrica
** JungleDrums
** JunglePrincess
** LostWorld
** TheNativesAreRestless
* DevelopingNationsLackCities
* UsefulNotes/TheDutchPortugueseWar
* ElephantGraveyard
* ForcesWithFirepower
** UsefulNotes/EgyptiansWithEagleFighters (Egyptian military)
** UsefulNotes/SouthAfricansWithSurfaceToAirMissiles (South African National Defense Force)
* UsefulNotes/FrenchLanguage
* TheGeneralissimo
* GenialGiraffe
* GentleGorilla
* GratuitousForeignLanguage
** GratuitousFrench
* GreatWhiteHunter
* HeinousHyena
* HonorableElephant
* HuggyHuggyHippos
* HungryJungle
* UsefulNotes/IslamicDress
* KillerGorilla
* KingOfBeasts
* MagicalNegro
* MaliciousMonitorLizard
* UsefulNotes/OtherRoyalFamilies
* PantheraAwesome
* UsefulNotes/PortugueseLanguage
* PresidentForLife
* RhinoRampage
* RuthlessModernPirates
* SeaOfSand
* Myth/TuaregMythology
* WhereDaWhiteWomenAt
* WhiteLikeMe
* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII
** WorldWarII/WarInEuropeAndAfrica

!!North Africa
''See UsefulNotes/{{Egypt}}, UsefulNotes/{{Libya}} and UsefulNotes/{{Morocco}} for everything solely related to those countries''
* UsefulNotes/AlgerianCivilWar
* [[AllMuslimsAreArab All Muslims are Arab]]
* UsefulNotes/TheArabSpring
* BarbarousBarbaryBandits
* UsefulNotes/BarbaryCoastWars
* BedouinRescueService
* BuildLikeAnEgyptian
* CrossingTheDesert
* CurseOfThePharaoh
* DeadlyDustStorm
* DesertBandits
* DesertWarfare
* Myth/EgyptianMythology
** OurGryphonsAreDifferent
** OurSphinxesAreDifferent
* EyeOfHorusMeansEgypt
* GodEmperor
* UsefulNotes/HistoryOfModernEgypt
* HollywoodMirage
* Myth/KabyleMythology
* LegionOfLostSouls
* {{Mummy}}
** ChummyMummy
** MummyWrap
** SeductiveMummy
* NephariousPharaoh
* {{Ouroboros}}
* PhilosophersStone
* UsefulNotes/PunicWars
* PyramidPower
* UsefulNotes/TheRiverWar
* ScarabPower
* ThirstyDesert
* {{Qurac}}
* WarElephants
* UsefulNotes/TheWarOnTerror

!!Southern Africa
''See UsefulNotes/SouthAfrica for everything solely related to South Africa''
* AmoralAfrikaner
* UsefulNotes/AngloZuluWar
* UsefulNotes/{{Castles}}
* FormerRegimePersonnel
* MandelaEffect
* MicroMonarchy
* MonstrousSeal
* PrivateMilitaryContractors
* UsefulNotes/TheSecondBoerWar
* SluggishSeal
* SweetSeal

!!West Africa
''See UsefulNotes/{{Nigeria}} for everything solely related to Nigeria''
* FourOneNineScam
* Myth/AkanMythology
* Myth/FulaniMythology
* Myth/GbeMythology
* {{GIRL}}
* Myth/HausaMythology
* Myth/IbibioEfikMythology
* Myth/IgboMythology
* Myth/IjawMythology
* Myth/JukunMythology
* Myth/MandeMythology
** Literature/TheEpicOfSundiata
** Myth/MendeMythology
** Myth/WoiEpic
* MediaNotes/{{Nollywood}}
* Myth/SererMythology
* Myth/SonghaiMythology
* Myth/YorubaMythology

!!East Africa
''See UsefulNotes/{{Kenya}}, UsefulNotes/{{Madagascar}} and UsefulNotes/{{Somalia}} for everything solely related to those countries''
* Myth/AlurMythology
* UsefulNotes/{{Coffee}}
** YouGetMeCoffee
* DoofyDodo
* FreddieMercopy
* Myth/GreatLakesBantuMythology
* Myth/MaaMythology
* Myth/MalagasyMythology
* Myth/SwahiliMythology
* ATasteOfTheLash

!!Central Africa
''See UsefulNotes/DemocraticRepublicOfTheCongo for everything solely related to the Democratic Republic of the Congo''
* Myth/BetiPahuinMythology
* UsefulNotes/TheCongoWars
* JungleWarfare
* Myth/KongoMythology
* Myth/MbutiMythology
* MokeleMbembe
* Myth/MongoMythology
* Myth/NyangaMythology
* Myth/SawaMythology
[[/index]]