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Africa: A Continent That Resists Easy Summary

Africa contains 54 countries, more than 1.4 billion people, somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 distinct living languages depending on how you count, and roughly a fifth of the world's land area. "Africa" as a category is the size of China, India, Europe, and the lower 48 United States combined. Treating it as one place is geographically absurd, but the habit is stubborn.

The major regions

North Africa — Morocco through Egypt. Predominantly Arabic-speaking, mostly Muslim, with strong historical ties across the Mediterranean to Europe and the Middle East.
The Sahel — a band of semi-arid land south of the Sahara including Mali, Niger, Chad, and northern Nigeria. Mixed Muslim and Christian populations and a wide range of indigenous languages.
West Africa — Senegal to Nigeria. The most populous region, home to Lagos, the largest city in Africa. Yoruba, Igbo, Akan, Wolof, and dozens of other languages.
Central Africa — the Congo Basin and surrounding states. Contains the second-largest rainforest in the world.
East Africa — Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, the horn states. Swahili is a regional lingua franca alongside hundreds of local languages.
Southern Africa — South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Zambia, and others. South Africa alone has 11 official languages.

Geographic extremes

Africa contains the largest hot desert in the world (the Sahara), the longest river (the Nile), the largest tropical lake (Victoria), the second-largest tropical rainforest (the Congo), and the tallest free-standing mountain (Kilimanjaro). It also contains the Great Rift Valley, an active continental rifting system that is slowly tearing East Africa away from the rest of the continent over geological time.

What is changing

Africa is the youngest continent. The median age across sub-Saharan Africa is under twenty, compared to the late thirties in Europe and the US. Most demographic projections put the African population at between 2.5 and 3 billion by 2050. Lagos and Kinshasa are likely to be among the largest cities in the world by then. The economic, political, and cultural consequences of that demographic weight will define the second half of the twenty-first century.

Common misconceptions

Africa is not "developing." It is fifty-four different countries with fifty-four different trajectories. Some are wealthy and stable. Some are middle-income with active economies and cities full of young professionals. Some are deeply poor. Treating the whole continent as one story flattens all of that. There is a more detailed link with regional breakdowns.