Africa is the second largest continent on Earth. It is bounded by the Mediterranean Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean and is divided almost equally by the Equator. Area: 11,717,370 sq mi (30,348,110 sq km). It has a population of over 800,000,000. It has many natural wonders such as Mount Kilimanjaro. The Sahara, the world's largest contiguous desert, occupies more than one-fourth of the total land area. The continent's hydrology is dominated by the Nile River in the north, the Niger River in the west, and the Congo River in central Africa.

Africa is widely recognized as the birthplace of humankind. Archaeological evidence indicates that the continent has been inhabited by humans and their hominid forebears for some 4,000,000 years or more. Anatomically modern humans are believed to have appeared about 100,000 years ago in the eastern region of sub-Saharan Africa. Somewhat later these early humans spread into northern Africa and the Middle East and, ultimately, to the rest of the world. The world’s first known, great, historical civilizations, were the Nile Valley civilizations, which arose along the Nile, culminating in Kmt or Egypt, which flourished for over 3,000 years. Due to multiple invasions, the last being Rome, many migrated out of Kmt. Because of the research of people such as African scientist and scholar, Chiekh Anta Diop, which identified, through use of linguistic, anthropological, and other scientific approaches, that the descendants of the people who migrated out of Kmt can be found in areas such as West Africa; such as the Akan people of Ghana, the Wolof of Sengal, and the Yoruba of Nigeria.

PEOPLE

Africa holds over 12% of the world's population, who are distributed among 54 nations and are further distinguishable in terms of linguistic and cultural groups, which number around 1,000. The Sahara forms a great ethnic divide. North of it, mostly Arabs predominate along the coast and Berbers (including the Tuareg) and Tibbu in the interior regions. Sub-Saharan Africa is occupied by a diverse variety of peoples including, among others, the Amhara, Mossi, Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, Kongo (see Kongo, kingdom of), Zulu (see Zululand), Akan, Oromo, Masai, and Hausa.

ECONOMY 

Africa is also known to be rich in natural resources, a large amount of the worlds raw materials come from Africa, especially its oil and minerals; such as gold, diamonds, salt, and agricultural produce, such as cocoa and peanuts. Africa produces three quarters of the world's cocoa beans and about one third of its peanuts. Rare and precious minerals (including much of the world's diamonds) are abundant in the continent's ancient crystalline rocks, which are found mostly to the south and east of a line from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sinai Peninsula; extensive oil, gas, and phosphate deposits occur in sedimentary rocks to the north and west of this general line.

SPIRITUALITY/RELIGION

“Because traditional religions permeate all the departments of life, there is no formal distinction between the sacred and the secular, between religious and non-religious, between the spiritual and the material areas of life…Where the individual is, there is his religion, for he is a religious being. It is this that makes Africans so religious: religion is in their whole system of being…What people do is motivated by what they believe, and what they believe springs from what they do and experience. So then, belief and action in African traditional society cannot be separated: they belong to a single whole.” 

John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy 

Cosmology   

We can identify common elements that define African cosmology. People tell countless stories and myths to explain how the world began. First and foremost, this is a created universe and the Supreme Being is the supreme Creator. It is a religious universe, with its beginning in and through the Supreme Being. It is governed and filled by the Supreme Being, and there is no end to it. Of central importance is the creation and sustenance of life, with human life being most prominent. The Supreme Being is the Source and Sustainer of life. The manifestations of life are interrelated. Even where there is no evident biological life, people tend to personify the objects, forces and phenomena of nature to grant them mystical life. African religiosity acknowledges the reality of God but does not define God. If anything, it confesses that God is unknowable. The Maasai (Kenya and Tanzania) name for God, Engai means (among others) "the Unseen One, the Unknown One". Likewise, among the Tenda (Guinea), God is called Hounounga which means: "the Unknown". People affirm that God is invisible, which is another way of asserting that they do not know God in any would-be physical form.