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GEOGRAPHY AND POPULATION Africa Institute of South Africa | Africa A-Z: Continental and Country Profiles 3 CHAPTER 1 Geography and Population Position, Area and Shape Extending over an area of more than 30 million km 2 , Africa is the world’s second largest continent. The equator bisects the continent, the two halves stretching almost equally far north and south to more or less the latitudes 37° N and 35° S. Longitudinally, it lies astride the 20° E meridian, the bulge of West Africa reaching about 15° W and, to the east, the Horn of Africa (Somalia) stretching to about 52° E. The continent’s most northerly and southerly extremities (Itas ben Sekka, near Bizerte in Tunisia, and Cape Agulhas in South Africa, respectively) are both roughly 4 000 km from the equator. The most westerly point (Cape Verde in Senegal) and the most easterly (Itas Hafun Peninsula in Somalia) are some 7 200 km apart. The direct distance across the broadest section of sub-equatorial Africa – between the southern Angolan and the northern Mozambican coasts – is about 3 000 km. The combined area of Africa’s three largest countries, Sudan, Algeria and Congo Kinshasa (in that order) – each of them larger than 2 million km2 – accounts for nearly a quarter of the continent’s total area. In contrast, the combined area of the 26 smallest countries – each of them smaller than 500 000 km 2 – covers less than 15% of the total area. The smallest mainland countries, The Gambia, Swaziland and Djibouti, are not much larger than some of the adjacent islands and are dwarfed by the largest island, Madagascar. Africa’s outline is comparatively smooth, with none of the large indentations and protruding peninsulas that characterise Europe’s outline. Thus Africa’s 32 000 km coastline is indeed Shorter than that of Europe, which covers a much smaller area. There are 32 countries with coastlines, while 15 are landlocked – seven to the north of the equator and eight to the south of it. The continental shelf (that part of the seabed nearest to the coast) is rather narrow, except opposite Cape Agulhas in the south, around the Orange River mouth, between Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, and in the Gulf of Gabes, bordering on Tunisia. Most of Africa is plateau country over 300 m above sea-level, and it is often termed the “plateau continent”. Only in the extreme north-west and south-west do rugged fold mountains occur, but nowhere on the scale of the mountain ranges which cross Asia, the Americas and Europe. Madagascar is the only large island off Africa’s shores; the others are small and mainly volcanic. Some of them are independent states, associated with Africa, while others are non-independent territories. These characteristics – area, shape and position – have had a great effect upon Africa’s climate, history and development. The climate and vegetation of its northern and southern halves, notwithstanding the greater east-west sprawl of the former, are almost mirror images of each other, both having deserts, savanna, grasslands, tropical rainforests, evergreen forests and woodlands, and scattered mountain regions. Lack of navigable rivers made its early penetration by European explorers difficult and much of the continent lies far from coastal ports and the world’s trade routes, perhaps AFRICA Physical Area: 30 million km2 Percentage of world land area: 22% Arable land: 7% Population Total (2011): 1.032 billion Percentage of world total: 15% Population growth (2000– 2011): 3% Persons per km2 : 26 Urbanised population: 42% GEOGRAPHY AND POPULATION 4 Africa A-Z: Continental and Country Profiles | Africa Institute of South Africa Figure 2 High and Low Africa explaining to some extent why development has been slower in Africa than elsewhere. Geologically Old and Stable Geological events over a vast period of time are responsible for the main features and components of Africa’s present-day relief. Climatic factors, by contrast, are responsible for those other great features of the landscape – the deserts of the Sahara, Kalahari and Namib, the rainforests of Central and Western Africa, and the vast savannas of Southern, Eastern and Western Africa. Moreover, Africa’s mineral wealth lies buried in its ancient rock formations. Most of the continent is a rigid base (a tectonic plate or plates) of ancient pre-Cambrian crystalline, igneous and metamorphic rocks. Where not exposed at thesurface, they are overlain by Later sedimentary rocks, among them the sandstones of the Karoo system. Alluvium (silt), as in the Congo and other great...

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