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CONTINGENT: Okeni Language & Arts
Institute COORDINATED BY: Ms. Eunice Ajaiyeoba, President:
. Ms. Aya N’Goran, African Women’s Dream Inc. Africa is the second-largest continent after Asia. It is separated from Asia by the Suez Canal, the Gulf of Suez, and the Red Sea, and from Europe by the Straits of Gibraltar and Mediterranean Sea. It is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Indian Ocean on the east. The earliest known protohuman fossils have been found in Africa, primarily in Kenya and Tanzania. The continent was also the home of one of the world's oldest civilizations, that of ancient Egypt. Egyptian influence spread south up the Nile into present Sudan by the 1st millennium BC, at the same time as the Phoenicians were founding Carthage and other city-states along the Mediterranean coast north of the Atlas Mountains. North Africa came under European influence during the period of Roman rule (1st century BC-7th century AD). Beginning in the 7th century, Arab culture and the Muslim faith spread across the Sahara following trade routes between the north coast and towns along the Sahara's southern border region. The modern European colonization of Africa was begun by the Portuguese, who established trading stations on the coasts in the 15th and 16th centuries, but the interior of what Europeans called "the Dark Continent" was not explored or colonized until the 19th century. By the early 20th century nearly all of Africa had been subjected to European rule. Since World War II, 48 nations have gained their independence, but the colonial experience left Africa with arbitrarily defined boundaries, a diversity of political systems and problems, and economies dependent upon the industrial world. Africa's peoples remain divided by race, language, religion, and politics in a complex cultural mosaic. |
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