Africa is the second largest continent, covering 23 percent of the world's total land area with 13 percent of the world's population. The continent straddles the equator with most of its area lying within the tropics. It is bounded on the west by the Atlantic Ocean, on the east by the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, and on the north by the Mediterranean Sea. In the northeastern corner of the continent, Africa is connected with Asia by the Sinai Peninsula. Mount Sinai or Jabal Mosá, Horeb, where Moses received the Ten Commandments, is on the Sinai Peninsula. There are 53 African countries, including 47 nations of the mainland and 6 surrounding island nations. The island nations are Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe in the Atlantic Ocean; and Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean. The Sahara is the world's largest desert. It cuts a huge swath through the northern half of the African continent stretching from the Atlantic Ocean on the west to the Red Sea on the northeast, and from the Mediterranean Sea and Atlas Mountains on the north, to the Sudan and the valley of the Niger River on the south. The boundaries have been shifting for millennia. The Sahara was once a fertile area with cultivated land over 8,000 years ago but conditions gradually became drier and desertification set in. The Sahara is now estimated to generate 60% of the world's total airborne dust.

Scientists use the theory of plate tectonics to explain the formation of Africa and the other continents. According to this theory, the crust of Earth's surface consists of a collection of 14 rigid plates floating on an underlying mantle. These plates are in constant motion - moving apart, colliding, and thrusting beneath one another. Africa sits at the center of the African Plate, one of the largest of Earth's plates. According to the theory of plate tectonics, for much of Africa's history, earthland was made up of one vast super continent known as Pangaea. About 220 million years ago, tectonic activity broke Pangaea apart into the super continents of Gondwanaland and Laurasia. Gondwanaland subsequently broke apart as well: First Antarctica, Australia, Madagascar, and the Indian subcontinent broke away, followed by South America. Africa, at the core of Gondwanaland, assumed roughly its present-day shape about 15 million years ago when the formation of the Red Sea split off the Arabian Peninsula. The Great Rift Valley system of East Africa is the world's largest rift valley system. It runs from the Afar Depression in Eritrea and Djibouti to southern Mozambique. Millions of years from now, as the Great Rift Valley continues to widen and deepen, East Africa might end up splitting off from the rest of the continent. Other notable rifts are found in the valley of the Benue and lower Niger rivers in Nigeria. Also in West Africa, volcanic activity and tectonic movement occurs along a major fault line that extends inland from the offshore island of Bioko through the Cameroon Mountain to beyond Lake Chad. This line has been interpreted as the early stage of a rift system that could eventually result in the separation of West Africa.

This is Africa. Read the history, culture and globalization aspects of the countries of Africa in the following pages.