As everyone knows by now, I am from Africa. South Africa to be precise. One of the tasks I often set my students is to name the African countries. There are 53 or 54 depending on whether you define West Sahara as part of Morocco or not. But most people get stuck after 10 or so.
Africa is the second largest continent in size with 20.6% of the earth’s land mass. It’s also second, albeit a distant second, in population with slightly under a billion people (14.5%), compared with Asia’s over four billion. There are two countries in Africa which are considered to never have been colonized – Liberia and Ethiopia. The truth, however, is much more complex and open to debate.
Here is a very interesting article from the BBC entitled Why is Africa Poor?
