Africa is a continent with an indisputable diversity, richness in culture, people and heritage. To commemorate Africa Day also known as Africa Liberation Day, which comes up every 25th of May, here are some amazing facts you didn’t know about the beautiful continent of Africa.
Africa Day is a yearly celebration of the foundation of the Organization of African Unity on May 25th 1963. It is a day to “mark each year the onward progress of the liberation movement, and to symbolise the determination of the people of Africa to free themselves from foreign domination and exploitation.”
Seven Facts About Africa You Probably Didn’t Know
- Part of the Star Wars movie, starring George Lucas was actually filmed in the Tunisian Sahara Desert. This is a fun fact many people do not know.
- Africa is home to the world’s largest frog called the Goliath frog. It can be found in Equatorial Guinea and Cameroon.
- The richest man ever is Africa’s Mansa Musa, or Musa I of Mali. He is considered one of the richest men in history and was the tenth emperor of the Mali Empire, one of the prosperous Sahelian kingdoms that developed along the Saharan slave trade routes in the later medieval period. By the time of his death in 1937, estimates place his net worth in the range of US$300 billion to US$400 billion in adjusted dollars for the late 2000s.
- Nigeria has the highest population (154.7 million people) in Africa. This represents 18% of Africa’s total population.
- The largest waterfall in Africa is the Victoria Falls and it is located on the Zimbabwe and Zambia border. It has a height of 355 feet and the width of the water fall runs into almost a mile.
- Angola has more Portuguese speakers than Portugal.
- Africa used to be joined to 4 other continents. Before humans inhabited the continent, it was joined to what would later become four other present day continents – South America, India, Antarctica and Australia. These future continents all made up one giant landmass called Pangaea. Over millions of years this mass of land eventually broke apart into the various continents we know today – with their wildly varying climates. We call this phenomena continental drift and the term was established in 1912 by Alfred Weneger.