Chapter 2: Overview of African Development

The map of Africa is like a giant jigsaw puzzle, indeed a tapestry of countries. In fact, it is a giant geopolitical puzzle created during the scramble for and partitioning of Africa among Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, and Italy.¹ Consequently, Africa has 55 countries, most of which were artificially created. Based on their geopolitical artificiality, these countries bear no resemblance to the historical, sociocultural, economic, and political realities of African societies, and one could argue that these African countries were set up for failure from the start.

Africa is more than three times the size of the United States and contains about 22% of the world’s total land area. Covering about 11,699,000 mi², Africa is the second largest of the world’s seven continents, following Asia. In 2017, about 17% of the world’s population, an estimated 1.3 billion people, lived in Africa, making it the world’s second-most populous continent, after Asia. The continent is estimated to account for a quarter of the world’s population by 2050, with a population over 2.5 billion people. As a whole, Africa encompasses at least 55 nations,² ranging from Nigeria, a country with an estimated 190 million people, to small island republics such as Seychelles, with a population under 100,000. As a developing continent, Africa presents the characteristics, opportunities, and challenges of developing regions.