Welcome to Africa:

Africa, The Cradle of Civilization. This is an educational website for the Thinkquest Contest that is directed at the worldwide community. Through this website people all over the world can learn about the beauty of Africa. We unveil the true essence of Africa from the beginnings of humanity to the rise and fall of its great civilizations. This site covers the issues, the events, and topics concerning Africa today and in the past. We invite you to journey to a side of Africa you have never seen before, Africa: The Cradle of Civilization.

Straddling the equator, Africa stretches 8,050 km (4,970 mi) from its northernmost point, Cape Blanc (Ra’s al Abyad;) in Tunisia, to its southernmost tip, Cape Agulhas in South Africa. The maximum width of the continent, measured from the tip of Cape Vert in Senegal, in the west, to Cape Xaafuun (Ras Hafun) in Somalia, in the east, is about 7,560 km (4,700 mi). The highest point on the continent is the perpetually snowcapped Mount Kilimanjaro (5,892 m/19,330 ft) in Tanzania; the lowest is ‘Asal Lake (153 m/502 ft below sea level) in Djibouti. Africa has a regular coastline characterized by few indentations. Its total length is about 30,490 km (18,950 mi), which in proportion to its area is less than that of any other continent.

The African continent comprises a vast, rolling plateau; just 10 per cent of its land area lies at less than 500 ft above sea level, compared with 54 per cent of Europe and 25 per cent of North America. Only in the extreme south and north have great folded mountain ranges been built up. Elsewhere in the continent differences in elevation have been caused either by the faulting which produced the Rift Valley, or by the creation of the enormous river basins—notably those of the Congo, the Niger, the Nile, the Volta, and the Zambezi—which are a more prominent feature of the geography of Africa than that of any other continent. At its margins the plateau gives way, via steep escarpments, to the narrow coastal plain that surrounds the continent. All the great rivers of Africa, except the Niger-Benue and Zambezi-Shire systems, plunge in falls or rapids over the escarpments, making effective navigation inland from the sea impossible.

The history of Africa and its peoples are covered in five informative sections. Africa, is the introduction to the early history of humanity and the continent. The earliest civilizations are fully explored in Ancient Civilizations, while Rise to Glory covers those empires of a later era. Freedom Lost, explains the demise of some of the greatest civilizations, and other controversial issues such as slavery. To conclude, the history of the countries,cultures, and peoples of Africa are profiled in our final section.