Inspired by my girlfriend and my brother, who are both somewhat huge geography buffs, I’ve decided to challenge myself to learn all the countries in the world. I would say I already have decent geography knowledge, but compared to them, I’m still in noob territory. The end goal is to be able to complete the “Countries of the World”-quiz on Jetpunk.
I started with Africa because it’s such a huge continent that I know embarrassingly little about.
Whenever I have trouble remembering a country, I usually look it up on Wikipedia and try to find one interesting fact about that state, that helps me form a better mental connection.
So here is my list of interesting facts about some countries in Africa:
Over 90 percent of the Algerian population lives along the Mediterranean coast (that is only 12% of the total land mass).
Botswana has been very successful economically recently and has been dubbed the “Switzerland of Africa”. It’s also the oldest democracy in Africa.
Burkina Faso has Ouagadougou as their capital (my grandmother taught me this at a very young age, and it stuck with me ever since because it sounds so iconic).
Djibouti has many foreign military bases because of its strategic location on one of the world’s busiest shipping routes.
Equatorial Guinea is the only country on the continent that has Spanish as their official language.
Eswatini used to be called Swaziland until 2018. One of the reasons was because foreigners apparently confused it with Switzerland. The official spelling is eSwatini.
Ethiopia is the most populous landlocked country on earth.
The Gambia is the smallest country in continental Africa and named after the Gambia River. It wanted to merge with Senegal at one point (Senegambia Confederation).
I found this interesting video, that explains, why there are so many Guineas: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea and also Papua New Guinea in Oceania.
Liberia was the first African republic to proclaim its independence.
Sierra Leone’s capital is Freetown, which is essentially the same name as Gabon’s capital Libreville, just in English instead of French.
Within Somalia, there is the unrecognized country Somaliland.
South Sudan is the youngest country in the world (2011) and plans to have a new capital, that doesn’t even exist yet (Ramciel).
Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt.
Tanzania is the result of the union between the former states Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
Uganda is where the Nile originates.
Do you have any more interesting facts about African countries that you want to share with me? Please send them my way!
See you in the next note about the next continent I’m gonna tackle: Asia.
All the posts in this series:
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- DJM (freelance for hire) commented on this on
@dominik Been to Cameroon too. A big complex country. There's a joke : "If you think you've understood Cameroon, this means you haven't..."
Bi Kidude - in memory of the Taarab Queen - African Music Forum
Been to Tanzania, mainly Zanzibar, a beautiful place, where I had the chance to meet Bi Kidude the "Queen of Taraab", who said she was 100+ yo and still singing and playing drums https://amf.didiermary.fr/bi-kidude-rip/ - DJM (freelance for hire) commented on this on
@dominik Benin, where I've been living since 2016 (and visiting even longer) is where the Vodun cult was born. There's a special holiday on January 10th for all traditional religions.
https://amf.didiermary.fr/benin-vodun-cult-traditions/Benin was once known as "le Quartier Latin de l'Afrique".
Vodun cult & traditions - African Music Forum - Dominik commented on this on
@cybeardjm Ooh, thank you!
- Dominik commented on this on
@cybeardjm Like the saying about Cameroon – thanks for sharing!
It's unfortunate that here in Europe, we generally only learn these things when we actively get invested. I have not really learned much about African countries in school, just about Africa as a whole continent but always in the context of European history.
- DJM (freelance for hire) commented on this on
@dominik Well, it's a very large continent, with many different cultures, languages, beliefs... difficult to embrace in a school program, IMHO.
DJM (freelance for hire) (@[email protected])
But, the way the "West" views Africa is extremely political since at least XIXe century: the lack of knowledge makes humanization of the various people more difficult, which is one of the goals of (neo)colonialism: the prism of famine, wars, illetrism, etc. is useful to let the status quo last as long as commodities stolen.
=> https://masto.ai/@cybeardjm/112763503178444652 - Dominik commented on this on
@cybeardjm Would you say that e.g. people in Benin have good knowledge about the culture/history of other African countries? Or is it all very regional?
- DJM (freelance for hire) commented on this on
@dominik Many (most?) people don't really travel across the continent.
But, historically (colonialism), most African countries are "composite", their borders being created without respecting the "tribes" that existed before, based mainly on their traditional occupations (fishing, agriculture, herding...) and/or tribes. Meaning nowadays, many countries are made of multiple religions, languages, etc.
There are 54 countries on the continent and about 1500 different languares (with common roots) - Dominik commented on this on
@cybeardjm that‘s really interesting to know! And the number of languages is just unbelievable, fascinating stuff
Thanks for telling me :) - DJM (freelance for hire) commented on this on
@dominik 10 years ago, students did a campaign to fight stereotypes:
https://www.didiermary.fr/real-africa-campaign-fighting-african-stereotypes-photos/For me the most important is "Africa existed before colonialism"
The Real Africa campaign - Didier J. MARY (blog) - Dominik commented on this on
@cybeardjm will check it out, thanks
- Marcel commented on this on
@dominik I love this.
- Dominik commented on this on
@marcel Thanks, Marcel! Wish me luck for when I have to memorize all these tiny island states in Oceania and the Carribbean…
- Social Sciences Feed reposted this on