60 Secret facts you never knew about Africa

60 Secret facts you never knew about Africa

1.      Africa is larger than China, USA, India, Mexico and a big part of Europe combined.

2.      Europe and Africa are only separated by 14.3 km (8.9 mi) of ocean and there are talks of creating the longest bridge ever.

3.      Africa is home to the world's largest living land animal, the African elephant, and the tallest, the Giraffe.

4.      The San people of Southern Africa today use the same set of tools that were found in a Cave, dating to 44,000 years ago.

5.      41% of children in Africa aged 5 to 14 are involved in child labour.

6.      People in Africa and Asia have to walk an average of 3.7 miles (6 KM) to collect water.

7.      Between 1525 and 1866, 12.5 million Africans were kidnaped and sold into slavery in the Americas.

8.      Facebook has 100 million active users in Africa.

9.      96 elephants are killed every day in Africa.

10.  The deadliest animal in Africa is the hippopotamus.

11.  Married women among the Dogon people of West Africa would publicly pursue extramarital relationships with encouragement from their mothers.

12.  South Africa is called the "Rainbow Nation" because it has 11 official languages.

13.  There's a beer brewed from bananas in Africa.

14.  South Africans can legally attach flamethrowers to cars to repel carjackers.

15.  Graca Machel is the only woman to have been first lady of two separate countries: Mozambique and South Africa.

16.  In 1998, all 11 members of a soccer team in Africa were killed by lightning while leaving the other team unhurt.

17.  Nearly half the gold ever mined has come from one place: Witwatersrand, South Africa.

18.  Contrary to popular belief, there are no wild tigers in Africa. Only in Asia.

19.  Over a million Europeans were captured and sold as slaves to North Africa between 1530 and 1780.

20.  There are more people speaking French in Africa than in France.

21.  Soccer player Didier Drogba is credited with brokering a cease-fire in his home country of Ivory Coast that brought a five-year civil war to an end.

22.  Most of the world's fastest runners come from a single tribe in Kenya, Africa, called the "Kalenjins."

23.  Tanzania, Africa, has one of the world's highest rates of Albinism. Albinos are often hunted by witch doctors to make potions.

24.  Lesotho, in Africa, is the only country on Earth to lie completely above 1000 meters in elevation.

25.  Ugandan dictator Idi Amin's official title was "His Excellency, President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin Dada, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular."

26.  The country of Liberia, in Africa, was established by U.S. citizens as a colony for former African-American slaves and their free black descendants.

27.  In 2010, the country of Ghana, in Africa, banned the sale of second-hand underwear.

28.  1 in 4 adults in Swaziland, Africa, are infected with HIV.

29.  The first president of Zimbabwe, Africa, was President Banana.

30.  There are 16 countries in Africa with higher vaccination rates than the U.S.

31.  The women of the Mursi tribe in Africa wear plates on their lips that can be as large as 5 inches (12 cm) in diameter.

32.  38% of Christianity is projected to live in sub-Saharan Africa in 2050.

33.  The hand print of Nelson Mandela resembles the African continent.

34.  Spain has two major exclaves, Ceuta and Melilla, in mainland Africa.

35.  Hallucinatory 'voices' seem to be shaped by local culture. In the U.S., the voices are harsh and threatening while those heard by schizophrenics in Africa and India tend to be more benign and playful.

36.  The African nation of Mozambique has an AK-47 assault rifle on its flag.

37.  Almost a third of the world's languages are spoken only in Africa.

38.  Giraffe are already extinct in at least seven countries in Africa.

39.  In 1986, a volcanic lake in Cameroon, Africa burped a C02 gas cloud that killed 1,746 people in minutes.

40.  Africa is the only continent that is in all four hemispheres and the only to have land on the prime meridian and the equator.

41.  In 1972, a pocket of uranium in Africa was found to have undergone self-sustaining nuclear fission for hundreds of thousands of years, making it the only known naturally formed nuclear reactor.

42.  The world's oldest university in continuous operation is in Africa: the University of Karueein, founded in 859 AD in Morocco.

43.  Over one million Chinese have moved to Africa since 2001.

44.  37% of adults in Africa are illiterates.

45.  Millions of tonnes of the world's electronic waste ends up in Africa where it is dumped in landfills.

46.  Africa had up to 10,000 different states and autonomous groups with distinct languages and customs before it was colonized.

47.  Deforestation rates in Africa are twice the average. More than 4 million hectares (9.9m acres) of forest are lost every year.

48.  Almost all of the 30 countries with the highest birth rates are in Africa.

49.  Giant rats have been trained to sniff out land mines in Africa. In Mozambique, they have already been instrumental in the removal of 13,000 mines, helping reclaim 1,100 hectares of land.

50.  AIDS is now the leading cause of death among adolescents in Africa.

51.  Africa is both the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent.

52.  Africa is being split into two due to the birth of a new ocean. In 2005, an 8 m (26 ft) wide and 60 km (37 miles) long stretch of the earth opened up in just 10 days.

53.  King Leopold II of Belgium was responsible for an estimated 10 million deaths in the Congo.

54.  A piece of an ancient continent, running from India to Madagascar, was found in 2017 under the island of Mauritius off the East Coast of Africa.

55.  The Republic of Benin was independent for less than a day.

56.  In 2009, Rwanda had the only government on earth in which the majority of parliamentarians are women.

57.  3 in 4 girls in Niger marry before their 18th birthday, the highest rate of child marriage in the world.

58.  When the coronation ceremony of King Oyo, of the Toro Kingdom in Uganda, began, the 3-year-old slid off the throne, ran away, and hid in his mother's lap.

59.  More Africans have access to cell phone service than piped water and electricity.

60.  Parts of Africa no longer want your clothing donations. The vast amount of these imports have devastated local clothing industries and led the region to rely far too heavily on the West.