Fun fact#397
Africa spans two hemispheres twice
Africa is the only continent crossed by both the equator and the two tropics, so it touches all four hemispheres.
506 fun facts, part 3
100 fun facts on this page. It covers Africa, Sahara, Nile, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and 55 other places. Page 3 of 6.
Page 3 of 6
100 fun facts on this page. It covers Africa, Sahara, Nile, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and 55 other places. Page 3 of 6.
Countries on this page
Every country page collects its entries in one place, with a fact sheet and the guides for going there.
Entries on this page
Fun fact#399
The Sahara is bigger than Australia
At roughly 9.2 million square kilometres, the Sahara is about the size of the United States and larger than Australia.
Fun fact#401
Sahara dust fertilises the Amazon
Winds carry millions of tonnes of phosphorus-rich Saharan dust across the Atlantic each year, feeding Amazon soils.
Fun fact#402
The Nile has two sources
The White Nile rises near Lake Victoria and the Blue Nile at Lake Tana in Ethiopia. They meet in Khartoum.
Fun fact#405
Egypt's pyramids predate mammoth extinction
The Great Pyramid was already old when the last woolly mammoths died out on Wrangel Island around 1650 BC.
Fun fact#406
Cleopatra lived closer to us than to the pyramids
Cleopatra's lifetime is nearer to the invention of the iPhone than to the building of the Great Pyramid.
Fun fact#409
Egypt moved a temple
Abu Simbel was cut into more than 1,000 blocks and reassembled 65 metres higher to escape the rising Aswan reservoir.
Fun fact#411
Alexandria's library burned more than once
The famous library declined over centuries through several fires, funding cuts and political upheaval rather than one dramatic blaze.
Fun fact#412
Sudan has more pyramids than Egypt
The Nubian kingdom of Kush built over 200 steep-sided pyramids at Meroe, roughly twice Egypt's total.
Fun fact#415
Ethiopia keeps its own calendar
Ethiopia runs a 13-month calendar about seven years behind the Gregorian one, and the day starts at sunrise.
Fun fact#416
Ethiopia carved churches downward
The eleven churches of Lalibela were cut down into solid rock in the 12th century, roofs level with the ground.
Fun fact#419
Coffee likely began in Ethiopia
Wild Coffea arabica still grows in Ethiopian forests, and the country's coffee ceremony can take well over an hour.
Fun fact#420
The Danakil is one of the hottest places
Average yearly temperatures above 34 degrees make the Danakil Depression among the hottest inhabited regions on Earth.
Fun fact#422
Eritrea's capital is modernist
Asmara holds one of the world's best-preserved collections of 1930s modernist architecture, including a petrol station shaped like a plane.
Fun fact#425
Djibouti has a lake saltier than the sea
Lake Assal is about ten times saltier than the ocean and sits 155 metres below sea level.
Fun fact#426
Somalia has the longest mainland coast in Africa
Somalia's coastline runs roughly 3,300 kilometres along the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden.
Fun fact#429
Kenya's rift is splitting the continent
The East African Rift is slowly tearing Africa apart, and in millions of years a new ocean may fill the gap.
Fun fact#430
The wildebeest migration never stops
Around two million wildebeest, zebra and gazelle circle continuously between Tanzania and Kenya following the rains.
Fun fact#432
Kilimanjaro has three volcanic cones
Africa's highest mountain is made of Kibo, Mawenzi and Shira. Kibo is dormant rather than extinct.
Fun fact#434
Zanzibar fought the shortest war
The Anglo-Zanzibar War of 1896 lasted under 45 minutes, the shortest recorded war in history.
Fun fact#436
Ngorongoro is a collapsed volcano
The crater is a caldera 20 kilometres wide, home to around 25,000 large animals that rarely need to leave.
Fun fact#438
Uganda has half the world's mountain gorillas
Bwindi Impenetrable Forest shelters roughly half the remaining mountain gorillas, whose numbers have slowly risen.
Fun fact#440
Lake Victoria touches three countries
Africa's largest lake is shared by Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, and supports tens of millions of people.
Fun fact#442
Rwanda banned plastic bags early
Rwanda outlawed non-biodegradable plastic bags in 2008, and bags are confiscated from arriving travellers.
Fun fact#444
Rwanda has a monthly cleaning day
On Umuganda, the last Saturday of each month, communities across Rwanda close shops and work together on public projects.
Fun fact#446
Burundi's drummers are UNESCO listed
The royal drummers of Burundi perform with drums carved from single tree trunks, a tradition recognised as intangible heritage.
Fun fact#448
The Congo is the deepest river
The Congo reaches depths over 220 metres, deep enough that fish in the same river have evolved in isolation.
Fun fact#450
Congo rainforest is the second largest
The Congo Basin holds the world's second largest tropical rainforest after the Amazon and absorbs enormous amounts of carbon.
Fun fact#452
Gabon is almost entirely forest
Close to 88 percent of Gabon is forested, and the country set aside 13 national parks in a single decree in 2002.
Fun fact#454
Sao Tome sits on the equator
Africa's second smallest country is two volcanic islands where cocoa once made it the world's leading exporter.
Fun fact#456
Cameroon is called Africa in miniature
Cameroon packs desert, mountains, rainforest and coast into one country, which is why it earned the nickname.
Fun fact#458
Lake Nyos released a deadly cloud
In 1986 a sudden release of carbon dioxide from the lake suffocated nearby villages. Degassing pipes now vent it safely.
Fun fact#460
Nigeria is Africa's most populous country
More than one in six Africans is Nigerian, and Lagos is one of the fastest-growing cities on Earth.
Fun fact#462
Nollywood outproduces Hollywood
Nigeria's film industry releases thousands of titles a year, second only to India in volume.
Fun fact#464
Ghana named itself after an empire
Modern Ghana took its name from the medieval Ghana Empire, though that state was located further northwest.
Fun fact#466
Ghana keeps fantasy coffins
Ga carpenters build coffins shaped like fish, aeroplanes or cocoa pods to reflect the life of the person inside.
Fun fact#468
Ivory Coast has the largest church
The Basilica of Our Lady of Peace is the largest church building in the world by floor area.
Fun fact#470
Senegal has a pink lake
Salt-loving algae turn Lake Retba pink in strong sun, and collectors coat their skin in shea butter before wading in.
Fun fact#472
Gorée Island remembers the slave trade
The House of Slaves on Goree stands as a memorial to the transatlantic trade and is visited by heads of state.
Fun fact#474
Mali built a mud mosque
The Great Mosque of Djenne is the largest mud-brick building on Earth and is replastered each year by the whole town.
Fun fact#476
Timbuktu held vast libraries
Timbuktu's private libraries preserved hundreds of thousands of manuscripts on astronomy, law and medicine.
Fun fact#478
Burkina Faso means land of upright people
The name was chosen in 1984, combining words from two local languages to replace the colonial name Upper Volta.
Fun fact#480
Niger has dinosaur graveyards
The Tenere desert has yielded some of Africa's richest dinosaur fossil beds, including giant sauropods.
Fun fact#482
Chad's lake keeps shrinking
Lake Chad has lost most of its surface area since the 1960s due to drought and irrigation, affecting millions.
Fun fact#484
Libya has an underground river project
The Great Man-Made River pumps fossil groundwater from beneath the Sahara through thousands of kilometres of pipe.
Fun fact#486
Tunisia hosted a film set that still stands
Underground Berber homes in Matmata were used as film locations and are still lived in and rented to travellers.
Fun fact#487
Carthage rivalled Rome
Carthage was one of the Mediterranean's great powers until Rome destroyed it in 146 BC, then rebuilt it as a Roman city.
Fun fact#490
Algeria is Africa's largest country
Algeria covers 2.38 million square kilometres, most of it Sahara, and became the continent's biggest country after Sudan split.
Fun fact#491
The Sahara holds prehistoric art
Rock paintings in Tassili show swimmers, cattle and hippos, proof the desert was green within the last 10,000 years.
Fun fact#494
Morocco has blue and white cities
Chefchaouen's lanes are painted in dozens of blue shades, a tradition variously credited to Jewish refugees and to repelling insects.
Fun fact#496
Fes has a car-free medina
Fes el Bali is one of the largest car-free urban areas in the world, where goods still move by donkey.
Fun fact#497
Morocco built a giant solar plant
The Noor complex uses mirrors to concentrate sunlight and can store heat in molten salt to generate power after sunset.
Fun fact#500
Goats climb argan trees
In southwest Morocco goats climb argan trees for the fruit, a sight that has become a roadside attraction.
Fun fact#501
Mauritania runs an iron ore train
One of the longest trains in the world hauls iron ore over 700 kilometres across the Sahara, and travellers ride it free on the ore cars.
Fun fact#504
Cape Verde is entirely volcanic
All ten Cape Verdean islands are volcanic, and Fogo's cone still has villages farming on its crater floor.
Fun fact#505
Guinea-Bissau has a maze of islands
The Bijagos archipelago has around 88 islands, most uninhabited, and is a UNESCO biosphere reserve.
Fun fact#507
Liberia was founded by freed people
Liberia was established in the 1820s as a settlement for freed African Americans and declared independence in 1847.
Fun fact#510
Sierra Leone means lion mountains
Portuguese sailors named the peninsula for mountains whose thunderstorms sounded like roaring lions.
Fun fact#511
Togo is narrow and long
Togo is only about 110 kilometres wide but stretches 550 kilometres inland from the Gulf of Guinea.
Fun fact#514
Benin has a lake village on stilts
Around 20,000 people live in Ganvie entirely on stilts above Lake Nokoue, moving by pirogue.
Fun fact#515
Angola has waterfalls few visit
The Kalandula Falls drop about 105 metres across a 400-metre curtain and see a fraction of Victoria Falls' visitors.
Fun fact#517
Namibia protects its whole coast
Namibia was the first African country to write environmental protection into its constitution, and its entire coastline is now protected.
Fun fact#519
Sossusvlei's dunes are among the tallest
Dunes here reach over 300 metres, coloured deep red by iron oxide that has been oxidising for millions of years.
Fun fact#521
Deadvlei's trees never rotted
The camelthorn trees died around 900 years ago but the air is too dry for decomposition, so they still stand black against white clay.
Fun fact#523
Namibia has the world's largest meteorite
The Hoba meteorite weighs about 60 tonnes and has never been moved from where it landed roughly 80,000 years ago.
Fun fact#525
Botswana's delta flows inland
The Okavango River never reaches the sea. It spreads into the Kalahari and evaporates, creating a vast seasonal wetland.
Fun fact#527
Botswana has the most elephants
Around a third of Africa's savanna elephants live in Botswana, concentrated in the Chobe region.
Fun fact#529
Makgadikgadi was once a lake
These salt pans are the bed of a superlake that dried up thousands of years ago, and they are visible from orbit.
Fun fact#531
Zambia and Zimbabwe share a waterfall
Victoria Falls is neither the tallest nor the widest, but its combined height and width create the largest sheet of falling water.
Fun fact#533
You can swim at the edge of Victoria Falls
When the river is low, a natural rock lip forms Devil's Pool, where swimmers sit metres from a 100-metre drop.
Fun fact#535
Zimbabwe has stone ruins without mortar
Great Zimbabwe's walls were built from fitted granite blocks with no mortar and gave the modern country its name.
Fun fact#537
Malawi's lake has more fish species than any other
Lake Malawi contains more fish species than any other lake, with hundreds of cichlids found nowhere else.
Fun fact#539
Mozambique's flag has a rifle
Mozambique is the only country whose flag features a modern assault rifle, alongside a hoe and a book.
Fun fact#541
Madagascar split off long ago
Madagascar separated from other landmasses around 88 million years ago, so roughly 90 percent of its wildlife is unique.
Fun fact#543
Baobabs store water in their trunks
A large baobab can hold well over 100,000 litres of water in its trunk to survive the dry season.
Fun fact#545
Mauritius lost the dodo in a century
The dodo went from first European sighting to extinction in under 100 years, mostly through introduced rats and pigs.
Fun fact#547
Seychelles has the biggest seed
The coco de mer palm produces the largest and heaviest seed in the plant kingdom, weighing up to 25 kilograms.
Fun fact#549
Reunion has an always-active volcano
Piton de la Fournaise erupts every year or two, and roads are built to be rebuilt after lava crosses them.
Fun fact#551
Comoros exports ylang-ylang
The Comoros supply a large share of the world's ylang-ylang essence, a key note in classic French perfumes.
Fun fact#553
South Africa has three capitals
Pretoria is administrative, Cape Town legislative and Bloemfontein judicial, a compromise dating from 1910.
Fun fact#555
Table Mountain has its own cloth
A flat cloud called the tablecloth pours over Table Mountain when southeast winds push moist air up the slope.
Fun fact#557
Cape Town's mountain is a plant hotspot
Table Mountain alone hosts more plant species than the entire United Kingdom, part of the tiny Cape Floral Kingdom.
Fun fact#559
The Cradle of Humankind holds early fossils
Caves northwest of Johannesburg have produced some of the richest early hominin fossil finds anywhere.
Fun fact#561
Lesotho is entirely above 1,000 metres
Lesotho is the only country whose entire territory sits above 1,000 metres, and it gets snow most winters.
Fun fact#563
Eswatini changed its name
Swaziland officially became Eswatini in 2018, meaning land of the Swazis, partly to avoid confusion with Switzerland.
Fun fact#565
The Kalahari is a thirst land, not a desert
The Kalahari receives enough rain to support grass and trees, so technically it is a semi-arid savanna.
Fun fact#567
Africa has over 2,000 languages
Estimates put the number of living African languages between 1,500 and 2,000, roughly a third of the world's total.
Fun fact#569
Swahili is a trade language
Swahili grew along the Indian Ocean coast blending Bantu grammar with Arabic vocabulary from centuries of trade.
Fun fact#571
Africa is bigger than it looks on maps
The Mercator projection shrinks Africa. In reality the United States, China, India and most of Europe would fit inside it.
Fun fact#572
The Rift Valley lakes are alkaline
Some rift lakes are so alkaline they can burn skin, yet flamingos thrive on the algae that grow there.
Fun fact#575
Timbuktu was a university town
Sankore in Timbuktu was a centre of learning in the 15th century with thousands of students in residence.
Fun fact#576
Saharan salt still moves by camel
Salt slabs are still cut in the desert and carried by camel caravan, though trucks now do most of the work.
Fun fact#579
African wild dogs hunt by vote
Researchers found wild dog packs decide when to hunt by sneezing, with more sneezes meaning stronger consensus.
Fun fact#581
Meerkats take turns on watch
Meerkat sentries rotate duty and give different alarm calls for aerial and ground predators.
Fun fact#582
Weaver birds build apartment blocks
Sociable weavers build communal nests weighing a tonne that house over a hundred birds for generations.
Fun fact#585
The Atlas Mountains hold snow
North Africa has ski resorts. Oukaimeden near Marrakech sits above 2,600 metres and opens most winters.
Fun fact#586
Africa's largest market is in Lagos
Balogun and its surrounding markets sprawl for blocks, and navigating them without a guide is close to impossible.
Fun fact#589
Ostriches cannot fly but can outrun horses
Ostriches sprint at 70 km/h and their kick can be lethal, which is why farm handlers keep to their side.
Fun fact#590
Hippos kill more people than lions
Hippos are responsible for far more human deaths in Africa than big cats, especially near riverside paths at night.
Fun fact#592
Canada has the longest coastline
Canada's coastline runs over 200,000 kilometres, longer than the next ten countries combined thanks to its Arctic islands.
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