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With a land area of around 30, 250,000 km2, about 20% of the earth’s land surface, Africa is the world’s second largest continent. It has a population of around one billion and covers 54 countries. It is connected with Asia by the Sinai Peninsula (split by the Suez Canal) and is bounded to the north by the Mediterranean Sea, to the west and south by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the east and south by the Indian Ocean. The largest island is Madagascar. Africa stretches from northern to southern temperate zones, encompassing a whole range of climatic areas and straddling the equator. Central eastern Africa is widely considered by paleoanthropologists as being the oldest inhabited region on Earth and thus the cradle of mankind. In the middle of the 20th century, anthropologists found evidence of human habitation possibly dating back 7 million years.
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