အာဖရိက: တိုက် (ပထဝဳ)

တိုက်အာဖရိက
Africa

ဨရိယာ	30,370,000 km2 (11,730,000 sq mi)  (2nd)
လၟိဟ်မၞိဟ်	1,275,920,972 (2018; 2nd)
ဂတီု လၟိဟ်မၞိဟ်	ထာမ်ပလိက်:Pop density
GDP (nominal)	$2.45 trillion (2019; 5th)
GDP (PPP)	$7.16 trillion (2019; 5th)
Demonym	African
ဍုင်ဂမၠိုင်	54 (and 2 disputed)
ဒေသ မဗဒဗဒါဲဂမၠိုင်	External (2)  French Southern and Antarctic Lands ထာမ်ပလိက်:Country data Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Internal (2) ထာမ်ပလိက်:Country data Mayotte ထာမ်ပလိက်:Country data Réunion
အရေဝ်ဘာသာဂမၠိုင်	1250–3000 native languages
အခိင်	UTC-1 to UTC+4
ဍုင်ဇၞော်ဂမၠိုင်	Largest urban areas: Cairo Lagos Kinshasa Johannesburg Luanda Khartoum Dar es Salaam Abidjan Alexandria Nairobi Cape Town Kano Dakar Casablanca Addis Ababa

ပၞောဝ်ကဵု တိုက်ဂမၠိုင် ပ္ဍဲဂၠးတိဏအ် တိုက်အာဖရိကဂှ် ဗွဲသၟဟ် မၞိဟ်အာယုက်ဍောတ်အိုတ်၊ အာယုက်လဒေါဝ် (median age) ပ္ဍဲသၞာံ ၂၀၁၂ ဂှ် နွံ ၁၉.၇ သၞာံ မဒှ်အခိင် အာယုက်လဒေါဝ် အလုံလိုက်ဂှ် နွံ ၃၀.၄ ရ။ ဍုင်အာလ်ဂျေရဳယျာ ဂှ် နကဵု ဗွိုက်ဨရိယာမ္ဂး ဒှ်ဍုင် ဇၞော်အိုတ် ပ္ဍဲအာဖရိကတုဲ နကဵုလၟိဟ်မၞိဟ်မ္ဂး ဍုင် နိဂေရဳယျာဂှ် ဇၞော်အိုတ် (ဝါ) ဒှ်ဍုင် မၞိဟ်ဂၠိုင်အိုတ်ရ။ အာဖရိက ဗွဲတၟေင် ပ္ဍဲကဵု လဒေါဝ်ဗွဲဒိုဟ်ဗမံက်ဂှ် တၠပညာဗွဲမဂၠိုင် ဒုင်တဲ တုပ်စိုတ် မဒှ်ဒၞာဲ ကောန်မၞိဟ် ကေုာံ ကၞုဲဗဳဇမနုဿ ကတဵုဒှ်ကၠာအိုတ် နကဵု သက်သဳသာဓက မဂၠာဲဆဵုကေတ် ဇုတ်ဇုဇဗဴဇ ဗဳဇကောန်မၞိဟ် နူကဵုသၞာံ ၜိုတ် ၇ မဳလဳယာန်သၞာံ မတုဲကၠုင် သီုကဵု Sahelanthropus tchadensis, Australopithecus africanus, A. afarensis, Homo erectus, H. habilis ကေုာံ H. ergaster— ကၠာအိုတ် Homo sapiens (modern human) တအ်ဂှ် ဂွံဆဵုကေတ် ပ္ဍဲအဳတဳအဝ်ပဳယျာ စၟတ်သမ္တီလဝ် သၞာံ ၜိုတ် 200,000 သၞာံမတုဲကၠုင်တေအ်ရ။ Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones.

Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century, European countries colonised almost all of Africa; most present states in Africa emerged from a process of decolonisation in the 20th century. African nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa.

 

Afri was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of then-known northern Africa to the west of the Nile river, and in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean (Ancient Libya). This name seems to have originally referred to a native Libyan tribe, an ancestor of modern Berbers; see Terence for discussion. The name had usually been connected with the Phoenician word ʿafar meaning "dust", but a 1981 hypothesis has asserted that it stems from the Berber word ifri (plural ifran) meaning "cave", in reference to cave dwellers. The same word may be found in the name of the Banu Ifran from Algeria and Tripolitania, a Berber tribe originally from Yafran (also known as Ifrane) in northwestern Libya.

Under Roman rule, Carthage became the capital of the province it then named Africa Proconsularis, following its defeat of the Carthaginians in the Third Punic War in 146 BC, which also included the coastal part of modern Libya. The Latin suffix -ica can sometimes be used to denote a land (e.g., in Celtica from Celtae, as used by Julius Caesar). The later Muslim region of Ifriqiya, following its conquest of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire's Exarchatus Africae, also preserved a form of the name.

According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while "Asia" was used to refer to Anatolia and lands to the east. A definite line was drawn between the two continents by the geographer Ptolemy (85–165 AD), indicating Alexandria along the Prime Meridian and making the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of "Africa" expanded with their knowledge.

Other etymological hypotheses have been postulated for the ancient name "Africa":

• The 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (Ant. 1.15) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
• Isidore of Seville in his 7th-century Etymologiae XIV.5.2. suggests "Africa comes from the Latin aprica, meaning "sunny".
• Massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian af-rui-ka, meaning "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and the "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."
• Michèle Fruyt in 1976 proposed linking the Latin word with africus "south wind", which would be of Umbrian origin and mean originally "rainy wind".
• Robert R. Stieglitz of Rutgers University in 1984 proposed: "The name Africa, derived from the Latin *Aphir-ic-a, is cognate to Hebrew Ophir."
• Ibn Khallikan and some other historians claim that the name of Africa came from a Himyarite king called Afrikin ibn Kais ibn Saifi also called "Afrikus son of Abrahah" who subdued Ifriqiya.