Algeria is the biggest country in Africa, with an area exceeding 2.38 million square kilometers as of 2020. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Sudan follow with a total area of around 2.34 million and 1.88 million square kilometers, respectively. On the other hand, Seychelles is the smallest country on the continent, with an area of only 460 square kilometers. Overall, Africa’s total area exceeds 30 million square kilometers, being the second largest continent in the world after Asia. Nigeria and Ethiopia lead the ranking of the most populated countries in Africa.

How have the African countries been formed?

The political geography of Africa has been influenced by its colonial history. Between the 19th and 20th Century, the European colonizers have divided up Africa. The partition of the territories was merely driven by strategic purposes: Borders between countries were artificially created in the absence of a geographic border. Following the decolonization, most countries gained their independence in the second half of the 1900s. The newest country in Africa is South Sudan, which became independent in 2011.

Africa's physical geography

Geographically, the African continent is mostly constituted by plains and tablelands. Inner plateaus are prevalent in the sub-Saharan region. In the center-north, the arid Sahara Desert extends for around nine million square kilometers, being the largest subtropical desert in the world. The continent also has some of the biggest water basins worldwide, namely the Nile, Congo, and Niger rivers. East Africa has, instead, the highest summit on the continent, the Kilimanjaro. Peaking at 5,895 meters, the mountain dominates Tanzania’s landscape and attracts thousands of climbers each year.

This horizontal bar chart displays land area (km²) by country using the aggregation sum in Africa. The data is about countries.

The average for 2021 based on 53 countries was 14.9 percent. The highest value was in Rwanda: 51.4 percent and the lowest value was in Djibouti: 0.1 percent. The indicator is available from 1961 to 2022. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

This dataset provides values for ARABLE LAND PERCENT OF LAND AREA WB DATA.HTML reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

Important Note: This item is in mature support as of April 2025 and will be retired in December 2026. New data is available for your use directly from the Authoritative Provider. Esri recommends accessing the data from the source provider as soon as possible as our service will not longer be available after December 2026. Rice (Oryza sativaandO. glaberrima) is one of the world"s most important staple food crops. Over half of the world"s population relies on rice. The people in some parts of Africa have been cultivating rice for over 3,500 years. Dataset Summary This layer provides access to a5 arc-minute(approximately 10 km at the equator)cell-sized raster of the 1999-2001 annual average area ofrice harvested in Africa. The data are in units of hectares/grid cell. TheSPAM 2000 v3.0.6 data used to create this layerwere produced by theInternational Food Policy Research Institutein 2012.This dataset was created by spatially disaggregating national and sub-national harvest datausing theSpatial Production Allocation Model. Link to source metadata For more information about this dataset and the importance of rice as a staple food see theHarvest Choice webpage. For data on other agricultural species in Africa see these layers:Cassava Groundnut (Peanut) Maize (Corn) Millet PotatoSorghum Sweet Potato and Yam Wheat Data for important agricultural crops in South America are availablehere. What can you do with this layer? This layer is suitable for both visualization and analysis. It can be used in ArcGIS Online in web maps and applications and can be used in ArcGIS Desktop. This layer hasquery,identify, andexportimage services available. This layer is restricted to a maximum area of 24,000 x 24,000 pixelswhich allows access to the full dataset. The source data for this layer are availablehere. This layer is part of a larger collection oflandscape layersthat you can use to perform a wide variety of mapping and analysis tasks. TheLiving Atlas of the Worldprovides an easy way to explore the landscape layers and many otherbeautiful and authoritative maps on hundreds of topics. Geonetis a good resource for learning more aboutlandscape layers and the Living Atlas of the World. To get started follow these links: Landscape Layers - a reintroductionLiving Atlas Discussion Group

The Global Burned Area 2000 initiative (GBA2000) was launched by the Global Vegetation Mapping Unit of the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, in partnership with several other institutions, to develop reliable and quantitative information on the global magnitude and spatial distribution of biomass burning. The objective of GBA2000 was to produce a map of the areas burned globally for the year 2000, using the medium resolution satellite imagery provided by the SPOT-VEGETATION (VGT) system and to derive statistics of area burned per type of vegetation cover. A subset of the global GBA20000 map was prepared for SAFARI 2000 to map the area burned in sub-Saharan Africa during 2000 on a monthly basis using VGT imagery at 1 km spatial resolution. Burned areas were identified with a classification tree, relying only on the near-infrared channel of VGT. The data used in this work are in the S1 daily synthesis format, i.e. the data are radiometrically calibrated, precisely geo-located, and corrected for atmospheric effects.The data are binary image files of area burned, BSQ format in geographic projection. There is one file for each month of 2000 and one file for all of the year 2000. There is also a comma-delimited ASCII text file that provides geographic coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the center of each pixel indicated as a burned area for all of 2000.

This statistic provides information on the size of lakes of the Great Lakes of Africa as of 2016. Lake Victoria covers an area of around ****** square kilometers and is the continent's largest lake. Lake Victoria is the second largest freshwater lake in the world based on surface area.

South Africa Small Area Boundaries provides a 2023 boundary with a total population count. The layer is designed to be used for mapping and analysis. It can be enriched with additional attributes using data enrichment tools in ArcGIS Online.The 2023 boundaries are provided by Michael Bauer Research GmbH. They are sourced from Statistics South Africa. These were published in October 2023. A new layer will be published in 12-18 months. Other administrative boundaries for this country are also available: Country Province District Municipality MainPlace SubPlace

This horizontal bar chart displays land area (km²) by continent using the aggregation sum in Middle Africa. The data is about countries.

Land area (sq. km) in South Africa was reported at 1213090 sq. Km in 2022, according to the World Bank collection of development indicators, compiled from officially recognized sources. South Africa - Land area (sq. km) - actual values, historical data, forecasts and projections were sourced from the World Bank on July of 2025.

Sudan had the largest agricultural land area in Africa in 2022, corresponding to around 112.7 million hectares. Following, South Africa and Nigeria had roughly 96.3 million and 69.8 million hectares of land under agricultural activities, respectively. In proportion to the total land area, Lesotho was the African country with the largest share of land devoted to agriculture.

This horizontal bar chart displays forest area (km²) by continent using the aggregation sum in Africa. The data is about countries.

This horizontal bar chart displays rural land area (km²) by country using the aggregation sum in Africa. The data is about countries.

The African Cities Population Database (ACPD) has been produced by the Birkbeck College of the University of London in 1990 at the request of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, Kenya. The database contains head counts for 479 cities in Africa which either have a population of over 20,000 or are capitals of their nation state. Listed are the geographical location of the cities and their population sizes. The material is primarily derived from a 1988 report of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and several issues of the United Nations Demographic Yearbook (1973-81). Severe problems were found with several countries such as Togo, Ghana and South Africa. For South Africa, the data were derived from the United Nations Demographic Yearbook 1987.

WCPD is an Arc/Info point coverage. It has no projection, as the cities are located on the basis of their latitude and longitude. Coordinates were assigned on the basis of gazetteers or African maps. Each record in the data base contains details of the city name, country name, latitude and longitude of the city, and its population at a defined time. The Arc/Info attribute table contains the following fields:

AREA Arc/Info item PERIMETER Arc/Info item ACPD# Arc/Info item ACPD-ID Arc/Info item ID-NUM Unique number for each city CITY City name COUNTRY Country name CITY-POP Population of city proper YEAR Latest available year of collection

ACPD comes as an Arc/Info EXPORT file originally called "ACPD.E00" and contains 67 Kb of data. The file has a record length of 80 and a block size of 8000 (blocking factor = 100). The file can be read from tape using Arc/Info's TAPEREAD command or any other generic copy utility. If distributed on a diskette it can be read using the ordinary DOS 'COPY' command. The file has to be converted to Arc/Info internal format using its IMPORT command.

References to the WCPD data set can be found in:

• SERLL News, Issue No. 1, January 1991, Birkbeck College, London, UK.
• D. Rhind. "Cartographically-related research at Birkbeck College 1987-91" in: The Cartographic Journal, Vol. 28, June 1991, pp. 63-66.

The source of the WCPD data set as held by GRID is Birkbeck College, University of London, Department of Geography, London, UK.

Flood maps of previous year provides valuable information as it indicates historical flood extents. For this project we can at least show flood extents from 2013 onwards and aim, if time permits, to extend the inundated layers back to 2000.for more information visit: http://floodobservatory.colorado.edu/WebMapServerDataLinks.html

South Africa: Land area in sq. km: The latest value from 2022 is 1213090 sq. km, unchanged from 1213090 sq. km in 2021. In comparison, the world average is 673036 sq. km, based on data from 191 countries. Historically, the average for South Africa from 1961 to 2022 is 1213090 sq. km. The minimum value, 1213090 sq. km, was reached in 1961 while the maximum of 1213090 sq. km was recorded in 1961.

This dataset comprises a map of groundwater recharge for Africa and a database of the 134 observations used to generate the map. The map shows long term average annual groundwater recharge in mm per annum relevant to the period 1970 to 2020. It is in the form of a GIS shapefile and is available as a layer package for ESRI and also as a georeferenced TIFF and BIL file for easy exchange with other software. The database contains 134 sites for which ground based observations for groundwater recharge are available. These 134 sites are from previously published material and have gone through a QA procedure and been accurately geolocated to be included in the dataset. For each record there is a latitude, longitude, recharge estimate, recharge range, time period for the measurement; scale for which the estimate is made, methods used, a confidence rating and reason for this rating, and the reference from where the data originate. In addition, the database includes for each observation information from other continental datasets including: climate data, landcover, aquifer type, soil group and the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI).

The average for 2021 based on 53 countries was 117869 sq. km. The highest value was in Democratic Republic of the Congo: 1250538.6 sq. km and the lowest value was in Djibouti: 58.7 sq. km. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2022. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

The average for 2021 based on 47 countries was 30.7 percent. The highest value was in Gabon: 91.3 percent and the lowest value was in Mauritania: 0.3 percent. The indicator is available from 1990 to 2022. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Important Note: This item is in mature support as of April 2025 and will be retired in December 2026. New data is available for your use directly from the Authoritative Provider. Esri recommends accessing the data from the source provider as soon as possible as our service will not longer be available after December 2026. Potato (Solanum tuberosum) a native of South America was firstdomesticatedbetween8000 and 5000 BC. In the middle of the 16th century it was introduced to Europe, Asia and Africa. Africa produces about 5% of the world"s potato crop. Dataset Summary This layer provides access to a5 arc-minute(approximately 10 km at the equator)cell-sized raster of the 1999-2001 annual average area ofpotato harvested in Africa. The data are in units of hectares/grid cell. TheSPAM 2000 v3.0.6 data used to create this layerwere produced by theInternational Food Policy Research Institutein 2012.This dataset was created by spatially disaggregating national and sub-national harvest datausing theSpatial Production Allocation Model. Link to source metadata For more information about this dataset and the importance of potato as a staple food see theHarvest Choice webpage. For data on other agricultural species in Africa see these layers:Cassava Groundnut (Peanut) Maize (Corn) Millet Rice Sorghum Sweet Potato and Yam Wheat Data for important agricultural crops in South America are availablehere. What can you do with this layer? This layer is suitable for both visualization and analysis. It can be used in ArcGIS Online in web maps and applications and can be used in ArcGIS Desktop. This layer hasquery,identify, andexportimage services available. This layer is restricted to a maximum area of 24,000 x 24,000 pixelswhich allows access to the full dataset. The source data for this layer are availablehere. This layer is part of a larger collection oflandscape layersthat you can use to perform a wide variety of mapping and analysis tasks. TheLiving Atlas of the Worldprovides an easy way to explore the landscape layers and many otherbeautiful and authoritative maps on hundreds of topics. Geonetis a good resource for learning more aboutlandscape layers and the Living Atlas of the World. To get started follow these links: Landscape Layers - a reintroductionLiving Atlas Discussion Group