The Bulge of Africa is composed of West Africa and the Maghreb. This distinctive landmass gives Africa its characteristic shape. West Africa is the region of western Africa that, most strictly speaking, includes the countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte dIvoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. ... (see also North Africa, Tamazgha, Arab Maghreb Union, Mashreq) The Maghreb (or Moghreb), meaning western in Arabic, is the region of the continent of Africa north of the Sahara desert and west of the Nile - specifically, the modern countries of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and to a lesser extent Libya and...
Compare:Horn of Africa The Horn of Africa Horn of Africa from space, May 1993 The Horn of Africa (also called the Somali peninsula) is a peninsula in East Africa that juts into the Arabian Sea and lies along the southern side of the Gulf of Aden. ...
Africa is thus composed of two segments at right angles, the northern running from east to west, the southern from north to south, the subordinate lines corresponding in the main to these two directions.
Africa is home to the oldest inhabited territory on earth, with the human race originating from this continent.
Africa is by far the world's poorest inhabited continent, and more saliently it is on average poorer than it was 25 years ago.