What If Africa Was Just ONE Country?

Africa is a continent and as many of us know the continent is not a single country Africa is currently divided between 54 different independent countries but what would happen if all of these countries united today to form a united African state? what would Africa the country look like in the world and how powerful of a country would it actually be for starters Africa is huge and covers over 20% of all the land on Earth making it about 70% of the same size as all of Asia or about three times the size of all of Europe 1.2 billion people currently live in Africa or about 16% of the entire global population so interestingly a United African state would actually have a smaller population that both India and China but this would be the case for very long since Africa is currently experiencing the largest population boom in the world. the population of the continent has doubled since just 1990 and the continent is expected to surpass the populations of both India and China in the same year 2022 according to official UN estimates the population of Africa is expected to reach a massive 4.4 billion people by the end of the 21st century and comprise 39% of the global population. This enormous demographic shift in the future will ensure that the United African state has a dominant position in the world but it comes with several challenges. The population of Africa currently is the youngest in the world with a median age of just 19.7 years old compared to the global average of 30.4 years old literacy rates are also low with only sixty-four percent of the population being considered literate, but this varies between regions. In Libya for example the literacy rate is very high at 94.2 percent while in South Sudan it is very low at only 27%. HIV infection rates in the continent would also pose a severe challenge to the United Africa as 11% of the population in sub-saharan Africa is currently infected with the disease. In addition to these challenges United African states would also struggle with the extreme diversity on the continent. Africa is the most linguistically and ethnically diverse continents on the planet where somewhere between 1250 and 3000 languages are spoken because of this Africa is the most multilingual place in the world where many people speak at least two African languages and one additional European language. A situation similar to South Africa where there are 11 official languages would probably have to exist the most common languages are Arabic spoken by about 17% of the population mostly in North Africa, Swahili by about 10% located mostly in Southeast Africa, Berber by five percent, and Hausa by another five percent English, French, and Portuguese are very commonly with funk is understood by a large amount of people where English is understood by thirteen percent of the population, French close behind at 11.5 percent, and Portuguese by 3% all of these languages would probably have official status as well as several others. There are hundreds if not thousands of different ethnic groups that exist in Africa were used to seeing this map to represent the continent but a more accurate map maybe this one which shows how incredibly diverse the continent really is because of this it's almost impossible to give figures for exact ethnic populations in the continent but no one single group would even have over an eight percent share of the total population in terms of religion here is a religious map of the continent Christians and Muslims would be almost perfectly divided with each face claiming about forty-seven percent of the continent population traditional African religions would represent about ten percent of the population and this adds two more than one hundred percent because several people hold mix to believe about a final two percent of the population would be atheist or non-religious next we have a map of where the 10 largest cities on the continent are located the biggest city Lagos in Nigeria has a greater population than all of Romania combined but despite this it probably wouldn't be the capital city I predict that the capital city would probably be located here in Ethiopia at "Addis Ababa" this is because an organization called the African Union already exists similar in some ways to the european union in Europe the african union headquarters are already located in addis ababa in the united nations economic commission of Africa is also headquartered here addis ababa is often already called the political capital of Africa so it would make sense to agree that the city would serve as a capital city of the United continent as well cairo and Johannesburg would probably be the largest financial centres of the United Africa and serve very important roles as well Africa is incredibly rich in natural resources possessing ninety percent of the world's platinum fifty percent of its gold fifty percent of its diamonds and another thirty three percent of its uranium despite this however it remains the poorest continent on the planet the United African states would have a gdp of 2.39 trillion u.s. dollars making it only the seventh largest economy in the world it would barely feed out india's economy but remain behind those of France the United Kingdom and Germany the gdp per capita of Africa would only be 1992 dollars per years but that figure isn't totally accurate of how crushing the poverty on the continent actually is because of rampant government corruption according to the world bank poverty is defined as living under $1.25 per day based on that fifty percent of the population of sub-saharan Africa would be living in poverty with the average for person on the continent living on less than seventy cents per day this picture kind of highlights how severe this problem is especially when you compare it to other continents but Africa has a lot of room to grow the continent is projected to be the quickest growing region of the world in the future and her gdp is expected to finally overtakes france and the united kingdom by 2023 will still remain behind Germany then. all things considered though Africa certainly has the potential if it United to become a superpower by the close of the 21st century it would have a massive population to fuel a massive army and a potentially huge economy that could one day rival the rest of the world with one flag Africa the country would be a united continents optimistically looking forward to what the future would bring for her leave your comments below about how you think other countries would react to a United Africa or even how long the United Africa may last for this idea was voted on over at the reallifelore patreon which you can visit by clicking here you can vote for upcoming videos every month just like what you just watched and you can subscribe to my channel by clicking here if you were curious about the music that was in this video it was created by a band called the solid ocean who are very good friends of mine you can check out their channel by clicking here they're currently doing a fundraiser to raise money to record their music professionally so any dollar or like on their social media can go a very long way for them thank you so much for watching and see you again next Friday for another new video

Channel: RealLifeLore

Views: 5,324,635

Rating: 4.8426218 out of 5

Keywords: real life lore, real life lore maps, real life lore geography, real life maps, world map, world map is wrong, world map with countries, world map real size, map of the world, world geography, geography, geography (field of study), facts you didn’t know, africa, african, power, what if, country, countries, empire reunited, south africa, poverty, documentary, languages, diversity, one country, continent, people, african union, lagos, johannesburg, cairo, addis ababa, ethiopia, capital of

Id: qjx98OpPEec

Length: 6min 32sec (392 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Why is he using the median age of Africa and comparing it to the average age of the global population?

Median = Half of them are older than and the other half are younger than.

Average = Take all of the people's ages, add them up and divide by the number of people.

Might not think the difference is much, but here's an example.

We just need a bunch of people's ages.

0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 and 25.

The average, is 6.6 years old.
Median is 5.5 years old.

I threw in an age gap because those actually exist and it represents the current population boom (for a small scale example).

So now you're giving me the median and comparing it to the average of something completely different. Really screws the stats you're trying to impress me with.

Or am I crazy?

[u/omnilynx]

Then it would immediately splinter into numerous rebelling regions.

[u/SyntheticGod8]

But what if Batman killed the Joker?

[u/dudethatsmeta]

africa already has enough trouble being 54 countries

[u/timelyparadox]

Eh trying to predict what would be the state of Africa in 2100 is pointless. Dynamics of a region like this is as predictable as trying to predict color of eyes of an alien on Alpha Centauris by looking trough a telescope on earth.