Africa is too often reduced to a single story, yet its reality spans extraordinary biodiversity, deep history, innovation, tragedy, and resilience. 25 Little-Known Facts About Africa highlights surprising moments from across the continent, from conservation challenges and scientific discoveries to cultural traditions and political decisions that shaped millions of lives. Together, these facts reveal a far more complex and nuanced picture than stereotypes suggest.
Africa’s Ivory Crisis by Numbers
1. Around 33,000 elephants are killed for their ivory each year across Africa, which is almost 100 per day or about one every 15 minutes.
2. The government of Free State in South Africa paid $4 million for their website, even though it uses a $40 WordPress theme.
3. Under 4% of slaves taken from Africa to the New World were brought to the United States.
4. James Watson, one of the scientists who discovered DNA’s helical structure, believes stupidity is a disease and that ‘stupid’ people should be ‘cured’, claims people from Africa are inherently less intelligent, and says he would never hire a fat person.
5. Africa as a whole has a smaller gross domestic product than France.
6. In 1888 James Jameson, the heir to the Jameson whiskey fortune, traveled through Africa where he purchased an 11-year-old girl and handed her to Congolese cannibals so he could sketch how they ate her.
7. Out of the 34 countries with the world’s highest birth rates, 32 are located in Africa.
8. South Africa is the sole nation that developed its own nuclear weapons and later chose to dismantle them voluntarily.
9. In 2007 two groups of armed attackers forced entry into a nuclear facility that stored weapons-grade uranium from South Africa’s decommissioned arsenal; the coordinated assault was thwarted by an off-duty firefighter, a plant employee, and their dog.
10. Elephants killed 605 people in Assam between 1994 and 2006. In South Africa three elephants killed 63 rhinos. Biologists believe the rise in elephant aggression results from species-wide trauma caused by poaching and habitat loss, and from direct trauma in individuals that witnessed family members being murdered.
Veiling Tradition Turns Gendered
11. In the Tuareg tribe of North Africa, Islamic men are required to wear veils and cover their faces, rather than the women.
12. The western black rhinoceros has been officially declared extinct.
13. The longest Test cricket match, played between England and South Africa, lasted 12 days and was eventually abandoned; otherwise England would have missed their boat home.
14. Rodriguez, a Detroit musician living in poverty, did not know that in South Africa he was more popular than the Beatles.
15. While President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki banned hospitals from using antiretroviral drugs because he did not believe HIV caused AIDS; over 330,000 people died of AIDS during his presidency.
16. R&B singer Akon founded a solar energy company in Africa. The company employs 5,000 people and recently closed a $1 billion credit line.
17. The Amazon and Congo were likely a single river before Africa and S. America drifted apart.
18. In Africa, beehive fences (spaced along the edge of their property) help farmers ward off elephants without harming them, while also producing honey that they can sell in addition to other crops.
19. An African frog, Trichobatrachus robustus, breaks a bone in its toe pad, pushes the sharp broken bone through its skin, and tries to shank you with it if it feels threatened.
20. About 10,000 years ago, lions were the second most widespread land mammal after humans, existing across Africa, Eurasia, and America.
Mine Detecting Rodent Heroes
21. In Africa, giant rats have been trained to detect land mines; in Mozambique they have helped clear 13,000 mines and enabled the recovery of 1,100 hectares of land.
22. Leka II, Crown Prince of Albania, was born in South Africa after the South African government temporarily declared the hospital’s maternity ward to be Albanian territory so he would be born on Albanian soil.
23. Athletes from Kenya’s Kalenjin community have won 70% of elite distance running races, despite making up only about 0.06% of the world’s population.
24. Members of the Herero tribe still wear Victorian-style clothing, a fashion they adopted from former German occupiers and have made their own.
25. A Xhosa teenager named Nongqawuse persuaded her entire tribe to kill all their cattle by claiming this would bring about a catastrophe that would destroy English colonizers; tens of thousands died in the resulting famine, while the English were unharmed.
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