Curated playlist

Member states of the African Union

TanzaniaTanzania's name was invented in a newspaper contest. Mohammed Iqbal Dar won by blending Tanganyika and Zanzibar.
AlgeriaIn 1827, Algiers's ruler struck the French consul with a fly whisk, and France later invaded.
DjiboutiDjibouti, a tiny African country, has the United States, France, Japan and China all paying to keep soldiers there.
MauritiusMauritius had no people at all until sailors, thought to be Arab, reached it around 975.
Burkina FasoIn 1984, Captain Thomas Sankara renamed Upper Volta as Burkina Faso. The new name blends words from two local languages.
NigerNiger is a landlocked country in West Africa, and more than 80 percent of its land lies in the Sahara. Yet it takes its name from a river, and nobody can say for certain where the river's name came from. The geographer Ptolemy described a…
TunisiaA street vendor's self-immolation in December 2010 set off Tunisia's revolution.
SenegalSenegal is named for a river, not the ocean it faces. Where the river's name came from is still debated.
BotswanaBotswana is a landlocked country in Southern Africa, and about 70% of its territory lies inside the Kalahari Desert. The terrain is flat. South Africa borders it to the south and southeast, Namibia to the west and north, Zambia to the…
MauritaniaNear the town of Ouadane, on the Adrar Plateau in Mauritania, the desert floor is marked by a set of concentric rings. From above, the formation looks like a giant eye. It is called the Richat Structure, and it has been dubbed the Eye of…
KenyaKenya took its name from a mountain, not from its people.
EritreaEritrea takes its name from a Greek word for red. Ancient Greek speakers called the Red Sea the Erythraean Sea, and the country at its southern end borrowed that old label. Italian colonial officials made the name official in 1890, when…
LibyaLibya, now a country in North Africa, first appears in the record as a name carved into Egyptian stone. The Great Karnak Inscription describes a war fought in year 5 of the pharaoh Merneptah, in 1208 BC. King Meryey led a confederacy…
NamibiaThe name Namibia comes from a desert, and the word at its root means vast place. The Namib is the oldest desert in the world, and its name has Khoi origins. A man named Mburumba Kerina chose it for the country, after first proposing the…
EswatiniOn the 19th of April 2018, King Mswati III announced that the Kingdom of Swaziland would from then on be called the Kingdom of Eswatini. The date was chosen to mark fifty years since independence. In the Swazi language the new name means…
Sierra LeoneSierra Leone is named for a line of mountains that Portuguese sailors saw from the water in 1462. The explorer Pedro de Sintra mapped that stretch of the West African coast and called the heights Serra Leoa, which means lioness mountains.…
Democratic Republic of the CongoThe Democratic Republic of the Congo holds 80 percent of the world's cobalt reserves.
SudanNubians in Sudan beat back Arab invaders in 641 and again in 652. They were one of the few peoples to defeat the Arabs.
MoroccoIn Turkish, Morocco is called Fas, after the medieval city of Fes. In Persian, Urdu and Punjabi it is Murrakush, a name that points to Marrakesh. In Arabic, the country is al-Maghrib, which means the west. Each name looks toward a…
GhanaGhana, a country of more than 35 million people on the Gulf of Guinea, made history on the 6th of March 1957. That day it became the first colony in Sub-Saharan Africa to achieve sovereignty. Its capital and largest city is Accra, and it…
MadagascarMadagascar appears on a map drawn by Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154 under the name Gesira Malai, Arabic for Malay island. That is a strange label for a place off the southeastern coast of Africa. Today the Republic of Madagascar is the world's…
LesothoLesotho is a country whose lowest ground sits 1400 metres above sea level, the highest lowest point of any nation on Earth. It is also the only independent state anywhere that lies entirely above 1000 metres. About 2.3 million people live…
EthiopiaEthiopia stayed independent while most of Africa fell to European rule. Its army beat Italy at Adwa in 1896.
The GambiaThe Gambia is the smallest country on the African mainland, and in 1964 its prime minister wrote a letter to protect a single word. Dawda Jawara asked a British committee on geographical names to let the country keep the definite article…
MozambiqueIn 1995, Mozambique joined the Commonwealth of Nations. At the time, it was the only member that had never been part of the British Empire. Its traffic even keeps to the left, like that of its Commonwealth neighbours, although no British…
RwandaThe name Rwanda comes from Ku-aanda, a word meaning "expansion" or "spreading out from the centre". Today the country feels anything but spread out. About 14 million people share 26338 square kilometres, which makes Rwanda the 21st most…
CameroonIn 1472, Portuguese sailors reached the coast of Central Africa and found the Wouri River teeming with shrimp. They called it Rio dos Camarões, the river of shrimps, after the Cameroon ghost shrimp, Lepidophthalmus turneranus. English bent…
Ivory CoastIvory Coast supplies more cocoa beans than any other country. It has also endured two civil wars and a coup.
ChadChad is a landlocked country in Central Africa, and its capital, N'Djamena, lies 1060 km from the nearest seaport, Douala in Cameroon. That distance, together with a largely desert climate, gave the country a bleak nickname: the "Dead…
Cape VerdeCape Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is a nation of volcanic islands scattered across the central Atlantic off the coast of West Africa. Its 2021 census counted 491,233 people. Nearly one million Cape Verdeans live abroad,…
South AfricaSouth Africa built six nuclear devices, then became the first nation to voluntarily dismantle its arsenal.
NigeriaNigeria's name was coined by a British journalist in 1897. Flora Shaw borrowed it from the Niger River.
EgyptAbout 99% of Egyptians live on roughly 5.5% of the country's land. The rest is desert and scattered oases.
UgandaUganda has the lowest median age of any country in the world, just 15 years. Its population grew from 9.5 million people in 1969 to 34.9 million in 2014. By the latest census figures, 49.5 per cent of Ugandans were under the age of 18. The…
SeychellesSeychelles, a country of tropical islands scattered across the Indian Ocean, was almost seized by mercenaries in 1981. A team of 43 South African mercenaries, led by Mike Hoare, flew in disguised as holidaying rugby players. Their goal was…