Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
Definition: Afro |
AfroNoun1. A rounded thickly curled hairdo. Source: WordNet 1.7.1 Copyright © 2001 by Princeton University. All rights reserved. |
(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)
Africa is the world's third-largest continent. At 11,608,000 sq. miles (30,065,000 km²), it covers 20.3% of the total land area on Earth, and with over 800 million human inhabitants it accounts for around one seventh of Earth's human population.The ancient Romans used the name Africa terra --- "land of the Afri" (plural, or "Afer" singular) --- for the northern part of the continent, corresponding to modern-day Tunisia. The origin of Afer may be the Arabic afer, dust; the Afridi tribe, who dwelt in Northern Africa around the area of Carthage; Greek aphrike, without cold; or Latin aprica, sunny.
Map
See also: World map .
Geography
Main Article: Geography of Africa
History
Main Article: History of AfricaAfrica is home to the oldest inhabited territory on earth, and it is believed the human race originated from what is now this continent.
For most of humanity's history, Africa had no nation states, and was instead inhabited by many small, loosely associated tribal groups, kingdomss, and families. In the 14th century European explorers arrived in Africa. By bargaining with some local tribal leaders, Europeans were able to capture millions of Africans, and export them for labour around the world in what became known as the global slave trade. In the early 19th century the European imperial powers staged a massive "scramble for Africa" and occupied most of the continent, creating many colonial states. This occupation continued until the conclusion of the Second World War, after which all colonial states were gradually granted independence. Today, Africa is home to over 30 independent countries, many of which still have borders drawn during the era of European colonialism.
Map showing European claimants to the African continent
Politics
Since independence, African states have frequently been hampered by instability, violence, and authoritarianism. Until recently, few nations in Africa were able to sustain democratic governments, instead cycling through a series of brutal coups and military dictatorships.
Border and territorial disputes have also been common, with the European-imposed borders of many nations being widely contested through armed conflicts.
Failed government policies have also resulted in many widespread famines, and significant portions of Africa remain without enough food or water to survive. The spread of dangerous diseases is also rampant, especially the deadly AIDS virus.
Despite numerous hardships, there have been some signs the continent has hope for the future. With international help, many African governments have been able to turn their economies around, and some nations are showing growth for the first time in decades. Democratic governments seem to be spreading, and although still not the majority, more and more Africans are living in freedom than ever before. Political associations such as the African Union are also offering hope for greater co-operation and peace between the continent's many countries.
Demographics
The population of Africa is almost entirely black. The nations of Zimbabwe and South Africa maintain small, but significant white and Asian minorities groups. Some northern countries, such as Egypt and Morocco, have Arabic majorities.
Africa is home to a wide variety of different religious groups. Christianity and Islam have a significant presence in many countries, while others retain regionally unique tribal beliefs and customs.
country pop. dens. area population (/km²) (km²) (2002-07-01 est.) Mauritius 588 2,040 1,200,206 Mayotte (Fr.) 457 374 170,879 Reunion (Fr.) 296 2,512 743,981 Comoros 283 2,170 614,382 Rwanda 281 26,338 7,398,074 Burundi 229 27,830 6,373,002 Seychelles 176 455 80,098 Sao Tome and Principe 170 1,001 170,372 Nigeria 141 923,768 129,934,911 Gambia 129 11,300 1,455,842 Uganda 105 236,040 24,699,073 Cape Verde 101 4,033 408,760 Togo 93 56,785 5,285,501 Malawi 90 118,480 10,701,824 Ghana 85 239,460 20,244,154 Sierra Leone 78 71,740 5,614,743 Lesotho 73 30,355 2,207,954 Egypt 71 1,001,450 70,712,345 Morocco (excluding Western Sahara) 70 446,550 31,167,783 Swaziland 65 17,363 1,123,605 Benin 60 112,620 6,787,625 Ethiopia 60 1,127,127 67,673,031 Tunisia 60 163,610 9815,644 Senegal 54 196,190 10,589,571 Kenya 53 582,650 31,138,735 Côte d'Ivoire 52 322,460 16,804,784 Burkina Faso 46 274,200 12,603,185 Tanzania 39 945,087 37,187,939 Guinea-Bissau 37 36,120 1,345,479 Eritrea 37 121,320 4,465,651 South Africa 36 1,219,912 43,647,658 Cameroon 34 475,440 16,184,748 Guinea 32 245,857 7,775,065 Liberia 30 111,370 3,288,198 Zimbabwe 29 390,580 11,376,676 Madagascar 28 587,040 16,473,477 Mozambique 24 801,590 19,607,519 Democratic Republic of the Congo 24 2,345,410 55,225,478 Djibouti 21 23,000 472,810 Equatorial Guinea 18 28,051 498,144 Saint Helena (UK) 18 410 7,317 Sudan 15 2,505,810 37,090,298 Algeria 14 2,381,740 32,277,942 Zambia 13 752,614 9,959,037 Somalia 12 637,657 7,753,310 Mali 9.1 1,240,000 11,340,480 Republic of the Congo 8.7 342,000 2,958,448 Angola 8.5 1,246,700 10,593,171 Niger 8.4 1,267,000 10,639,744 Chad 7.0 1,284,000 8,997,237 Central African Republic 5.8 622,984 3,642,739 Gabon 4.6 267,667 1,233,353 Libya 3.1 1,759,540 5,368,585 Mauritania 2.7 1,030,700 2,828,858 Botswana 2.7 600,370 1,591,232 Namibia 2.2 825,418 1,820,916 Western Sahara (Morocco) 1.0 266,000 256,177
See also
Sub-Saharan Africa
External link
- An Irish anarchist in Africa provides a readable and compelling, but biased, introduction to today's western Africa.
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Africa."
| The following table is compiled from various sources, across various languages. When English abbreviations or acronyms come from a non-English source, this is noted. | |||
| Entry | Source | Expression | Field |
AFRO | English | Regional Office for Africa | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |||
Crosswords: Afro |
| English words defined with "Afro": afro-wig. (references) |
| Non-English Usage: "Afro" is also a word in the following languages with English translations in parentheses. Albanian (almost, circa, nearly), Hawaiian (almost, nearly), Hungarian (afro), Turkish (afro). |
| Domain | Usage | |
Screenplays | Do you know what those things can do? Suck the paint off your house and give your family a permanent orange afro. (Spies Like Us; writing credit: Dan Aykroyd; Dave Thomas) I'll bet, besides maybe an afro, you look exactly how you did at 29. (Jackie Brown; writing credit: Quentin Tarantino) | |
Lyrics | Afro American afro thick (Southern Hospitality; performing artist: Ludacris) Afro Picks afro chicks (Southern Hospitality; performing artist: Ludacris) I let my soul glow from my afro dick (Southern Hospitality; performing artist: Ludacris) Rabbit out the hat pullin afro tricks (Southern Hospitality; performing artist: Ludacris) | |
Movie/TV Titles | Afro - Kubanske igre (1963) Bloco Afro and Afoxé: Afro-Brazilian Carnival as a Political & Religious Stage (2003) Afro Deutsch (2002) | |
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | ||
| Domain | Title | ||
Books | |||
Periodicals |
| ||
Music |
| ||
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
 |
| "Afro drinking" by Stefan Weiss Commentary: "A close-up picture from a young afro-american who drinks out of a glass." |
Source: photographs selected by the editor, with permission from the photographers. |
| Subject | Topic | Quote |
Economic History | Brazil | Of Brazil's 170 million population, almost 80 million are of African descent, making Brazil the second largest country, behind Nigeria, of Afro descendents. (references) |
Minorities | Uruguay | According to a study published in 1999 by the NGO Mundo Afro, the illiteracy rate among black women is twice the national average, and the percentage of black women who have pursued higher education is one-third the rate in the population at large. (references) |
Source: compiled by the editor from ICON Group International, Inc.; see credits. | ||
| "Afro" is generally used as an adjective (general or positive) -- approximately 78.38% of the time. "Afro" is used about 37 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted) |
| Parts of Speech | Percent | Usage per 100 Million Words | Rank in English |
| Adjective (general or positive) | 78.38% | 29 | 64,444 |
| Noun (singular) | 21.62% | 8 | 124,375 |
| Total | 100.00% | 37 | N/A |
Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.
Expressions using "Afro": afro hairdo ♦ afro hairstyle. Additional references. | |
| Hyphenated Usage | |
Beginning with "Afro": Afro-america, Afro-American, afro-american music, Afro-americans, Afro-asia, Afro-Asian, Afro-asians, afro-asiatic, afro-brazilian, afro-caribbean, Afro-caribbeans, afro-carribbean, afro-carribean, afro-centric, Afro-charlie, afro-cuban, afro-d, Afro-eurasia, afro-funk, afro-guyanese, afro-house, Afro-lingua, afro-mauritanian, Afro-mauritanians, Afro-saxons, afro-styled, Afro-trinidadians, Afro-west, afro-wig. | |
Containing "Afro": ragga-street-afro-swedish. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |
| The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com. |
| Expression | Frequency per Day | Expression | Frequency per Day |
afro | 337 | afro tgp | 21 |
afro man | 253 | afro cuban all star | 20 |
afro chick | 130 | afro pick | 20 |
afro chick tgp | 95 | afro american art | 19 |
afro hair | 81 | afro pic | 17 |
afro celt sound system | 72 | afro cuban | 17 |
afro ken | 68 | afro puff | 17 |
afro centric.com | 62 | afro connection | 16 |
afro american | 62 | afro american greeting card | 16 |
afro wig | 59 | afro asian euro lottery sweepstake | 14 |
afro hair style | 54 | afro american wig | 13 |
afro lyrics man | 41 | afro asian literature | 13 |
afro celt | 41 | afro cuban music | 11 |
afro american hair style | 39 | afro caribbean music | 11 |
afro deep | 32 | afro style | 11 |
afro centric | 30 | afro american hair | 10 |
afro brasileira cultura | 30 | 45 afro colt lyrics man | 10 |
afro american newspaper | 29 | afro whore | 9 |
afro picture | 28 | afro sheen | 9 |
afro grow | 22 | afro world | 9 |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. | |||
| Language | Translations for "Afro"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses. | |
Afrikaans | Afro-Asiaties (Afro-Asian). (various references) | |
Albanian | afro-amerikan (afro-american). (various references) | |
Bulgarian | американски негър (afro-american). (various references) | |
Chinese | 美国黑人 (Afro-American). (various references) | |
Czech | afroamerický (afro-american), afroamerièan (afro-american), úèes afro (afro hairstyle). (various references) | |
Danish | afroasiatisk sjakal (Afro-Asian jackal), afro-asiat (Afro-Asian). (various references) | |
Dutch | Afroaziatisch (Afro-Asian). (various references) | |
Esperanto | afrikazia (Afro-Asian). (various references) | |
French | afro-asiatique (Afro-Asian). (various references) | |
German | afro-asiatischer Schakal (Afro-Asian jackal), afro-asiatisch (Afro-Asian), Afro-American Labor Center (Afro-American Labor Center). (various references) | |
Greek | αφρό χτένισμα. (various references) | |
Hungarian | afro, afrikai (african). (various references) | |
Indonesian | orang negro-amerika (afro-american). (various references) | |
Italian | sciacallo afroasiatico (Afro-Asian jackal). (various references) | |
Japanese Kanji | アフリカ民族会議 (a priori, abnormal, abseiling, absinthe, absolutism, abstract, abstract art, abstraction, adding sounds to a soundtrack after a film has been made, African National Congress, Afro-Cuban rhythm, Afro-hair, ahead, ANC, APL, application, application program, application software, apply, approach, approach light, approach shot, apres-guerre, apricot, dubbing, lowering on a rope, postlooping, postrecording, postsynchronization). (various references) | |
Japanese Katakana | アフロ . (various references) | |
Korean | 아프리카계 아메리카인 (Afro-American). (various references) | |
Pig Latin | afroay.(various references) | |
Portuguese | afro-americano (afro-american), afro-americana (afro-american), chacal afro-asiático (Afro-Asian jackal). (various references) | |
Russian | афро (afros). (various references) | |
Spanish | afroasiático (afro-asian), afroamericano (afro-american), chacal afroasiático (Afro-Asian jackal). (various references) | |
Swedish | afroasiat (afro-asian). (various references) | |
Turkish | afro. (various references) | |
Ukrainian | що стосується американських негрів (afro-american), негритянська музика (afro-american music), афро-азіатський (afro-asian), американський негр (afro-american). (various references) | |
Vietnamese | thuộc người Mỹ da đen; người Mỹ nguồn gốc Châu phi (afro-american), người Mỹ nguồn gốc Châu phi (afro-american), người Mỹ da đen (afro-american). (various references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references. | ||
Derivations | |
Words containing "Afro": permafrost, permafrosts, safrol, safrole, safroles, safrols, seafront, seafronts. (additional references) | |
| |
"Afro" is suggested in spellcheckers for the following: abro, acro, Affo, affreux, affro, Afgoi, afo, afoe, afog, afor, afora, Afori, afr, afra, Afrah, Afrem, afri, afrum, afto, Airo, anfo, anro, apro, arf, arfe, aro, Arro, arrog, arroz, arzo, Asroc, asrog, atro, Atrox, auro, Aveiro, avro, Ayrhoh, efor, farao, Fardo, farlo, faroh, farot, farow, Farro, hfro, Jadro, ofor, ofro, safro, ufdrop. (additional references) | |
| Source: compiled by the editor, based on several corpora (additional references). | |
Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams | |
Direct Anagrams: faro, fora. | |
| Words within the letters "a-f-o-r" | |
-1 letter: arf, far, for, fro, oaf, oar, ora. | |
-2 letters: ar, fa, of, or. | |
| Words containing the letters "a-f-o-r" | |
+1 letter: afore, faros, favor, flora, foram, foray, sofar. | |
+2 letters: afford, factor, farrow, favors, favour, fedora, femora, flavor, florae, floral, floras, foamer, foliar, forage, forams, forays, forbad, forgat, formal, format, loafer, orfray, safrol, shofar, sofars. | |
+3 letters: aciform, affords, affront, airflow, airfoil, alforja, aliform, ausform, factors, factory, fagoter, faitour, fanwort, farrago, farrows, favored, favorer, favours, fedoras, femoral, feodary, fibroma, flavors, flavory, flavour, floater, florals, foamers, foamier, foraged, forager, forages, foramen, forayed, forayer, forbade, forbear, forearm, forebay, foreman, forepaw, foreran, foresaw, forgave, formals, formant, formate, formats, formula, forsake, forward, foulard, frogman, fromage, frontal, froward, hayfork, insofar, loafers, nonfarm, oarfish, offramp, orfrays, overfar, overfat, profane, rakeoff, refloat, saffron, safrole, safrols, shofars, wolfram. | |
| Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro. | |
| 1. Definition 2. Crosswords 3. Usage: Modern 4. Usage: Commercial | 5. Images: Slideshow 6. Images: Digital Art 7. Quotations: Non-fiction 8. Usage Frequency | 9. Expressions 10. Expressions: Internet 11. Translations: Modern 12. Abbreviations | 13. Acronyms 14. Derivations 15. Anagrams 16. Bibliography |
Copyright © Philip M. Parker, INSEAD. Terms of Use.
