အာဖရိက

တိုက်အာဖရိက () ဂှ် ပၞောဝ်ကဵု တိုက်ဂမၠိုင် ပ္ဍဲဂၠးတိဏအ် ဒှ်တိုက်ဇၞော်အိုတ် မရနုက်ကဵုဒုတိယတုဲ သီုဒှ် တိုက်လၟိဟ်မၞိဟ် မဂၠိုင်အိုတ် မရနုက်ကဵု ဒုတိယ ကြဴနူ တိုက်အာရှရ။ ဇမၞော်တိုက်ဝွံ နွံၜိုတ် 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square&nbsp;miles) သီုကဵု တကအ်ဂမၠိုင်တုဲ တိုက်ဝွံ ဂြောပ်ဓလီုလဝ် သမၠဲ ဂၠးတိ သီုဖအိုတ် ၆% တုဲ နကဵုဨရိယာတိမ္ဂး ဒှ် ၂၀% ရ။ နကဵုလၟိဟ်မၞိဟ် 
 ဗဳလဳယာန်  အတိုင်စရင်ကုလသမဂ္ဂ သၞာံတုဲ ဒှ်လၟိဟ် မၞိဟ်ဂၠးတိ ၜိုတ် ၁၆% ရ။ တိုက်အာဖရိကဂှ် ဗိုင်ကၠောအ်ဒၟံင် ဗွဲဒိုဟ်သၟဝ်ကျာ နကဵု ၜဳမေဒိတာရဳယာန်၊ (Mediterranean Sea) တကအ် (Isthmus of Suez) ကေုာံ ဗွဲဒိုဟ် ဨသာန်မ္ဂး ၜဳဍာဲ (Red Sea)၊ ဗွဲဒိုဟ်အဂၞဲ မှာသၟိဒ်အိန္ဒိယ ကေုာံ ဗွဲဒိုဟ်ပလိုတ် မှာသၟိဒ်အာတ်လာန်တိစ် ။ ပ္ဍဲတိုက်အာဖရိကဂှ် တကအ်မာဒဂါသကာ ကေုာံ တကအ် archipelagos ဂမၠိုင် ပါလုပ်ကီုရ။ ပ္ဍဲကဵုတိုက်ဂှ် ဍုင်မကလိဂွံလဝ် အဝဵုကၞောတ်အထောတ်သီုဖအိုတ် နွံ ၅၄ ဍုင်၊ ဒေသပကင်အရင်အပိုင် ပန် ဒေသ၊ ကဵု ဍုင်မဂွံလဝ် အဝဵုအပိုင်အခြာ (de facto) ၜါဍုင်ရ။  

ပၞောဝ်ကဵု တိုက်ဂမၠိုင် ပ္ဍဲဂၠးတိဏအ် တိုက်အာဖရိကဂှ် ဗွဲသၟဟ် မၞိဟ်အာယုက်ဍောတ်အိုတ်၊ အာယုက်လဒေါဝ် (median age) ပ္ဍဲသၞာံ ၂၀၁၂ ဂှ် နွံ ၁၉.၇ သၞာံ မဒှ်အခိင် အာယုက်လဒေါဝ် အလုံလိုက်ဂှ် နွံ ၃၀.၄ ရ။ ဍုင်အာလ်ဂျေရဳယျာ ဂှ် နကဵု ဗွိုက်ဨရိယာမ္ဂး ဒှ်ဍုင် ဇၞော်အိုတ် ပ္ဍဲအာဖရိကတုဲ နကဵုလၟိဟ်မၞိဟ်မ္ဂး ဍုင် နိဂေရဳယျာဂှ် ဇၞော်အိုတ် (ဝါ) ဒှ်ဍုင် မၞိဟ်ဂၠိုင်အိုတ်ရ။ အာဖရိက ဗွဲတၟေင် ပ္ဍဲကဵု လဒေါဝ်ဗွဲဒိုဟ်ဗမံက်ဂှ် တၠပညာဗွဲမဂၠိုင် ဒုင်တဲ တုပ်စိုတ် မဒှ်ဒၞာဲ ကောန်မၞိဟ် ကေုာံ ကၞုဲဗဳဇမနုဿ ကတဵုဒှ်ကၠာအိုတ် နကဵု သက်သဳသာဓက မဂၠာဲဆဵုကေတ် ဇုတ်ဇုဇဗဴဇ ဗဳဇကောန်မၞိဟ် နူကဵုသၞာံ ၜိုတ် ၇ မဳလဳယာန်သၞာံ မတုဲကၠုင် သီုကဵု *[[Sahelanthropus tchadensis]]*, *[[Australopithecus africanus]]*, *[[Australopithecus afarensis|A. afarensis]]*, *[[Homo erectus]]*, *[[Homo habilis|H. habilis]]* ကေုာံ *[[Homo ergaster|H. ergaster]]*— ကၠာအိုတ် *[[Homo sapiens]]* (modern human) တအ်ဂှ် ဂွံဆဵုကေတ် ပ္ဍဲအဳတဳအဝ်ပဳယျာ စၟတ်သမ္တီလဝ် သၞာံ ၜိုတ် 200,000 သၞာံမတုဲကၠုင်တေအ်ရ။ Africa straddles the equator and encompasses numerous climate areas; it is the only continent to stretch from the northern temperate to southern temperate zones.

Africa hosts a large diversity of ethnicities, cultures and languages. In the late 19th century, European countries colonised almost all of Africa; most present states in Africa emerged from a process of decolonisation in the 20th century. African nations cooperate through the establishment of the African Union, which is headquartered in Addis Ababa.

## Etymology

*[[Afri]]* was a Latin name used to refer to the inhabitants of then-known northern Africa to the west of the Nile river, and in its widest sense referred to all lands south of the Mediterranean (Ancient Libya). This name seems to have originally referred to a native Libyan tribe, an ancestor of modern Berbers; see Terence for discussion. The name had usually been connected with the Phoenician word **' meaning "dust", but a 1981 hypothesis has asserted that it stems from the [[Berber languages|Berber]] word ''ifri'' (plural ''ifran'') meaning "cave", in reference to cave dwellers. The same word may be found in the name of the [[Banu Ifran]] from [[Algeria]] and [[Tripolitania]], a Berber tribe originally from [[Yafran]] (also known as ''Ifrane'') in northwestern Libya.

Under [[Roman Empire|Roman]] rule, [[Carthage]] became the capital of the province it then named ''[[Africa Proconsularis]]'', following its defeat of the [[Ancient Carthage|Carthaginians]] in the [[Third Punic War]] in 146 BC, which also included the coastal part of modern [[Libya]]. The Latin suffix **' can sometimes be used to denote a land (e.g., in *[[Gallia Celtica|Celtica]]* from *[[Celts|Celtae]]*, as used by Julius Caesar). The later Muslim region of Ifriqiya, following its conquest of the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire's *[[Exarchate of Africa|Exarchatus Africae]]*, also preserved a form of the name.

According to the Romans, Africa lay to the west of Egypt, while "Asia" was used to refer to Anatolia and lands to the east. A definite line was drawn between the two continents by the geographer Ptolemy (85–165 AD), indicating Alexandria along the Prime Meridian and making the isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea the boundary between Asia and Africa. As Europeans came to understand the real extent of the continent, the idea of "Africa" expanded with their knowledge.

Other etymological hypotheses have been postulated for the ancient name "Africa":
* The 1st-century Jewish historian Flavius Josephus (*Ant. 1.15*) asserted that it was named for Epher, grandson of Abraham according to Gen. 25:4, whose descendants, he claimed, had invaded Libya.
* Isidore of Seville in his 7th-century *[[Etymologiae]]* XIV.5.2. suggests "Africa comes from the Latin *aprica*, meaning "sunny".
* Massey, in 1881, stated that Africa is derived from the Egyptian *af-rui-ka*, meaning "to turn toward the opening of the Ka." The Ka is the energetic double of every person and the "opening of the Ka" refers to a womb or birthplace. Africa would be, for the Egyptians, "the birthplace."
* Michèle Fruyt in 1976 proposed linking the Latin word with *africus* "south wind", which would be of Umbrian origin and mean originally "rainy wind".
* Robert R. Stieglitz of Rutgers University in 1984 proposed: "The name Africa, derived from the Latin *Aphir-ic-a, is cognate to Hebrew Ophir."
* Ibn Khallikan and some other historians claim that the name of Africa came from a Himyarite king called Afrikin ibn Kais ibn Saifi also called "Afrikus son of Abrahah" who subdued Ifriqiya.