--- title: Africa: countries and capitals — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Africa: countries and capitals», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Africa is a huge continent with 54 countries in the United Nations, more than any other continent, and more than 2,000 languages, about a --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Africa: countries and capitals # Africa: countries and capitals Lesson 13 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 20 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/0/) — Africa is a huge continent with 54 countries in the United Nations, more than any other continent, and more than 2,000 languages, about a third of all the languages on Earth. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/1/) — Many African borders were not drawn by Africans: at the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885 European powers agreed rules for dividing Africa among themselves, and no African was in the room. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/2/) — That is why some borders are ruler-straight lines across deserts. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/3/) — Long before that, Africa had great states of its own: the Mali Empire of the 1300s was one of the richest in the world, and its ruler Mansa Musa carried so much gold to Mecca in 1324 that the price of gold fell in Cairo. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/4/) — In Europa Universalis 5 you can see Mali, Ethiopia, Kongo and Kilwa in 1337, and later small European forts on the coasts. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/5/) — The game shows forts as trade posts, but it hides the human cost: about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships to the Americas. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/6/) — Imagine standing on the bank of the Congo River in Kinshasa: across the water you can see Brazzaville, the capital of a different country, the Republic of the Congo. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/7/) — Africa has 54 countries that are members of the United Nations, more than any other continent, plus disputed lands such as Western Sahara and Somaliland. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/8/) — Algeria is the largest country in Africa by area, and most of it is Sahara desert, so most Algerians live near the Mediterranean coast. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/9/) — South Sudan, with its capital Juba, became the world's newest widely recognised country in 2011. - [10](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/10/) — Nigeria is Africa's most populous country, with about 230 million people, and its capital moved from Lagos to the planned city of Abuja in 1991. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/11/) — Cairo (the capital of Egypt), Lagos and Kinshasa are Africa's largest cities, each with well over 15 million people in their wider urban areas. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/12/) — South Africa has three capitals: Pretoria for the government, Cape Town for parliament and Bloemfontein for the highest courts. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/13/) — Ethiopia, with its capital Addis Ababa, home of the African Union, kept its independence through the colonial period, apart from an Italian occupation from 1936 to 1941. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/14/) — At the Berlin Conference of 1884 and 1885 European powers agreed rules for dividing Africa without any African present, and by 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia were independent. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/15/) — Between the 1500s and the 1800s about 12.5 million Africans were forced onto ships to the Americas, and roughly 1.8 million died during the crossing. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/16/) — Most African countries won independence between 1956 and 1975; Ghana in 1957 was the first colony south of the Sahara to break free from European rule, and 17 countries became independent in 1960, the «Year of Africa». - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/17/) — The Mali Empire was one of the richest states in the world in the 1300s, and Mansa Musa's pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324 carried so much gold that its price fell in Cairo. - [19](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/19/) — Kinshasa and Brazzaville face each other across the Congo River as the capitals of two different countries. - [20](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/13-africa-countries-and-capitals/20/) — More than 2,000 languages are spoken in Africa, and Swahili is a shared language for well over 100 million people in East Africa. - ← previous: [The Middle East and Central Asia](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/12-middle-east-and-central-asia/) - next →: [Latin America and the Caribbean](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/14-latin-america-and-the-caribbean/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)