Geography of Africa Geography of Africa Africa is a continent comprising 63 political territories, representing the largest of the great southward projections from the main mass of Earth's surface. Within its regular outline, it comprises an area of , excluding adjacent islands. Its highest mountain is Mount Kilimanjaro, its largest lake is Lake Victoria Separated from Europe by the Mediterranean Sea and from much of Asia by the Red Sea, Africa is joined to Asia at its northeast extremity by the Isthmus of Suez (which in transected by the Suez Canal), wide. For geopolitical purposes, the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt – east on
Europe the EU. Malta was considered an island of Northwest Africa for centuries. "Europe" as used specifically in British English may also refer to Continental Europe exclusively. The first recorded usage of "Eurṓpē" as a geographic term is in the Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, in reference to the western shore of the Aegean Sea. As a name for a part of the known world, it is first used in the 6th century BC by Anaximander and Hecataeus. Anaximander placed the boundary between Asia and Europe along the Phasis River (the modern Rioni River) in the Caucasus, a convention still followed