Infographic
Africa in numbers
Our image of Africa often does not correspond to reality. Cultural diversity is much greater than in Europe, for example. Technological progress is sometimes ahead of ours. We try to give you an impression of this with a few examples.
The average age in Africa is 19 years. In 1990 it was 16, but it is predicted to rise to 24 by 2050. In Switzerland, the average age is currently 43.
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Over 50 percent of mobile money services are based in Africa. This makes the continent the world leader in this field. The M-Pesa application from Kenya, for example, processes around 10 billion dollars in transactions every month.
About 2000 languages are spoken in Africa. European languages are used in everyday life. At the same time, there is a return to linguistic roots. The image shows the most widely spoken languages.
Half of Africa's electricity supply is decentralized, meaning it comes not from a power grid but from solar panels on your own roof, for example. Overall, only about half of Africa's population has access to electricity.
1 billion mobile phones in use in Africa - that means three mobile phone connections for every four people. 40 percent of mobile phones are second-hand, 90 percent of which come from outside the continent.
40 million Africans live abroad, more than half of whom have migrated to other African countries and a quarter to Europe.
Magazine uniFOKUS
Africa
This article first appeared in uniFOKUS, the University of Bern print magazine. Four times a year, uniFOKUS focuses on one specialist area from different points of view. Current focus topic: Africa
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