A French map of Africa, c. 1911 (PD). By the time World War I broke out, Britain and France collectively controlled 45% of Africa’s population. Germany, late to the show, held on to 9%.

Continued use of blind representations of old colonial boundaries causes us to misread the reality on the ground in many African states and overestimate their empirical effectiveness. The official map ...

Africa gives France clout on the world stage it otherwise would not have as a "mid-sized power", argues Prof Tony Chafer, of the University of Portsmouth in the UK. Getty Images.

President Emmanuel Macron has said the era of French interference in Africa was “well over” as he began a four-nation tour of the continent to renew frayed ties.

This is believed to be the first map of Africa, as a continent. “Africa” was originally a Roman term for the region of modern Tunisia and the western portion of Libya.