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East Africa, also known as Eastern Africa or the East of Africa, is a region at the eastern edge of the African continent, distinguished by its unique geographical, historical, and cultural landscape. Defined in varying scopes, the region is recognized in the United Nations Statistics Division scheme as encompassing 18 sovereign states and 4 territories. It includes the Horn of Africa to the North, African Great Lakes to the west, the coast of the Indian ocean to the east, and Southeastern Africa to the south.
The geography of East Africa is quite varied, with coastal regions leading up to cooler highlands where large population centers are often located. The climate generally is rather atypical of equatorial regions, being mostly arid or semi-arid, with more moisture as you go further south. The region is regularly affected by North Indian Ocean tropical cyclones near the Horn of Africa, and South-West Indian Ocean tropical cyclones in the south. The extreme climate variability makes the region vulnerable to drought and flood cycles, that in the 20th century has lead to food insecurity and climate migration.
Historically the region is thought to be the foundation of humanity, with some of the earliest evidence of human ancestors found in dry highland areas, such as the Rift valley. The populations in the region have been dominated by the Bantu expansion, a mass migration of ethnically Bantu peoples to the region between 2500 and 3000 years ago. During the pre-modern era, connections with sea routes to both Arab regions in the north, and India in the east often had cultural mixing on the coasts, leading to the development of the trade region of the Swahili coast, where the Swahili language developed with loan words from Arabic and other languages in the trade region. The Horn of Africa is home to Cushitic-speaking peoples. In some parts of East Africa, especially in South Sudan, the population largely consists of Nilotic populations.
In modern history, after European Exploration, first Portuguese and then later English and German colonies were formed in the region. Since post-colonial independence the region has grown to be a populous region, with a 2017 estimate of over 537.9 million inhabitants. Tanzania, Kenya, and Ethiopia are some of the largest economies in the region. Many of the countries are still dominated by rural workforces employed in agriculture, but the economies of East Africa are currently growing much faster than other parts of Africa at 6% growth, with Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania outpacing many of the other countries.
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General info from Wikipedia.org
