Africa (The Kalmar Union)

Africa is the world's third largest continent. It is characterised by the vast Sahara desert in the north, the wide jungle belts of the centre and extensive plains to the south. While continuously inhabited since the very dawn of humanity the terrain and climate has made nation building difficult and prevented many innovations and ideas spreading southwards.

The European explorers of the early modern era rarely paid much attention to the continent, merely using its ports to reach the richer lands of India and the spice islands beyond. Portugal populated its mid-Atlantic islands with slaves bought in the great markets of West Africa but with ample man-power available in Leifia other nations rarely made the effort to engage with the native kingdoms. However, trade did slowly begin to build and by the mid 1700s an intense rivalry involving Europe and several Leifian nations powered a boom in fortress building to stake definitive claims on a particular area's products. Nowadays the coasts are dotted with trade forts belonging to foreign powers, some literally just a building, others endowed with more substantial lands with limited colonisation.

The Caliphate and the five great African Sultanates occupy much of the Sahara and Sudan areas, often more at war with each other than the non-Islamic states to their south. Clinging to the West African coast are a multitude of states, many forming loose federations. On the central West coast the old kingdoms of Kongo and Lunda are slowly appearing from a century of civil war to become economic powerhouses. To their south lies the only major European colony on the continent; the New Netherlands. To its East the paint is still drying on the Union of Southern States of Africa and the jury is still out on whether it will hold. Along the East coast old Arabian sultanates are slowly being turned into native controlled kingdoms eager to fight one another and the ancient Kingdom of Ethiopia for the centre.