“Why was Africa called the Dark Continent?” is that Europe did not know much about Africa until the 19th century, but that answer is misleading and disingenuous. Europeans had known quite a lot about Africa for at least 2,000 years, but because of powerful imperial impulses, European leaders began purposefully ignoring earlier sources of information. At the same time, the campaign against slavery and for missionary work in Africa actually intensified Europeans’ racial ideas about African people in the 1800s. They called Africa the Dark Continent, because of the mysteries and the savagery they expected to find in the “Interior."It is true that up until the 19th century, Europeans had little direct knowledge of Africa beyond the coast, but their maps were already filled with details about the continent. African kingdoms had been trading with Middle Eastern and Asian states for over two millennia. Initially, Europeans drew on the maps and reports created by earlier traders and explorers like the famed Moroccan traveler Ibn Battuta who traveled across the Sahara and along the North and East coasts of Africa in the 1300s.

Africa's Today Express below current situation:

This remains the case according to the April 2019, 19th edition of Africa's Pulse, which estimates GDP growth in 2018 at a lower-than-expected 2.3%, with a forecast to 2.8% in 2019. ... The report notes that the three largest African economies—Nigeria, Angola and South Africa—play a big role in the region's growth

                    

African poverty is falling and is falling rapidly... If present trends continue, the poverty Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of people with incomes less than one dollar a day will be achieved on time.The growth spurt that began in 1995 decreased African income inequality instead of increasing it. African poverty reduction is remarkably general: it cannot be explained by a large country, or even by a single set of countries possessing some beneficial geographical or historical characteristic. All classes of countries, including those with disadvantageous geography and history, experience reductions in poverty.

And for now as the latest report, Africa, a continent endowed with immense natural and human resources as well as great cultural, ecological and economic diversity, remains underdeveloped. ... The majority of the countries classified by the UN as least developed are in Africa. Number two on the list is diamond mining heir Nicky Oppenheimer of South Africa, with a net worth of $7.7 billion, up $700 million from last year. Oppenheimer is one of 8 South Africans on the list, making it the African country with the most billionaires.