High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Africa, being a continent containing 55 countries, each with a wealth of cultures and particular histories, encompasses a wide variety of traditions and evolving trends, within the different literary genres. Poetry in Africa is a large and complex subject, not least "because there are literally thousands of indigenous languages spoken in Africa and many more dialects, every African country has an official language (or 11 in the case of South Africa). This official language acts as the ‘lingua franca’ for (at least) a reasonably sized region."