Africa has a large quantity of natural resources, including diamonds, sugar, salt, gold, iron, cobalt, uranium, copper, bauxite, silver, petroleum, natural gas and cocoa beans, but also tropical timber and tropical fruit.
Nigeria, Angola, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Algeria, Libya, Egypt, and South Sudan are among the largest oil producers in Africa.
Together they account for 85% of the continent's oil production and are, in order, from highest to lowest output: Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, Egypt and Angola.
Other African oil producing countries are Gabon, the DRC, Cameroon, Tunisia, Equatorial Guinea, the Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, and more recently, Ghana.
Included in this list are Chad, Sudan, Namibia, South Africa, and Madagascar, whilst Mozambique and Tanzania are potential oil producers.
[6] With a low population density[citation needed] Africa has been colonized by non-African nations from the 16th century, all exploiting African resources to varying degrees.