There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of the Western Sahara in the west, to Egypt and Sudan's Red Sea coast in the east.

It can also be considered to include Malta, as well as other Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish regions such as Lampedusa and Lampione, Madeira, and the Canary Islands, which are all closer or as close to the African continent than Europe.

[10] In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula swept across the region during the early Muslim conquests.

The countries and people of North Africa share a large amount of their genetic, ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity and influence with the Middle East/West Asia, a process that began with the Neolithic Revolution c. 10,000 BC and pre Dynastic Egypt.

The Islamic and Arab influence in North Africa has remained dominant ever since, with the region being major part of the Muslim world.

[11] North Africa has three main geographic features: the Sahara desert in the south, the Atlas Mountains in the west, and the Nile River and delta in the east.

They recede to the south and east, becoming a steppe landscape before meeting the Sahara desert, which covers more than 75 percent of the region.

A wide variety of valuable crops including cereals, rice and cotton, and woods such as cedar and cork, are grown.

Ancient Egyptians record extensive contact in their Western desert with people that appear to have been Berber or proto-Berber.

The trans-Saharan slave trade resulted in increased levels of sub-Saharan African ancestry in North Africa.

[45] The majority of the people of the Maghreb and the Sahara regions speak varieties of Arabic and almost exclusively follow Islam.

Over the years, Berbers have been influenced by contact with other cultures: Egyptians, Greeks, Punic people, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Europeans, and Africans.

[46] The Maghreb formerly had a significant Jewish population, almost all of whom emigrated to France or Israel when the North African nations gained independence.

[49][50][51] The earliest inhabitants of central North Africa have left behind significant remains: early remnants of hominid occupation in North Africa, for example, were found in Ain el Hanech, near Saïda (c. 200,000 BCE); in fact, more recent investigations have found signs of Oldowan technology there, and indicate a date of up to 1.8 million BCE.

"[53] Early humans may have comprised a large, interbreeding population dispersed across Africa whose spread was facilitated by a wetter climate that created a "green Sahara", around 330,000 to 300,000 years ago.

[54] In September 2019, scientists reported the computerized determination, based on 260 CT scans, of a virtual skull shape of the last common human ancestor to modern humans/H.

Some parts of North Africa began to participate in the Neolithic revolution in the 6th millennium BCE, just before the rapid desertification of the Sahara around 3500 B.C.

[58] There has been an inferred connection between areas of rapid drying and the introduction of livestock in which the natural (orbital) aridification was amplified by the spread of shrubs and open land due to grazing.

[59] Nevertheless, changes in northern Africa's ecology after 3500 BCE provided the backdrop for the formation of dynastic civilizations and the construction of monumental architecture such as the Pyramids of Giza.

[62][63] When Egypt entered the Bronze Age,[64] the Maghreb remained focused on small-scale subsistence in small, highly mobile groups.

The Carthaginians developed an empire in the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, Sardinia, Corsica and northwest Sicily, the latter being the cause of First Punic War with the Romans.

Furthermore, during the rule of the Romans, Byzantines, Vandals, Ottomans and Carthaginians the Kabyle people were the only or one of the few in North Africa who remained independent.

[70][71][72][73] The Kabyle people were incredibly resistible so much so that even during the Arab conquest of North Africa they still had control and possession over their mountains.

In the eleventh century, a reformist movement made up of members that called themselves the Almoravid dynasty expanded south into Sub-Saharan Africa.

Ibn Khaldun noted that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.

After the 19th century, the imperial and colonial presence of France, the United Kingdom, Spain and Italy left the entirety of the region under one form of European occupation.

The wider protest movement known as the Arab Spring began with revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt which ultimately led to the overthrow of their governments, as well as civil war in Libya.