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West Africa

West Africa

10 1.9
A region in western Africa between the Sahara and the Gulf of Guinea
  • proper noun
translation icon : África occidental
  • So my parents immigrated here from Ghana, which is in West Africa, to live the American dream and make a better life for themselves.
  • part of West Africa
  • marriage in West Africa
  • traveling to West Africa

And we went to Iceland, Bulgaria, Ghana, West Africa, Thailand, and then back here in Los Angeles.

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Examples

  • Much music learning in West Africa is informal, although affiliation with an instructor may eventually become necessary.

    Academic text (1991)
  • They would fly to West Africa and they would offer free medical services to people who had no ability to afford them.

  • A clear recent example stands out in West Africa, although they did not get as much focus.

  • Their clients trade primarily off the coast of West Africa.

  • France plans to transfer surveillance drones to West Africa by the end of the year.

    Blog text (3)
  • Dimka is a real hero in West Africa.

  • It is a small country in West Africa.

  • So what happened in West Africa affects us now clearly in Santa Clara County.

  • Between 1982 and 1984, there was a drug trafficking boom from South America, through West Africa to Europe and America.

  • Many countries in West Africa are rich in natural resources, like gold and oil.

Surface Forms

Morphology

West + Africa

The meaning 'a region in the western part of Africa' is directly and transparently derived from combining 'West' (western part) with 'Africa' (the continent); the phrase is a straightforward geographic compound. This place-name composition is cross-linguistically common (e.g., 'West Africa' / 'África Occidental') and would be immediately understood by a B1 learner who knows the constituent words.

Etymology

West Africa comes from the words west, meaning the direction, and Africa, the continent. Map makers and traders used the name to show the countries on the western side of the continent, so today West Africa means the region of countries along Africa's west coast between the Sahara and the Gulf of Guinea.