Browsing through the internet on the last day of 2021, I decided to search for the countries that would celebrate the New Year - 2022 - first before the others and got a whole lot of answers. Then, I took the moment to search for the ones in my continent, Africa but I could not find quite a straightforward result like the previous results for the countries globally.
Intrigued by this, I thought to myself, "What about that for Africa?". I then decided to do research on it for the sake of my curiosity and that of many others like me who would want to know about it.
Without further ado, let's dive right in.
Mind you, beware of the Geography-bumps ahead!
According to Google, Africa has six time zones which I am going to list here in the order of when the countries therein celebrated the New Year first. The time zones are relative to the Greenwich Meridian Time (GMT). As the name implies, the GMT is for countries that are on the Greenwich Meridian. The Greenwich Meridian is basically at 0 degrees longitude - a vertical line that runs around the globe forming a great circle and dividing it into two equal halves.
Now to the main thing ...
1)Mauritius & Seychelles Time Zone (GMT+4): As the name implies, Mauritius and Seychelles, which are island and archipelago countries respectively, use this time. They are 4 hours ahead of the GMT.
2)East African Time (GMT+3): The countries in this time zone are the second to celebrate the New Year as they are 3 hours ahead of GMT. They include Eastern Africa countries including Uganda, Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, etc.
3)Central African Time (GMT+2): Countries in Central and some in Southern Africa like Egypt, South Africa, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, South Sudan, Botswana, etc. observe this time zone.
4)West African Time (GMT+1): This time zone is observed by some West African countries in which my country Nigeria is one of them. The others include Chad, Benin, Cameroon, etc.
5)GMT: Yes, the GMT itself. We have African countries on the Greenwich Meridian too. This automatically implies that they use the same time equal to the GMT. These countries include Senegal, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Gambia, Mauritania, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, and so on.
6)Cape Verde Time (GMT -1): I would say, this time was specially created for the archipelago country itself because it is the only one observing the time zone. Cape Verde's time is 1 hour late than the GMT.
I believe by now we all now know the top (range of) African countries to enter a new year. The range here, rather than precise (or single names) is due to the relative size of Africa to the world.
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