Oceania & New Caledonia
Oceania is a geographical region comprising Australasia, Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Outside of the English-speaking world, Oceania is generally considered a continent, while Australia is regarded as an island or a continental landmass contained inside of the larger continent of Oceania. Spanning the Eastern and Western hemispheres, at the center of the water hemisphere, Oceania is estimated to have a land area of about 9,000,000 square kilometres (3,500,000 sq mi) and a population of around 44.4 million as of 2022. When compared to the other continents, Oceania is the smallest in land area and the second-least populated after Antarctica.
Oceania has a diverse mix of economies from the highly developed and globally competitive financial markets of Australia, French Polynesia, Hawaii, New Caledonia, and New Zealand, which rank high in quality of life and Human Development Index,[7][8] to the much less developed economies of Kiribati, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, Vanuatu, and Western New Guinea,[9] while also including medium-sized economies of Pacific islands such as Fiji, Palau, and Tonga.[10] The largest and most populous country in Oceania is Australia, and the largest city is Sydney.[11] Puncak Jaya in Highland Papua, Indonesia, is the highest peak in Oceania at 4,884 m (16,024 ft).[12]
The first settlers of Australia, New Guinea, and the large islands just to the east arrived more than 60,000 years ago. Oceania was first explored by Europeans from the 16th century onward. Portuguese explorers, between 1512 and 1526, reached the Tanimbar Islands, some of the Caroline Islands and west New Guinea. Spanish and Dutch explorers followed, then British and French. On his first voyage in the 18th century, James Cook, who later arrived at the highly developed Hawaiian Islands, went to Tahiti and followed the east coast of Australia for the first time.
The arrival of European settlers in subsequent centuries resulted in a significant alteration in the social and political landscape of Oceania. The Pacific theatre saw major action during the Second World War, mainly between Allied powers the United States, Philippines (a U.S. Commonwealth at the time) and Australia, and Axis power Japan. The rock art of Aboriginal Australians is the longest continuously practiced artistic tradition in the world. Most Oceanian countries are multi-party representative parliamentary democracies, with tourism being a large source of income for the Pacific island nations.
Oceania includes these countries: Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, thirteen countries : Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu and the French overseas departements Polynesia (Tahiti, Wallis and Futuna) and New Caledonia. It does not include Australia and New Zealand. It is mainly a huge oceanic space (Pacific ocean) with 10 000 islands, only 800 000 square km and a population of 12 million inhabitants. One can see in the map Melanasia which refers to Black Asia. The US African-American scholar Runoko Rashidi has dedicated many videos ( below) papers to this unknown Black Pacific where the people claimed to come from Tanzania, when he visited Fidji. This would be the ancient diaspora in this region often considered the 6th continent.
The facilitator Lazare Ki-Zerbo (Burkina Faso) is a philosophy teacher in Noumea, New Caledonia. He has established closed links with the African community in the southern province. People from this new diaspora originate mainly from the DRC, Côte d'Ivoire, Mali, Senegal, Togo and have launched an organization called Afrikdissi.
New Caledonia is a sui generis collectivity of overseas France in the southwest Pacific Ocean, south of Vanuatu, about 1,210 km (750 mi) east of Australia, and 17,000 km (11,000 mi) from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Chesterfield Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of Pines, and a few remote islets. The Chesterfield Islands are in the Coral Sea. French people, especially locals, call Grande Terre "Le Caillou" ("the pebble"). It is one of the European Union’s Overseas Countries and Territories (OCTs), but is not part of the European Union.
New Caledonia has a land area of 18,575 km2 (7,172 sq mi) divided into three provinces. The North and South Provinces are on the New Caledonian mainland, while the Loyalty Islands Province is a series of three islands off the east coast of mainland. New Caledonia's population of 271,407 (October 2019 census) is of diverse origins and varies by geography; in the North and Loyalty Islands Provinces, the indigenous Kanak people predominate, while the wealthy South Province contains significant populations of European (Caldoches and Metropolitan French), Kanak, and Polynesian (mostly Wallisian) origin, as well as smaller groups of Southeast Asian, Pied-Noir, and North African heritage. The capital of New Caledonia is Nouméa
Regional Facilitator
