Mayotte in the context of "Seychelles"

The European Union (EU) has expanded a number of times throughout its history by way of the accession of new member states to the Union. To join the EU, a state needs to fulfil economic and political conditions called the Copenhagen criteria (named after the Copenhagen summit in June 1993), which require a stable democratic government that respects the rule of law, and its corresponding freedoms and institutions. According to the Maastricht Treaty, each current member state and the European Parliament must agree to any enlargement. The process of enlargement is sometimes referred to as European integration. This term is also used to refer to the intensification of co-operation between EU member states as national governments allow for the gradual harmonisation of national laws.

The EU's predecessor, the European Economic Community, was founded with the Inner Six member states in 1958, when the Treaty of Rome came into force. Since then, the EU's membership has grown to twenty-seven, with the latest member state being Croatia, which joined in July 2013. The most recent territorial enlargement of the EU was the incorporation of Mayotte in 2014. Campione d'Italia joined the EU Customs Union in 2020. The most notable territorial reductions of the EU, and its predecessors, have been the exit of Algeria upon independence in 1962, the exit of Greenland in 1985, and the withdrawal of the United Kingdom in 2020.

The number of languages natively spoken in Africa is variously estimated (depending on the delineation of language vs. dialect) at between 1,250 and 2,100, and by some counts at over 3,000. Nigeria alone has over 500 languages (according to SIL Ethnologue), one of the greatest concentrations of linguistic diversity in the world. The languages of Africa belong to many distinct language families, among which the largest are:

• Niger–Congo, which include the large Atlantic-Congo and Bantu branches in West, Central, Southeast and Southern Africa.
• Afroasiatic languages are spread throughout Western Asia, North Africa, the Horn of Africa and parts of the Sahel.
• Saharan, Nilotic and Central Sudanic languages (grouped under the hypothetical Nilo-Saharan macro-family), are present in East Africa and Sahel.
• Austronesian languages are spoken in Madagascar and parts of the Comoros.
• Khoe–Kwadi languages are spoken mostly in Namibia and Botswana.
• Indo-European languages, while not indigenous to Africa, are spoken in South Africa and Namibia (Afrikaans, English, German) and are used as lingua francas in Liberia and the former colonies of the United Kingdom (English), former colonies of France and of Belgium (French), former colonies of Portugal (Portuguese), former colonies of Italy (Italian), former colonies of Spain (Spanish) and the current Spanish territories of Ceuta, Melilla and the Canary Islands and the current French territories of Mayotte and La Réunion.

There are several other small families and language isolates, as well as creoles and languages that have yet to be classified. In addition, Africa has a wide variety of sign languages, many of which are language isolates.

The Comoros, officially the Union of the Comoros, is an archipelagic country made up of three islands in Southeastern Africa, located at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean. Its capital and largest city is Moroni. The religion of the majority of the population, and the official state religion, is Islam. Comoros proclaimed its independence from France on 6 July 1975. The Comoros is the only country of the Arab League which is entirely in the Southern Hemisphere. It is a member state of the African Union, the Organisation internationale de la Francophonie, the Organisation of Islamic Co-operation, and the Indian Ocean Commission. The country has three official languages: Comorian, French and Arabic.

At 1,659 km (641 sq mi), the Comoros is the third-smallest African country by area after São Tomé and Príncipe and Seychelles. In 2019, its population was estimated to be 850,886. The sovereign state consists of three major islands and numerous smaller islands, all of the volcanic Comoro Islands with the exception of Mayotte. Mayotte voted against independence from France in a referendum in 1974, and continues to be administered by France as an overseas department. France has vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have affirmed Comorian sovereignty over the island. Mayotte became an overseas department and a region of France in 2011 following a referendum which was passed overwhelmingly.

This is a list of Madagascar and Indian Ocean Island animals extinct in the Holocene that covers extinctions from the Holocene epoch, a geologic epoch that began about 11,650 years before present (about 9700 BCE) and continues to the present day.

The Republic of Madagascar is a large island country in the Indian Ocean, off the coast of East Africa. Other Indian Ocean islands near Madagascar include the Mascarene Islands (split between the Republic of Mauritius and the French department of Réunion), the Republic of Seychelles, and the Comoro Islands (split between the Union of Comoros and the French department of Mayotte).

A single territorial collectivity (French: collectivité territoriale unique, French pronunciation: [kɔlɛktivite teʁitɔʁjal ynik]) is a chartered subdivision of France that exercises the powers of both a region and a department. This subdivision was introduced in Mayotte in 2011, in French Guiana and Martinique in 2015, and in Corsica in 2018.

The nature of a French single territorial collectivity is set forth in Articles 72 and 73 of the French Constitution of 1958 (as amended since), which provides for local autonomy within limits prescribed by law.

Mozambique, officially the Republic of Mozambique, is a country located in Southeast Africa bordered by the Indian Ocean to the east, Tanzania to the north, Malawi and Zambia to the northwest, Zimbabwe to the west, and Eswatini and South Africa to the south and southwest. The sovereign state is separated from the Comoros, Mayotte, and Madagascar through the Mozambique Channel to the east. The capital and largest city is Maputo.

Between the 7th and 11th centuries, a series of Swahili port towns developed in the area, which contributed to the development of a distinct Swahili culture and dialect. In the late medieval period, these towns were frequented by traders from Somalia, Ethiopia, Egypt, Arabia, Persia, and India. The voyage of Vasco da Gama in 1498 marked the arrival of the Portuguese, who began a gradual process of colonisation and settlement in 1505. After over four centuries of Portuguese rule, Mozambique gained independence in 1975, becoming the People's Republic of Mozambique shortly thereafter. After only two years of independence, the country descended into an intense and protracted civil war lasting from 1977 to 1992. In 1994, Mozambique held its first multiparty elections and has since remained a relatively stable presidential republic, although it still faces a low-intensity insurgency mainly in the furthest regions from the southern capital and where Islam is dominant.

Maore Comorian, or Shimaore (French Mahorais), is one of the two indigenous languages spoken in the French island of Mayotte; Shimaore being a dialect of the Comorian language, while ShiBushi is an unrelated Malayo-Polynesian language originally from Madagascar. Historically, Shimaore- and ShiBushi-speaking villages on Mayotte have been clearly identified, but Shimaore tends to be the de facto indigenous lingua franca in everyday life, because of the larger Shimaore-speaking population. Only Shimaore is represented on the local television news program by Mayotte La Première. The 2002 census references 80,140 speakers of Shimaore in Mayotte itself, to which one would have to add people living outside the island, mostly in metropolitan France. There are also 20,000 speakers of Comorian in Madagascar, of which 3,000 are Shimaore speakers.

The same 2002 census indicates that 37,840 persons responded as knowing how to read or write Shimaore. However this number has to be taken with caution, since it was a few years after this census was taken that a standard writing system was introduced.