North Africa, or Northern Africa, is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in the west, to Egypt's Suez Canal in the east.

The United Nations's definition for the region's boundaries includes Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, and Western Sahara, the territory disputed between Morocco and the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Republic. The African Union defines the region similarly, only differing from the UN in excluding Sudan. The Sahel, south of the Sahara Desert, can be considered as the southern boundary of North Africa. North Africa includes the Spanish cities of Ceuta and Melilla, and the plazas de soberanía. It can also be considered to include Malta, as well as other British, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian regions such as Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Azores,Lampedusa and Lampione which are all closer or as close to the African continent than Europe.

Northwest Africa has been inhabited by Berbers since the beginning of recorded history, while the eastern part of North Africa has been home to the Egyptians. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula swept across the region during the Early Muslim conquests. These peoples formed a single population in many areas, as many but not all Berbers and Egyptians gradually merged into Arabic and Muslim culture. These processes of Arabization and Islamization has defined the cultural landscape of North Africa ever since.

The countries of North Africa share a large amount of their genetic, ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity and influence with Western Asia, a process that began with the Neolithic Revolution circa 10,000 BC and pre Dynastic Egypt The Islamic influence in North Africa is significant, with the region being major part of the Muslim world. North Africa is associated with West Asia in the realm of geopolitics to form the Middle East-North Africa region.