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- Africa, the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, spans across six different time zone offsets from Coordinated Universal Time (UTC): UTC−01:00 to UTC+04:00. As Africa straddles the equator and tropics, there is little change in daylight hours throughout the year and as such daylight saving time is currently observed in only one country, Morocco, however it was also previously observed in several other countries. Before the wide adoption of standard time zones, local mean time was widely used in railway time for train timetables and telegraphic time for telegraphy. Local mean time is a solar time that corrects the variations of local apparent time by forming a uniform time scale at a specific longitude; for instance, Liberia observed UTC-0:44:30 instead of an approximate offset such as UTC-01:00. British Rhodesia (at the time administered by the private British South Africa Company) was the first area in Africa to adopt standard time, switching to UTC+02:30 on 1 August 1899 as the previous time standards proved problematic for the railway system. Other countries followed suit, and by 1912, most Portuguese, French and British territories had adopted a standard offset. Liberia was the last country in Africa to adopt a standard offset, doing so on 7 January 1972. Names for the offsets vary by country and jurisdiction: in Africa, UTC+01:00 is commonly known as "West Africa Time", however Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia designate the offset by its European name, "Central European Time"; UTC+02:00 – commonly known as "Central Africa Time" – is designated as "South African Standard Time" by Eswatini, Lesotho and South Africa, whilst Egypt and Libya designate it by its European name "Eastern European Time". Cape Verde is the only country in Africa which observes UTC-01:00, where it is known as Cape Verde Time (CVT); thirteen countries observe UTC±00:00, fourteen observe UTC+01:00, sixteen observe UTC+02:00, nine observe UTC+03:00, and two (Mauritius and Seychelles) observe UTC+04:00, where the offset is designated as Mauritius Time (MUT) and Seychelles Time (SCT) respectively. (en)
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