[jcranmer]

In a geopolitical and historical sense, Africa is usually taken to mean sub-Saharan Africa. Egypt in particular is historically bound up in fortune with the Middle East, but if you look at the general trend of political conflicts and especially technological diffusion in pre-modern eras, it's clear that the barrier between Eurasia and Africa is not Sinai but the Sahara.

Even France, Germany, and England were outside the Eurasian core, exhibiting lags in technological diffusion (although decreasing over time) until almost the eve of Early Modern. It's only in the Early Modern that European countries (and by the end of the Early Modern, this is mostly focused more on England, France, and Germany than Spain, Italy, or the Balkans) began to match and pull ahead of the rest of the Eurasian core.