article: Africa is not a country. It is a continent that feels like it has come of age. Despite the very real problems of poverty, corruption and the sense you sometimes get in some quarters, that no-one is held to account, business types hail Africa as the "final frontier". After nearly 12 years reporting this region, for me it feels like a place where one grows up. I have met priests and politicians, warlords and entrepreneurs, gangsters and teachers. Ordinary mums and dads. Each of them has helped to shape my impressions and many have become firm friends. One of the first lessons I learnt in Kenya was survival. There is no safety net here when times get tough. In the early days on a visit to the slum known as Kibera, an elderly lady called me over as she stirred her supper in a thick black cast iron pot. "Hey sister, where are you from?" she asked. "London," I replied. "Yes, but where in London?" I was rather puzzled as she pressed me further. "I know London," she nodded, sagely. "In fact, I know Paris and Berlin, too." It emerged that this friendly stranger had once been a glamorous stewardess for a international airline. She had drunk the best champagne and visited the fanciest European hotels but when times got hard in the 1980s and the airline folded, she lost her job. She was now selling samosas in the slum to survive. From that day onwards I learnt never to make any assumptions about Africa: a jet-setter one day, a slum dweller the next. It the drumbeat of so many who take the knocks, but reclaim their dignity and survive. Yet, in absolute terms, people are getting poorer in Africa because the population continues to grow. During my time on this continent I witnessed a colleague of mine - away from the BBC - lose two of his three young children. That is never OK. When I arrived in Africa more than a decade ago, Boko Haram in Nigeria did not exist, Somalia's al-Shabab insurgency group had yet to be formed - not to mention the so-called Islamic State - and Sudan was one vast, sprawling country emerging from more than two decades of civil war. I arrived to a continent of 53 states. I now leave behind 54. South Sudan's independence in 2011 marked the newest addition to the globe. The birth pains are still being felt. When I arrived, George W Bush was beginning his second term as US president, oil and gas had yet to be discovered in many parts of Africa and mobile phones were just beginning to open up a world of possibilities from e-commerce to telemedicine. Now, two US presidents later (give or take a week or two), China has become the second-biggest investor in Africa, with India hard on its heels. The brain-drain is beginning to slow down as African talent is being retained, especially in the technology sector. And there is more money flowing back into Africa from remittances, than the entire aid budget
summary: As she moves on from her posting, the BBC's Southern Africa correspondent Karen Allen looks back on nearly 12 years of reporting from the continent.