The Roman province of Africa Proconsularis was established after the Romans defeated Carthage in the Third Punic War. It roughly comprised the territory of present-day Tunisia, the northeast of modern-day Algeria, and the small Mediterranean Sea coast of modern-day western Libya along the Syrtis Minor.
It was one of the wealthiest provinces in the western part of the empire, second only to Italia. The Arabs later named roughly the same region as the original province Ifriqiya, a rendering of Africa, from the Latin language.