Area and Population HT.Africa’s Population Prospects

ID.Mineral Resources

IE.Africa’s Fragile Infrastructure

IF.Africa’s Place in World Markets and Economies

IG.A Legacy of Failed States

108. Geopolitical Issues

Africa south of the Sahara is the poorest of the world’s regions, with half its population living in extreme poverty. The region has been plagued by conflict over ethnicity and resource control. Sub- Saharan Africa is also by far the hardest-hit area in the world from HIV/AIDS. The disease originated in Africa, and experts predict by 2010, 25 percent of Africa’s population – more than 700 million people – will have died of AIDS. This pandemic has dramatically lowered life expectancies, especially in southern Africa.

Physically, much of Africa is a series of vast plateaus at varying elevations. The continent is mountainous in the east, especially around the Great Rift Valley and Lake Victoria. Rivers rise in interior uplands but have many rapids and falls, blocking easy inland navigation. Africa’s biomes and climates are roughly symmetrical north and south of the equator. The northern reaches of the region are dominated by the Sahara Desert, and tropical rainforests abound around the equator and portions of the Atlantic and Indian coasts. Tropical savannas are widespread, and drought is a persistent problem over much of the area. Africa has large and diverse wildlife, which is increasingly threatened by human agricultural activity and population growth.

Women produce most of Africa’s food, which is largely grown as subsistence agriculture. Crop yields are low as fertilizers and mechanization is rare. Cattle and sheep herding is prevalent in the grasslands. Some sections of Africa are not suitable for cattle raising because of a deadly disease transmitted by the tsetse fly. Per capita, food production in many African nations has declined since independence. Exports of cash crops support several national economies.

Sub-Saharan Africa contains forty-seven countries and 749 million people. Modern humans originated in Africa, and the continent is very diverse ethnically, religiously, and linguistically. Civilizations, kingdoms, and empires arose in Ethiopia, West Africa, central Africa, and southern Africa. Beginning in the sixteenth century Europeans began establishing ports and colonies in Africa, and soon virtually the entire region was under European control. Africa was the source of most of the world’s slaves for over 1,000 years, when as many as 25 million Africans were sold into slavery and sent to foreign lands. The trans-Atlantic slave trade was finally abolished in 1870, but slavery still exists in parts of Africa itself to this day.

South Africa is the only industrialized nation in this region. One or two products dominate exports in most of the remainder of African nations, especially agricultural or mineral products. Africa is mineral rich, and access to those minerals has been the cause of several conflicts, including the “dirty diamonds” of Angola and Sierra Leone. Most foreign investment in Africa is given directly to the mines, and much of Africa’s infrastructure has been developed primarily for the mining industry. Oil is an increasingly important export.

African development is slowed by numerous factors, including low education levels, lack of a middle class, poor communication and transportation networks, corrupt or repressive governments, difficulties in attracting investment and in starting businesses, and public health and safety issues. Most of Africa is heavily indebted to foreign lenders, and the level of aid Africa receives has generally declined since the end of the Cold War, when the U.S. and Soviet Union no longer used African conflicts as proxy wars between them. Failed states are common throughout this region, though there are increasing steps towards democracy and freedom.

Africa represents a security and a geopolitical concern for the U.S. on several fronts. Africa has been the target of al-Qa’ida attacks, and the U.S. fears that African nations may be training and recruitment grounds for Islamist groups. Africa’s oil production is also increasing in importance, especially after the 2003 Iraq war. And the HIV/AIDS epidemic has also been declared a national security issue for the U.S.

196. 
     Sub-Saharan Africa’s population is actually clustered in five distinct areas: the coast of the Gulf of Guinea between Ghana and Nigeria; the savannas of northern Nigeria; the highlands of Ethiopia; the highlands surrounding Lake Victoria in Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, and Uganda; and the high interior plateau of South Africa. [p. 455]
     

197. 
     A variety of factors are responsible for Africa’s high HIV infection rates, although not every factor is applicable to every country or culture. Attitudes about sexuality are generally more relaxed in Africa than in the Western world, and condom usage is low. There is a great stigma attached to having AIDS, and victims are often ostracized. There is a shortage of public education and awareness about HIV and AIDS, and there is often a lack of leadership from governments on this issue. Health measures around the continent are often inadequate to fight the virus, and even when AIDS drugs are available they are often too expensive for the population at large to obtain. HIV and AIDS can be fought (and in some cases, are being fought) in several different ways. A few African countries have reduced infection rates by being outspoken about the dangers of the disease, promoting low-cost but effective public health tools and education. Wealthier nations around the world can contribute more money to both African nations and to AIDS researchers, and AIDS “cocktail” manufacturers could lower the costs of their drugs. AIDS has reduced life expectancies in many African countries by significant amounts, and populations of some nations may soon start declining. Population pyramids in AIDS-ravaged nations are much thinner and chimney-like than they would normally appear. [pp. 462-463]
     

198. 
     Africa’s location straddling the equator leads to remarkable symmetry in the continent’s biomes and climates. Tropical rain forest climates and biomes prevail along the equator, surrounded largely by a tropical savanna climate and biome. The fringes of the savanna climate experience semiarid steppe conditions, and these lead into deserts to the north, east, and south. Rain forest conditions prevail along much of Africa’s east coast and in Madagascar, and South Africa experiences a Mediterranean climate and biome found nowhere else in the region. [pp. 459-461]
     

199. 
     The African slave trade began in the seventh century with Arab merchants using trans-Saharan caravan routes to trade goods from northern Africa for slaves from areas south of the desert. Many of these slaves, especially women, became household servants in North Africa and the Middle East. Arabs also bought or traded for African slaves from eastern portions of Africa, where they wound up as far away as India and China. Slaves were one of the main motivations for European commerce along Africa’s coasts, and between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries millions of West African slaves were transported to European colonies in the Americas. [pp. 469, 471]
     

200. 
     The French controlled much of west and central Africa, as well as Madagascar. The British colonized Nigeria, parts of eastern Africa and most of southern Africa. Portugal owned Angola and Mozambique, plus several smaller colonies to the north. Belgium held the vast Congo, and Spain and Italy had minor colonial holdings. Germany lost its colonies after World War I, but it would not be until several decades after the end of the Second World War that most European colonies in Africa would be granted independence. [pp. 472-474]
     

201. 
     Among several African peoples, cattle contribute to cultural, social, and economic arrangements throughout daily life in addition to being an important part of the diet. Someone owning large numbers of cattle is likely to be considered wealthy and of high status in society. [pp. 461, 464]
     

202. 
     Sub-Saharan Africa’s main export crops are coffee, cacao, cotton, peanuts, and palm oil. Other export crops include tea, tobacco, rubber, pineapples, bananas, vanilla, sisal, sugar, and cashews. If a nation is too dependent upon one or two cash crops for export revenue, it becomes vulnerable to potential dramatic economic decline if the value of that cash crop plummets on the world market from oversupply. [pp. 474-475]
     

203. 
     A keystone species is one that affects many other organisms in an ecosystem. The tsetse fly is considered a keystone species because of the deadly diseases it carries that affects people and domesticated animals. People have tried to eliminate the tsetse fly from wilderness areas so they can grow crops and raise their livestock in those areas. Where the fly has been eradicated, the wilderness that existed in that region has also disappeared. [p. 457]
     

204. 
     Since the 1960s, population growth in Africa south of the Sahara has grown at about 3 percent annually, while food production in the region has grown at about 2 percent annually, resulting in the “one percent gap.” The fear is that Africa’s population will grow too quickly and food production will not keep up, resulting in famines. Some analysts see the effects of HIV and AIDS upon Africa’s population as a “check” against further growth at current rates. [pp. 456, 458]
     

205. 
     The U.S. Congress passed the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) in 2000, which ended or reduced tariffs and quotas on more than 1,800 manufactured, mineral, and food items that could be imported from Africa. As a result of this legislation exports to the U.S. from Africa surged, especially clothing. [pp. 477-479]
     

206. 
     Shell states are countries that appear to have viable institutions such as a parliament, constitution, and ministries, but are in reality mostly run by family and friends of the country’s ruler. Failed state syndrome is a process of economic and political decay within a country that is likely to be ruinous to that country. Donor democracies are countries that institute just enough political or human rights concessions without making any meaningful reforms to win loans or development aid. Donor fatigue affects MDCs, when their people and governments grow weary of hearing about and giving large sums of money to poorer countries where conditions never seem to improve. [pp. 480-481]
     

207. 
     During the Cold War the United States and Soviet Union waged proxy wars in Africa and elsewhere around the globe, arming their respective allies and giving generous amounts of aid to developing nations. When the Cold War ended, that aid to Africa either diminished significantly (in Washington’s case) or disappeared completely (in Moscow’s). The vast stockpiles of weapons that African nations had been given by the two superpowers remained, however, and conflict in Africa, which previously had mainly been relegated to civil wars, began spreading across national boundaries. Some countries collapsed essentially into small fiefdoms ruled by warlords, while others mis-prioritize the little international aid they do get by concentrating on military acquisitions rather than on feeding their citizens. However, after 2000, the United States renewed some interest in Africa, with the AGOA bill, some military presence in the continent after 9/11, and pledging to increase the amount of aid given to Africa to combat AIDS. [pp. 481-482]
     

208. 
     As China’s participation in the global economy increases, it competes with U.S. interests in sub-Saharan Afica. Both industrial superpowers see the region of sub-Saharan Africa as one of rich raw materials, and the geopolitical status of the region will doubtless rise in proportion to competition for resources. [p. 481]
     

This chapter should enable your students to…

• 
  Recognize how the maldistribution of resources, particularly of quality farmland, has contributed to dissent and war
  
• 
  Understand how the economic boom in China, where labor costs are very low, has taken a toll on the region’s industries
  
• 
  See why fertile volcanic uplands came to be the core regions of most of the mainland countries
  
• 
  Appreciate the vital role played by tourism in many of the nations’ economies
  
• 
  Understand how the limited resources of small island countries hampers their economies and leads them in search of Internet, banking, and other alternative ventures
  

109. 
     
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