ref4

Geographych6.pdf

6 REGIONS

SOUTHERN AFRICA EAST AFRICA EQUATORIAL AFRICA WEST AFRICA AFRICAN TRANSITION ZONE

CONCEPTS, IDEAS, AND TERMS

● Heart of the world, cradle of humanity ● Africa’s rich and varied cultures ● Why Africa remains in the grip of poverty ● South Africa: Engine of its region, beacon for the realm ● Nigeria: Cracking cornerstone of West Africa ● The Islamic Front looms over the north

In This Chapter

W here

w as this photo taken? Find out at www.wiley.com/c

olleg e/d

ebl ij

1 Human evolution 2 Rift valley 3 Continental drift 4 Medical geography 5 Endemic 6 Epidemic 7 Pandemic 8 Land tenure 9 Land alienation

10 Green Revolution 11 State formation 12 Colonialism 13 Multilingualism 14 Apartheid 15 Separate development 16 Landlocked state 17 Exclave 18 Desertification 19 Periodic market 20 Islamic Front 21 Failed state

Photos: © H. J. de Blij

FIGURE 6-1 © H. J. de Blij, P. O. Muller, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 281

L OOK AT A GLOBE, or at a map of the physicalworld (such as Fig. G-1 in this book), and it is clear that Africa is the core while the rest of world is the pe- riphery. Africa lies centrally positioned in the Land Hemisphere, with the Americas to the west, Eurasia to the north, Australia to the east, and Antarctica to the south.

In the economically globalizing world of today Af- rica may not be the functional core, but make no mis- take: for most of human history, Africa was indeed the core, the very source of humanity. This is where the great saga of human evolution began. Here in Africa we formed our first communities, created our first art, and fashioned our first weapons. After tens of thou- sands of years of adaptation to constantly changing en- vironments, we followed our ancestor hominids out of Africa in fateful migrations that were to change the world.

This was in effect the first great wave of globalization. Modern humans crossed the narrow strait at the south- ern end of the Red Sea, skirted the South Asian coast, traversed the Indonesian archipelago, and reached Aus- tralia more than 40,000 years ago. Others went north, in- vading Europe and confronting the Neanderthals who had preceded them. The wide Pacific Ocean delayed their arrival in the Americas, but eventually, apparently less than 15,000 years ago, the migration’s vanguard crossed the Bering Strait and started southward along North America’s west coast, making South America the last continent they reached.

We tend to forget that this globalizing wave was also the Africanization of the world. Wherever hu- mans migrated, their ancestors had started from Africa and carried their genetic and cultural baggage with them. Time, distance, and environment diversified the human map of the world, but at the source we are all Africans.

Cradle and Cauldron

For millions of years, therefore, Africa served as the cra- dle for humanity’s emergence. For tens of thousands of years, Africa was the source of human cultures. For thousands of years, Africa led the world in countless spheres ranging from tool manufacture to plant domes- tication.

But in this chapter we will encounter an Africa that has been struck by a series of disasters ranging from

environmental deterioration to human dislocation on a scale unmatched anywhere in the world. When we assess Africa’s misfortunes, though, we should re- member that these have lasted hundreds, not thou- sands, or millions, of years. Africa’s catastrophic interlude will end, and Africa’s time and turn will come again.

The focus in this chapter will be on Africa south of the Sahara, for which the unsatisfactory but convenient name Subsaharan Africa has come into use to signify not physically “under” the great desert but directionally “below” it. The African continent contains two geo- graphic realms: (1) the African, extending from the southern margins of the Sahara to the Cape of Good Hope; and (2) the Northern, consisting of the western flank of the realm dominated by the Muslim faith and Islamic culture, whose heartland lies in the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula. The great desert forms a for- midable barrier between the two, but the powerful in- fluences of Islam crossed it centuries before the first Europeans set foot in West Africa. By that time, the African kingdoms in what is known today as the Sahel had been converted, creating an Islamic foothold all along the northern periphery of the African realm (see Fig. G-2, p. 7). As we note later, this cultural and ideo- logical penetration had momentous consequences for Subsaharan Africa.

Peril of Proximity

In the three previous chapters on the Americas, we made frequent reference to the forced migration of Africans to Brazil, the Caribbean region, and the United States. The slave trade was one of those African disasters alluded to above, and it was facilitated in part by what we may call the peril of proximity. The north- eastern tip of Brazil, by far the largest single destina- tion for the millions of Africans forced from their homes in bondage, lies about as far from the nearest West African coast as South Carolina lies from Ve- nezuela, a short maritime intercontinental journey in- deed (it is more than twice as far from West Africa to South Carolina). That proximity facilitated the forced migration of millions of West Africans to Brazil, which in turn contributed to the emergence of an African cul- tural diaspora in Brazil that is without equal in the New World. It is therefore logical to focus next on the African realm.

282

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 282

A F R I C A ’ S P H Y S I O G R A P H Y 283

The African continent may be partitioned into two human- geographic realms, but the landmass is indivisible. Before we investigate the human geography of Subsaharan Africa, therefore, we should take note of the entire continent’s unique physical geography (Fig. 6-1). We have already noted Africa’s situation at the center of the planet’s Land Hemisphere; moreover, no other landmass is positioned so squarely astride the equator, reaching almost as far to the south as to the north. This location has much to do with the distribution of Africa’s climates, soils, vegetation, agri- cultural potential, and human population.

AFRICA’S PHYSIOGRAPHY

Africa accounts for about one-fifth of the Earth’s entire land surface. The north coast of Tunisia lies 7700 kilo- meters (4800 mi) from the south coast of South Africa. Coastal Senegal, on the extreme western Bulge of Africa, lies 7200 kilometers (4500 mi) from the tip of the Horn in easternmost Somalia. These distances have environ- mental implications. Much of Africa is far from maritime

sources of moisture. In addition, as Figure G-7 shows, large parts of the landmass lie in latitudes where global atmospheric circulation systems produce arid conditions. The Sahara in the north and the Kalahari in the south form part of this globe-girdling desert zone. Water sup- ply is one of Africa’s great problems.

Rifts and Rivers

Africa’s topography reveals several properties that are not replicated on other landmasses. Alone among the conti- nents, Africa does not have an Andes-like linear moun- tain backbone; neither the northern Atlas nor the southern Cape Ranges are in the same league. Where Africa does have high mountains, as in Ethiopia and South Africa, these are deeply eroded plateaus or, as in East Africa, high, snowcapped volcanoes. Furthermore, Africa is one of only two continents containing a cluster of Great Lakes, and the only one whose lakes result from power- ful tectonic forces in the Earth’s crust. These lakes (with the exception of Lake Victoria) lie in deep trenches called

1. Physiographically, Africa is a plateau continent with- out a linear mountain backbone, with a set of Great Lakes, variable rainfall, generally low-fertility soils, and mainly savanna and steppe vegetation.

2. Dozens of nations, hundreds of ethnic groups, and many smaller entities make up Subsaharan Africa’s culturally rich and varied population.

3. Most of Subsaharan Africa’s peoples depend on farming for their livelihood.

4. Health and nutritional conditions in Subsaharan Africa need improvement as the incidence of disease remains high and diets are often unbalanced. The AIDS pandemic began in Africa and has become a major health crisis in this realm.

5. Africa’s boundary framework is a colonial legacy; many boundaries were drawn without adequate knowledge of or regard for the human and physical geography they divided.

6. The realm is rich in raw materials vital to industrial- ized countries, but much of Subsaharan Africa’s pop- ulation has little access to the goods and services of the world economy.

7. Patterns of raw-material exploitation and export routes set up in the colonial period still prevail in most of Subsaharan Africa. Interregional and inter- national connections are poor.

8. During the Cold War, great-power competition mag- nified conflicts in several Subsaharan African coun- tries, with results that will be felt for generations.

9. Severe dislocation affects many Subsaharan African countries, from Liberia to Rwanda. This realm has the largest refugee population in the world today.

10. Government mismanagement and poor leadership afflict the economies of many Subsaharan African countries.

Subsaharan Afr ica

MAJOR GEOGRAPHIC QUALITIES OF

Defining the Realm

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 283

284 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

rift valleys, which form when huge parallel cracks or faults appear in the Earth’s crust and the strips of crust between them sink, or are pushed down, to form great, steep-sided, linear valleys. In Figure 6-2 these rift valleys, which stretch almost 10,000 kilometers (6300 mi) from the Red Sea to Swaziland, are indicated by red lines.

Africa’s rivers, too, are unusual: their upper courses often bear landward, seemingly unrelated to the coast to- ward which they eventually flow. Several rivers, such as the Nile and the Niger, have inland as well as coastal

deltas. Major waterfalls, notably Victoria Falls on the Zambezi, or lengthy systems of cataracts, separate the upper from the lower courses.

Finally, Africa may be described as the “plateau con- tinent.” Except for some comparatively limited coastal plains, almost the entire continent lies above 300 meters (1000 ft) in elevation, and fully half of it lies over 800 me- ters (2500 ft) high. As Figure 6-2 shows, the plateau surface has sagged under the weight of accumulating sediments into a half dozen major basins (three of them in the Sahara).

Equator

Tropic of Cancer

Tropic of Capricorn

Canary Islands

D jouf

Bas in

Libyan Desert

S u d a n

B a s i n S a h e l

Futa Jallon Highlands

Ethiopian Highlands

Bas in

B ihe P la teau

Ka l aha r i Bas i n

Cape Ranges

Dr ak

en sb

er g

Cape of Good Hope

Nam ib

D esert

Zanzibar

Atla s M

ts.

20°

0°

20°

0° 20° 40°

20°

0°

20°

40°20°0°20°

Madagascar

Congo Mt. Kenya 5,199 m. (17,058 ft.)

20° Longitude West of Greenwich Longitude East of Greenwich

Mt. Cameroon 4,069 m. (13,351 ft.)

Jos Plateau

Ad am

aw a

Hi gh

la nd

Okavango Delta

H ighve ld

Great Karoo

Ogaden

Horn of Africa

Mt. Kilimanjaro 5,895 m. (19,340 ft.)

S A H A R A

Chad Bas in

Ahaggar M t s .

T ibes t i M t s .

Strait of Gibralta r

Mediterranean Sea

Nile

Persian Gulf

R e

Sea

Gulf o f Adan

W hite

N il e

R .

Blue N

ile R

Shavi R.

Lake Chad

Lake Turkana INDIAN

OCEAN

Ku ne

ne R. Cuban

R .

Ka fu

e R .

Rufij i R.

K asai R

Congo R.

Lake Victoria

L.Tanganyika

Lake Malawi

M oç

am bi

qu e

Ch an

ne l

Orange R. Vaa l

Li m

po R.

Z am

be zi R.

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Gulf of Guinea

Lake Volta

Nige r R

Senegal R .

Niger R.

Ben ue

Ub angi R .

Rovuma R.

AFRICA: PHYSIOGRAPHY Plateau

Basin

Rift

0 1600 Kilometers

0 1000 Miles

400 1200

250 750

800

500

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 284

A F R I C A ’ S P H Y S I O G R A P H Y 285

The margins of Africa’s plateau are marked by escarp- ments, often steep and step-like. Most notable among these is the Great Escarpment of South Africa, marking the eastern edge of the Drakensberg Mountains.

Continental Drift and Plate Tectonics

Africa’s remarkable and unusual physiography was one piece of evidence that geographer Alfred Wegener used to construct his hypothesis of continental drift. The pre- sent continents, Wegener reasoned, lay assembled as one giant landmass called Pangaea not very long ago geo- logically (220 million years ago). The southern part of this supercontinent was Gondwana, of which Africa formed the core (Fig. 6-3). When, about 200 million years ago, tectonic forces began to split Pangaea apart, Africa (and the other landmasses) acquired their present config-

urations. That process, now known as plate tectonics, continues, marked by earthquakes and volcanic erup- tions. By the time it started, however, Africa’s land sur- face had begun to acquire some of the features that mark it today—and make it unique. The rift valleys, for exam- ple, demarcate the zones where plate movement contin- ues—hence the linear shape of the Red Sea, where the Arabian Plate is separating from the African Plate (Fig. G-3). And yes, the rift valleys of East Africa probably mark the further fragmentation of the African Plate (some geophysicists have already referred to a “Somali Plate,” which in the future will separate, Madagascar- like, from the rest of Africa).

So Africa’s ring of escarpments, its rifts, its river sys- tems, its interior basins, and its lack of Andes-like moun- tains, all relate to the continent’s central location in Pangaea, all pieces of the puzzle that led to the plate- tectonics solution. Once again, geography was the key.

E U R A S I A

A F R I C A N O R T H

A M E R I C A

S O U T H

A M E R I C A

I N D I A

A U S T R A L I A

A N T A R C T I C A

L A U R A S

I A

G O N D W A

N A

Djouf Chad Sudan

Congo

Amazon

Kalahari

SOUTH POLE

N ile

N iger

Co ngo

Ka fu

Zambezi

Orange

M ad

ag as

ca r

A m

az on

Sã o

Fr an

ci sc

o Ri

Ad am

aw a

Hi gh

lan ds

PANGAEA REASSEMBLED

Basin areas

Direction of plate movement

African Rift Valley system

Dwyka Ice Limit

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 285

286 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

NATURAL ENVIRONMENTS

Only the southernmost tip of Subsaharan Africa lies out- side the tropics. Although African elevations are compar- atively high, they are not high enough to ward off the heat that comes with tropical location except in especially fa- vored locales such as the Kenya Highlands and parts of Ethiopia. And, as we have noted, Africa’s bulky shape means that much of the continent lies far from maritime moisture sources. Variable weather and frequent droughts are among Africa’s environmental problems.

It is useful at this point to refer back to Figure G-7 on page 17. As that map shows, Africa’s climatic regions are distributed almost symmetrically about the equator, though more so in the center of the landmass than in the east, where elevation changes the picture. The hot, rainy climate of the Congo Basin merges gradually, both north- ward and southward, into climates with distinct winter- dry seasons. “Winter,” however, is characterized more by drought than by cold. In parts of the area mapped Aw (savanna), the annual seasonal cycle produces two rainy seasons, often referred to locally as the “long rains” and the “short rains,” separated by two “winter” dry periods. As you go farther north and south, away from the moist Congo Basin, the dry season(s) grow longer and the rainfall diminishes and becomes less and less dependable.

Crops and Animals

Most Africans still make their living by farming, and many grow crops in marginal areas where rainfall vari- ability can have catastrophic consequences. Compare Fig- ures G-6 and G-7 and note the steep decline in annual rainfall from more than 200 centimeters (80 in) around the equator in the Congo Basin to a mere 10 centimeters (4 in) in parts of Chad to the north and Namibia to the south. Millions of farmers till the often unproductive soils of the savanna, and many mix livestock herding with crop-raising to reduce their risk in this difficult environ- ment. But the savanna’s wildlife carries diseases that also infect livestock, which makes herding a risky proposition, too. Even where the savanna gives way to the still drier steppe, human pressure continues to grow, and people as well as animals trample fragile, desert-margin ecologies.

End of an Era

Africa’s shrinking rainforests and vast savannas form the world’s last refuges for wildlife ranging from primates to wildebeests. Gorillas and chimpanzees survive in dwin-

dling numbers in threatened forest habitats, while millions of herbivores range in great herds across the savanna plains where people compete with them for space. European col- onizers, who introduced hunting as a “sport” (a practice that was not part of African cultural traditions) and who brought their capacities for mass destruction to animals as well as people in Africa, helped clear vast areas of wildlife and push species to near extinction. Later they laid out game preserves and other types of conservation areas, but these were not sufficiently large or well enough connected to allow herd animals to follow their seasonal and annual migration routes. The same climatic variability that affects farmers also affects wildlife, and when the rangelands wither, the animals seek better pastures. When the fences of a game preserve wall them off, they cannot survive. When there are no fences, the wildlife invades neighbor- ing farmlands and destroys crops, and the farmers retaliate. After thousands of years of equilibrium, the competition between humans and animals in Africa has taken a new turn. It is the end of an era.

Farmers’ Problems

And yet it would seem that there could be room for hu- mans as well as wildlife in Subsaharan Africa. As the Data Table inside the back cover confirms, all the coun- tries of this realm combined have a population little more than half that of China alone. Indeed, Africa does have some areas of good soils, ample water, and high produc- tivity: the volcanic soils of Mount Kilimanjaro and those of the highlands around the Western Rift Valley, the soils in the Ethiopian Highlands, and those in the moister ar- eas of higher-latitude South Africa and parts of West Africa yield good crops when social conditions do not disrupt the farming communities. But such areas are small in the vastness of Africa. Ominously, a 2006 study by the International Center for Soil Fertility and Agricultural De- velopment reports that the overall situation is deteriorat- ing, and that it is worst in East Africa. Soils in Subsaharan Africa are losing nutrients at the highest rate in the world through erosion, exhaustion, and lack of fertilizer. The Center cites an example: in southern Somalia, soils are losing 88 kilograms (200 lb) of nutrients per hectare (2.5 acres) per year, compared to 9 kilograms (20 lb) in over- stressed Egypt. And according to the journal Science, “African farmers desperate for fresh soil are clearing frag- ile forestlands and wildlife habitats.”

The map of Subsaharan Africa’s population distribution (Fig. 6-4) shows few major clusters and many sparsely peopled areas, so that the destruction of natural habitats still has decades, perhaps generations, to go. Nigeria, the realm’s most populous state, has the largest numbers in

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 286

E N V I R O N M E N T A N D H E A L T H 287

West Africa; a second large cluster occupies the Great Lakes region in East Africa; and the third well-defined population concentration centers on the Ethiopian High- lands in the northeast. Referring once again to Figure 6-4, compare these prominent population clusters to the sparsely peopled expanses of the interior from Namibia in the far southwest to the Central African Republic on the Saharan margin in the north: Subsaharan Africa has just one-tenth the population density of South Asia.

One major reason for this is that Subsaharan Africa has nothing to compare to the huge river basins of India or China and their fertile soils. In fact, this realm does not even have anything comparable to Egypt’s teeming lower Nile Valley and Delta, where relatively small areas of fer- tile, irrigated soils can support tens of millions of people. Except for limited, often experimental patches of rice and wheat, Africa is the land of corn (maize), millet, and root crops, far less able to provide high per-hectare yields. Africa’s natural environment poses a formidable chal- lenge to the millions who depend directly on it.

ENVIRONMENT AND HEALTH

From birth, Africans (especially rural people living in A climates) are exposed to a wide range of diseases spread by insects and other organisms. The study of human health in spatial context is the field of medical geography, and medical geographers employ modern methods of analysis (including geographic information systems) to track dis- ease outbreaks, identify their sources, detect their carriers, and prevent their repetition. Alliances between doctors and geographers have already yielded significant results. Doc- tors understand how a disease ravages the body; geogra- phers understand how climatic conditions such as wind direction or variations in river flow can affect the distribu- tion and effectiveness of disease carriers. This collabora- tion helps protect vulnerable populations.

Tropical Africa, the source of many serious illnesses, is the focus of much of medical geography’s work. Not only the carriers (vectors) of infectious diseases but also

20°

60°40°20°0°20°

40°20°0°

Tropic of Capricorn

Equator0° 0°

20°

Longitude East of Greenwich

SUBSAHARAN AFRICA POPULATION DISTRIBUTION: 2010

One dot represents 50,000 persons

0 3200 Kilometers

0 2000 Miles

800 2400

500 1500

1600

1000

Dodoma

Kigoma

Mwanza

Zanzibar

Arusha

DAR ES SALAAM

FIGURE 6-4

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 287

288 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

cultural traditions that facilitate transmission, such as sex- ual practices, food selection and preparation, and personal hygiene, play their role—and all can be mapped. Com- paring medical, environmental, and cultural maps can lead to crucial evidence that helps combat the scourge.

In Africa today, hundreds of millions of people carry one or more maladies, often without knowing exactly what ails them. A disease that infects many people (the hosts) in a kind of equilibrium, without causing rapid and widespread deaths, is said to be endemic to the popula- tion. People affected may not die suddenly or dramati- cally, but their health deteriorates, energy levels fall, and the quality of life declines. In tropical Africa, hepatitis, venereal diseases, and hookworm are among the public health threats in this category.

Epidemics and Pandemics

When a disease outbreak has local or regional dimen- sions, it is called epidemic. It may claim thousands, even tens of thousands of lives, but it remains confined to a certain area, perhaps one defined by the range of its vector. In tropical Africa, trypanosomiasis, the dis- ease known as sleeping sickness and vectored by the tsetse fly, has regional proportions. The great herds of sa- vanna wildlife form the reservoir of this disease, and the tsetse fly transmits it to livestock and people. It is endemic to the wildlife, but it kills cattle, so Africa’s herders try

to keep their animals in tsetse-free zones. African sleep- ing sickness appears to have originated in a West African source area during the fifteenth century, and it spread throughout much of tropical Africa (Fig. 6-5). Its epi- demic range was limited by that of the tsetse fly: where there are no tsetse flies, there is no sleeping sickness. More than anything else, the tsetse fly has kept Subsaharan Africa’s savannalands largely free of livestock and open to wildlife. Should a remedy be found, livestock would replace the great herds on the grasslands.

When a disease spreads worldwide, it is described as pandemic. Africa’s and the world’s most deadly vec- tored disease is malaria, transmitted by a mosquito and killer of as many as one million children each year. Whether malaria has an African origin is not known, but it is an ancient affliction. Hippocrates, the Greek physi- cian of the fifth century BC, mentions it in his writings. Apes, monkeys, and several other species also suffer from it. Recurrent fever attacks, anemia, and enlargement of the spleen are its symptoms.

Malaria spread around the world, not only in tropical but also in temperate areas (the United States did not con- quer this disease until the mid-1950s), but Africa was hardest hit. Even today, 90 percent of tropical Africa’s approximately 700 million inhabitants live with the threat or effects of malaria. Medical geographers Melinda Meade and Robert Earickson in 2005 wrote that ma- laria’s “mosquito vectors are resistant to all the major in- secticides, the agent is resistant to all the major drugs, and the ancient scourge is upon us again.” For those at risk, this means that protection is the best course of ac- tion: millions of African children sleep in dwellings without windows or screens, and their best hope is in- secticide-treated mosquito netting. Many organizations, governmental and private, are engaged in a massive cam- paign to distribute mosquito netting to even the most remote villages, but even its widespread use can only mi- tigate, not eradicate, the scourge. And now there are re- ports that global warming is causing malaria to again encroach on higher altitudes as well as higher latitudes, lending even greater urgency to this battle for children’s lives. When you see the shockingly low life expectancies for tropical African countries in the Data Table at the end of the book, malaria is one of the leading causes, dramat- ically reflecting infant and child mortality.

Another mosquito-vectored pandemic disease with African origins, yellow fever, is also making a comeback in tropical Africa as well as in South America, again be- cause its mosquito vector seems to be reinvigorated. And keep an eye out, too, for reports on the spread of dengue fever, still another growing threat. Africa’s inventory of serious disease seems to have no limit.

WEST AFRICAN FOCUS

ca. 1400 ca. 1850 1901

1908

1907

ORIGINAL TSETSE FLY VECTORS THAT TRANSMIT THE

TRYPANOSOMES

Diffusion of African sleeping sickness

After Willett.

FIGURE 6-5

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 288

L A N D A N D F A R M I N G 289

Living with wildlife has its dangers as well, and mil- lions of Africans still share their habitat with wild an- imals. “Bush meat” is common fare in such areas, and many an African epidemic had its origin in the forest. During the 1970s, AIDS appears to have erupted in the equatorial rainforest in western Equatorial Africa, and rapidly evolved from an epidemic into a global pandemic (see box titled “AIDS in Subsaharan Africa”). Monkeys may have activated this terrible malady in humans, but whatever the source, Africa was and remains most se- verely afflicted. In 2009, there were an estimated 34.3 million cases of AIDS in the world, at least 24.5 million of them in Subsaharan Africa, further reducing the life expectancies of this realm’s inhabitants.

Challenges to Improving Health Conditions

The great incubator of vectored and nonvectored diseases in humid equatorial Africa continues to threaten local pop- ulations. Sudden outbreaks of Ebola fever in Sudan dur- ing the 1970s, in The Congo* in the 1990s, and in Uganda in 2000–2001 projected the risks that many Africans live with onto the world’s television screens. But Africa’s woes are soon forgotten. Only the fear that an African epidemic might evolve into a global pandemic mobilizes world at- tention. Africans cope with the planet’s most difficult en- vironments, but they are least capable of combating its hazards because their resources are so limited.

Even when international efforts are made to assist Africa, the unintended results may be catastrophic. Among Africa’s endemic diseases is schistosomiasis, also called bilharzia. The vector is a snail, and the transmitted parasites enter via body openings when people swim or wash in slow-moving water where the snails thrive (fast-moving streams are rel- atively safe). When development projects designed to help African farmers dammed rivers and streams and sent wa- ter into irrigation ditches, farm production rose—but so did the incidence of schistosomiasis, which causes internal bleeding and fatigue, although it is rarely fatal. Medical geographers’ maps showed the spread of schistosomiasis around the dam projects, and soon the cause was clear: by slowing down the water flow, the engineers had created an ideal environment for the snail vector.

Poverty is a powerful barrier to improving health, and major interventions in the natural environment carry costs as well as benefits. Africa needs improved medical

services, more effective child-immunization programs, mobile clinics for remote areas, and similar remedies. While two-thirds of the realm’s people continue to live in rural areas, the natural environment will weigh heav- ily on a vulnerable population.

LAND AND FARMING

Environmental conditions including rainfall and soil quality have much to do with the way Africans farm their land, but cultural, political, and economic factors also matter. Traditional land tenure (whether mainly subsis- tence or primarily commercial), farming techniques and equipment, markets, government intervention (in the form of promoting one crop over another through subsi- dies), and attitudes toward innovation such as irrigation or mechanization all play a role.

In their penetrating book, Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa, editor Samuel Aryeetey-Attoh and his col- leagues focus on the issue of land tenure, crucial in Africa because most Africans are farmers. Land tenure refers to the way people own, occupy, and use land. African traditions of land tenure are different from those of Europe or the Americas. In most of Subsaharan Africa, communities, not individuals, customarily hold land. Occupants of the land have temporary, custodial rights to it and cannot sell it. Land may be held by large (extended) families, by a village community, or even by a traditional chief who holds the land in trust for the peo- ple. His subjects may house themselves on it and farm it, but in return they must follow his rules.

Stolen Lands

When the European colonizers took control of much of Subsaharan Africa, their land ownership practices clashed head-on with those of Africa. Africans believed that their land belonged to their ancestors, the living, and the yet- unborn; Europeans saw unclaimed space and felt justified in claiming it. What Africans called land alienation— the expropriation of (often the best) land by Europeans— changed the pattern of land tenure in Africa. By the time the Europeans withdrew, private land ownership was widely dispersed and could not be reversed. Postcolonial African states tried to deal with this legacy by national- izing all the land and doing away with private ownership, reverting in theory to the role of the traditional chief. But this policy has not worked well. In the rural areas, the government in the capital is a remote authority often seen as unsympathetic to the plight of farmers. Governments keep the price of farm products low on urban markets,

*Two countries in Africa have the same short-form name: Congo. In this book, we use The Congo for the larger Democratic Republic of the Congo (also called Congo DRC), and Congo for the smaller Republic of Congo.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 289

290 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

AIDS in Subsaharan Africa

ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEF IC IENCY Syndrome—AIDS— spread in Africa during the 1980s and became a pandemic during the 1990s. Its impact on Africa has been devastat- ing. In 2007, more than 2 million people died of AIDS in Subsaharan Africa, 75 percent of the global toll.

Persons infected by HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) do not immediately or even soon display symptoms of AIDS. In the early stages, only a blood test will reveal infection, and then only by indicating that the body is mo- bilizing antibodies to fight HIV. People can carry the virus for years without being aware of it; during that period they can unwittingly transmit it to others. For that reason, of- ficial statistics of AIDS cases lag far behind the reservoir of those infected, especially in countries where popula- tions cannot be thoroughly tested. Since AIDS was iden- tified in the early 1980s, nearly 30 million people have died of it.

By 2009, more than 34 million people were known to be infected by AIDS worldwide, and of these about 25 million lived in 34 tropical African countries accord- ing to United Nations sources. In the early 1990s, the worst-hit countries were in Equatorial Africa in what was called the AIDS Belt from (then) Zaïre to Kenya. But a decade later, the most severely afflicted countries lay in Southern Africa. In Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland, more than 25 percent of all persons 15–49 were infected with HIV; in South Africa, the re- gion’s most populous country, the proportion was 22 percent (6.1 million). These are the official numbers; medical geographers estimate that 20 to 25 percent of the entire population of several tropical African coun- tries are infected.

As the number of deaths from AIDS rises, African countries’ vital statistics are showing the demographic im- pact. In Botswana, life expectancy in 1994 was 60 years; by 2006 it had bottomed out at 34. In South Africa it de- clined from 66 to 47 over the same time period. In Zim- babwe, population growth was 3.3 percent per year in the early 1980s; today it is 1.0 percent. Meanwhile, AIDS is killing parents at such a rate that it is already responsible for 20 million African orphans.

No part of tropical Africa has been spared. West Af- rican countries, too, are reporting growing numbers of AIDS cases. Ivory Coast, reporting that nearly 7 percent of adults are infected there, may provide the most accu- rate data. In Nigeria, where the full onslaught may not yet be known, AIDS incidence among adults is more than 5 percent (which, in that populous country, means that as many as 8.5 million people are ill with AIDS).

The misery the AIDS pandemic has created is beyond measure, but its economic impact is beyond doubt. Workers are sick on the job; but jobs are scarce and medical help is unavailable or unaffordable for many, so the workers stay on the job until they collapse. In a realm where unemployment is high, new workers immediately fill the vacancies, but they, too, are unwell. Corporations report skyrocketing AIDS-related costs. In Botswana, whose economy has been prospering due to increased diamond production, highly trained diamond sorters are being lost to AIDS, and training replacement workers is depressing profits. Medical expenses, multiplying death benefits, funeral payments, and recruiting and training costs are reducing corporate incomes from Kenya’s sugar plantations to South Africa’s gold mines. Thus the impact of AIDS is recorded in the continent’s economic statistics. The pattern shown in Figure G-11, where Af- rica is concerned, is due in substantial part to the AIDS pandemic.

In countries of the global core, progress has been made in containing AIDS and prolonging the lives of those afflicted. This has taken AIDS off the medical cen- ter stage, but such a turnaround is not in prospect for Africa. The cost of the medications that combat AIDS is too high, and private drug companies will not dispense their products at prices affordable to African patients. Thus the best short-term strategy is for governments to attempt to alter public attitudes and behavior, notably by making condoms available as widely and freely as pos- sible. Uganda, once one of tropical Africa’s hardest-hit countries, managed to slow the rate of AIDS dispersal by these methods—and through a vigorous advertising campaign on billboards, in newspapers, and on radio and television.

But what Africa needs is a coordinated attack on AIDS through the provision of medicines. One such initiative was launched in 2003 when the United States provided Subsaharan Africa with the financial means to combat the disease: a U.S. $10 billion fund to facilitate treatment as well as prevention. The urgency of the matter is under- scored by estimates that, in the absence of a massive cam- paign, some African countries may experience population declines of as much as 10 to 20 percent, a disaster com- parable only to Europe’s fourteenth-century bubonic plague and the collapse of Native American populations after the introduction of smallpox by the European in- vaders in the sixteenth. Once again environmental, cul- tural, and historical factors combine to afflict Africa’s peoples.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 290

L A N D A N D F A R M I N G 291

pleasing their supporters but frustrating farmers. Large landholdings once owned by Europeans seem now to be occupied by officials or those the government favors. The colonial period’s approach to land tenure left Africa with a huge social problem.

Rapid population growth makes the problem worse. Traditional systems of land tenure, which involve sub- sistence farming in various forms ranging from shifting cultivation to pastoralism, work best when population is fairly stable. Land must be left fallow to recover from cultivation, and pastures must be kept free of livestock so the grasses can revive. A population explosion of the kind Africa experienced during the mid-twentieth cen- tury destroys this equilibrium. Soils cannot rest, and pas- tures are overgrazed. As land becomes degraded, yields decline.

This is the situation in much of Subsaharan Africa, where two-thirds of the people depend on farming for their livelihood. That percentage is now declining, but it remains among the highest for any realm in the global periphery. Subsaharan Africa is sometimes thought of as a storehouse of minerals and fuels and great underground riches, but farming is the key to its economy. And not just subsistence farming: agricultural exports also pro- duce foreign exchange revenues needed to pay for essen- tial imports. The European colonizers identified suitable environments and laid out plantations to grow cocoa, cof- fee, tea, and other luxury crops for the markets of the global core. Irrigation schemes enabled the export of cot- ton, groundnuts (peanuts), and sesame seeds. Today, na- tional governments and some private owners continue to operate these projects.

Persistent Subsistence

But most African farmers are subsistence farmers who grow grain crops (corn, millet, sorghum) in the drier ar- eas and root crops (yams, cassava, sweet potatoes) where moisture is ample. Shifting cultivation still oc- curs in remote parts of The Congo and neighboring lo- cales in Equatorial Africa, but this practice is declining as the forest shrinks. Others are pastoralists, driving their cattle and goats along migratory routes to find wa- ter and pasture, sometimes clashing with sedentary farmers whose fields they invade. Whatever their prin- cipal mode of farming, all African farmers today feel the effects of population pressure and must cope with dwindling space and damaged ecologies. By intercrop- ping, planting several types of crops in one cleared field, some of which resemble those in the forest, shift- ing cultivators extend the life of their plots. In com-

pound farming, usually near a market center, farmers combine the use of compound (village) and household waste as fertilizer with intensive care of the crops to produce vegetables, fruits, and root crops as well as eggs and chickens for urban consumers. Other subsis- tence farmers use diversification to cope with such problems; they combine their cultivation of subsistence crops with nonfarm work, including full-time jobs in nearby towns.

Notwithstanding all these adaptations, African farm production is declining for many reasons, including gov- ernment mismanagement and corruption. When Nigeria became independent in 1960, its government embarked on costly industrialization, and agriculture was given a lower priority. In that year, Nigeria was the world’s largest producer and leading exporter of palm oil; today, Nige- ria must import palm oil to meet its domestic demand. In- adequate rural infrastructures create another obstacle. Roads from the rural areas to the market centers are in bad and worsening shape, often impassable during the rainy season and rutted when dry. Ineffective links be- tween producers and consumers create economic losses. Storage facilities in the villages tend to be inadequate, so that untold quantities of grains, roots, and vegetables are

Pyrethrum, a flowering plant native to Southeast Asia, does well in East Africa, where its flower heads are picked and crushed into a powder that forms the source of a useful insecticide of the same name. Take a look at the listed contents of many household bug sprays, and you are likely to see pyrethrum among them; it is also used in “dusts” for edible plants because pyrethrum is not toxic to humans. Detailed lists of some African states’ products sometimes show pyrethrum as an export, and in Kenya the government has set up a Pyrethrum Board to cultivate and harvest the flower. These workers, seen picking the petaled pyrethrum flower, are government employees. © Sven Torfinn/Panos Pictures.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 291

lost to rot, pests, and theft. Electricity supply in rural ar- eas also requires upgrading: without power, pumps can- not be run for water supply, and the processing of produce cannot be mechanized. Rural farmers have inadequate ac- cess to credit: banks would rather lend to urban home- owners than to distant villagers. This is especially true for women who, according to current estimates, produce 75 percent of the food in Subsaharan Africa.

Along the banks of Africa’s rivers and on the shores of the Great Lakes fishing augments local food supplies, but Africa’s fishing industries are still underdeveloped and contribute only modestly to overall nutrition. Dur- ing the postcolonial period, Subsaharan Africa’s popu- lation has more than doubled; food production has declined. Agricultural exports have also decreased, but food im- ports have mushroomed. The situation is especially clear in terms of per-capita output, which is lower today than it was 20 years ago. Even advances in biotechnology that closed the global gap between food production and de- mand largely passed Africa by (see box titled “A Green Revolution for Africa?”)

AFRICA’S HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

Africa is the cradle of humankind. Archeological re- search has chronicled 7 million years of transition from australopithecenes to hominids to Homo sapiens. It is therefore ironic that we know comparatively little about Subsaharan Africa from 5000 to 500 years ago—that is, before the onset of European colonialism. This is partly due to the colonial period itself, during which African history was neglected, many African traditions and arti- facts were destroyed, and many misconceptions about African cultures and institutions became entrenched. It is also a result of the absence of a written history over most of Africa south of the Sahara until the sixteenth century—and over a large part of it until much later than that. The best records are those of the savanna belt im- mediately south of the Sahara, where contact with North African peoples was greatest and where Islam achieved a major penetration.

A Green Revolution for Africa?

THE GREEN REVOLUTION—the development of more pro- ductive, higher-yielding types of grains—has narrowed the gap between world population and food produc- tion. Where people depend mainly on rice and wheat for their staples, the Green Revolution has pushed back the specter of hunger. The Green Revolution has had less impact in Subsaharan Africa, however. In part, this re- lates to the realm’s high rate of population growth (which is substantially higher than that of India or China). Other reasons have to do with Africa’s staples: rice and wheat support only a small part of the realm’s population. Corn (maize) supports many more, along with sorghum, millet, and other grains. In moister ar- eas, root crops, such as the yam and cassava, as well as the plantain (similar to the banana) supply most calories. These crops were not priorities in Green Rev- olution research.

Lately there have been a few signs of hope. Even as terrible famines struck several parts of the continent and people went hungry in places as widely scattered as Moçambique and Mali, scientists worked toward two goals: first, to develop strains of corn and other crops that would be more resistant to Africa’s virulent crop diseases, and second, to increase the productiv- ity of those strains. But these efforts faced serious problems. An average African hectare (2.5 acres)

planted with corn, for example, yields only about half a ton of corn, whereas the world average is 1.3 tons. When a virus-resistant variety was developed and dis- tributed throughout Subsaharan Africa in the 1980s, yields rose significantly where farmers could afford to buy the new strain as well as the fertilizers it requires. Nigeria saw a near-doubling of its production before it leveled off, but population growth negated the advan- tage. Hardier types of root crops also raised yields in some areas.

But Africa needs more than this to reverse the trend to- ward food deficiency. (Nor is the Green Revolution an un- qualified remedy: the poorest farmers, who need the help most, can least afford the more expensive higher-yielding seeds and also cannot pay for the pesticides that may be required.) It has been estimated that, for the realm as a whole, food production has fallen about 1 percent annu- ally even as population grew by more than 2 percent. Lack of capital, inefficient farming methods, inadequate equip- ment, soil exhaustion, male dominance, apathy, and dev- astating droughts contributed to this decline. The seemingly endless series of civil conflicts (The Congo, Su- dan, Somalia, Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Chad) also reduced farm output. The Green Revolution may narrow the gap between production and need, but the battle for food suf- ficiency in Africa is far from won.

292 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 292

F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“Got up before dawn this date in the hope of being the first visitor to the Great Zimbabwe ruins, a place I have wanted to see ever since I learned about it in a historical geography class. Climbed the hill and watched the sun rise over the great elliptical ‘temple’ below, then explored the maze of structures of the so-called fortification on the hilltop above. Next, for an incredible 90 minutes I was alone in the interior of the great oval walls of the temple. What history this site has seen—it was settled for perhaps six centuries before the first stones were hewn and laid here around AD 750, and from the 11th to the 15th centuries this may have been a ceremonial or religious center of a vast empire whose citizens smelted gold and copper and traded them via Sofala and other ports on the Indian Ocean for goods from South Asia and even China. No cement was used: these walls are built with stones cut to fit closely together, and in the valley they rise over 30 feet (nearly 10 m) high. And what secrets Great Zimbabwe still conceals—where are the plans, the tools, the quarries? The remnants of an elaborate water-supply system suggest a practical function for this center, but a decorated conical tower and adjacent platform imply a religious role. Whatever the answers, history hangs heavily, almost tangibly, over this African site.” © H. J. de Blij

Concept Caching

www.conceptcaching.com

A F R I C A ’ S H I S T O R I C A L G E O G R A P H Y 293

The absence of a written record does not mean, as some scholars have suggested, that Africa does not have a history as such prior to the coming of Islam and Chris- tianity. Nor does it mean that there were no rules of so- cial behavior, no codes of law, no organized economies. Modern historians, encouraged by the intense interest shown by Africans generally, are now trying to recon- struct the African past, not only from the meager writ- ten record but also from folklore, poetry, art objects, buildings, and other such sources. Much has been lost forever, though. Almost nothing is known of the farm- ing peoples who built well-laid terraces on the hillsides of northeastern Nigeria and East Africa or of the com- munities that laid irrigation canals and constructed stone- lined wells in Kenya; and very little is known about the people who, perhaps a thousand years ago, built the great walls of Zimbabwe (see photos above). Porcelain and coins from China, beads from India, and other goods from distant sources have been found in Zimbabwe and

other points in East and Southern Africa, but the trade routes within Africa itself—let alone the products that circulated and the people who handled them—still re- main the subject of guesswork.

African Genesis

Africa on the eve of the colonial period was a continent in transition. For several centuries, the habitat in and near one of the continent’s most culturally and economically productive areas—West Africa—had been changing. For 2000 years, probably more, Africa had been innovating as well as adopting ideas from outside. In West Africa, cities were developing on an impressive scale; in central and Southern Africa, peoples were moving, readjusting, sometimes struggling with each other for territorial su- premacy. The Romans had penetrated to southern Sudan, North African peoples were trading with West Africans,

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 293

294 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

and Arab dhows were sailing the waters along the east- ern coasts, bringing Asian goods in exchange for gold, copper, and a comparatively small number of slaves.

Consider the environmental situation in West Africa as it relates to the past. As Figures G-6 and G-7 indicate, the environmental regions in this part of the continent ex- hibit a decidedly east-west orientation. The isohyets (lines of equal rainfall totals) run parallel to the south- ern coast (Fig. G-6); the climatic regions, now positioned somewhat differently from where they were two millen- nia ago, still trend strongly east-west (Fig. G-7); the veg- etation pattern also reflects this situation, with a coastal forest belt yielding to savanna (tall grass with scattered trees in the south, shorter grass in the north) that gives way, in turn, to steppe and desert.

We know that African cultures had been established in all these environmental settings for thousands of years. One of these, the Nok culture, endured for over eight cen- turies on the Benue Plateau (north of the Niger-Benue confluence in modern Nigeria) from about 500 BC to the third century AD. The Nok people made stone as well as iron tools, and they left behind a treasure of art in the form of clay figurines representing humans and animals. But we have no evidence that they traded with distant peoples. The opportunities created by environments and technologies still lay ahead.

Early Trade in West Africa

West Africa, over a north-south span of a few hundred kilometers, displayed an enormous contrast in environ- ments, economic opportunities, modes of life, and prod- ucts. The peoples of the tropical forest produced and needed goods that were different from the products and requirements of the peoples of the dry, distant north. For example, salt is a prized commodity in the forest, where the humidity precludes its formation, but it is plentiful in the desert and steppe. This enabled the desert peoples to sell salt to the forest peoples in exchange for ivory, spices, and dried foods. Thus there evolved a degree of regional complementarity between the peoples of the forest and those of the drylands. And the savanna peoples—those located in between—found themselves in a position to channel and handle the trade (which is always economi- cally profitable).

The markets in which these goods were exchanged prospered and grew, and cities arose in the savanna belt of West Africa. One of these old cities, now an epitome of isolation, was once a thriving center of commerce and learning and one of the leading urban places in the world—Timbuktu. Others, predecessors as well as suc- cessors of Timbuktu, have declined, some of them into oblivion. Still other savanna cities, such as Kano in the northern part of Nigeria, remain important.

Early States

Strong and durable states arose in the West African cul- ture hearth (see Fig. 7-4). The oldest state we know any- thing about is Ghana. Ancient Ghana was located to the northwest of the modern country of Ghana, and covered parts of present-day Mali, Mauritania, and adjacent ter- ritory. Ghana lay astride the upper Niger River and in- cluded gold-rich streams flowing off the Futa Jallon Highlands, where the Niger has its origins. For a thou- sand years, perhaps longer, old Ghana managed to weld various groups of people into a stable state. The country had a large capital city complete with markets, suburbs for foreign merchants, religious shrines, and, some dis- tance from the city center, a fortified royal retreat. Taxes were collected from the citizens, and tribute was ex- tracted from subjugated peoples on Ghana’s periphery; tolls were levied on goods entering Ghana, and an army maintained control. Muslims from the northern drylands invaded Ghana in about AD 1062, when it may already have been in decline. Even so, the capital was protected for 14 years. However, the invaders had ruined the farm- lands and destroyed the trade links with the north. Ghana could not survive. It finally broke into smaller units.

Eastward Shift

In the centuries that followed, the focus of politico- territorial organization in the West African culture hearth shifted almost continuously eastward—first to ancient Ghana’s successor state of Mali, which was centered on Timbuktu and the middle Niger River Valley, and then to the state of Songhai, whose focus was Gao, a city on the Niger that still exists. This eastward movement may have been the result of the growing influence and power of Islam. Traditional religions prevailed in ancient Ghana, but Mali and its successor states sent huge, gold- laden pilgrimages to Mecca along the savanna corridor south of the Sahara, passing through present-day Khar- toum and Cairo. Of the tens of thousands who parti- cipated in these pilgrimages, some remained behind. Today, many Sudanese trace their ancestry to the West Africa savanna kingdoms.

Beyond the West

West Africa’s savanna region undoubtedly witnessed momentous cultural, technological, and economic de- velopments, but other parts of Africa also progressed. Early states emerged in present-day Sudan, Eritrea, and Ethiopia. Influenced by innovations from the Egyptian culture hearth, these kingdoms were stable and durable: the oldest, Kush, lasted 23 centuries (Fig. 6-6). The Kushites built elaborate irrigation systems, forged iron

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 294

A F R I C A ’ S H I S T O R I C A L G E O G R A P H Y 295

tools, and built impressive structures as the ruins of their long-term capital and industrial center, Meroe, re- veal. Nubia, to the southeast of Kush, was Christianized until the Muslim wave overtook it in the eighth century. And Axum was the richest market in northeastern Africa, a powerful kingdom that controlled Red Sea trade and endured for six centuries. Axum, too, was a Christian state that confronted Islam, but Axum’s rulers deflected the Muslim advance and gave rise to the Christian dynasty that eventually shaped modern Ethiopia.

The process of state formation spread throughout Africa and was still in progress when the first European contacts occurred in the late fifteenth century. Large and effectively organized states developed on the equatorial

west coast (notably Kongo) and on the southern plateau from the southern part of The Congo to Zimbabwe. East Africa had several city-states, including Mogadishu, Kilwa, Mombasa, and Sofala.

Bantu Migration

A crucial event affected virtually all of Equatorial, West, and Southern Africa: the great Bantu migration from present-day Nigeria–Cameroon southward and eastward across the continent. This migration appears to have oc- curred in waves starting as long as 5000 years ago, pop- ulating the Great Lakes area and penetrating South Africa, where it resulted in the formation of the power- ful Zulu Empire in the nineteenth century (Fig. 6-6).

0° 15°15° 30° 45°

15°

0°0°

15°15°

30°30°

Tropic of CapricornTropic of Capricorn

Tropic of Cancer

Longitude East of Greenwich

Longitude West of Greenwich

0° 15°

15°

30° 45°

Equator

Tropic of Cancer

KUSH

NUBIA

ETHIOPIA

BUGANDA

RWANDA

BURUNDI

LOZINGOLA

KONGO

ASHANTI DAHOMEY BENIN

OYO

NUPE

HAUSA

NOK

SONGHAIWOLOF

MALI

GHANA

LUNDA

LUBA

MWENEMUTAPA

ZIMBABWE

ZULU

SOUTH SOTHO

XHOSA

AXUM

Malindi

Mogadishu

Adis Abeba

Axum (Aksum)

Mombasa

Zanzibar

Kilwa

Sofala EARLY AFRICA

1200 Kilometers 8004000

0 600 Miles400200

City States

Great Bantu Migration

Ancient States

Later States

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 295

Coastward Reorientation

Suddenly, the centers of activity lay not with the cities of the savanna but in the foreign stations on the Atlan- tic coast. As the interior declined, the coastal peoples thrived. Small forest states gained unprecedented wealth, transferring and selling slaves captured in the interior to the European traders on the coast. Dahomey (now called Benin) and Benin (now part of neighboring Nigeria) were states built on the slave trade. When slavery even- tually came under attack in Europe, those who had in- herited the power and riches it had brought opposed abolition vigorously in both continents.

Horrors of the Slave Trade

Although slavery was not new to West Africa, the kind of slave raiding and trading the Europeans introduced certainly was. In the savanna, kings, chiefs, and promi- nent families traditionally took a few slaves, but the sta- tus of those slaves was unlike anything that lay in store for those who were shipped across the Atlantic. In fact, large-scale slave trading had been introduced in East Africa long before the Europeans brought it to West Africa. African middlemen from the coast raided the in- terior for able-bodied men and women and marched them in chains to the Arab markets on the coast (Zan-

296 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

Tropic of Capricorn

0° Equator

0°

30°

Longitude East of Greenwich

ATLANTIC OCEAN

ETHNIC AREAS OF SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

1000 Kilometers

500 Miles

After Stamp and Morgan.

All this reminds us that, before European coloniza- tion, Africa was a realm of rich and varied cultures, di- verse lifestyles, technological progress, and external trade (Fig. 6-7). But Europe’s intervention would forever change its evolving political map.

The Colonial Transformation

European involvement in Subsaharan Africa began in the fifteenth century. It would interrupt the path of in- digenous African development and irreversibly alter the entire cultural, economic, political, and social makeup of the continent. It started quietly in the late fifteenth century, with Portuguese ships groping their way along the west coast and rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Their goal was to find a sea route to the spices and riches of the Orient. Soon other European countries were send- ing their vessels to African waters, and a string of coastal stations and forts sprang up. In West Africa, the nearest part of the continent to European spheres in Mid- dle and South America, the initial impact was strongest. At their coastal control points, the Europeans traded with African middlemen for the slaves who were need- ed to work New World plantations, for the gold that had been flowing northward across the desert, and for ivory and spices.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 296

A F R I C A ’ S H I S T O R I C A L G E O G R A P H Y 297

0°20°40°60°80°100°

0°

20°

40°

Equator

A F R I C A

S O U T H A M E R I C A

N O R T H A M E R I C A

M I D D L E A M E R I C A

British North America

Spa nish

America

British Caribbean

French Caribbean

Danish Caribbean

Dutch Caribbean

Brazil

Ar ab

ATLANTIC OCEAN

PACIFIC OCEAN

0 20001000 3000 Kilometers

1000 2000 Miles

THE ATLANTIC SLAVE TRADE VOLUME AND DESTINATIONS

1701–1810

12,000,000

10,000,000

8,000,000

6,000,000

4,000,000 2,000,000

1,000,000

VOLUME

After (1) Curtin and (2) Fellows.

zibar was a notorious market). There, packed in spe- cially built dhows, they were carried off to Arabia, Per- sia, and India. When the European slave trade took hold in West Africa, however, its volume was far greater. Eu- ropeans, Arabs, and collaborating Africans ravaged the continent, forcing perhaps as many as 30 million per- sons away from their homelands in bondage (Fig. 6-8). Families were destroyed, as were entire villages and cultures; and those who survived their exile suffered un- fathomable misery.

The European presence on the West African coast completely reoriented its trade routes, for it initiated the decline of the interior savanna states and strengthened the coastal forest states. Moreover, the Europeans’ in- satiable demand for slaves ravaged the population of the interior. But it did not lead to any major European thrust toward the interior or produce colonies overnight. The African middlemen were well organized and strong, and they held off their European competitors, not just for decades but for centuries. Although the Europeans first appeared in the fifteenth century, they did not carve West Africa up until nearly 400 years later, and in many areas not until after 1900.

In all of Subsaharan Africa, the only area where Eu- ropean penetration was both early and substantial was at its southernmost end, at the Cape of Good Hope.

There the Dutch founded Cape Town, a waystation to their developing empire in the East Indies. They settled in the town’s hinterland and migrated deeper into the in- terior. They brought thousands of slaves from Southeast Asia to the Cape, and intermarriage was common. To- day, people of mixed ancestry form the largest part of Cape Town’s population. Later the British took control not only of the Cape but also of the expanding frontier and brought in tens of thousands of South Asians to work on their plantations. Multiracial South Africa was in the making.

Elsewhere in the realm, the European presence re- mained confined almost entirely to the coastal trading stations, whose economic influence was strong. No real frontiers of penetration developed. Individual travelers, missionaries, explorers, and traders went into the interior, but nowhere else in Africa south of the Sahara was there an invasion of white settlers comparable to that of south- ernmost Africa’s.

Colonization

In the second half of the nineteenth century, after more than four centuries of contact, the European powers finally laid claim to virtually all of Africa. Parts of the continent had been “explored,” but now representatives of European

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 297

298 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

The Berlin Conference

IN NOVEMBER 1884, the imperial chancellor and archi- tect of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, con- vened a conference of 14 states (including the United States) to settle the political partitioning of Africa. Bis- marck wanted not only to expand German spheres of in- fluence in Africa but also to play off Germany’s colonial rivals against one another to the Germans’ advantage. The major colonial contestants in Africa were: (1) the British, who held beachheads along the West, South, and East African coasts; (2) the French, whose main sphere of activity was in the area of the Senegal River and north of the Congo Basin; (3) the Portuguese, who now desired to extend their coastal stations in Angola and Moçambique deep into the interior; (4) King Leopold II of Belgium, who was amassing a personal domain in the Congo Basin; and (5) Germany itself, ac- tive in areas where the designs of other colonial pow- ers might be obstructed, as in Togo (between British holdings), Cameroon (a wedge into French spheres), South West Africa (taken from under British noses in a swift strategic move), and East Africa (where German Tanganyika broke the British design for a solid block of territory from the Cape north to Cairo).

When the conference convened in Berlin, more than 80 percent of Africa was still under traditional African

rule. Nonetheless, the colonial powers’ representatives drew their boundary lines across the entire map. These lines were drawn through known as well as unknown re- gions, pieces of territory were haggled over, boundaries were erased and redrawn, and African real estate was exchanged among European governments. In the process, African peoples were divided, unified regions were ripped apart, hostile societies were thrown together, hinterlands were disrupted, and migration routes were closed off. Not all of this was felt immediately, of course, but these were some of the effects when the colonial powers be- gan to consolidate their holdings and the boundaries on paper became barriers on the African landscape (Fig. 6-9).

The Berlin Conference was Africa’s undoing in more ways than one. The colonial powers superimposed their domains on the African continent. By the time Africa re- gained its independence after the late 1950s, the realm had acquired a legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be eliminated nor made to operate satisfac- torily. The African politico-geographical map is therefore a permanent liability that resulted from three months of ignorant, greedy acquisitiveness during a period when Eu- rope’s search for minerals and markets had become insa- tiable.

governments and rulers arrived to create or expand African spheres of influence for their patrons. Competition was in- tense. Spheres of influence began to crowd each other. It was time for negotiation, and in late 1884 a conference was convened in Berlin to sort things out. This conference laid the groundwork for the now familiar politico-geographical map of Africa (see box titled “The Berlin Conference”).

Figure 6-9 shows the result. The French dominated most of West Africa, and the British East and Southern Africa. The Belgians acquired the vast territory that be- came The Congo. The Germans held four colonies, one in each of the realm’s regions. The Portuguese held a small colony in West Africa and two large ones in South- ern Africa (see the map dated 1910).

The European colonial powers shared one objective in their African colonies: exploitation. But in the way they governed their dependencies, they reflected their differ- ences. Some colonial powers were themselves democracies (the United Kingdom and France); others were dictator- ships (Portugal, Spain). The British established a system of indirect rule over much of their domain, leaving indige- nous power structures in place and making local rulers rep-

resentatives of the British Crown. This was unthinkable in the Portuguese colonies, where harsh, direct control was the rule. The French sought to create culturally assimilated elites that would represent French ideals in the colonies.

In the Belgian Congo, however, King Leopold II, who had financed the expeditions that staked Belgium’s claim in Berlin, embarked on a campaign of ruthless exploitation. His enforcers mobilized almost the entire Congolese pop- ulation to gather rubber, kill elephants for their ivory, and build public works to improve export routes. For failing to meet production quotas, entire communities were massa- cred. Killing and maiming became routine in a colony in which horror was the only common denominator. After the impact of the slave trade, King Leopold’s reign of terror was Africa’s most severe demographic disaster. By the time it ended, after a growing outcry around the world, as many as 10 million Congolese had been murdered. In 1908 the Belgian government took over, and slowly its Congo be- gan to mirror Belgium’s own internal divisions: corpora- tions, government administrators, and the Roman Catholic Church each pursued their sometimes competing interests. But no one thought to change the name of the colonial cap-

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 298

A F R I C A ’ S H I S T O R I C A L G E O G R A P H Y 299

1885

1950

1970 1994–

1958

1910

Independent but white- minority ruled

Britain*

France*

Belgium*

Portugal

Italy*

Germany*

Spain

South Africa

Independent

*Including Mandates and Trust Territories.

COLONIZATION AND DECOLONIZATION SINCE 1885 © H. J. de Blij, P. O. Muller, and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

FIGURE 6-9

ital: it was Leopoldville until the Belgian Congo achieved independence in 1960.

Colonialism transformed Africa, but in its post- Berlin form it lasted less than a century. In Ghana, for

example, the Ashanti (Asante) Kingdom still was fight- ing the British into the early twentieth century; by 1957, Ghana was independent again. A few years from now, much of Subsaharan Africa will have been independent

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 299

300 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

for half a century, and the colonial period is becoming an interlude rather than a paramount chapter in modern African history.

Legacies

Nevertheless, some colonial legacies will remain on the map for centuries to come. The boundary framework has been modified in a few places, but it is a politico-geo- graphical axiom that boundaries, once established, tend to become entrenched and immovable. The transport sys- tems were laid out to facilitate the movement of raw ma- terials from interior sources to coastal outlets. Internal circulation was only a secondary objective, and most African countries still are not well connected to each other. Moreover, the colonizers founded many of Subsa- haran Africa’s cities or built them on the sites of small towns or villages.

In many countries, the elites that gained advantage and prominence during the colonial period also have re- tained their preeminence. This has led to authoritarian- ism in some postcolonial African states (for details, see the regional discussion to come), and to violence and civil conflict in others. Military takeovers of national governments have been a byproduct of decolonization, and hopes for democracy in the struggle against colonial- ism have too often been dashed. Yet a growing number of African countries, including Ghana, Tanzania, Botswana, South Africa, and, most recently, Nigeria, have overcome the odds and achieved representative gov- ernment under dauntingly difficult circumstances.

Although not strictly a colonial legacy, the impact of the Cold War (1945–1990) on African states should be noted. In three countries—Ethiopia, Somalia, and Angola—great-power competition, weapons, military advisers, and, in Angola, foreign armed forces magnified civil wars that would perhaps have been inevitable in any case. In other countries, ideological adherence to foreign dogmas led to political and social experiments (such as one-party Marxist regimes and costly farm collectiviza- tion) that cost Africa dearly. Today, debt-ridden Africa is again being told what to do, this time by foreign fi- nancial institutions. The cycle of poverty that followed colonialism exacts a high price from African societies. As for future development prospects, the disadvantages of peripheral location vis-à-vis the world’s core areas continue to handicap Subsaharan Africa.

CULTURAL PATTERNS

We may tend to think of Africa in terms of its promi- nent countries and famous cities, its development prob- lems and political dilemmas, but Africans themselves

have another perspective. The colonial period created states and capitals, introduced foreign languages to serve as the lingua franca, and brought railroads and roads. The colonizers stimulated labor movements to the mines they opened, and they disrupted other migra- tions that had been part of African life for many cen- turies. But they did not change the ways of life of most of the people. No less than two-thirds of the realm’s population still live in, and work near, Africa’s hun- dreds of thousands of villages. They speak one of more than a thousand languages in use in the realm. The vil- lagers’ concerns are local; they focus on subsistence, health, and safety. They worry that the conflicts over re- gional power or political ideology will engulf them, as has happened to millions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Rwanda, The Congo, Moçambique, and An- gola since the 1970s. Africa’s largest peoples are ma- jor nations, such as the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Zulu of South Africa. Africa’s smallest peoples number just a few thousand. As a geographic realm, Subsaharan Africa has the most complex cultural mosaic on Earth (see Fig. 6-7).

African Languages

Africa’s linguistic geography is a key component of that cultural intricacy. Most of Subsaharan Africa’s more than 1000 languages do not have a written tradition, making classification and mapping difficult. Scholars have attempted to delimit an African language map, and Figure 6-10 is a composite of their efforts. One feature is common to all language maps of Africa: the geo- graphic realm begins approximately where the Afro- Asiatic language family (mapped in yellow in Fig. 6-10) ends, although the correlation is sharper in West Africa than to the east.

In Subsaharan Africa, the dominant language fam- ily is the Niger-Congo family, of which the Kordofan- ian subfamily is a small, historic northeastern outlier (Fig. 6-10), and the Niger-Congo languages carry the other subfamily’s name. The latter subfamily extends across the realm from West to East and Southern Africa. The Bantu language forms the largest branch in this subfamily, but Niger-Congo languages in West Africa, such as Yoruba and Akan, also have millions of speakers. Another important language family is the Nilo-Saharan family, extending from Maasai in Kenya northwest to Teda in Chad. No other language fami- lies are of similar extent or importance: the Khoisan family, of ancient origins, now survives among the dwindling Khoi and San peoples of the Kalahari; the

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 300

C U L T U R A L P A T T E R N S 301

small white minority in South Africa speak Indo-European lan- guages; and Malay–Polynesian lan- guages prevail in Madagascar, which was peopled from Southeast Asia before Africans reached it.

The Most Widely Used Languages

About 40 African languages are spo- ken by 1 million people or more, and a half-dozen by about 10 million or more: Yoruba (28 million), Hausa (24 million), Ibo, Swahili, Lingala, and Zulu. Although English and French have become important linguae fran- cae in multilingual countries such as Nigeria and Côte d’Ivoire (where officials even insist on spelling the name of their country—Ivory Coast—in the Francophone way), African languages also serve this pur- pose. Hausa is a common language across the West African savanna; Swahili is widely used in East Africa. And pidgin languages, mixtures of African and European tongues, are spreading along West Africa’s coast. Millions of Pidgin English (called Wes Kos) speakers use this medium in Nigeria and Ghana.

Language and Culture

Multilingualism can be a powerful centrifugal force in society, and African governments have tried with vary- ing success to establish “national” alongside local lan- guages. Nigeria, for example, made English its official language because none of its 250 languages, not even Hausa, had sufficient internal interregional use. But us- ing a European, colonial language as an official medium invites criticism, and Nigeria remains divided on the is- sue. On the other hand, making a dominant local lan- guage official would invite negative reactions from ethnic minorities. Language remains a potent force in Africa’s cultural life.

Religion in Africa

Africans had their own religious belief systems long be- fore Christians and Muslims arrived to convert them.

And for all of Subsaharan Africa’s cultural diversity, Africans had a consistent view of their place in nature. Spiritual forces, according to African tradition, are manifest everywhere in the natural environment, not in a supreme deity that exists in some remote place. Thus gods and spirits affect people’s daily lives, witnessing every move, rewarding the virtuous, and punishing (through injury or crop failure, for example) those who misbehave. Ancestral spirits can inflict misfortune on the living. They are everywhere: in the forest, rivers, mountains.

As with land tenure, the religious views of Africans clashed fundamentally with those of outsiders. Mono- theistic Christianity first touched Africa in the northeast when Nubia and Axum were converted, and Ethiopia has been a Coptic Christian stronghold since the fourth cen- tury AD. But the Christian churches’ real invasion did not begin until the onset of colonialism after the turn of the

20°

20° 40°

20°0° 40°

20°

0°

20°

A R

A B

I C

A R A B I C

T U

A R

E G

SO NGH

D INKA

R A

B I

B E

J A

AM HA

RI C

S O

M A

G A

L L

B ATEKE

K O N G O

KIKUYU

S W

A H

I L I

B E M B

M A

K U

S H O N A

THO NG

SOTHO

S AN

KHOI

XHOSA

M A

L A

G A

S Y

B A L U B A

SPANISH

W O

LO F

FULANI

GOLA

KRU AKA

MOSSI HAUSA

T I VYORUBA

IBO

FA NG

G B A Y A B A N D A

AZAN DE

LUO

NUER

SIDAMO

M O N G O

L I N G A L A GANDA MAASAI

MBUNDU

ZULU

ENGLISH

T E D A 2B

M ALAW

NIGER-CONGO FAMILY 1A Niger-Congo Subfamily 1B Kordofanian Subfamily

NIL0-SAHARAN FAMILY 2A Nilotic Subfamily 2B Saharan Subfamily

KHOISAN FAMILY

AFRO-ASIATIC FAMILY

MALAY-POLYNESIAN FAMILY

INDO-EUROPEAN FAMILY

LANGUAGES OF AFRICA

After Greenberg.

1000 Miles5000

1000 Kilometers5000

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 301

302 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

sixteenth century. Christianity’s various denominations made inroads in different areas: Roman Catholicism in much of Equatorial Africa mainly at the behest of the Belgians, the Anglican Church in British colonies, and Presbyterians and others elsewhere. However, almost everywhere, Christianity’s penetration led to a blending of traditional and Christian beliefs, so that much of Sub- saharan Africa is nominally, though not exclusively, Christian. Go to a church in Gabon or Uganda or Zam- bia, and you may hear drums instead of church bells, sing African music rather than hymns, and see African carv- ings alongside the usual statuary.

Islam had a different arrival and impact. Long before the colonial invasion, Islam advanced out of Arabia, across the desert, and down the east coast. Muslim cler- ics converted the rulers of African states and commanded them to convert their subjects. They Islamized the sa- vanna states and penetrated into present-day northern Nigeria, Ghana, and Ivory Coast. They encircled and iso- lated Ethiopia’s Coptic Christians and Islamized the So- mali people in Africa’s Horn. They established beachheads on the Kenya coast and took over Zanzibar. On the map, the African Transition Zone defines the Is- lamic Front (see Fig. 6-11). In the field, Arabizing Islam and European Christianity competed for African minds, and Islam proved to be a far more pervasive force. From Senegal to Somalia, the population is virtually 100 per- cent Muslim, and Islam’s rules dominate everyday life (photo above). The Sunni mullahs would never allow the kind of marriage between traditional and Christian be- liefs seen in much of formerly colonial Africa. This fun- damental contradiction between Islamic dogma and Christian accommodation creates a potential for conflict in countries where both religions have adherents.

MODERN MAP AND TRADITIONAL SOCIETY

The political map of Subsaharan Africa contains almost 50 states but no nation-states (apart from some microstates and ministates in the islands and in the far south). Centrifugal forces are powerful, and outside interventions during the Cold War, when communist and anticommunist foreign- ers took sides in local civil wars, worsened conflict within African states. Colonialism’s economic legacy was not much better. In tropical Africa, core areas, capitals, port cities, and transport systems were laid out to maximize profit and facilitate exploitation of minerals and soils; the colonial mosaic inhibited interregional communications ex- cept where cooperation enhanced efficiency. Colonial Zam- bia and Zimbabwe, for example (then called Northern and Southern Rhodesia), were landlocked and needed outlets, so railroads were built to Portuguese-owned ports. But such routes did little to create intra-African linkages. The mod- ern map reveals the results: in West Africa you can travel from the coast into the interior of all the coastal states along railways or adequate roads. But no high-standard roadway was ever built to link these coastal neighbors to each other.

Supranationalism

To overcome such disadvantages, African states must co- operate internationally, continentwide as well as regionally. The Organization of African Unity (OAU) was established for this purpose in 1963 and in 2001 was superseded by the African Union. In 1975 the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) was founded by 15 coun-

The faithful kneel during Friday prayers at a mosque in Kano, northern Nigeria. The survival of Nigeria as a unified state is an African success story; the Nigerians have overcome strong centrifugal forces in a multi-ethnic country that is dominantly Muslim in the north, Christian in the south. In the 1990s, some Muslim clerics began calling for an Islamic Republic in Nigeria, and after the death of the dictator Abacha and the election of a non-Muslim president, the Islamic drive intensified. A number of Nigeria’s northern States adopted Sharia (strict Islamic) law, which led to destructive riots between the majority Muslims and minority Christians who felt threatened by this turn of events. Can Nigeria avoid the fate of Sudan (see pp. 366-367)? © M. & E. Bernheim/Woodfin Camp & Associates.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 302

E C O N O M I C P R O B L E M S 303

tries to promote trade, transportation, industry, and social affairs in the region. And in the early 1990s, another im- portant step was taken when 12 countries joined in the Southern African Development Community (SADC), or- ganized to facilitate regional commerce, intercountry transport networks, and political interaction.

Population and Urbanization

Subsaharan Africa is the second least urbanized major world realm, but it is urbanizing at a fast pace. The per- centage of urban dwellers today stands at 35 percent. This means that almost 270 million people now live in cities and towns, many of which were founded and de- veloped by the colonial powers.

African cities became centers of embryonic national core areas, and of course they served as government headquarters. This formal sector of the city used to be the dominant one, with government control and regula- tions affecting civil service, business, industry, and work- ers. Today, however, African cities look different. From a distance, the skyline still resembles that of a modern center. But in the streets, on the sidewalks right below the shopwindows, there are hawkers, basket weavers, jewelry sellers, garment makers, wood carvers—a sec- ond economy, most of it beyond government control. This informal sector now dominates many African cities. It is peopled by the rural immigrants, who also work as ser- vants, apprentices, construction workers, and in countless other menial jobs.

Millions of urban immigrants, however, cannot find work, at least not for months or even years at a time. They live in squalid circumstances, in desperate poverty, and governments cannot assist them. As a result, the squatter rings around (and also within) many of Africa’s cities are unsafe—uncomfortable, unhealthy slums with- out adequate shelter, water supply, or basic sanitation. Garbage-strewn (no solid-waste removal here), muddy and insect-infested during the rainy season, and stifling and smelly during the dry period, they are incubators of disease. Yet very few residents return to their villages. Every new day brings hope.

In our regional discussion we focus on some of Sub- saharan Africa’s cities, all of which, to varying degrees, are stressed by the rate of population influx. Despite the plight of the urban poor and the poverty of Africa’s rural areas, some of Africa’s capitals remain the strongholds of privileged elites who, dominant in governments, fail to address the needs of other ethnic groups. Discrimina- tory policies and artificially low food prices disadvantage farmers and create even greater urban-rural disparities than the colonial period saw. But today the prospect of

democracy brings hope that Africa’s rural majorities will be heard and heeded in the capitals.

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

As the world map of economic development (Fig. G-11) shows, Subsaharan Africa as a geographic realm is the weakest link in the international economy. Proportion- ately more countries are poor and debt-ridden in Subsa- haran Africa than anywhere else. Annual income per person is low, infrastructure is inadequate, linkages with the rest of the world are weak, farmers face obstacles to profit at home as well as abroad. Champions of global- ization say that Africa’s poverty is proof that a lack of globalizing interaction spells disadvantage for any coun- try. Opponents of globalization argue that Africa’s con- dition is proof that globalization is making the poor poorer and the already-rich richer.

From Mauritania to Madagascar, Africa’s low-in- come economies reflect a combination of difficulties so daunting that overcoming them should be a global, not just an African, objective. If the world is a village of neighborhoods, as is so often said, this is the neigh- borhood that needs the most help—ranging from med- ical assistance against AIDS to fair market conditions for farmers. Lifting hundreds of millions of subsistence farmers from the vagaries of individual survival to the security of collective prosperity will take more than a Green Revolution. Africa’s vast expanse of savanna soil may not be any less fertile than that of Brazil’s booming cerrado, but if there is no capital to provide fertilizers and no incentive to produce, no secure finan- cial system and no roads to markets, no government policies to secure fair domestic prices and no equal ac- cess to the international marketplace, Africa’s key in- dustry will not make progress. That is the crucial problem: farming will form Africa’s dominant eco- nomic activity for decades to come. True, Africa con- tinues to sell commodities ranging from asbestos to zinc to foreign buyers in a pattern established during the colonial era, but the gauge of Africa’s well-being lies in its agriculture.

Figure G-11 may appear to contradict this prospect, but consider how few the exceptions are. Of Subsaha- ran Africa’s nearly 50 countries, all but nine have low- income economies. The only well-balanced economy among these nine is South Africa, for reasons we dis- cuss in the regional section of this chapter: South Africa combines industrial production, commodity sales, and commercial farming. Among the others, Botswana’s prosperity is based on commodity (diamond) sales, Namibia’s on metals, and Gabon’s on oil and forest

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 303

304 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

exploitation. But even the export of oil or metals can- not lift Nigeria, The Congo, Zimbabwe, or any other African economy out of its low-income status.

The remnants of colonial economic ties are mostly gone, and profits from commodities, from gold to man- ganese, have dropped as production costs rise and mar- ket prices fluctuate. But a new buyer has arrived on the African scene: China. The Chinese demand for metals, especially iron ore but also ferroalloys and copper, is bur- geoning, and Africa has what China wants—except that Subsaharan Africa’s railroad system, even in compara- tively efficient South Africa, cannot get the cargoes to the coast in sufficient quantity or, in many areas, at all. China is offering to pay for infrastructure improvements, and there is hardly a country in Africa today without Chinese business representatives negotiating with the govern- ment. If China’s interest in commodities were to help link farmers as well as mines to cities and ports, Africa’s economic condition might improve.

● More than one million infants and children die of malaria each year in Africa, many times more than in the rest of the susceptible countries of the world combined.

● China is building a dam on Ethiopia’s Tekeze River that will be the largest in Africa, higher even than China’s Three Gorges project, to generate electricity and facilitate irrigation.

● Liberia in 2005 became the first country in Africa to be governed by a woman when President Ellen Johnson- Sirleaf was elected with 59 percent of the vote.

● The staggering death toll in the wars in The Congo— more than 4 million since 1998—is the worst in the world, but international assistance, including UN peacekeeping efforts, has not been enough to end it.

POINTS TO PONDER

Regions of the Realm On the face of it, Africa seems to be so massive, com- pact, and unbroken that any attempt to justify a contem- porary regional breakdown is doomed to fail. No deeply penetrating bays or seas create peninsular fragments as they do in Europe. No major islands (other than Mada- gascar) provide the broad regional contrasts we see in Middle America. Nor does Africa really taper southward to the peninsular proportions of South America. And

Africa is not cut by an Andean or a Himalayan moun- tain barrier. Given Africa’s colonial fragmentation and cultural mosaic, is regionalization possible? Indeed it is.

Maps of environmental distributions, ethnic patterns, cultural landscapes, historic culture hearths, and other spatial data yield a four-region structure complicated by a fifth, overlapping zone as shown in Figure 6-11. Be- ginning in the south, we identify the following regions:

1. Southern Africa, extending from the southern tip of the continent to the northern borders of Angola, Zambia, Malawi, and Moçambique. Ten countries constitute this region, which extends beyond the tropics and whose giant is South Africa. The island state of Madagascar, with Southeast Asian influences, is neither Southern nor East African.

2. East Africa, where natural (equatorial) environments are moderated by elevation and where plateaus, lakes, and mountains, some carrying permanent snow, define the countryside. Six countries, including the highland part of Ethiopia, comprise this region.

3. Equatorial Africa, much of it defined by the basin of the Congo River, where elevations are lower than in East Africa, temperatures are higher and moisture more ample, and where most of Africa’s surviving rainforests remain. Among the eight countries that form this region, The Congo dominates territorially and demographically, but others are much better off economically and politically.

M A J O R C I T I E S O F T H E R E A L M

City Population*(in millions)

Abidjan, Ivory Coast 4.3 Accra, Ghana 2.4 Adis Abeba, Ethiopia 3.6 Cape Town, South Africa 3.3 Dakar, Senegal 2.9 Dar es Salaam, Tanzania 3.4 Durban, South Africa 2.8 Harare, Zimbabwe 1.7 Ibadan, Nigeria 2.9 Johannesburg, South Africa 3.6 Kinshasa, The Congo 9.2 Lagos, Nigeria 10.6 Lusaka, Zambia 1.5 Mombasa, Kenya 1.0 Nairobi, Kenya 3.5

*Based on 2010 estimates.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 304

S O U T H E R N A F R I C A 305

Lake Tanganyika

Lake VictoriaAT L A N T I C

O C E A N

I N D I A N

O C E A N

Orange R .

Va al

Zambezi R.

Co ngo R.

N ile

R .

Nile R

Lake Chad

Nig er R.

R ed Sea

MAURITANIA

SENEGAL GAMBIA

GUINEA

SIERRA LEONE

GUINEA- BISSAU

MALI

LIBERIA IVORY COAST

BURKINA FASO

GHANA

TOGO

BENIN NIGERIA

NIGER

CHAD

SUDAN

CENTRAL AFRICAN

REPUBLIC CAMEROON

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

GABON CONGO

CABINDA (Angola)

ETHIOPIA

KENYA UGANDA

RWANDA

BURUNDI

TANZANIA

ZAMBIA

ZIMBABWE

M AL

AW I

ANGOLA

NAMIBIA BOTSWANA

SOUTH AFRICA

SWAZILAND

LESOTHO

15° 0° 15° 30° 45°

15°

0°

15°

30°

45°30°15° Longitude East of Greenwich

Tropic of Capricorn

M OÇ

AM BIQ

M AD

AG AS

CA R

0°

15°

Equator

SO MA

LIA

ERITREA

DJIBOUTI

THE CONGO

REGIONS OF SUBSAHARAN AFRICA

0 1200 Kilometers

300 600 Miles

Southern Africa

East Africa

Equatorial Africa

West Africa

Approximate southern boundary of Islam

African Transition Zone

600

4. West Africa, which includes the countries of the west- ern coast and those on the margins of the Sahara in the interior, a populous region anchored in the south- east by Africa’s demographic giant, Nigeria. Fifteen countries form this crucial African region.

5. The African Transition Zone, the complicating fac- tor on the regional map of Africa. In Figure 6-11, note that this zone of increasing Islamic influence com- pletely dominates some countries (e.g., Somalia in the east and Senegal in the west) while cutting across oth- ers, thereby creating Islamized northern areas and non-Islamic southern zones (Nigeria, Chad, Sudan).

SOUTHERN AFRICA

Southern Africa, as a geographic region, consists of all the countries and territories lying south of Equatorial Africa’s The Congo and East Africa’s Tanzania (Fig. 6-12). Thus

defined, the region extends from Angola and Moçambique (on the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts, respectively) to South Africa and includes a half-dozen landlocked states. Also marking the northern limit of the region are Zambia and Malawi. Zambia is nearly cut in half by a long land extension from The Congo, and Malawi penetrates deeply into Moçambique. The colonial boundary framework, here as elsewhere, produced many liabilities.

Africa’s Richest Region

Southern Africa constitutes a geographic region in both physiographic and human terms. Its northern zone marks the southern limit of the Congo Basin in a broad upland that stretches across Angola and into Zambia (the tan corridor extending eastward from the Bihe Plateau in Fig. 6-2). Lake Malawi is the southernmost of the East African rift-valley lakes; Southern Africa has none of East Africa’s volcanic

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 305

306 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

and earthquake activity. Most of the region is plateau coun- try, and the Great Escarpment is much in evidence here. There are two pivotal river systems: the Zambezi (which forms the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe) and the Orange-Vaal (South African rivers that combine to demar- cate southern Namibia from South Africa).

Southern Africa is the continent’s richest region ma- terially. A great zone of mineral deposits extends through the heart of the region from Zambia’s Copperbelt through

Zimbabwe’s Great Dyke and South Africa’s Bushveld Basin and Witwatersrand to the goldfields and diamond mines of the Orange Free State and northern Cape Province in the heart of South Africa. Ever since these minerals began to be exploited in colonial times, many migrant laborers have come to work in the mines.

Southern Africa’s agricultural diversity matches its mineral wealth. Vineyards drape the slopes of South Africa’s Cape Ranges; tea plantations hug the eastern

Zambezi R .

Zambezi R.

Okavango R.

Cubango R.

C o ng

Lake Kariba

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Va al

Orange R.

Lim popo

INDIAN OCEAN

Lake Tanganyika

Lake Mweru

Lake Malawi

Rovum a R.

Lim po

po R.

O range R.

20° 25° 30° 35° 40°

10°

20°

30°25°20°15°

30°

25°

20°

15°

10°

Port Elizabeth

East London

XHOSA

De Aar

Bloemfontein Kimberley

Maseru

Durban

Pietermaritzburg

Ladysmith

ZULU

MaputoMmabatho

Hotazel

Bitterfontein

Seeheim

Kranzberg

Grootfontein

Tsumeb

Ghanzi

Francistown

Bulawayo Nyanda

Mutare

Beira

Hwange

Livingstone

Mongu

Menongue

Namibe

Benguela

Huambo

Malanje

Luanda

Matadi Kananga Kalemie

Kigoma

Lindi

Pemba

Moçambique Cuamba

Lichinga

Blantyre

Tete

Kabwe

Ndola Mufulira

KitweChingola

Lubumbashi Likasi

Tenke

Inhambane

Tropic of Capricorn

Longitude East of Greenwich

Lüderitz

Otjiwarongo

Dar es Salaam

Chipoka

Walvis Bay

Cape Town

Gaborone Pretoria

(Tshwane)

Windhoek

Lusaka

Lilongwe

Dodoma

KRUGER NATIONAL

PARK

GORONGOZA N.P.

HUHLUWE N.P.

KALAHARI GEMSBOK N.P.

CHOBE N.P. HWANGE N.P.

KAFUE N.P.

LUANGWA N.P.

G re

a t D

yk e

S of

a l a

Za mb

ez ia

N a

m i b

D e

s e

r t

B u s h v e l d B a s i n

W i t w a t e r s r a n d Johannesburg

CENTRAL KALAHARI GAME RESERVE

SOTHO

TSWANA

SHONA

OVAMBO

OVIMBUNDU

KONGO

CAPRIVI STRIP

K a l a h a r i D e s e r t

Mbabane

Lobito

Mafikeng

Harare

Copperbelt

15°

C a p e R a n g e s

D r

a k en

s b e r

G r e a t K a r o o

SWAZILAND

A N G O L A

Z A M B I A

ZIMBABWE

B O T S W A N A

N A M I B I A

S O U T H A F R I C A

M O

Ç A

B I

Q U

T H E C O N G O

T A N Z A N I A

LESOTHO

M A

L A

W I

CABINDA (ANG.)

SOUTHERN AFRICA

POPULATION

National capitals are underlined

National park

Johannesburg– Maputo Corridor

Railroad Road

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

200 Miles1000

400 Kilometers2000

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 306

S O U T H E R N A F R I C A 307

escarpment slopes of Zimbabwe. Before civil war de- stroyed its economy, Angola was one of the world’s lead- ing coffee producers. South Africa’s relatively high latitudes and its range of altitudes create environments for apple orchards, citrus groves, banana plantations, pineapple farms, and many other crops.

Despite this considerable wealth and potential, not all of the ten countries of Southern Africa have prospered. As Figure G-11 shows, four remain mired in the low- income category (Malawi, Moçambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe); although South Africa, Angola, Lesotho, Swaziland, Namibia, and Botswana fall into the two middle-income ranks, the (desert-dominated) last two rank among the realm’s three most sparsely populated countries. A period of rapid population growth, followed by the dev- astating onslaught of AIDS, civil conflict, political instabil- ity, incompetent government, widespread corruption, unfair competition on foreign markets, and environmental prob- lems have combined to constrain regional development.

Still, with the tragic exception of Zimbabwe (the realm’s basket case in 2009), Southern Africa as a region is better off than any other in Subsaharan Africa: as Fig- ure G-11 shows, six countries here have risen above the lowest-income rank among world states. Some interna- tional cooperation including a regional association and a customs union are emerging. And South Africa, the realm’s most important country by many measures, gives hope for a better future.

South Africa

The Republic of South Africa is the giant of Southern Africa, an African country at the center of world atten- tion, a bright ray of hope not only for Africa but for all humankind.

Long in the grip of one of the world’s most notorious racial policies (apartheid, or “apartness,” and its deriv- ative, separate development), South Africa today is shedding its past and is building a new future. That vir- tually all parties to the earlier debacle worked coopera- tively to restructure the country under a new flag, a new national anthem, and a new leadership was one of the great events of the late twentieth century. Now, more than 15 years after Nelson Mandela became South Africa’s first democratically elected president, and with his suc- cessor reelected to a second term, South Africa is matur- ing politically. In 2008, a significant development oc- curred: the political party that represented the coalition of anti-apartheid forces, the African National Congress (ANC), broke apart through the secession of a group of dissidents calling themselves the Congress of the People (COPE), a new party that might form the core of a new opposition. This was exciting as well as ominous: excit-

ing because it was a vigorous expression of democracy at work, but ominous because the political system could break down under the tensions of controversy.

An African—and Global—Magnet

South Africa stretches from the warm subtropics in the north to Antarctic-chilled waters in the south. With a land area of more than 1.2 million square kilometers (470,000 sq mi) and a multicultural population of just un- der 50 million, South Africa contains the bulk of its re- gion’s minerals, most of its good farmlands, its largest cities and best ports, its most productive factories, and best-developed transport networks. Commodities from as far away as Zambia move through South African ports. Workers from distant Malawi and nearby Moçambique arrive to find work in South Africa’s mines and factories.

South Africa’s location has much to do with its human geography. On the African continent, peoples migrated southward—first the Khoisan-speakers and then the Bantu peoples—into the South African cul-de-sac. On the oceans, the Europeans arrived to claim the southernmost Cape as one of the most strategic places on Earth, the gateway from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, a waysta- tion on the route to Asia’s riches. The Dutch East India Company founded Cape Town as early as 1652, and soon the Hollanders began to bring Southeast Asians to the Cape to serve as domestics and laborers, thereby creat- ing a foothold for Islam here. By the time the British took over about 150 years later, Cape Town had a substantial population of mixed ancestry, the source of today’s so- called Coloured sector of the country’s citizenry.

The British also altered the demographic mosaic by bringing tens of thousands of indentured laborers from their South Asian domain to work on the sugar plantations of east-coast Natal. Most of these laborers stayed after their period of indenture was over, and today South Africa counts more than 1 million Indians among its people. Most are still concentrated in Natal and prominently so in met- ropolitan Durban, adhering to their Hindu faith.

British and Boers

As we noted above, South Africa had been occupied by Europeans long before the colonial “scramble for Africa” gained momentum. The Dutch, after the British took con- trol of the Cape, trekked into the South African interior and, on the plateau they called the highveld, founded their own republics. When diamonds and gold were discovered there, the British challenged the Boers (descendants of the Dutch settlers) for these prizes. In 1899–1902, the British and the Boers fought the Boer War. The British won, and British capitalists took control of South Africa’s economic and political life. But the Boers negotiated a power-sharing

15 14

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 307

308 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

arrangement and eventually achieved supremacy. Having long since shed their European links, they now called themselves Afrikaners, their word for Africans, and pro- ceeded to erect the system known as apartheid.

Zulu and Xhosa

These foreign immigrations and struggles took place on lands that Africans had already entered and fought over. When the Europeans reached the Cape, Bantu nations were driving the weaker Khoi and San peoples into less hospitable territory or forcing them to work in bondage. One great contest was taking place in the east and south- east, below the Great Escarpment. The Xhosa nation was moving toward the Cape along this natural corridor. Be- hind them, in Natal (Fig. 6-12), the Zulu Empire became the region’s most powerful entity in the nineteenth century. On the highveld, the North and South Sotho, the Tswana, and other peoples could not stem the tide of European ag- grandizement, but their numbers ensured survival.

In the process, South Africa became Africa’s most pluralistic and heterogeneous society. People had con- verged on the country from Western Europe, Southeast Asia, South Asia, and other parts of Africa itself. At the end of the first decade of this century, Africans outnum- bered non-Africans by just about 4 to 1 (Table 6-1).

The Ethnic Mosaic

Heterogeneity also marks the spatial demography of South Africa. Despite centuries of migration and (at the Cape) intermarriage, labor movement (to the mines, farms, and factories), and sustained urbanization, regionalism per- vades the human mosaic. The Zulu nation still is largely concentrated in the province the Europeans called Natal. The Xhosa still cluster in the Eastern Cape, from the city of East London to the Natal border and below the Great Escarpment. The Tswana still occupy ancestral lands along the Botswana border. Cape Town still is the core area of the Coloured population; Durban still has the strongest Indian imprint. Travel through South Africa, and you will recognize the diversity of rural cultural land- scapes as they change from Swazi to Ndebele to Venda.

This historic regionalism was among the factors that led the Afrikaner government to institute its “separate de- velopment” scheme, but it could not stem the tide of ur- banization. Millions of workers, job-seekers, and illegal migrants converged on the cities, creating vast shanty- towns on their margins. In the legal African “townships” such as Johannesburg’s Soweto (“SOuth WEstern TOwnships”) and in these squatter settlements the anti- apartheid movement burgeoned, and the strength of the African National Congress movement grew. In February 1990 Nelson Mandela, imprisoned for 28 years on Robben Island, South Africa’s Alcatraz, became a free man, and following the momentous first democratic elec- tion of 1994 he became president of an ANC-dominated government in Cape Town.

South Africa’s New Map

Prior to 1994, South Africa had been administratively or- ganized into four provinces, two of them based on British coastal holdings and two interior ones roughly represen- tative of Boer “republics.” Even before the momentous 1994 election, these were replaced by a framework of nine provinces carefully laid out to reflect South Africa’s heterogeneous subregions (Fig. 6-13). During white- minority rule, South Africa had two capital cities: Pre- toria, the administrative headquarters, in the interior; and Cape Town, the legislative capital, on the coast. Pretoria and the country’s largest city—the mining, industrial, and financial center of Johannesburg—were made part of the new Province of Gauteng, which approximately corresponds to South Africa’s core area. Cape Town re- tained its legislative functions and simultaneously be- came the capital of the new Western Cape Province. The old Province of Natal was renamed Kwazulu-Natal in recognition of its dominant ethnic sector.

This politico-geographical reorganization proved to be a stroke of genius. In South Africa’s first democratic

Demographic Data for South Africa 2010 Estimated Population

Population Groups (in millions)

African nations 38.6

Zulu 11.6 Xhosa 8.6 Tswana 4.0 Sotho (N and S) 3.9 Others (6) 10.5

Whites 4.7

Afrikaners 2.9 English-speakers 1.7 Others 0.1

Mixed (Coloureds) 4.5

African/White 4.1 Malayan 0.4

South Asian 1.3

Hindus 0.9 Muslims 0.4

TOTAL 49.1

TABLE 6-1

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 308

S O U T H E R N A F R I C A 309

election ever, the African National Congress won seven of the new provinces, failing to win only in Kwazulu- Natal where the Zulu vote went to a local movement and in the Western Cape where an alliance of Coloured and white voters outpolled the ANC. This demonstration of democracy and the resulting representation of minorities in the new South African Parliament was a triumph. The ANC attracted support from some voters in the white, Coloured, and Asian communities, and President Man- dela’s cabinet was, indeed, a rainbow coalition.

In 1999, ANC leader Thabo Mbeki, who had served as Mandela’s deputy, became the country’s second pop-

ularly elected president. In many other African countries, the succession from heroic founder-of-the-nation to po- litical inheritor-of-the-presidency has not gone well, but South Africa’s constitution proved its worth. Still, the new president faced some formidable problems: in- evitable comparisons to the incomparable Mandela; the rising tide of AIDS in South Africa, which Mbeki and his health minister attributed to causes other than HIV; the collapse of order and the rise of ruthless dictatorship in neighboring Zimbabwe, on which Mbeki’s leadership failed; and impatience at home over slow progress in the betterment of living conditions for the poor. This last and

LIMPOPO

MPUMALANGA

GAUTENG

KWAZULU-NATAL

NORTH WEST

FREE STATE

EASTERN CAPE

WESTERN CAPE

NORTHERN CAPE

Port Elizabeth

East London

raAeD

notgnipU

nietnofmeolB

yelrebmiK

Maseru

Durban

Pietermaritzburg (non-Zulu capital)

Ladysmith

MaputognekifaM

Bitterfontein

Seeheim

grebznarK

Ghanzi

nwotsicnarF

oyawaluB

ztiredüL

Otjiwarongo

Walvis Bay

nwoTepaC

enorobaG

airoterP )enawhsT(

Windhoek

Johannesburg Mbabane

Mmabatho Nelspruit

Bisho

Ulundi (Zulu capital)

Polokwane

B u s h v e l d B a s i n

K a l a h a r i D e s e r t

W i twate r s r a nd SWAZILAND

LESOTHO

S O U T H A F R I C A

B O T S W A N A

Z I M B A B W E

N A M I B I A

M O

Ç A

M B

I Q U

HLUHLUWE N.P.

KRUGER NATIONAL

PARK

KALAHARI GEMSBOK N.P.

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Vaa l R.

Orange R.

Lim popo

INDIAN OCEAN

Li m

po po

O range

Vaal Dam

20°

25°

30°

25°20°

15°

30°

25°

20°

Longitude East of Greenwich

20° 25° 30°15°

0 200 400 Kilometers

0 200 Miles100

National capitals are underlined

SOUTH AFRICA POPULATION

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

Provincial capital

Road National park

Railroad

PROVINCIAL POPULATION

Over 7,000,000

5,000,000–7,000,000

3,000,000–5,000,000

1,000,000–3,000,000

25°

20°20°

25°

30°30°

35°

40°

Longitude East of Greenwich

30°

30°25°20°

35°

25°20°15°

T R A N S V A A L

NATAL

ORANGE FREE STATE

NAMIBIA

BOTSWANA

ZIMBABWE

MOÇAMBIQUE

LESOTHO

SWAZILAND

C A P E

Cape Town

Johannesburg

Port Elizabeth East London

Durban

Bloemfontein

Pretoria

INDIAN OCEANATLANTIC

OCEAN

National capitals are underlined. Other city

SOUTH AFRICA: PRE-1994 PROVINCES Provincial capital 0

200 Miles

200 Kilometers

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 309

310 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

inevitable development is not unique to South Africa or any other country in the global periphery: the rise to power by a local leader results in a “revolution of rising expectations” that must be met by persuasive evidence of progress. Mbeki had to steer a course that kept South Africa’s national economy on track while finding ways to fund social programs as well as foreign initiatives (he sent the South African Army to help quell the crisis in The Congo, for example). Mbeki was reelected in 2004, but in 2008 his presidency was cut short by disputes within the ANC that eventually led to his premature res- ignation.

Jacob Zuma of KwaZulu-Natal was elected in the im- portant presidential vote of 2009. Mr. Zuma had positioned himself as a “man of the people,” skillfully mixing populist campaign promises with reassurances to business and in-

dustry, firing up South Africa’s long-simmering revolution of rising expectations. President Zuma also faced legal prob- lems even as he ran for the presidency, having been charged in court with corruption and fraud, acquitted in a rape case in another trial, and facing criticism for other aspects of his personal life (he has three wives in a country where mo- nogamy is the norm if not the law). The economic down- turn starting in 2008 immediately challenged Zuma, not only nationally but also within his ANC party, whose left wing expects the results Mbeki allegedly failed to deliver.

South Africa’s Economic Geography

South Africa has by far the largest and most diverse economy in all of Africa, but it is an economy facing ma- jor challenges. Ever since diamonds were discovered at

SUBSAHARAN AFRIC A IS urbanizing rapidly, but it still has only one true conurbation, and Johannesburg, South Africa lies at the heart of it. Little more than a century ago, Johannesburg was a small (though rapidly growing) min- ing town based on the newly discovered gold reserves of the Witwatersrand.

Today Johannesburg forms the focus of a conurbation of more than 7 million, extending from Pretoria in the north to Vereeniging in the south, and from Springs in the east to Krugersdorp in the west. The population of met- ropolitan Johannesburg itself passed the 3 million mark in 2003 (it now totals 3.6 million), thereby overtaking Cape Town to become South Africa’s largest metropolis.

Johannesburg’s skyline is the most impressive in all of Africa, a forest of skyscrapers reflecting the wealth generated here over the past hundred years. Look southward from a high vantage point, and you see the huge mounds of yel- lowish-white slag from the mines of the “Rand,” the so- called mine dumps, partly overgrown today, interspersed with suburbs and townships. In a general way, Johannes- burg developed as a white city in the north and a black city in the south. Soweto, the black township, lies to the south- west; Houghton and other spacious, upper-class suburbs, formerly exclusively white residential areas, lie to the north.

Johannesburg has neither the scenery of Cape Town nor the climate and beaches of Durban. The city lies 1.5 kilometers (nearly 1 mi) above sea level, and its thin air often is polluted from smog created by automobiles, factories, mine-dump dust, and countless cooking fires in the townships and shantytowns that ring the metropolis.

Over the past century, the Johannesburg area pro- duced nearly one-half of all the world’s gold by value. But

today, Johannesburg lies at the heart of an industrial, commercial, and financial complex whose name on the new map of South Africa is Gauteng.

AMONG THE REALM’S GREAT CITIES . . . Johannesburg

Johannesburg International Airport

Krugersdorp

W i t w a t e r s r a n d

JOHANNESBURG

Pretoria

Vanderboom Airport

Rand Airport

Randfontein Roodepoort

Randburg Sandton

Kempton Park

Tembisa

Olifantsfontein

Pinedene

Monavoni Irene

Alexandra Houghton Edenvale

Boksburg Benoni

Putfontein

Germiston Brakpan

Springs

Katlehong

AlbertonSoweto

Westonaria

Evaton

Vereeniging Vanderbijlpark

Nigel

Mamelodi

Klip River

Ma ga

lie s R

ive r

Juksei River

M ul

de rs

dr if

Ri ve

Hennops River

Natal Rive

Apies River

Diu ve

nh oe

ks Ri

ve r

Vaal River

Union Buildings (national executive

capital)

Gauteng capital CBD

0 5 Miles

10 Kilometers

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 310

S O U T H E R N A F R I C A 311

Kimberley in the 1860s, South Africa has been synony- mous with minerals. The Kimberley finds, made in a re- mote corner of what was then the Boer “Republic” of Orange Free State (the British soon annexed it to the Cape), set into motion a new economic geography. Rail lines were laid from the coast to the “diamond capital” even as fortune seekers, capitalists, and tens of thousands of African workers, many from as far afield as Lesotho, streamed to the site. One of the capitalists was Cecil Rhodes, of Rhodes Scholarship fame, who used his for- tune to help Britain dominate Southern Africa.

Just 25 years after the diamond discoveries, prospec- tors found what was long to be the world’s greatest gold- field on a ridge called the Witwatersrand (Fig. 6-13). This time the site lay in the so-called South African Repub- lic (the Transvaal), and again the Boers were unable to hold the prize. Johannesburg became the gold capital of the world, and a new and even larger stream of foreign- ers arrived, along with a huge influx of African workers. Cheap labor enlarged the profits. Johannesburg grew ex- plosively, satellite towns developed, and black townships mushroomed. The Boer War was merely an interlude here on the mineral-rich Witwatersrand.

During the twentieth century, South Africa proved to be richer than had been foreseen. Additional goldfields were discovered in the Orange Free State. Coal and iron ore were found in abundance, which gave rise to a major iron and steel industry. Other metallic minerals, including chromium and platinum, yielded large revenues on world markets. As- bestos, manganese, copper, nickel, antimony, and tin were mined and sold; a thrivingmetallurgical industry developed

in South Africa itself. Capital flowed into the country, white immigration grew, farms and ranches were laid out, and markets multiplied.

Infrastructural Gains

South Africa’s cities grew apace. Johannesburg was no longer just a mining town: it became an industrial com- plex and a financial center as well. The old Boer capital, Pretoria, just 50 kilometers (30 mi) north of the Witwa- tersrand, became the country’s administrative center dur- ing apartheid’s days. In the Orange Free State, major industrial growth matched the expansion of mining. While the core area developed megalopolitan characteristics, coastal cities expanded as well. Durban’s port served not only the Witwatersrand but also a wider regional hinter- land. Cape Town was becoming South Africa’s largest central city; its port, industries, and productive agricultural hinterland gave it primacy over a wide area.

The labor force for all this development, from mines to railroads and from farms to highways, came from the African peoples of South Africa (and, indeed, from be- yond its borders as well). Draconian apartheid policies notwithstanding, workers from Moçambique, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and other neighboring countries sought jobs in South Africa even as millions of South African villagers also left their homes for the towns and cities. In the process they built the best infrastructure of any African country. But apartheid ruined South Africa’s prospects. The cost of the separate development program was astro- nomical. Social unrest during the decade preceding the

F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“Looking down on this enormous railroad complex, we were reminded of the fact that almost an entire continent was turned into a wellspring of raw materials carried from interior to coast and shipped to Europe and other parts of the world. This complex lies near Witbank in the eastern Rand, a huge inventory of freight trains ready to transport ores from the plateau to Durban and Maputo. But at least South Africa acquired a true transport network in the process, ensuring regional interconnections; in most African coun- tries, railroads serve almost entirely to link resources to coastal outlets.” © H. J. de Blij

Concept Caching www.conceptcaching.com

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 311

312 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

end of apartheid created a vast educational gap among youngsters. International sanctions against the race-ob- sessed regime damaged the economy.

The Sputtering Engine of Africa

During the upheavals of the last decade of the twentieth century—think of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, the Mid- dle East—was any country more fortunate than South Africa? Surely a massive revolution would sweep apartheid away and bring an all-African regime to power? Had that happened, South Africa today would still be repairing the damage. But instead, largely through the unmatched states- manship of Nelson Mandela, South Africa is governed by a multiracial party, the erstwhile architects of apartheid are in parliament as a legitimate opposition, and its economy is the largest and healthiest in the realm. Check the Data Table inside the back cover and you will see that, on the African mainland, South Africa’s per-capita GNI is pract- ically in a class by itself. By some calculations, South Africa produces 45 percent of all of Subsaharan Africa’s GDP.

In many respects South Africa is the most important country in Subsaharan Africa, and the entire realm’s for- tunes are bound up with it. No African country attracts more foreign investment or (still) foreign workers. None has the universities, hospitals, and research facilities. No other has the military forces capable of intervening in African trouble spots. Few have the free press, effective trade unions, independent courts, or financial institutions to match South Africa’s. And with a population of 49.1 million (79 percent black, just under 10 percent white, 9 percent Coloured, 2.6 percent Asian), South Africa has a large, multiracial, and growing middle class.

But South Africa also faces challenges. When the African National Congress (ANC) won the 1994 elections (and subsequent democratic elections as well, another beacon for Africa), the country’s African peoples har- bored expectations not only of post-apartheid freedom but of better living conditions as well. And indeed the gov- ernment made major progress: it began an old-age pen- sion scheme, built nearly two million brick homes for the poor, provided free water to nearly 30 million people in remote areas—all this without destabilizing the economy. And through a series of laws, the ANC has made it mandatory for firms to hire more blacks and women. The growing African middle class strongly supports the ANC.

This progress notwithstanding, South Africa confronts long-range problems. The economy continues to depend far too much on the export of minerals and metals (diamonds, platinum, gold, iron, and steel) at a time when this entails risks at home and abroad. At home, those union-friendly la- bor laws, including rising wages, are making mining less profitable. Abroad, commodity prices are unreliable. In the

apartheid year of 1970, South Africa produced nearly 70 percent of the world’s gold; today it produces less than 15 percent. And the manufacturing sector of the economy re- mains too weak. Even while the black middle class is ex- panding, unemployment among blacks may be as high as 50 percent—and the gap between rich and poor is growing. Land reform, an urgent matter in a country where land alien- ation reached huge proportions, is too slow in the view of many. Add to this the scourge of AIDS and the govern- ment’s failure to address this crisis effectively, and South Africa is shadowed by serious problems.

Core-Periphery Contrasts

On maps of development indices, South Africa is por- trayed as a middle-income economy, but averages mean little in this country of strong internal core-periphery con- trasts. In its great cities, industrial complexes, mechanized farms, and huge ranches, South Africa resembles a high- income economy, much like Australia or Canada. But out- side the primary core area (centered on Johannesburg) and beyond the secondary cores and their linking corridors lies a different South Africa, where conditions are more like those of rural Zambia or Zimbabwe. In terms of such indices as life expectancy, infant and child mortality, over- all health, nutrition, education, and many others, a wide range marks the country’s population sectors. South Af- rica has been described as a microcosm of the world, ex- hibiting in a single state not only a diversity of cultures but also a wide array of human conditions. If South Africa can keep on course, this one-time pariah of apartheid will become a guidepost to a better world.

The Middle Tier

Between South Africa’s northern border and the region’s northern limit lie two groups of states: those with bor- ders with South Africa and those beyond.

Five countries constitute the middle tier, neighboring South Africa: Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, and the ministates of Lesotho and Swaziland (Fig. 6-12). As the map shows, four of these five countries are landlocked. Botswana occupies the heart of the Kalahari Desert and surrounding steppe; it has an upper-middle-income economy boosted by diamond exports, tourism, and a de- mocratic government, but the fate of its rural inhabitants continues to roil its politics. The government succeeded in transferring the sales and distribution of the country’s diamonds from London back to the capital of Gaborone, where the De Beers Company built a major sorting cen- ter. Botswana’s health services and budgets are strained by the high incidence of AIDS (one of the highest in all

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 312

S O U T H E R N A F R I C A 313

of tropical Africa). Lesotho, the landlocked, high-moun- tain ministate encircled by South Africa and a traditional kingdom that used to depend on revenues from the mine workers it sent to South Africa, now survives precari- ously on a textile industry built by Taiwanese investors that sells the bulk of its production in the United States. Swaziland, another ministate and nearly surrounded by South Africa, is also a remaining traditional kingdom whose absolute ruler resists democratic reforms while engaging in personal excesses that regularly make the world news. Its citrus-fruit-based export economy is es- sentially irrelevant to the king’s subjects, more than 70 percent of whom live in extreme poverty. Both Lesotho and Swaziland have seen surges in AIDS incidence that put them among Africa’s worst-afflicted.

As Figure 6-12 shows, Botswana is not the only desert country in Southern Africa. To its west, neighboring Namibia is named after what is known as the driest desert on Earth, the Namib. Oddly shaped by its narrow Caprivi Strip linking it to the Zambezi River, this former German colony was administered by South Africa from 1919 to 1990. Territorially the size of Texas and Oklahoma com- bined, vast Namibia with just 2.1 million inhabitants has one of the lowest population densities in the world (see Figure 6-4). Only in the far north is there enough water for sedentary agriculture; most of the rest of the country lies under huge livestock ranches. Beef ranks among Namibia’s exports, but the export economy is mainly based on minerals: diamonds, gold, copper, zinc, lead, uranium, and other commodities all attract foreign invest- ment. The interior capital, Windhoek, the major port, Walvis Bay, and the main mining town of Tsumeb are urban centers in a country whose population remains 65 percent rural. A major challenge for Namibians will be or- derly land reform: the government plans to purchase and transfer commercial estates to local farmers, and by 2010 more than 1 million hectares (2.5 million acres) had been reallocated. The goal, however, is 15 times larger, for which Namibia seeks international assistance because the cost involves not just the price of the land, but also the subsequent help to the new owners. In 2010, some 250,000 applicants were awaiting their turn to qualify.

The Tragedy of Zimbabwe

Botswana’s other neighbor, Zimbabwe, may be said to lie at the heart of Southern Africa, between the Zambezi River in the north and the Limpopo River in the south, between the escarpment to the east and the desert to the west. Landlocked but endowed with good farmlands, cool uplands, a wide range of mineral resources, and var- ied natural environments, Zimbabwe (named after his- toric stone ruins in its interior [see photo page 293]) had

one of Southern Africa’s most vibrant economies and seemed to have a bright future.

Zimbabwe’s core area is defined by the mineral-rich “Great Dyke” that extends across the heart of the country from the vicinity of its capital, Harare, in the north to the second city, Bulawayo, in the south. Gold, copper, asbestos, chromium, and platinum are among its major exports in normal times. But Zimbabwe is not just an ore-exporting country. Its farms produce tobacco, tea, sugar, cotton, and even cut flowers in addition to staples for the local market.

But these are not normal times for the two nations that constitute most of Zimbabwe’s population, the Shona (82 percent) and the Ndebele (14 percent). Following their successful joint campaign to end white-minority rule, the Shona turned on the Ndebele in a bitter ethnic conflict that established Shona dominance. A leader named Robert Mugabe rose to prominence during this early period, and it seemed that relatively prosperous Zimbabwe would put its conflicts behind it and take its place among African success stories.

During the colonial period, the tiny minority of whites that controlled what was then called Southern Rhodesia (after Cecil Rhodes, the British capitalist of diamond fame and scholarship honors), took the most productive farmlands and organized the agricultural economy. Af- ter independence their descendants continued to hold huge estates, only parts of which were being farmed. What was needed was a comprehensive land reform pro- gram, but in the 1980s now President Mugabe began to encourage squatters to invade these white farms and a number of owners were killed. The agricultural economy began to collapse as some white farmers held out while others abandoned their lands. Corruption in the Mugabe government involved the transfer of land, not to needy squatters but to friends of top officials. Foreign invest- ment in other Zimbabwean enterprises, including the mining industry, started to dry up. By the mid-1990s Zimbabwe was in an economic free fall.

Many Africans within and outside Zimbabwe had lit- tle sympathy for the white farmers or corporate powers controlling the means of production, but Mugabe had no compassion for his own people either. He now turned on the informal sector of the economy, which was all most Zimbabweans had left when jobs on farms and in facto- ries and mines disappeared. Shantytown dwellings that were once confined to the outskirts of the cities now ap- peared in city centers, as did shacks where women re- paired garments and men fixed bicycles. Mugabe ordered his henchmen to destroy the dwellings and shacks of some 700,000 of these “informal” urban residents, leav- ing them in the streets without shelter or livelihood.

As conditions worsened, people by the hundreds of thou- sands streamed out of Zimbabwe; by 2009 an estimated 4

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 313

314 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

million of the country’s 13.8 million people were refugees. About 80 percent of the people were jobless. A whole generation of children suffered from malnutrition. But still the Saddam Hussein of Africa, as Mugabe came to be called, would not yield what had become his dicta- torial powers. In late 2008 a major outbreak of cholera killed thousands and sent another wave of desperate Zim- babweans across the border, but Mugabe did not express any sympathies; none of the victims was from his elite inner circle. A rapacious ruler had converted an African breadbasket into a basket case.

This terrible tragedy was compounded by the failure of Zimbabwe’s key neighbors to intervene. President Thabo Mbeki of South Africa proved a weak leader in a time of need; it fell to former President Mandela to express the sen- timents of outrage felt by many. Some international food assistance reached desperate Zimbabweans, but the international community did not prove a deterrent to Mu- gabe. In 2008 he was defeated in legislative elections by Morgan Tsvangirai, but through intimidation and violence Mugabe succeeded in preventing a legitimate runoff. Even- tually Tsvangirai agreed to a power-sharing arrangement, but Zimbawe still does not have the representative, compe- tent governement it needs. Meanwhile, the people suffer.

The human catastrophe of Zimbabwe stands in sharp contrast to the social achievement of South Africa. The question is whether South Africa’s example will ulti- mately prevail in Zimbabwe, or if Zimbabwe’s affliction will eventually infect its southern neighbor.

The Northern Tier

In the four countries that extend across the northern tier of the region—Angola, Zambia, Malawi, and Moçambique—problems abound. Angola (17.7 million), formerly a Portuguese dependency, with its exclave of Cabinda (Fig. 6-12) had a thriving economy based on a wide range of mineral and agricultural exports at the time of independence in 1975. But then Angola fell victim to the Cold War, with northern peoples choosing a commu- nist course and southerners falling under the sway of a rebel movement backed by South Africa and the United States. The results included a devastated infrastructure, idle farms, looting of diamonds, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and millions of landmines that continue to kill and maim. But Angola’s oil wealth yields about U.S. $3 billion per year, and stability, if sustained, may attract investors to begin rebuilding this ruined country.

By 2009, a building boom in Angola’s capital, once- picturesque and then-ruined Luanda, signified what seemed to be a new era. As the second-largest oil exporter in Subsaharan Africa, Angola joined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and became the largest supplier of crude oil to China; the Chinese planned to help Angola in the reconstruction of its highway and railroad infrastructure. In 2008, an election contested by three major parties (including those representing the old north-south division) proved that democracy was making gains in this embattled country. But Angola was vulner- able to fluctuating world prices for the oil that brings more than 90 percent of its export revenues, and its economic growth rate, which had reached an unprecedented 15 per- cent, could not be sustained. Thus it will take a long time

African cities are a jumble of “formal” and “informal” sectors and neighborhoods ranging from modern downtowns and leafy suburbs to shantytowns and slums. Many families that have moved from the countryside to the city have no choice but to rent (or build) a ramshackle dwelling lacking basic amenities. These poorest urban areas nevertheless have a vibrant economy as their occupants try to make a living as local vendors, repairers, builders, traders, or artisans. Often they find jobs in service or construction industries nearby without earning enough to allow them to move out of their abode. Most governments tolerate these neighborhoods, but not the president of Zimbabwe, who in 2005 ordered his capital city “cleaned up.” Here, a group of residents of a shantytown in Harare watch the destruction, having hurriedly piled their belongings on the dirt road outside their dwellings—including a framed photograph of President Robert Mugabe, once a hero of Africa’s liberation struggle and inheritor of a thriving economy, now the symbol of administrative failure and social repression. © AP/World Wide Photos.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 314

S O U T H E R N A F R I C A 315

Distinctive Madagascar

MAPS SHOWING THE geographic regions of the Subsaharan Africa realm often omit Madagascar. And for good reason: Madagascar differs strongly from Southern Africa, the Afri- can region to which it is nearest—just 400 kilometers (250 mi) away. It also differs from East Africa, from which it has received some of its cultural infusions. Madagascar is the world’s fourth-largest island, a huge block of Africa that separated from the main landmass 160 million years ago. About 2000 years ago, the first settlers arrived—not from Africa (although perhaps via Africa) but from Southeast Asia. Malay communities flourished in the interior highlands of the island, which resembles Africa in having a prominent eastern escarpment and a central plateau (Fig. 6-14). Here was formed a powerful kingdom, the empire of the Merina. Its language, Malagasy, of Malay-Polynesian origin, became the indigenous tongue of the entire island (Fig. 6-10).

The Malay and Indonesian immigrants brought Africans to the island as wives and slaves, and from this forced immigration evolved the African component in Madagascar’s population of 20.0 million. In all, nearly 20 discrete ethnic groups coexist in Madagascar, among which the Merina (about 5 million) and Betsimisaraka (about 3 million) are the most numerous. Like mainland Africa, Madagascar experienced colonial invasion and competition. Portuguese, British, and French colonists ap- peared after 1500, but the Merina were well organized and resisted colonial conquest. Eventually Madagascar became part of France’s empire, and French became the lingua franca of the educated elite.

Because of its Southeast Asian imprint, Madagascar’s staple food is rice, not corn. It has some minerals, includ- ing chromite, iron ore, and bauxite, but the economy is weak, damaged by long-term political turmoil and bur- dened by rapid population growth. The infrastructure has crumbled; the “main road” from the capital to the near- est port (Fig. 6-14) is now a potholed 250 kilometers (150 mi) that takes 10 hours for a truck to navigate.

Meanwhile, Madagascar’s unique flora and fauna retreated before the human onslaught. Madagascar’s long-term isolation kept evolution here so distinct that the island is a discrete zoogeographic realm. Primates living on the island are found nowhere else; 33 varieties of lemurs are unique to Madagascar. Many species of birds, amphibians, and reptiles are also exclusive to this island. Their home, the rainforest, covered 168,000 square kilometers (65,000 sq mi) in 1950, but today only about one-third of it is left. Logging, introduced by the colonists, damaged it; slash-and-burn agricul- ture is destroying it; and severe droughts since 1980 have intensified the impact. Obviously, Madagascar should be a global conservation priority, but funds are limited and the needs are enormous. Malnutrition and

poverty are powerful forces when survival is at stake for villages and families.

Madagascar’s cultural landscape retains its Southeast Asian imprints, in the towns as well as the paddies. The capital, Antananarivo, is the country’s primate city, its ar- chitecture and atmosphere combining traces of Asia and Africa. Poverty dominates the townscape here, too, and there is little to attract in-migrants (Madagascar is only 30 percent urbanized). But perhaps the most ominous statistic is the high natural increase rate (2.8 percent) of Madagascar’s population.

Juan de Nova (Fr.)

Mayotte (Fr.)

Boraha Island

COMOROS

A N T A N D R O Y

B E

T S

I M I S

A R

A K

B E

T S

I L E

A N

T A

I S A

K A

S A K A

L A V A

M E

R I N

T S

I M I H

E T I

15°

20°

25° 25°

20°

15°

50°45° Longitude East of Greenwich

Antalaha

Nosy Bé

Maroantsetra

Atondrazaka

Mananjary

Manakara

Farafangana

Tôlanaro

Morondava Antsirabe

Fianarantsoa

Toliara

Mahajanga

Toamasina

Antananarivo

Antsiranana

Rantabe

Miarinarivo

M oç

am bi

e Ch

an nel

I N D

I A N

O C

E A

5000 ft+ (1600+ m)

MADAGASCAR

Paddy farming

2000–4000 ft (665–1330 m)

0–2000 ft (0–665 m) Main road

MERINA Major peoples

Main railroad

100 Kilometers

100 MilesNational capital is underlined

FIGURE 6-14

deblij_c06_280-337hr2.qxd 28-09-2009 18:25 Page 315

316 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

for the peoples in Angola’s countryside to believe that better times have truly arrived.

On the opposite coast, the other major former Por- tuguese colony, Moçambique (21.3 million), fared poorly in a different way. Without Angola’s mineral base and with limited commercial agriculture, Moçambique’s chief as- set was its relative location. Its two major ports, Maputo and Beira, handled large volumes of exports and imports for South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Zambia. But upon inde- pendence Moçambique, too, chose a Marxist course with dire economic and dreadful political consequences. Another rebel movement supported by South Africa caused civil conflict, created famines, and generated a stream of more than a million refugees toward Malawi. Rail and port facil- ities lay idle, and Moçambique at one time was ranked by the United Nations as the world’s poorest country. In re- cent years, the port traffic has been somewhat revived, and Moçambique and South Africa are working on a joint Jo- hannesburg-Maputo Development Corridor (Fig. 6-12), but it will take generations for Moçambique to recover.

Landlocked Zambia (12.7 million) is an African suc- cess story: it remained stable even during economically difficult times and avoided the turbulence engulfing its neighbors, and is now reaping some rewards as a result. Its boundaries a product of British imperialism, Zambia shares the minerals of the Copperbelt with The Congo’s Katanga Province (Fig. 6-12). In recent years, high cop- per prices have brought substantial external income; refugee farmers from Zimbabwe boosted the tobacco in- dustry; and stability and relatively open government were rewarded when donors forgave nearly U.S. $4 billion in foreign debt. Zambia still remains a very poor country; it is too dependent on a few commodities, its access to world markets remains difficult, and its farming sector needs irrigation systems. But Zambia exemplifies what is possible when an African state is run responsibly.

Neighboring Malawi (14.5 million), by comparison, has suffered from political instability and infighting ever since the death of its founding autocratic ruler, Hastings Banda. Malawi’s dependence on corn as its food staple, its variable climate, and its severely fragmented land-use pattern combine to create cycles of boom and bust from which the country has yet to escape, and its political rep- resentatives spend more time scheming and conniving than they do in cooperative planning. When the terrible drought of 2005 broke in 2006, producing a bumper crop that was matched by another in 2007, Malawi was actu- ally able to export some corn to needy Zimbabwe. But when still-troubled local subsistence farmers asked for help, they were told by the government to increase their efficiency by forming cooperatives. Members of the Na- tional Assembly might consider the principle of cooper- ation as a means of improving their own efficiency.

Before leaving Southern Africa we should take note of Madagascar, the island-state that lies off the southeast- ern African coast. Despite its location, this country is nei- ther Southern nor East African. Madagascar has historic ties to Southeast Asia and cultural links to both Asia and Africa (see box titled “Distinctive Madagascar”).

EAST AFRICA

In only two parts of the world do local people refer to the “Great Lakes” as a geographic landmark: North America and East Africa. A string of elongated lakes, some with colonial-era names, marks the western border of the region we define as East Africa (Fig. 6-15). Go- ing to school there, you learn these names early: Albert, Edward, Kivu, Tanganyika, Malawi. But in some ways the most important lake of all lies at the heart of this re- gion, not on its border: Lake Victoria. And as the map shows, Lake Victoria is anything but elongated. It is a large body of water lying in a huge basin—but the basin lies high on a plateau.

The equator crosses East Africa, even Lake Victoria itself, but you would hardly think so on the ground here. We tend to associate equatorial environments with rain- forests, heat, and moisture, but in East Africa elevation changes everything (as we also note in Chapter 5 for low-latitude, Andean South America). Drought, not in- cessant rain, is the frequent problem in this region. Nights can be downright cold. Some volcanic peaks carry snow. Highland East Africa is as different from lowland Equatorial Africa west of the lakes as Amazo- nia is from the Andes.

East Africa, as the map shows, extends from the Ethiopian Highlands in the north to Tanzania in the south, and from the Indian Ocean to the eastern margins of the Congo Basin. This is a region of spectacular scenery. Vol- canoes, some of them active, rise above the high plains. Canyons carved by rivers rival the one we call Grand; Ethiopia was once called Abyssinia, and not for nothing because steep scarps define rift valleys partly filled with water; views from the top are all the more breathtaking when you recall that this is the landscape seen by our ear- liest ancestors. Herds of wildlife that attract millions of tourists roam vast savannas whose names (Serengeti; Maasai Mara) have become world renowned.

Too many visitors come here to see the wildlife with- out also learning about East Africa’s diversity of cultures. In addition to highland Ethiopia, five other countries form this East African region: Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. Here the Bantu peoples that make up most of the population met Nilotic peoples from the north, including the Maasai. In the hills of Rwanda and Bu-

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 316

E A S T A F R I C A 317

rundi a stratified society developed in which the minority Tutsi, in their cattle-owning kingdoms, dominated the Hutu peasantry. The Indian Ocean coast was the scene of many historic events: the arrival of Islam from Ara-

bia, the visit of Ming Dynasty Chinese fleets in the 1400s, the quest for power by the Turks, the Arab slave trade, the European colonial competition. Here, too, de- veloped the East African lingua franca, Swahili.

40°

10°

0°

5°

0°Equator

10°

30° 35° Longitude East of Greenwich

5°

30° 35° 40°

5°

10° 45°

Lake Turkana

Lake Victoria

Lake Albert

A lb

er t

N il

e R.

Tana R.

L. Edward

L. Kivu

Lake Tanganyika

Lake Rukwa

Gr ea

t R ua

ha R.

Lake Malawi

INDIAN

OCEAN

Kage ra R.

Se m

lik i R

Rovuma R

Vict oria Nile

R .

W h

ite N

ile R.

Whi te N

ile

Lake Abaya

Lake Bahir

Lake Chamo

L. Ziway

She bel

e R .

L. Shala

Dawa R.

Nanyuki Nakuru

Kitale

Kisumu

Mombasa

Dar es Salaam

Tanga Pemba

Zanzibar

Mafia

Kidatu

Moshi

K I K U

Y U

MARSABIT RESERVE

MERU RESERVE

MT. KENYA NAT. PARK

ABERDARE NAT. PARK

TSAVO NATIONAL

PARK

AMBOSELI RESERVE

MARA RESERVE

SERENGETI NATIONAL

PARK

MANYARA NAT. PARK

TARANGIRE GAME RESERVE

RUAHA NATIONAL

PARK

MIKUMI NATIONAL

PARK

SELOUS GAME

RESERVE

NGORONGORO NATIONAL PARK

Eldoret

Kampala

Kismaayo

Nairobi

Dodoma

Kigali

TAN -Z AM

R A I L W A Y

Harer

Gore

Adis Abeba

Ogaden

S u d d

A F R

I C A

N T

R A

N S

I T I O

N Z

O N

EGAMBELLA NATIONAL PARK

OMO NATIONAL PARK

MAGO NATIONAL PARK

NECHISAR NATIONAL PARK

BALE MTS. NATIONAL PARK

AWASH NATIONAL PARK

SIBILOI NATIONAL PARK

KIDEPO VALLEY NAT. PARK

MURCHISON FALLS NATIONAL PARK

QUEEN ELIZABETH NATIONAL PARK

AKAGERA NAT. PARK

AGALLA GAME

RESERVE

KATAVI NATIONAL PARK

SAMBURU RESERVE

Juba

Arua

Kamuli Jinja

EntebbeKasese

Mwanza

Goma

Bujumbura

Kigoma

Bukavu

Kalemie

Mpanda

Tabora

Tunduma

Kasama

Mpika

Lindi

Makumbako

Mangula

Ruvu

Morogoro

Arusha

Mt. Kilimanjaro 5,395 m.

(19,340 ft.) Malindi

Bunia

Mt. Kenya 5,199 m. (17,058 ft.)

UGANDA

SUDAN

SOMALIA

K E N Y A

RWANDA

BURUNDI

T A N Z A N I A

Z A M B I A

T H E C O N G O

MOÇAMBIQ UE

E T H I O P I A

SOMALIA

M A

L A

W I

THE CONGO

ANKOLE

BUNYORO

ACHOLI

G A L L A

T U R

K A N

S O

M A

L I

K A M

B A

M IJ

I K E

N D

M A A S A I

H UTU

TUTSI

SAMBURU

BORAN

LUO

L U O

GANDA

O R O M O

A M H A R A

LU HY

KA LE

NJ IN

T A I T A

Railroad Road

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

POPULATION

National capitals are underlined

Kenya Highlands

Parks and Reserves

0 200 Kilometers100

50 100 Miles0

EAST AFRICA

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 317

318 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

Kenya

Kenya is neither the largest nor the most populous coun- try in East Africa, but over the past half-century it has been the dominant state in the region. Its skyscrapered capital at the heart of its core area, Nairobi, is the region’s largest city; its port, Mombasa, is the region’s busiest. During the 1950s, the Kikuyu nation led a vicious rebel- lion that hastened the departure of the British from the region.

After independence, Kenya chose a capitalist path of development, aligning itself with Western interests. Without major known mineral deposits, Kenya depended on coffee and tea exports and on a tourist industry based on its magnificent national parks (Fig. 6-15). Tourism be- came its largest single earner of foreign exchange, and Kenya prospered, apparently proving the wisdom of its capitalist course.

But serious problems arose. During the 1980s, Kenya had the highest rate of population growth in the world, and population pressure on farmlands and on the fringes

of the wildlife reserves mounted. Poaching became wor- risome, and tourism declined. During the late 1990s, vi- olent weather buffeted Kenya, causing landslides and washing away large segments of the crucial Nairobi- Mombasa Highway. This disaster was followed by a se- vere drought lasting several years, bringing famine to the interior. Meanwhile, government corruption siphoned off funds that should have been invested. Democratic prin- ciples were violated, and relationships with Western al- lies were strained. The AIDS pandemic brought yet another setback to a country that, in the early 1970s, had appeared headed for an economic takeoff.

Kenya is one of those African states in which leader- ship and representative government faltered after inde- pendence. Jomo Kenyatta was the father of the nation, the leader who personified the struggle for sovereignty. As the map shows, geography and history had placed his people, the Kikuyu (22 percent of the 2010 population of 40.2 million), at the center of this struggle and in a position of power. But even before independence, the Luo (13 percent today), whose domain borders Lake Vic-

NAIROBI IS THE quintessential colonial legacy: there was no African settlement on this site when, in 1899, the rail- road the British were building from the port of Mombasa to the shores of Lake Victoria reached it. However, it had something even more important: water. The fresh stream that crossed the railway line was known to the Maasai cat- tle herders as Enkare Nairobi (Cold Water). The railroad was extended farther into the interior, but Nairobi grew. Indian traders set up shop. The British established their administrative headquarters here. When Kenya became independent in 1963, Nairobi naturally was the national capital.

Nairobi owes its primacy to its governmental func- tions, which ensured its priority through the colonial and independence periods, and to its favorable situation. To the north and northwest lie the Kenya Highlands, the country’s leading agricultural area and the historic base of the dominant nation in Kenya, the Kikuyu. Beyond the rift valley to the west lie the productive lands of the Luo in the Lake Victoria Basin. To the east, elevations drop rapidly from Nairobi’s 1600 meters (5000 ft), so that highland environs make a swift transition to tropical sa- vanna that, in turn, yields to semiarid steppe.

A moderate climate, a modern city center, several ma- jor visitor attractions (including Nairobi National Park, on the city’s doorstep), and a state-of-the-art airport have

boosted Nairobi’s fortunes as a major tourist destination, though wildlife destruction, security concerns, and polit- ical conditions have damaged the industry in recent years.

Nairobi is Kenya’s principal commercial, industrial, and educational center. But its growth (to 3.5 million to- day) has come at a price: its modern central business dis- trict stands in stark contrast to the squalor in the shantytowns that house the countless migrants its appar- ent opportunities attract.

AMONG THE REALM’S GREAT CITIES . . . Nairobi

NAIROBI

Karen Jomo Kenyatta

(Nairobi) International

Airport

Wilson Airport

Nairobi National Park To Mombasa

Nairobi Dam

Chiromo

Nairobi Hill

Kariokor

Eastland

Ruaraka

Mariakani

Kitisuru

Dagoretti Kawangware

Kabete

Parklands

Umoja

Embakasi

Kahawa

Dandora

Nairob i R.

Na iro

bi R .

Parliament CBD

State House University of Nairobi

National Museum

Kenyatta University College

5 Kilometers

3 Miles

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 318

Raila Odinga (the son of Kenya’s first vice-president). The announcement of the outcome, a narrow victory for the in- cumbent, was followed by riots and ethnic clashes in which hundreds were killed and the country seemed to teeter on the brink of civil war. Eventually, the government and the opposition reached a mediated agreement that di- vided the powers, giving the presidency to the incumbent and the prime minister’s position to the challenger. But this result failed to address the serious problems Kenya had been facing even before the election campaign started.

As Figure 6-15 shows, Kenya confronts an external problem as well. In its northeast, Kenya’s neighbor is Is- lamic, chaotic, and violent Somalia, a failed state whose troubles—and people—sometimes spill over into Ken- yan territory. Kenya already has been a victim of Is- lamic terrorism, which seriously impacted its tourist industry; since 2008, ships headed into and out of the port of Mombasa have fallen prey to Somali pirates, further damaging the economy. Kenya has long been the leading state in East Africa, but its problems are daunting.

Kenya has become one of the world’s major exporters of flowers, but not without controversy. Here, workers are picking roses in a huge, 2-hectare (5-acre) greenhouse, part of an industry that currently concentrates around Lake Naivasha in the Eastern Rift Valley. European companies have set up these enterprises, buying large swaths of land and attracting workers far and wide. Locals see wildlife and waters threatened, but the government appreciates the revenues from an industry that, in 2009, accounted for about 20 percent of Kenya’s agricultural export income. This is a revealing core-periphery issue: companies growing and exporting the flowers to European markets use pesticides not tolerated in Europe itself, so that the ecological damage prevented by regulations in the global core falls on the periphery, where rules are less stringent and the environment suffers. The burgeoning flower industry around Lake Naivasha also has created social problems as thousands of workers, attracted by rumored job opportunities, have converged on the area and find themselves living in squalid conditions. © Marta Nascimento/REA.

F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“Visiting the village in the Kenya Highlands where a graduate student was doing fieldwork on land reform, I took the long way and drove along the top of the eastern wall of the Eastern Rift Valley. Often the valley wall is not sheer but terraced, and soils on those terraces are quite fertile; also, the west-facing slopes tend to be well-watered. Here African farmers built villages and laid out communal plots, farming these lands in a well- organized way long before the European intrusion.” © H. J. de Blij Concept Caching

www.conceptcaching.com

toria in the west, posed a challenge to Kikuyu leadership. Other peoples, including the Luhya, Kalenjin, and Kamba, constitute an additional 37 percent. And still oth- ers in smaller numbers, such as the Maasai, Turkana, Bo- ran, and Galla, live on Kenya’s periphery, along with Muslim communities in the east that are not well inte- grated into Kenya’s political fabric (Fig. 6-15).

During the increasingly autocratic rule of Kenyatta’s successor, the seeds of serious political trouble were sown as corruption soared and efficiency shrank. When the time came for an election in 2007, a Kikuyu incumbent, Mwai Kibaki, faced a Luo challenger with a famous last name,

E A S T A F R I C A 319

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 319

320 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

Tanzania

Tanzania (a name derived from Tanganyika plus Zan- zibar) is the biggest and most populous East African country outside of Ethiopia. Its total area exceeds that of the region’s four other countries combined. Tanzania has been described as a country without a core because its clusters of population and zones of productive capacity lie dispersed—mostly on its margins on the east coast (where the capital, Dar es Salaam, is located), near the shores of Lake Victoria in the northwest, near Lake Tanganyika in the far west, and near Lake Malawi in the interior south (Figs. 6-4, 6-15). This is in sharp contrast to Kenya, which has a well-defined core area in the Kenya Highlands (centered on Nairobi in the heart of the country). Moreover, Tanzania’s population of 42.1 mil- lion consists of many peoples, none numerous enough to dominate the country. About 100 ethnic groups coexist; 35 percent of the population, mainly those on the coast, are Muslims. (Tanzania has the distinction of having had both a Roman Catholic and a Muslim president during its period of independence.)

In contrast to Kenya, following independence Tanza- nia embarked on a socialist course toward development, including a massive farm collectivization program that was imposed without adequate planning. Communist China helped Tanzania construct a railroad, the Tan-Zam Railway, from Dar es Salaam to Zambia, but the project failed, as did an effort to move the capital from colonial Dar es Salaam to Dodoma in the interior (Fig. 6-15). The country’s limited tourist infrastructure was allowed to de- generate, giving Kenya virtually the entire tourist market.

But Tanzania did achieve what several other East African countries could not: political stability and a de- gree of democracy. Thus Tanzania changed economic direc- tion in the late 1980s without social turmoil and embarked on a market-oriented “recovery” program. The govern- ment, aided by foreign donors and investors, encouraged commercial agriculture, but although Tanzanian coffee, cotton, tobacco, and other farm products sold increasingly well on foreign markets, the great majority of Tanzani- ans remained subsistence farmers and the country stayed wretchedly poor. However, its transparent government, relatively low corruption level, and effective leadership (President Mkapa and his successor, President Jakaya Kikwete, set the highest standards in the region) were re- warded with a growing and dependable stream of subsi- dies and investments. Today the economy is growing robustly, and the government is able to plan an expansion of commercial farming through investments in highways, irrigation, fertilizers, market mechanisms, and other needs. Meanwhile, Tanzania’s tourist industry is back on track, its mining industry is expanding (gold is a major income earner, and Tanzania may possess some of the world’s largest nickel reserves), and this one-time basket case of East Africa may yet rise to lead the region.

Uganda

Uganda (2010 population: 31.1 million) was the site of the most important African political entity in this region when the British arrived in the 1890s. This was the kingdom of Buganda (shown in dark brown in Fig. 6-15), which faced

F R O M T H E F I E L D N O T E S

“It was 108 in the shade, but the narrow alleys of Zanzibar’s Stone City felt even hotter than that. I spent some time here when I was working on my monograph on Dar es Salaam in the 1960s and had not been back. In those days, African socialism and uhuru were the watchwords; since then Tanzania has not done well economically. But here were signs of a new era: a People’s Bank in a former government building, and on the old fort’s tower a poster saying ‘Think Digital Go Tritel.’ Nearby, on the sandy beach where I relaxed 35 years ago, was evidence that Zanzibar had not escaped the ravages of AIDS. Now the sand served as a refuge for the sick, who were resting there. ‘It’s better, bwana, than the corridor of the clinic,’ said a young man who could walk only a few steps at a time with the help of a cane, and who breathed with difficulty as he spoke. Here as everywhere in Subsharan Africa, AIDS has severely strained already-limited facilities.” © H. J. de Blij Concept Caching

www.conceptcaching.com

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 320

E A S T A F R I C A 321

the north shore of Lake Victoria, had an impressive capi- tal at Kampala, and was stable—as well as ideally suited for indirect rule over a large hinterland. The British estab- lished their headquarters at nearby Entebbe on the lake (thus adding to the status of the kingdom) and proceeded to organize their Uganda protectorate in accordance with the principles of indirect rule. The Baganda (the people of Buganda) became the dominant people in Uganda, and when the British departed, they bequeathed a complicated federal system to perpetuate Baganda supremacy.

Landlocked states tend to face particular problems, and Uganda is no exception. Dependent on Kenya for an outlet to the ocean, Uganda at independence in 1962 had better economic prospects than many other African coun- tries. It was the largest producer of coffee in the British Commonwealth. It also exported cotton, tea, sugar, and other farm products. Copper was mined in the southwest, and an Asian immigrant population of about 75,000 do- minated the country’s commerce. Nevertheless, political disaster struck. Resentment over Baganda overlordship fueled revolutionary change, and a brutal dictator, Idi Amin, took control in 1971. He ousted the Asians, ex- terminated his opponents, and destroyed the economy. Eventually, in 1979, an invasion supported by neigh- boring Tanzania drove Amin from power, but by then Uganda lay in ruins. Recovery was slow, complicated by the AIDS pandemic, which struck Uganda with particu- lar severity. President Yoweri Museveni became an in- ternational hero of the anti-AIDS campaign through his advocacy of condom use, responsible personal behavior, and medical intervention. Impressive results showed the effectiveness of this combination of countermeasures as Uganda’s rate of infection fell dramatically.

In the 1990s, Uganda’s interior location again afflicted its future: during a period of civil war in its northern neighbor, Sudan, Uganda was accused of supporting African rebels against their Muslim oppressors, and a costly conflict ensued. This destabilized the country’s north, home of the Acholi people, and led to a second nightmare—the rise of a nominally Christian movement called the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), which pro- claimed that it wanted to rule Uganda according to the Ten Commandments. Known for unmatched brutality even in this zone of violent conflict, the LRA captured, conscripted, and enslaved children, and drove some 2 mil- lion Ugandans, most of them Acholi, into squalid refugee camps during the government’s counterinsurgency cam- paign. Yet despite the government’s best efforts in the form of military intervention combined with offers of ne- gotiation, more than a million Acholi remained in these camps in 2009 as the LRA rebellion continued.

As if this were not enough, Uganda also found itself em- broiled in the collapse of still another landlocked neighbor, Rwanda (Fig. 6-15), and in a civil war in The Congo. In

both neighbors, Uganda took the side of Tutsi minorities under threat from powerful enemies, putting further strain on its limited financial resources. Situated at one of Africa’s most volatile crossroads, Uganda faces a difficult future.

Rwanda and Burundi

Rwanda and Burundi would seem to occupy Tanzania’s northwest corner (Fig. 6-15), and indeed they were part of the German colonial domain conquered before World War I. But during that war Belgian forces attacked the Germans from their Congo bases and were awarded these territories when the conflict ended in 1918. The Belgians used them as labor sources for their Katanga mines.

Rwanda (10.1 million) and Burundi (9.4 million) are physiographically part of East Africa, but their cultural geography is linked to the north and west. Here, Tutsi pas- toralists from the north subjugated Hutu farmers (who had themselves made serfs of the local Twa [pygmy] popula- tion), setting up a conflict that was originally ethnic but became cultural. Certain Hutu were able to advance in the Tutsi-dominated society, becoming to some extent con- verted to Tutsi ways, leaving subsistence farming behind, and rising in the social hierarchy. These so-called mod- erate Hutu were—and are—often targeted by other Hutus, who resent their position in society even as they despise the Tutsi. This longstanding discord, worsened by colo- nial policies, had repeatedly devastated both countries and, in the 1990s, spilled over into The Congo, generat- ing the first interregional war in Subsaharan Africa (see pp. 322-324).

An estimated 4 million people have perished as Hutu, Tutsi, Ugandan, and Congolese rebel forces have fought for control over areas of the eastern Congo, unleashing longstanding local animosities that worsened the death toll. Only massive international intervention could sta- bilize the situation, but the world essentially turned a blind eye to the region’s woes—again.

Highland Ethiopia

As Figure 6-15 shows, the East African region also en- compasses the highland zone of Ethiopia, including the capital, Adis Abeba; the source of the Blue Nile, Lake Tana; and the Amharic core area that was the base of the empire that lost its independence only from 1935 to 1941. Ethiopia, mountain fortress of the Coptic Chris- tians who held their own here, eventually became a col- onizer itself. Its forces came down the slopes of the highlands and conquered much of the Islamic part of Africa’s Horn, including present-day Eritrea and the Ogaden area, a Somali territory. (Geographically, these

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 321

322 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

are parts of what we have mapped as the African Tran- sition Zone [Fig. 6-11], which will be discussed in the final section of this chapter.)

Physiographically and culturally, highland Ethiopia is part of the East African region. But because Ethiopia was not colonized and because its natural outlets are to the Red Sea, not southward to Mombasa, effective in- terconnections between former British East Africa and highland Ethiopia never developed. Yet the Amhara and Oromo peoples of Ethiopia are Africans, not Arabs; nor have they been Arabized or Islamized as in northern Sudan and Somalia. The independence and secession of Eritrea in 1993 effectively landlocked Ethiopia, but for a few years there was cooperation and Ethiopia used Eritrean Red Sea ports (see Fig. 6-20). In 1998, how- ever, a boundary dispute led to a bitter and costly war, and Ethiopia was forced to turn to Djibouti for a mari- time outlet. This border conflict cost some 70,000 lives and did not end until UN mediation in 2000, when an agreement signed in Algiers gave Eritrea—in the view of Ethiopians—more than it deserved. By mid-decade, the arbitration still had not been completely accepted in Adis Abeba, but now a new problem loomed and Ethiopian troops were on (and across) the border with southern Somalia, where an Islamist militia was in the process of taking over the government. No matter how these issues turn out, Highland Ethiopia has adversaries on three sides and is likely to turn increasingly toward East Africa, however tenuous its surface links to the south may be today.

EQUATORIAL AFRICA

The term equatorial is not just locational but also envi- ronmental. The equator bisects Africa, but as we noted above only the western part of central Africa features the conditions associated with the lowland tropics: intense heat, high rainfall and extreme humidity, little seasonal variation, rainforest and monsoon-forest vegetation, and enormous biodiversity. To the east, beyond the Western Rift Valley, elevations rise, and cooler, more seasonal cli- matic regimes prevail. As a result, we recognize two re- gions in these lowest latitudes: (1) Equatorial Africa to the west; and (2) just-discussed East Africa to the east.

Equatorial Africa is physiographically dominated by the gigantic Congo Basin. The Adamawa Highlands separate this region from West Africa; rising elevations and climatic change mark its southern limits (see the Cwa boundary in Fig. G-7). Its political geography consists of eight states, of which The Congo (officially the Democratic Republic of the Congo) is by far the largest in both territory (49 per- cent) and population (63 percent) (Fig. 6-16).

Five of the other seven states—Gabon, Cameroon, São Tomé and Príncipe, Congo, and Equatorial Guinea— all have coastlines on the Atlantic Ocean. The Central African Republic and Chad, the south of which is part of this region, are landlocked. In certain respects, the physical and human characteristics of Equatorial Africa extend even into southern Sudan. This vast and complex region is in many ways the most troubled in the entire Subsaharan Africa realm.

The Congo

As the map shows, The Congo has but a tiny window (37 km/23 mi) on the Atlantic Ocean, just enough to ac- commodate the mouth of the Congo River. Oceangoing ships can reach the port of Matadi, inland from which falls and rapids make it necessary to move goods by road or rail to the capital, Kinshasa. This is not the only place where the Congo River fails as a transport route. Follow it upstream in Figure 6-16, and you note that other transshipments are necessary between Kisangani and Ubundu, and at Kindu. Follow the railroad south from Kindu, and you reach another narrow corridor of territory at the city of Lubumbashi. That vital part of Katanga Province contains most of The Congo’s major mineral resources, including copper and cobalt.

With a territory not much smaller than the United States east of the Mississippi, a population of just over 70 million, a rich and varied mineral base, and much good agricultural land, The Congo would seem to have all the ingredients needed to lead this region and, indeed, Africa. But strong centrifugal forces, arising from its physiogra- phy and cultural geography, pull The Congo apart. The immense forested heart of the basin-shaped country cre- ates communication barriers between east and west, north and south. Many of The Congo’s productive areas lie along its periphery, separated by enormous distances. These areas tend to look across the border, to one or more of The Congo’s nine neighbors, for outlets, markets, and often ethnic kinship as well.

Crisis in the Interior

The Congo’s civil wars of the 1990s started in one such neighbor, Rwanda, and spilled over into what was then still known as Zaïre. As noted above, Rwanda, Africa’s most densely populated country, has for centuries been the scene of conflict between sedentary Hutu farmers and invading Tutsi pastoralists. Colonial borders and practices worsened the situation (see the Issue Box ti- tled “The Impact of Colonialism on Subsaharan Africa”), and after independence a series of terrible

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 322

E Q U A T O R I A L A F R I C A 323

crises followed. In the mid-1990s, the latest of these crises generated one of the largest refugee streams ever seen in the world, and the conflict engulfed eastern (and later northern and western) Congo. The death toll will never be known, but estimates in mid-2009 ex- ceeded 5 million, a toll rivaling that of World War II. Although the United Nations Security Council autho- rized the largest and most expensive UN peacekeeping

operation in its history to counter the crisis, only con- certed action by the entire international community could break the cycle of violence. But this is Africa, not Yugoslavia or the Middle East. There is no threat to European stability. There is no oil to forfeit.

By 2005, stable government in The Congo’s capital, Kinshasa, negotiations among the rebel groups and African states involved in the conflict in various ways,

Benguela

Luanda

Kolwezi Tenke

Likasi

Lubumbashi

Ndola Mufulira

Chingola Kitwe

Mwene-Ditu

Mbuji-Mayi Kananga

Tshikapa

Kikwit

Ilebo

Bandundu

Matadi

Pointe Noire

Port Gentil

São Tomé

Mbandaka

Lisala Bumba

Bondo

Ubundu

Kisangani

Kindu

Goma

Bukavu

Kigoma

Kalemie

Isiro

Wari

Nyala

Sarh

Bambari

Douala

Port Harcourt

Bamenda

Kano

Nguru

Maroua

NIGERIA

SÃO TOMÉ & PRÍNCIPE

Bujumbura

CABINDA (ANGOLA)

LUBA

LUNDA

30°

Annobón (EQ. GUINEA)

Equator

Bioko Malabo Yaoundé

Libreville

Brazzaville

Kampala

Kigali

N'Djamena

20°

Juba

El Obeid

En Nahud

Sennar El Fasher

A D

A M

A W

H I G

H L

A N

D S

Bakassi Peninsula

10°

LOWER CONGO

EQUATOR

EAST

NORTH KIVU

SOUTH KIVU

EAST KASAI

WEST KASAI

KATANGA

KINSHASA BANDUNDU

Kribi

Doba

Abuja

Bangui

MANIEMA

S U D D

D A R F U R

D o b a B a s i n

30°

10°

20°

0°

10°

0°

Kinshasa

Bunia

Longitude East of Greenwich

NIGER

CAMEROON

GABON

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

CHAD

SUDAN

UGANDA

TANZANIA

ZAMBIA ANGOLA

ZAMBIA

T H E C O N G O

NIGERIA

CONGO

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

RWANDA

BURUNDI

Lom am

i R.

C on

go R

Congo R.

U ba

n g i R

Chari R.

Ben ue R

Lake Chad

N ig

er R

Kw ango R.

Kasai R.

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Lake Ndombe

Lualaba R .

Lake Mweru

Lake Tanganyika

Lake Kivu

Lake Edward

W hi

te N

ile R

Lake Albert

Uele R .

W hi

te N

ile R

A lb

er t N

ile R.

Lake Victoria

Ba hr

e l-G

ha za

POPULATION

National capitals are underlined

1,000,000–5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

250,000–1,000,000 50,000–250,000 Under 50,000

EQUATORIAL AFRICA

0 400 Kilometers 200

0 100 200 Miles

Area most affected by rebel activity, 2009

Oilfields

Railroad

Road

Potential oilfields

Projected oil pipeline

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:26 Page 323

324 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

the UN peacekeeping effort and related assistance, and sheer exhaustion from endless strife had produced a sem- blance of security in all but a few areas of the eastern Congo, and there was hope for longer-term stability. In 2006, a democratic election in The Congo gave a second term to President Joseph Kabila, the son of the assassi- nated ruler whose forces had invaded and captured the capital region during the civil war, ushering in what seemed to be a new era of progress for this troubled state.

But as before, those hopes were dashed. In late 2008, a Tutsi “General” who also proclaimed himself to be a Christian pastor began a campaign of conquest in The Congo’s North Kivu Province bordering Uganda and Rwanda, creating hundreds of thousands of refugees and demanding an autonomous enclave he would rule. Lay- ing siege to the city of Goma, he put The Congo’s Pres- ident Kabila in a difficult position, insisting that Kabila’s forces disarm Hutu militias that, he said, had attacked Tut- sis in North Kivu. Meanwhile, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda was accused of supporting the “General,” and in 2009 it appeared that another stage in this ongoing cata- strophe was in the making. Conflict is endemic here in The Congo’s east, and no end of it is in sight.

Across the River

To the west and north of the Congo and Ubangi rivers lie Equatorial Africa’s other seven countries (Fig. 6-16). Two of them are landlocked. Chad, straddling the Af- rican Transition Zone as well as the regional boundary with West Africa, is one of Africa’s most remote coun- tries, although recent oil discoveries in the south are now changing this. Not only oil, but also the crisis in neigh- boring Darfur in Sudan is affecting Chad, with a major refugee influx and a rebel movement destabilizing this vulnerable state. The Central African Republic, chroni- cally unstable and poverty-stricken, never was able to convert its agricultural potential and mineral resources (diamonds, uranium) into real progress. And one coun- try consists of two small, densely forested volcanic islands: São Tomé and Príncipe, a ministate with a population of less than 250,000 whose economy is about to be trans- formed by recent oil discoveries.

The four coastal states present a different picture. All four possess oil reserves and share the Congo Basin’s equatorial forests; oil and timber, therefore, rank promi- nently among their exports. In Gabon, this combination has produced Equatorial Africa’s only upper-middle-in- come economy. Of the four coastal states, Gabon also has the largest proven mineral resources, including manga- nese, uranium, and iron ore. Its capital, Libreville (the only coastal capital in the region), reflects all this in its high-rise downtown, bustling port, and rapidly expand- ing squatter settlements.

Cameroon, less well endowed with oil or other raw materials, has the region’s strongest agricultural sector by virtue of its higher-latitude location and high-relief topography. Western Cameroon is one of the more de- veloped parts of Equatorial Africa and includes the cap- ital, Yaoundé, and the port of Douala.

With five neighbors, Congo could be a major transit hub for this region, especially for The Congo if it re- covers from civil war. Its capital, Brazzaville, lies across the Congo River from Kinshasa and is linked to the port of Pointe Noire by road and rail. But devastat- ing power struggles have negated Congo’s geographic advantages.

As Figure 6-16 shows, Equatorial Guinea consists of a rectangle of mainland territory and the island of Bioko, where the capital of Malabo is located. A former Span- ish colony that remained one of Africa’s least-developed territories, Equatorial Guinea, too, has been affected by the oil business in this area. Petroleum products now dominate its exports; but, as in so many other oil-rich countries, this bounty has not significantly raised in- comes for most of the people.

For decades the easternmost areas of The Congo, especially the provinces of North Kivu and South Kivu (see Fig. 6-16), have endured recurrent violence as internal conflicts are worsened by civil strife in neighboring countries spilling across the borders. Government forces, rebel groups, militiamen and their followers, warlords, and thieves fight each other, often at the behest of outsiders, driving millions from their homes and sowing death and destruction in the countryside. This photo, taken late in 2008, shows thousands of refugees walking along a road north of the town of Goma, hoping to return to their looted homes near Kibumba, scene of a battle among militias seeking control but driven out by Congolese government forces. © AP/Wide World Photos.

deblij_c06_280-337hr2.qxd 29-09-2009 12:14 Page 324

E Q U A T O R I A L A F R I C A 325

COLONIALISM IS THE CULPRIT!

“If you want to see and feel the way colonialism ruined Africa, you don’t have to go beyond the borders of my own country, the so-called Democratic Republic of the Congo, for the evi- dence. I’m a school teacher here in Kikwit, east of Kinshasa, and my whole life I’ve lived under the dictatorship left us by the Belgians and in the chaos before and after it. All you have to do is look at the map. Who can say that the political map of Africa isn’t a terrible burden? Imagine some outside power, say the Chinese, coming into Europe and throwing the Ger- mans and the French together in one country. There would never be peace! Well, that’s what they did here. All over Africa they put old enemies together and parceled up our great na- tions. And now they tell us to get over our animosities and ‘tribalism’ and live in democratic peace.

“And let me tell you something about tribalism. Before the conquest, we had ethnic groups and clans like all other peo- ples have, from the Scots to the Siamese. And we certainly fought with each other. But mostly we got along, and there was lots of gray area be- tween and among us. You weren’t immediately labeled a Hutu or a Luba or a Bemba. The colo- nial powers changed all that. Suddenly we were tribalized. Whether you liked it or not, whether you filled the ‘profile’ or not, you were designated a Tutsi or a Hutu, a Ganda or a Toro. This enabled the European rulers to use the strong to dominate the weak, to use the rich to tax the poor, to po- lice migrants and assemble labor. The tribalization of Africa was a colonial invention. It worsened our divisions and de- stroyed our common ground. And now we just have to get over it?

“Of course the colonialists exploited our mineral re- sources—I tell my pupils how The Congo enriched Europeans and other ‘civilized’ peoples outside of Africa. But they also grabbed our best land, turning food-producing areas into commercial plantations. Are you surprised that in Zimbabwe Mugabe wants to chase those white farmers off ‘their’ land? I’m not, and I’m with him all the way. If the colonialists had- n’t ruined traditional agriculture, there wouldn’t be any food shortages today.

“Look at my country. The war between the Hutu and the Tutsi that started during colonial times has now spread into The Congo. We’ve got so used to taking sides in ‘tribal’ con- flicts that much of the east is out of control. And who are the losers? The poorest of the poor, who get robbed and killed by the Mai, the Interahamwe, and the Tutsis and their friends. What are the ex-colonial powers doing now to help us with the mess they left behind? Nothing! So don’t com- plain to me about poor African leadership and our failure to carry out economic reforms dictated by some foreign bank. The poisonous legacy of colonialism will hold Africa back for generations to come.”

COLONIALISM IS A SCAPEGOAT!

“We Africans have many factors to blame for our troubles, but colonialism isn’t one of them. Many African countries have been independent for nearly two generations; most Africans were born long after the colonial era ended. Are we better off today than we were at the end of the colonial pe- riod? Are those military dictatorships that ran so many coun- tries into the ground any better than the colonizers who preceded them? Are the ghosts of colonialists past rigging our elections, stifling the media? Is our endemic corruption the fault of lingering colonialism? Did the colonial governors set up Swiss bank accounts to which to divert development funds? Can extinct colonial regimes be blamed for the envi- ronmental problems we face? Did the bandits of interior Sierra Leone or eastern areas of The Congo learn their mu- tilation practices from colonialism? As a nurse in a Uganda hospital for AIDS victims, I say that it’s time to stop blam-

ing ancient history for our current failures. “It’s not that we Africans aren’t at a disad-

vantage in this unforgiving world. Our postcolo- nial population explosion was followed by an HIV-induced implosion. Apartheid South Africa

spread its malign influence far beyond its borders. The Cold War pitted regimes against rebels and, to use a colonial term, tribe against tribe. Droughts and other plagues of biblical proportions ravaged our continent when we were more vul- nerable than ever. Prices for our raw materials on interna- tional markets fell when we most needed a boost. Foreign governments protected their farmers against competition from African producers. Those are legitimate complaints. But colonialism?

“Forget about blaming boundaries, white farmers, tribal- ism, religion, and other residues of colonialism for our pre- sent troubles. Look at what happened here in Uganda. A decade ago we were at the heart of the ‘AIDS Belt’ in tropi- cal Africa, with one of the worst infection rates on the con- tinent. Then came President Museveni, whose government launched a vigorous self-help campaign, educating people to the risks, urging restraint, distributing condoms, encourag- ing women to resist unwanted sex. Now Uganda’s AIDS in- cidence is dropping, and we are held up as an example for all of Africa to follow. While South Africa’s President Mbeki reveals his confusion about the causes of AIDS, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe is too busy chasing white farmers, and Kenya’s Moi is trying to rig his succession, we in Uganda have leadership in an area where we need it desperately. That certainly beats blaming colonialism for everything.

“We have an African Union. If those colonial boundaries are so bad, let’s change them, or do what the European Union is doing and begin to erase them. But first, let’s isolate tyrants, nurture open democracy, and combat corruption—and stop blaming colonialism.”

The Impact of Colonialism on Subsaharan Africa

Vote your opinion at www.wiley.com/college/deblij

Regional ISSUE

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 325

326 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

One other territory would seem to be a part of Equa- torial Africa: Cabinda, wedged between the pair of Congos just to the north of the Congo River’s mouth. But Cabinda is one of those colonial legacies on the African map—it belonged to the Portuguese and was administered as part of Angola. Today it is an exclave of independent Angola, and a valuable one: it contains major oil reserves.

WEST AFRICA

West Africa occupies most of Africa’s Bulge, extending south from the margins of the Sahara to the Gulf of Guinea coast and from Lake Chad west to Senegal (Fig. 6-17). Politically, the broadest definition of this region includes all those states that lie to the south of Western

Sahara, Algeria, and Libya and to the west of Chad (it- self sometimes included) and Cameroon. Within West Africa, a rough division is sometimes made between the large, mostly steppe and desert states that extend across the southern Sahara (Chad could also be included here) and the smaller, better-watered coastal states.

Apart from once-Portuguese Guinea-Bissau and long- independent Liberia, West Africa comprises four former British and nine former French dependencies. The British- influenced countries (Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Gambia) lie separated from one another, whereas Fran- cophone West Africa is contiguous. As Figure 6-17 shows, political boundaries extend from the coast into the inte- rior, so that from Mauritania to Nigeria, the West African habitat is parceled out among parallel, coast-oriented states. Across these boundaries, especially across those between former British and former French territories,

MaiduguriKano

Kaduna

Ado-Ekiti Ibadan

Lagos Enugu

Yaoundé Douala

Port Harcourt

El Aaiún

Fderik

Nouadhibou

Banjul

Bissau

Conakry

Freetown

Kankan

Pendembu

BuchananMonrovia

Sanniquellie

Bobo-Dioulasso

Abidjan Sekondi- Takoradi

Lomé Kumasi

Blitta

Porto- Novo

Tropic of Cancer

ANC IENT

SONGHA I

ANC IENT

MAL I ANC IENT

GHANA

Bioko

BENUE PLATEAU

Ouagadougou

0° Longitude East of Greenwich5°Longitude West of Greenwich15°

5°

10°

15°

20°

25°

30°

15° 10° 5° 0° 5° 10° 15°

20°

15°

10°

5°

15°10°

Cotonou

Nouakchott

Dakar

Abuja

Bamako

Niamey

Accra

S A H A R A

D A

M A

W A

H I G

H L

A N

D S

Yamoussoukro

Tombouctou

Kaolack

Tema

N'Djamena

A L G E R I A

L I B Y A

C A M E R O O N

N I G E R I A

N I G E R M A L IM A U R I T A N I A

SENEGAL

G U I N E A

I V O R Y C O A S T

G H A N A B E N I N

BURKINA FASO

SAHARA

C H A D

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

CONGO

MOROCCO

GAMBIA

GUINEA- BISSAU

SIERRA LEONE

LIBERIA (CÔTE D'IVOIRE)

WESTERN

T O

G O

C H A D

Lake Volta

ATLANTIC

OCEAN

Ni ge

r R.

Gulf of Guinea

Lake Chad

Former lake shoreline

Niger R.

Ben ue

Casa ma n ce

0 400 600 Kilometers

200 400 Miles

National capitals are underlined

Road

Railroad

SAHEL zone

POPULATION

WEST AFRICA

Under 50,000

250,000-1,000,000

1,000,000-5,000,000

Over 5,000,000

50,000-250,000

200

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 14:13 Page 326

W E S T A F R I C A 327

there is only limited interaction. For example, in terms of value, Nigeria’s trade with Britain is about 100 times as great as its trade with nearby Ghana. The countries of West Africa are not interdependent economically, and their incomes are largely derived from the sale of their products on the non-African international market.

Given these cross-currents of subdivision within West Africa, why are we justified in speaking of a single West African region? First, this part of the realm has remark- able cultural and historical momentum. The colonial in- terlude failed to extinguish West African vitality, ex- pressed not only by the old states and empires of the sa- vanna and the cities of the forest, but also by the vigor and entrepreneurship, the achievements in sculpture, music, and dance, of peoples from Senegal to Nigeria’s southeastern Iboland. Second, West Africa contains a set of parallel east-west ecological belts, clearly reflected in Figures G-6 and G-7, whose role in the development of the region is pervasive. As the transport-route pattern on the map of West Africa indicates, overland connections within each of these belts, from country to country, are poor; no coastal or interior railroad ever connected this tier of countries. Yet spatial interaction is stronger across these belts, and some north-south economic exchange does take place, notably in the coastal consumption of meat from cattle raised in the northern savannas. And third, West Africa received an early and crucial imprint from European colonialism, which—with its maritime commerce and slave trade—transformed the region from one end to the other. This impact reached into the heart of the Sahara and set the stage for the reorientation of the whole area, from which emerged the present patch- work of states.

Despite the effects of the slave trade, West Africa today is Subsaharan Africa’s most populous region (Fig. 6-4). In these terms, Nigeria (whose census results are in doubt, but with an estimated population of 156 million) is Africa’s largest state; Ghana (25.0 million) and Ivory Coast (21.7 million) rank prominently as well. The southern half of the region, understandably, is home to most of the people. Mau- ritania, Mali, and Niger include too much of the unproduc- tive Sahel’s steppe and the arid Sahara to sustain populations comparable to those of Nigeria, Ghana, or Ivory Coast.

The peoples along the coast reflect the modern era that the colonial powers introduced: they prospered in their newfound roles as middlemen in the coastward trade. Later, they experienced the changes of the colonial period; in education, religion, urbanization, agriculture, politics, health, and many other endeavors, they adopted new ways. In contrast, the peoples of the interior retained their ties with a different era in African history. Distant and aloof from the main theater of European colonial activity and often drawn into the Islamic orbit, they experienced a sig- nificantly different kind of change. But the map reminds us that Africa’s boundaries were not drawn to accommo- date such contrasts. Both Nigeria and Ghana possess pop- ulation clusters representing the interior as well as the coastal peoples, and in both countries the wide cultural gap between north and south has produced political problems.

Nigeria: West Africa’s Cornerstone

Nigeria, the region’s cornerstone, is home to more than 155 million people, by far the largest population total of any African country. When Nigeria achieved full

Ghana’s coastal town of Elmina may be too small to show up on our regional map, but this was the site of the first European settlement in West Africa. It was a key node in Portuguese maritime trade and later became notorious during the slave trade era. Today it is a fishing port of about 20,000, but the industry is not doing well. The local fishers must compete with the larger foreign trawlers that harvest the waters off the coast of West Africa, and cold-storage facilities remain minimal, so that almost all of the local catch is smoked and sold on the local market. This keeps prices low, so that Elmina’s economy has changed very little even after the government in 1983 introduced economy-boosting policies. Talk to the locals (fishing and related work are the livelihoods of over half the population), and you realize that it was the capital of Accra that benefited most from the new economic rules, not places like this. © Richard J. Grant.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 327

328 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

independence from Britain in 1960, its new government was faced with the daunting task of administering a Eu- ropean political creation containing three major nations and nearly 250 other peoples ranging from several mil- lion to a few thousand in number.

For reasons obvious from the map, Britain’s colonial imprint always was stronger in the south than in the north. Christianity became the dominant faith in the south, and later southerners, especially the Yoruba, took a lead role in the transition from colony to independent state. The choice of Lagos, the port of the Yoruba-dom- inated southwest, as the capital of a federal Nigeria (and not one of the cities in the more populous north) reflected British desires for the country’s future. A three-region federation, two of which lay in the south, would ensure the primacy of the non-Islamic part of the state. But this framework did not last long. In 1967, the Ibo-dominated Eastern Region declared its independence as the Repub- lic of Biafra, leading to a three-year civil war at a cost of 1 million lives. Since then, Nigeria’s federal system

has been modified repeatedly; today there are 36 States, and the capital has been moved from Lagos to centrally located Abuja (Fig. 6-18).

Fateful Oil

Large oilfields were discovered beneath the Niger Delta during the 1950s, when Nigeria’s agricultural sector pro- duced most of its exports (peanuts, palm oil, cocoa, cot- ton) and farming still had priority in national and State development plans. Soon, revenues from oil production dwarfed all other sources, bringing the country a brief pe- riod of prosperity and promise. But before long Nigeria’s oil wealth brought more bust than boom. Misguided de- velopment plans now focused on grand, ill-founded in- dustrial schemes and costly luxuries such as a national airline; the continuing mainstay of the vast majority of Nigerians, agriculture, fell into neglect. Worse, poor management, corruption, outright theft of oil revenues during military misrule, and excessive borrowing against

IN A REALM that is only 35 percent urbanized, Lagos, for- mer capital of federal Nigeria, is the exception: a teeming megacity of 10.6 million, sometimes called the Calcutta of Africa.

Lagos evolved over the past three centuries from a Yoruba fishing village, Portuguese slaving center, and British colonial headquarters into Nigeria’s largest city, major port, leading industrial center, and first capital. Sit- uated on the country’s southwestern coast, it consists of a group of low-lying islands and sand spits between the swampy shoreline and Lagos Lagoon. The center of the city still lies on Lagos Island, where the high-rises adjoin- ing the Marina overlook Lagos Harbor and, across the wa- ter, Apapa Wharf and the Apapa industrial area. The city expanded southeastward onto Ikoyi Island and Victoria Island, but after the 1970s most urban sprawl took place to the north, on the western side of Lagos Lagoon.

Lagos’s cityscape is a mixture of modern high-rises, di- lapidated residential areas, and squalid slums. From the top of a high-rise one sees a seemingly endless vista of rusting corrugated roofs, the houses built of cement or mud in irregular blocks separated by narrow alleys. On the outskirts lie the shantytowns of the less fortunate, where shelters are made of plywood and cardboard and lack even the most basic facilities.

By world standards, Lagos ranks among the most se- verely polluted, congested, and disorderly cities. Misman- agement and official corruption are endemic. Laws, rules,

and regulations, from zoning to traffic, are flouted. The in- ternational airport is notorious for its inadequate security and for extortion by immigration and customs officers. In many ways, Lagos is a metropolis out of control.

AMONG THE REALM’S GREAT CITIES . . . Lagos

LAGOS

Mushin Shomolu

Apapa

Iddo

Ebute Metta

University of Lagos

Ikeja

Ikorodu Agege

Aketu-Oja

Akowonjo

Olasore Alagbado

Lagos Lagoon

Bight of Benin

ATLANTIC OCEAN

Lagos H arbor Victoria I.

Ikoyi I.

Lagos I.

0 5 10 Kilometers

0 3 6 Miles After de Blij, 2009.

Murtala Mohammed International Airport

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 328

5°

10° 15°

15°

10°

5°

15°

5°

10°

15°

Longitude East of Greenwich

Kano

Ilorin Ogbomosho

Ado-Ekiti

Oshogbo

Ibadan Abeokuta

Zaria

Kaduna

Jos

Gusau

Sokoto

Port Harcourt

Enugu

Nsukka

Maiduguri

Ngaoundéré

Douala

Makurdi

Warri

Lagos

Abuja

Yaoundé

Niamey

Porto- Novo

N'Djamena

Malabo

SOKOTO

KEBBI KANO

JIGAWA YOBE

BORNO

TARABA

BAUCHI

KADUNA NIGER KWARA

PLATEAU

NASSARAWA

BENUE

KOGI EKITI

OYO

OGUN LAGOS

BAYELSA RIVERS

IMO ABIA

AKWA IBOM

EDO ANAMBRA

AD AM

M AW

KA TS

IN A

ON DO

FEDERAL CAPITAL

TERRITORY

OSUN

DE LT

CROSS RIVER

EB ON

EN UG

ZAMFARA

GOMBE

N I G E R

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

B E

N I

C A

M E

R O

O N

BURKINA FASO

C H

A D

C. A.

A T L A N T I C

O C E A N

Lake Chad

Former lake shoreline

Be nu

e R .

N iger R.

Lagdo Reservoir

Mbakaou Reservoir

N iger R.

H A U S A

Niger Delta

YORUBA

IBO

TIV

KANURI

THE STATES OF FEDERAL NIGERIA 0 400 Kilometers 200

0 100 200 Miles

Core area

Sharia law proclaimed

Railroad

Road

Pipeline

Oilfield

Major ethnic group TIV

National capitals are underlined

POPULATION Under 50,000 ⓦ

50,000–250,000 ⓦ

250,000–1,000,000 ⓦ

1,000,000–5,000,000 ⓦ Over 5,000,000 ⓦ

W E S T A F R I C A 329

future oil income led to economic disaster. The country’s infrastructure collapsed. In the cities, basic services broke down. In the rural areas, clinics, schools, water supplies, and roads to markets crumbled. In the Niger Delta area, local people beneath whose land the oil was being exploited demanded a share of the revenues and reparations for ecological damage; the military regime under General Abacha responded by arresting and exe- cuting nine of their leaders. By the time the ruthless Abacha was succeeded by democratically elected Pres- ident Olusegun Obasanjo, the situation in the Niger Delta had generated an armed resistance group named the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta

(MEND), which carried out attacks on pipelines, kid- napped oil-company workers, and committed other acts of sabotage. The delta has become one of the most dan- gerous oil-producing areas in the world for locals and workers alike.

On global indices of national well-being, Nigeria dur- ing the 1990s sank to the lowest rungs even as its oil pro- duction ranked it tenth in the world in that category, with the United States its chief customer. After 2000 some im- provement occurred, but mismanagement and corruption slowed all progress, and so did rapid population growth (which had eased up by 2007, but Nigeria remains a fast- growing country). Take a careful look at the data in the

FIGURE 6-18

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 329

330 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

table at the end of the book and you will see that this African as well as regional cornerstone state has a long way to go.

Islam Ascendant

Nigeria faces problems beyond the economic and demo- graphic spheres. The free election of a president in 1999 raised the people’s hopes, but trouble arose in another context: its historic cultural schism. Soon after the return to democracy, federal Nigeria’s northern States, beginning with Zamfara, decided to proclaim Sharia (strict Islamic) law. When Kaduna State followed suit, riots between Christians and Muslims devastated the old capital city of Kaduna. There, and in 11 other northern States (Fig. 6-18), the imposition of Sharia law led to the departure of thou- sands of Christians, intensifying the cultural fault line that threatens the cohesion of the country.

While the national government worked to ease the tensions, Muslim-Christian conflict in the northern cities is never far from the surface. In 2008 in the city of Jos, where Christians and Muslims had retreated to separate neighborhoods after earlier strife, local elections between parties that had split along religious lines produced vio- lent clashes in which rampaging gangs killed nearly 1000 people (photo at left). As Figure 6-18 shows, Jos is not located in a Sharia-proclaiming State, but lies wedged between two States that did—Kaduna and Bauchi. Here as elsewhere the Muslim-Christian divide does not cor- respond to State boundaries, and Nigerians refer to this transition zone as their country’s Middle Belt. Here, too, the devolutionary forces arising from Nigeria’s cultural diversity and relative location are strongest, threatening the cohesion of Africa’s most populous country, the cor- nerstone of West Africa.

Coast and Interior

Nigeria is one of 17 countries (counting Chad and off- shore Cape Verde [not shown in Fig. 6-17]) that consti- tute the region of West Africa. Four of these states, comprising a huge territory on the Sahara’s margins but containing small populations, are landlocked: Mali, Bur- kina Faso, Niger, and Chad. Figure G-7 shows clearly how steppe and desert conditions dominate the natural en- vironments of these four interior states. Figure 6-4 reveals the concentration of population in the steppe zone and along the ribbon of water provided by the Niger River. Scattered oases form the remaining settlements and an- chor regional trade. But even the coastal states do not escape the dominance of the desert over West Africa. Mauritania’s environment is almost entirely desert. Sene- gal, as Figure 6-17 shows, is mostly a semiarid Sahel country; and not only northern Nigeria but also northern Benin, Togo, and Ghana have interior steppe zones. The loss of pastures to desertification (human-induced desert expansion) is a constant worry for the livestock herders there.

West Africa’s states share the effects of the environ- mental zonation depicted in Figures G-6 and G-7, but they also exhibit distinct regional geographies. Benin, Nigeria’s neighbor with a population of 9.9 million, has a growing cultural and economic link with the Brazilian State of Bahía, where many of its people were taken in bondage and where elements of West African culture have survived.

Ghana, once known as the Gold Coast, was the first West African state to achieve independence (1957), with a sound economy based on cocoa exports. Two grandiose post-independence schemes can be seen on

To the people living in Nigeria’s “middle belt,” the Islamic Front (p. 333) is more than a geographic concept: it is like living in an earthquake zone where things can fall apart in a moment. In Figure 6-18, you can see Plateau State bordering Islamic-law Kaduna and Bauchi States, with a land extension northward separating these two. In that land extension is where Jos, the State capital, is situated, and in that city Muslim and Christian tensions are never far from the surface. In late November 2008 local elections led to rumors that the mainly Christian Peoples Democratic Party had won over the mainly Muslim All Nigerian Peoples Party. Riots broke out, and in a few days hundreds died and much property destruction took place. Mosques and churches, as well as more than 3000 shops in one market alone, were destroyed before the government could restore order. This photo, taken in early December, shows the Nigerian military separating an advancing group of protesters from their targets by barricading a road in central Jos while local elders try to calm the people. It took the national army and State law enforcement several more days to control the violence, but it will not be the last time such strife will erupt along Nigeria’s Islamic Front. © AFP/Getty Images, Inc.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 330

W E S T A F R I C A 331

its map: the port of Tema, which was to serve a vast West African hinterland, and Lake Volta, which resulted from the region’s largest dam project. When neither ful- filled expectations, Ghana’s economy collapsed. But in the 1990s, Ghana’s military regime was replaced by de- mocratic and stable government in the capital, Accra, and over the past decade Ghana has become a model for Africa. Even ethnic strife in the northern region in 2002 did not disrupt the country’s progress, and its agri- culture-dominated export economy, based on cocoa, re- ceived an unexpected boost when chaos descended on its chief West African competitor, neighboring Ivory Coast. In 2006, Ghana authorized the world’s largest mining conglomerate to begin exploiting gold reserves northwest of Kumasi, the historic Ashanti capital, un- der strict compensatory and environmental conditions that set an example to the rest of the continent and, indeed, the world.

In 2007 Ghana celebrated 50 years of independence, its democracy maturing, its economy robust, corruption persistent but declining, and its international stature ris- ing. The same year also brought news of a major discov- ery of oil reserves off Ghana’s coast, and caused a surge

of optimism. This came only a few months after (former) President Kufuor had signed a nearly $550 million aid package from the U.S. Millennium Challenge Corpora- tion to expand commercial agriculture, further improve infrastructure, and combat poverty, a grant made in recognition of Ghana’s achievements that, in late 2008, included a democratic, closely contested, and peaceful presidential election.

Ivory Coast (which, as we have stated, officially still goes by its French name, Côte d’Ivoire) translated three decades of autocratic but stable rule into economic progress that gave it lower-middle-income status based mainly on cocoa and coffee sales. Continued French in- volvement in the country’s affairs contributed to this prosperity; the capital, Abidjan, reflected its compara- tive well-being. But then Ivory Coast’s president-for-life engineered the transfer of the capital to his home vil- lage, Yamoussoukro, spending tens of millions of dol- lars to build a Roman Catholic basilica there to rival that of St. Peter’s in Rome. It was dedicated just as the country’s economy was slowing and its social condi- tions worsened.

By the late 1990s, Ivory Coast’s economy had re- verted to the low-income category (Fig. G-11). Worse, regional strife intensified during the run-up to a pres- idential election in 2000, when southern politicians objected to the ethnic origins and alleged Muslim sympathies of a northern candidate. In September 2002, a series of coordinated attacks by northern re- bels failed to take the largest city and former capital, Abidjan, but succeeded in capturing major northern centers. The attacks cost hundreds of lives and con- firmed the worst fears of citizens in this long-stable and comparatively prosperous country, where immi- grants have long contributed importantly to the econ- omy and society.

At the turn of this century, the population included about 2 million Burkinabes (immigrants from Burkina Faso to the north), as many as 2 million Nigerians, about one million Malians, half a million Senegalese, and smaller groups of Ghanaians, Guineans, and Liberians. This cultural mix had been kept stable by strong cen- tral government and a growing economy, but when both of these mainstays failed, disorder followed. In 2004 French troops, sent to Ivory Coast to stabilize the situ- ation and to facilitate negotiations as well as protect the French expatriate community, suffered a deadly attack by the Ivoirian Air Force. This resulted in retaliatory ac- tion and led to assaults on French citizens in Abidjan and elsewhere. Most of the expatriate community de- parted, leaving Ivory Coast, its cocoa-based economy devastated, in dire straits, a West African success story with a tragic turn.

Even in the poorer countries of the world, you see something that has become a phenomenon of globalization: gated communities. Widening wealth differences, security concerns, and real estate markets in societies formerly characterized by traditional forms of land ownership combined to produce this new element in the cultural landscape. This is the entrance to Golden Gate, the first private gated community development in Accra, Ghana, started in 1993 as a joint venture between a Texas- based construction company and a Ghanaian industrial partner. © Richard J. Grant.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 331

332 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

All of West Africa has been affected by what has hap- pened in Liberia and Sierra Leone. Liberia, a country founded in 1822 by freed slaves who returned to Africa with the help of American colonization societies, was ruled by their descendants for more than six generations. Rubber plantations and iron mines made life comfort- able for the “Americo-Liberians,” but among the local peoples, resentment simmered. A military coup in 1980 was followed in 1989 by full-scale civil war that pitted ethnic groups against each other and drove hundreds of thousands of refugees into neighboring countries, in- cluding Ivory Coast, Guinea, and Sierra Leone. Mon- rovia, the capital (named after U.S. president James Monroe), was devastated; an estimated 230,000 people, almost 10 percent of the population, perished. In 1997, one of the rebel leaders, Charles Taylor, became presi- dent, but he was indicted by a UN war-crimes tribunal in 2003 just as he was negotiating an end to the civil war with his opponents. Nigerian forces and UN peacekeep- ing troops entered Monrovia in 2005 and a semblance of stability returned to the country. Later that year, Liberia became the first African state to elect a female president when Ellen Johnson Sirleaf won the first post- civil war contest for that office.

Among the countries in the West African region most severely affected by Liberia’s turmoil was Sierra Leone, its coastal neighbor to the northwest. Like Liberia, Sierra Leone also was founded as a haven for freed slaves, in this case by the British in 1787. Independent since 1961, Sierra Leone went the all-too-familiar route from self- governing Commonwealth member to republic to one- party state to military dictatorship. But in the 1990s a civil war brought untold horror to this small country even as refugees from Liberia’s war were arriving. Rebels en- abled by “blood” diamond sales fought supporters of the legitimate government in a struggle that devastated town and countryside alike and killed and mutilated tens of thousands. Eventually a combination of West African, United Nations, and British forces intervened in the con- flict and resurrected a semblance of representative gov- ernment, but not before Sierra Leone had sunk to dead last on the world’s list of national well-being.

As Figure 6-17 shows, Guinea borders all three of the troubled countries just identified, and it has involved it- self in the affairs of all of them—receiving in return a stream of refugees in its border areas. Guinea, with a population of 10.9 million, has been under dictatorial rule ever since its founding president, Sekou Touré, turned from father of the nation to usurper of the peo- ple. As Figure G-11 shows, Guinea is one of Africa’s poorer states, but representative government and less cor- rupt administration could have made it a far better place.

Guinea has significant gold deposits, may possess as much as one-third of the world’s bauxite (aluminum ore) reserves, and can produce far more coffee and cotton than it does; offshore lie productive fishing grounds. As the map shows, this is no ministate like neighboring Guinea-Bissau, the former Portguese colony. Guinea’s capital, Conakry, has a substantial hinterland reaching well into West Africa’s interior, and, as a result, the coun- try has a wide range of environments.

As Figure 6-17 shows, Senegal has a wedge-shaped territory situated between forested Guinea to the south and desert Mauritania to the north. Senegal’s envir- onmental problems notwithstanding, this country is far ahead of its neighbors in almost every respect. Its great advantage, a legacy from colonial times, is the city of Dakar, headquarters for France’s West African empire and now the oversized capital of a state with 13.4 mil- lion people, more than half of them farmers. Dakar an- chors an unusually well-defined core area, but its surface connections with a much larger West African hinterland are not as good as its large commercial and fishing port would suggest. Senegal’s economy remains largely agri- cultural, but the export sector now depends mostly on fish, fertilizers, converted petroleum products, and some iron ore. Peanuts, once a big revenue earner, now figure less prominently.

In many ways Senegal’s most valuable asset is its tra- dition of representative government. In 2010 this coun- try could not only celebrate 50 years of independence (from France) but also more than four decades of democ- racy. Although Senegal is 94 percent Muslim, its cultural mosaic is varied, with the Wolof, concentrated in and around the capital, constituting nearly half the population, the Fulani farmers of the interior about one-quarter, and the Serer about one-seventh. In general, Senegal’s lead- ers have maintained close relationships with France, which remains the country’s chief financial supporter in times of need. Without significant oil reserves, diamonds, or other riches, and with a mainly subsistence farming population, Senegal is still a low-income economy but with GNI levels that exceed the region’s average (see the Data Table inside the back cover). Here is evidence that reasonably representative government and stability are greater assets than gold, liquid or otherwise.

A closer look at Figure 6-17 reveals that Senegal’s territory surrounds that of another state, the English- speaking enclave of Gambia. Efforts to achieve unifica- tion have failed, and Senegal has even faced a secession movement in the Casamance District lying south of Gambia. Yet none of this has threatened a state whose strong cultural traditions and steady democracy are a model for Francophone West Africa.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 332

T H E A F R I C A N T R A N S I T I O N Z O N E 333

Saharan Shadows

The huge West African bulge is environmentally domi- nated by the Sahara, the great desert whose dust is blown by Harmattan “winter” winds across the entire region and out to sea. Under nature’s regime, the Sahara ex- pands and contracts over time, its southern margin or Sahel (an Arabic word meaning “border”) shifting north and south. Figure 6-17 shows the Sahel in an average po- sition, but people and their animals are increasingly af- fecting its configuration. Herds of livestock occupy the desert-adjoining steppes when they turn temporarily green, leaving the vegetation trampled and the thin soil disturbed when drought returns. The desert advances and the people retreat into the moister savannas to the south, invading farmlands and confronting settled inhabitants. It is an ancient cycle intensified by population growth and political partitioning, and it challenges virtually every state in this part of Africa.

Much of West Africa’s countryside retains its tradi- tional African forms of agriculture and herding which, as noted earlier, are skillful adaptations to environmen- tal limitations and social constraints. Visit villages south of the Sahel, and you may find that there is not enough commerce to justify daily markets everywhere. This has led to an economic tradition called the periodic market, involving a system whereby particular village markets are not open every day, but only every third or fourth day or in some other rotation adjusted to factors of product supply, distance, and population distribution. This sys- tem ensures that all villages of a certain size participate in the exchange network. Cultural traditions of this kind endure throughout West Africa, even as the towns and cities beckon the farmers and burst at the seams.

Look to the north of the Sahel, and even the vast Sa- hara is compartmentalized into states, from Mauritania in the west to Chad in the east. As we will see in the next chapter, Islam dominates in these sparsely peopled desert countries, but here too population pressures and environ- mental issues intensify. Within the West African region and beyond, the great challenges are economic survival and nation-building, complicated by a boundary frame- work that is as burdensome as any in this realm.

THE AFRICAN TRANSITION ZONE

From our discussion of East, Equatorial, and West Africa, it is obvious that the northern margin of the realm we define as Subsaharan Africa is in turmoil. Along a zone from Ethiopia in the east to Guinea in the west, cul- tural and ethnic tensions tend to erupt into conflict, and

often the conflict spreads to engulf large areas across in- ternational borders. It is also clear that much of this tur- moil has to do with the religious transition from Islamic and Arabized Africa to the Africa where Christianity and traditional beliefs prevail. This zone, called the African Transition Zone, epitomizes the way one geographic realm yields to another. But in terms of its instability, variability, and volatility, this particular transition be- tween realms is unique.

It is useful to look again at Figure 6-11, which shows that some entire countries lie within the African Transi- tion Zone, such as Senegal, Guinea, Burkina Faso, Er- itrea, and Somalia. Others are bisected by it, including Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, and Ethiopia. Africa’s colonial boundary framework was laid out even as Islam was on the march and paid little heed to the consequences. But it is Islam that defines the southern periphery of the African Transition Zone along a religious frontier some- times referred to as the Islamic Front (Fig. 6-19).

As we noted earlier in this chapter, Islam arrived across the Sahara by caravan and up the Nile by boat, thus reaching and converting the peoples of the interior steppes and savannas on the southern side of the great desert. Then came Europe’s colonial powers, and the modern politico-geographical map of Subsaharan Africa took shape. Muslims and non-Muslims were thrown to- gether in countries not of their making. Vigorous Chris- tian proselytism slowed the march of Islam, resulting in the distribution shown in Figure 7-3. The north-to-south transition is especially clear in the heart of the continent, where Libya is 96 percent Muslim, Chad 57, the Central African Republic 15, and The Congo 9.

Conflict is the hallmark of much of the Islamic Front across Africa. In Sudan, a 30-year war between the Arab, Islamic north and the African, Christian-animist south, costing hundreds of thousands of lives and displacing millions, appeared to be finally settled in late 2004. Even so, a new and deathly conflict had arisen in Sudan’s far- western Darfur Province (see p. 367) even as the south- ern war ended. In Ivory Coast, livestock owned by Muslim cattle herders from Burkina Faso had been tram- pling African farms for years before the north-south schism broke into open conflict in 2002. In Nigeria, Is- lamic revivalism in the North is clouding the entire coun- try’s prospects. But perhaps the most conflict-prone part of the African Transition Zone lies in Africa’s Horn, in- volving the historic Christian state of Ethiopia and its neighbors (Fig. 6-20).

Earlier we noted that Highland Ethiopia where the country’s core area, capital (Adis Abeba), and Christ- ian heartland lie, is virtually encircled by dominantly Muslim societies. One poor-quality road, along which

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 333

334 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

bandits rob bus passengers and law enforcement is vir- tually nonexistent, forms the only direct surface link between Adis Abeba and Nairobi, the capital of Kenya to the south (Fig. 6-20). But, as Figure 6-19 reminds us, Ethiopia’s eastern Ogaden is traditional Somali country and almost entirely Islamic, a vestige of a time when the rulers in Adis Abeba extended their power from their highland fortress over the plains below. To- day, 34 percent of Ethiopia’s population of 83.1 mil- lion is Muslim, and the Islamic Front is quite sharply defined (Fig. 6-19).

With the realm’s second-largest population, Ethiopia is an important African cornerstone state, but its econ- omy remains weak, its politics unrepresentative, and its relations with neighbors adversarial. Landlocked and

fragmented by the African Transition Zone, Ethiopia for- feited international support when its disputed parliamen- tary election in 2005 was followed by the imprisonment of opposition leaders and journalists. The World Bank, for example, withheld budgetary subsidies while human- rights organizations criticized Ethiopian actions in its southern Oromo and eastern Somali areas. In 2007, an attack by the Ogaden National Liberation Front (a ter- rorist organization) on an oil rig in eastern Ethiopia killed 68 Ethiopians and 9 Chinese. Ethiopian forces, with U.S. approval, tried to intervene in the chaotic situation pre- vailing in southern Somalia, but the campaign proved be- yond their capabilities.

Ethiopia’s diverse environments, spectacular scenery, and archeological fame sustain an economy that depends

Lagos

Khartoum

Adis Abeba

Mogadishu

Adan

Mombasa

Dar es Salaam

Durban

Maputo Johannesburg

Cape Town

Walvis Bay

Nairobi

Luanda

N'Djamena Niamey

Conakry

Bamako

Dakar

Kinshasa

Kano

99%

85%

90%

28%

99%

91% 57%

96% 91% 94%

99%

68%

34%

35%

51%

94%

62%

12%

42%

10%

99% A L G E R I A

M A U R I T A N I A

N I G E R I A 51%

N I G E R

L I B Y A

C H A D

E G Y P T S A U D I A R A B I A

T H E C O N G O

ANGOLA <1%

Z A M B I A 1 %

T A N Z A N I A

M AD

AG AS

C AR

2 %

ZIMBABWE 1%

BOTSWANA <1%

SOUTH AFRICA 3%

N A M I B I A < 1 %

RWANDA 13%

BURUNDI

K E N Y A

E T H I O P I A

S U D A N

OMAN 89%

DJIBOUTI

U.A.E.

S O M

A L I A

UGANDA

C A M E R O O N 20%

C E N T R A L A F R I C A N R E P U B L I C 15%

CONGO 2%

G A B O N 7%

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

M A L I

BURKINA FASO 51%

Y E M E N

IVORY COAST

GHANA 21%

TOGO 14%

BENIN 24%

SENEGAL 94%

W. S A H .

GAMBIA 90%

GUINEA- BISSAU

G U I N E A

SIERRA LEONE 46% LIBERIA

20%

ERITREA

MO ÇA

MB IQ

M A

LA WI

2 0

LESOTHO <1%

SWAZILAND 1%

OGADEN

D A

R FU

10°

0°

10°

20°

30°

10°

Equator 0°

20°

50°

20°

40°30°20°10°

50°40°20°10°

0°10°

Longitude East of Greenwich

10° 0°

ATLANTIC OCEAN

INDIAN OCEAN

Red Sea

Blue N

ile R

N ile

Niger R.

Congo R.

X X

AFRICAN TRANSITION ZONE: PERCENT MUSLIMS IN STATES

0 2000 Kilometers

0 400 800 1200 Miles

400 800 1200 1600

51 – 90

11 – 50

Under 11

Over 90 Islamic Front

Armed conflict, current or recent

Terrorist strikes since 1990X

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 334

T H E A F R I C A N T R A N S I T I O N Z O N E 335

primarily on farm products (coffee, tea, and spices) and tourism. But the overwhelming majority of Ethiopian cit- izens are subsistence farmers, and despite its historic abundance the country now requires food imports from relief agencies.

As Figure 6-20 shows, Ethiopia is landlocked not only by Somalia but also by the critically-positioned ministate of Djibouti and Ethiopia’s former federal partner, Eritrea.

Once an Italian colony, Eritrea was under British admin- istration during World War II and was made part of an Ethiopian “Federation” in 1952. This was one of those in- name-only federations, and when Ethiopia formally an- nexed Eritrea in 1962, Eritreans—Christian as well as Muslim—took up arms to fight a war of secession. By 1993 they had achieved their goal when an independent state of Eritrea gained international recognition.

OROMO

TIGRAY

AMHARA

SOMALI O g a d e n

Mt. Kenya 17,058 ft.

Mt. Kilimanjaro 19,340 ft.

Ras Dashen Terara 15,157 ft.

At Ta'if

Makkah (Mecca)

Jiddah

Najran

Al Hudaydah

Ta'izz

Adan

Al Mukalla

Khamis Mushayt

Jizan

Port Sudan

Kassala

Gedaref Mek'ele

Bahir Dar Dese

Garoowe

Dire Dawa

Harer

Asela

Debre Mark'os

Jima

Gonder Weldiya

Agordat Keren Massawa

Assab

Berbera

Hargeysa

Malakal

Wau

Juba

Merca

Jamaame

Baidoa

Kismaayo

Meru

Mombasa

Tanga

Moshi

Nakuru

Eldoret

Kisumu

Mbale

Entebbe

Gulu

Bunia

Isiro

Butembo

Goma

Bukavu

Soroti

Jinja

Mbarara

Mwanza Arusha

Tabora

San'a

Asmara

Djibouti

Adis Abeba

Mogadishu

Nairobi

Kampala

Bujumbura

Kigali

KostiEl Obeid

En Nahud

T A N Z A N I A

ADNAWR

IDNURUB

K E N Y A UGANDAT H E

C O N G O

E T H I O P I A

S U D A N

SOMALILAND)1991demialcorpecnednepednI(

Y E M E N

A R A B I A S A U D I

O M A N

DJIBOUTI

E R I T R E A

E G Y P T

Soco t r a ( Yemen )

PUNTLAND (Autonomy declared 1998)

S O

A L

I A

40° 45° 50°35°30°

15°

5°

0°

5°

10°

Longitude East of Greenwich

Equator

I N D I A N

O C E A N

G u l f o

f A d a

R e

d S

e a

B lue N ile

W hite N

ile

Lake Victoria

Lake Albert

Lake Tana

Lake Assal

Lake Tanganyika

Lake Turkana

ti art

S be

dn a

Ml eb

0 200 400 Kilometers

0 200 Miles100

National capitals are underlined

HORN OF AFRICA POPULATION

Under 50,000

50,000–250,000

250,000–1,000,000

1,000,000–5,000,000

RoadRailroad

Major ethnic groupOROMO

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 335

336 C H A P T E R 6 ● S U B S A H A R A N A F R I C A

troubled Somalia, vulnerable Eritrea, and crucial Ethiopia—and directly across the narrow Bab el Mandeb Strait (which separates the Red Sea and the Gulf of Adan) from Yemen, the ancestral home of Usama bin Laden (Fig. 6-20).

But the key component in the eastern sector of the African Transition Zone is Somalia, where 9.5 million people, virtually all Muslim, live at the mercy of a desert- dominated climate that enforces cross-border migration into Ethiopia’s Ogaden area in pursuit of seasonal pas- tures. As many as three to five million Somalis live per- manently on the Ethiopian side of the border, but this is not the only division the Somali “nation” faces. In real- ity, the Somali people is an assemblage of five major eth- nic groups fragmented into hundreds of clans engaged in an endless contest for power as well as survival.

Early in this new century’s first decade, Somalia’s condition as a failed state led to the country’s fragmen- tation into three parts (Fig. 6-20). In the north, the sec- tor called Somaliland, which had proclaimed its in- dependence in the 1990s and which remains by far the most stable of the three, functioned essentially as an African state, although the “international community” will not recognize it as such. In the east, a conclave of local chiefs declared their territory to be separate from the rest of Somalia, called it Puntland, and asserted an unspecified degree of autonomy. In the south, where the official capital, Mogadishu, is located on the Indian Ocean coast, local secular warlords and Islamic militias continued their struggle for supremacy, the warlords sup- ported by U.S. funding. In 2006, Islamic militias stormed into the capital and took control, ousting the warlords and proclaiming their determination to create an Islamic state.

As noted above, Ethiopian forces intervened with the unheralded support of the United States. They were joined by an African Union peacekeeping force, but be- fore long both came under continuous and increasing at- tack from Somali militias. Hundreds of thousands of refugees streamed out of Mogadishu, where the fighting was worst, and many others left their villages in the em- battled zone. By 2008, the UN was estimating that more than a million Somalis were stranded between the Kenya border (where many were turned back) and the sea, and starvation was widespread.

Meanwhile, Indian Ocean waters off Somalia be- came an arena of action for a growing number of pirates based along the country’s lengthy coastline and with in- creasing capabilities. Piracy had long been occurring here, but most of the incidents involved smaller boats and did not make the news. But then Somali pirates be- gan to target larger ships; they captured a Ukrainian freighter loaded with tanks and other weapons, a

The new state had the effect of landlocking Ethiopia, which had made Assab its key Red Sea port while it con- trolled Eritrea. As the Muslim sector of Eritrea’s popu- lation of 5.3 million grew faster than the Christian sector, relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea worsened, and in 1998 the two countries launched a seemingly senseless war over their common border. This war flared up repeat- edly, cost billions of dollars, and required foreign medi- ation to resolve, but a negotiated agreement reached in 2000 was not enough to stop it altogether. By 2009, more than 100,000 soldiers on both sides had died in old-style combat over a strip of rocky land and a few abandoned villages. But by then, Eritrea had become a magnet for Islamic militants eager to join a campaign against Chris- tian Ethiopia. As millions went hungry and the once- promising Eritrean economy collapsed, it was a reminder that the Islamic Front is far more than a line on a map.

In 2002, a ministate in this part of the African Tran- sition Zone, Djibouti, came to international attention as a result of the so-called War on Terror declared by the United States. Formerly a French colony and still host to a French military base, coastal Djibouti, ethnically di- vided between ethnic Afars and Issas but politically sta- ble, proved to have a favorable relative location between

The waters off the Horn of Africa have become the scene of modern-day piracy as vessels ranging from oil tankers to cruise ships are being attacked by teams of armed criminals using all kinds of small boats to stalk their prey. The Gulf of Adan (Aden), flanked by failed-state Somalia and terrorist-base Yemen, is especially dangerous as ships converge on the choke-point entrance to the Red Sea. Several countries, including the United States, have deployed warships to combat the pirates, but the problem persists. This photo was taken in May 2009 as members of a boarding team from the cruiser USS Gettysburg and U.S. Coast Guard law enforcement officers approached a suspected pirate boat in the Gulf. © AP/Wide World Photos.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 336

W H A T Y O U C A N D O 337

What You Can Do R E C O M M E N DAT I O N: Write an op-ed piece! This is not merely a matter of writing a longer letter to the editor. An op- ed (opinion-editorial) essay is more challenging because you cannot assume the reader’s familiarity with the topic. There- fore, you will want to write an introductory paragraph setting the stage and explaining what issue you plan to address, leading into a concisely argued position on the matter citing the necessary evidence, followed by a logical and judicious conclusion. Give yourself 1000 to 1200 words, and make every word count! It’s great practice, and if the newspaper or magazine editor accepts your article, it will have much more impact than a letter to the editor. And, unlike a letter, you are able to title your op-ed piece. For example, you might try one under the headline Give African Farmers a Break! or another asking What Has Globalization Done for Africa? And here’s a switch: readers are likely to write letters to the ed- itor responding to your argument. They may even ask the editor to invite you to write again on another topic.

GEOGRAPHIC CONNECTIONS

Geographic Literature on Subsaharan Africa: The key introductory works on this realm were authored by Aryeety-Attoh, Bohannon & Curtin, Cole & de Blij, de Blij, Grove, and Stock. These works, together with a comprehensive listing of notewor- thy books and recent articles on the geography of Africa south of the Sahara, can be found in the References and Further Read- ings section of this book’s website at www.wiley.com/college/deblij.

1 Tourism is one of Africa’s important industries, in somecountries contributing substantially to the government’s income and creating jobs where unemployment is high. But if you were a member of an organized tour group, you would soon discover that visitors to Subsaharan Africa tend to be more interested in the realm’s remaining wildlife than in the people and their cultures. How would you go about adding some human interest to the itinerary? What aspects of the cultural geography of Subsaharan Africa would you like to see and why? In what ways are villages and small towns usu- ally more evocative of regional cultures than large cities?

2 You have just been appointed to a key U.S.-governmentcommission charged with the following responsibility: sufficient funds are available to give substantial assistance to just four countries in Subsaharan Africa, and the government hopes that the beneficial effects of this assistance will radi- ate outward into neighboring states. The first task of the commission of which you are a member is to identify the four countries. If you had this decision to make, which four African states would you nominate, and what criteria, includ- ing geographic factors, would you employ to arrive at that selection?

300,000-ton oil tanker, and even tried to board cruise ships. Their sphere of activity expanded from the Gulf of Adan to waters south of the latitude of Kenya’s port of Mombasa, and their impact was global. Warships from Russia, India, and the United States were among vessels trying to secure the vast maritime region off So- malia, but the “industry” could not easily be closed down. The combination of a failed state in Africa’s Horn, Islamic fundamentalism driven by local militants, al-Qaeda in the mix, and pirates operating off the coast makes this segment of the African Transition Zone a focus of international concern.

As this chapter has underscored, Africa is a conti- nent of infinite social diversity, and Subsaharan Africa is a realm of matchless cultural history. Comparatively recent environmental change widened the Sahara and

separated north from south; the arrival of Islam turned the north to Mecca and left the south to Christian pros- elytism. Millions of Africans were carried away in bondage; the cruelties of colonialism subjugated those who were left behind in a political straitjacket forged in Berlin. Africa’s equatorial heart is an incubator for debilitating diseases second to none on Earth, but Af- rica’s health problems never were a top priority in the medical world. When the richer countries finally aban- doned their African empires, African peoples were left a task of reconstruction in which they not only got lit- tle help: they found their products uncompetitive on markets where rich-country producers basked in subsi- dies. We said at the beginning of this chapter that Af- rica’s time and turn will come again, but it will take far more than is being done today to rectify half a millen- nium’s malefactions.

deblij_c06_280-337hr.qxd 3-09-2009 12:27 Page 337