Module 6
Sub-Saharan Africa
a. Area and Population
People overpopulation is apparent in some areas, and yet much of the region is
sparsely populated. With a population of 749 million as of 2007, the region’s average
population density is slightly more than that of the United States. Even with the loss of
population due to AIDS, the rate of natural population increase in sub-Saharan Africa is
2.5 percent per year, or about four times that of the United States. As in most LDCs,
African parents generally want large families for several reasons: to have extra hands to
perform work; to be looked after when they are old or sick; and in the case of girls, to
receive the “bride wealth” a groom pays in a marriage settlement. Large families also
convey status. However, there are signs of signifi cant change in this pattern: birth rates
have been dropping in every country in this region over the past two decades.
Most of this region’s people live in a few small, densely populated areas. The
main areas are the coastal belt bordering the Gulf of Guinea in West Africa from the
southern part of Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, westward to southern Ghana;
the savanna lands of northern Nigeria; the highlands of Ethiopia; the highland region
surrounding Lake Victoria in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi; and the
eastern coast and parts of the high interior plateau of South Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the world’s most rural region (69 percent), with rural
populations of most countries between 65 and 85 percent. The most rural are two East
African nations with very fertile soils: Burundi (8 percent urban) and Uganda (12 percent
urban). The most urbanized are Djibouti (82 percent), where there is no arable land and a
small number of people are clustered in a port city, and Gabon (73 percent), where people
are fl ocking to partake in an oil boom that is benefi ting urbanites. The region’s major
cities, are magnets that attract many poor, rural people. But life in villages is the rule,
where a typical rural home is a small hut made of sticks and mud, with a dirt fl oor,
thatched roof, and no electricity or plumbing.
This is the world’s youngest population, where 43 percent of the region’s people
are under 15 years old (compared with about a third of the populations of Latin America
and Asia). This is another indicator of how rapidly the region’s population should grow,
barring the vagaries of disease or famine. But the Malthusian scenario does seem to loom
over Africa. Analysts fear the consequences of what they call the “1 percent gap”: Since
the 1960s, the population of sub-Saharan Africa has grown at a rate of about 3 percent
annually, while food production in the region has grown at only about 2 percent annually.
This is the only world region where per capita food production is declining. The wild
card in Africa’s population deck is the human immunodefi ciency virus (HIV), and the
disease it causes—AIDS (acquired immunodefi ciency syndrome)—has inevitably been
identifi ed by some as the Malthusian “check” to the region’s population growth.
b. Physical Geography and Human Adaptations
Most of Africa is a vast plateau, actually a series of plateaus, with a typical
elevation of more than 1,000 feet (c. 300 m). Near the Great Rift Valley in the Horn of
Africa and in southern and eastern Africa, the general elevation rises 2,000 to 3,000 feet
(c. 600 to 900 m), with many areas at 5,000 feet (1,520 m) and higher Perspective, page
466). The highest peaks and largest lakes of the continent are located in this belt. The
loftiest summits lie within 250 miles (c. 400 km) of Lake Victoria. They include
Kilimanjaro (19,340 ft/5,895 m) and Kirinyaga, which are volcanic cones, and the
Ruwenzori range (up to 16,763 ft/5,109 m), a nonvolcanic massif produced by faulting.
Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, is surpassed in area among inland waters of the
world only by the Caspian Sea and Lake Superior. It is relatively shallow, however, and
the large numbers of people living on its shores are taxing its resources. Other very large
lakes in East Africa include Lake Tanganyika and Lake Malawi.
The physical structure of Africa has infl uenced the character of African rivers.
The main rivers, including the Nile, Niger, Congo, Zambezi, and Orange, rise in interior
uplands and descend by stages to the sea. At some points, they descend abruptly,
particularly at plateau escarpments, with rapids and waterfalls interrupting their courses.
These often block navigation a short distance inland. Helping offset this problem,
Africa’s discontinuous inland waterways are interconnected by railroads and highways
more than on any other continent. The Congo is used more for transportation than any
other river in the region.
The many waterfalls and rapids do have a positive side: They represent a great
potential source of hydroelectric energy. There are major power stations on the Zambezi
River at the Cabora Bassa Dam in Mozambique and at the Kariba Dam, which Zimbabwe
and Zambia share; at the Inga Dam on the Congo River, just upstream from Matadi; at
the Kainji Dam on the Niger River in Nigeria; and at the Akosombo Dam on the Volta
River in Ghana. But only about 5 percent of Africa’s hydropower potential has been
realized (compared to about 60 percent in North America). Many of the best sites are
remote from large markets for power. In some cases, geopolitical considerations pose
obstacles to dam construction. Downstream Egypt, for example, has expressed concern
and even hostile rhetoric about dams and water diversions of the Nile and its tributaries
by upstream Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.
The equator bisects Africa, so about two-thirds of the region lies in the low
latitudes, having tropical climates and biomes; Africa is the most tropical of the world’s
continents. Areas of tropical rain forest climate center on the great rain forest of the
Congo Basin in central and western Africa. The forest merges gradually into a tropical
savanna climate on the north, south, and east. This is the climatic and biotic zone
supporting the famous large mammals of Africa. The savanna areas in turn trend into
steppe and desert on the north and southwest. A broad belt of drought-prone tropical
steppe and savanna bordering the Sahara on the south is known as the Sahel. There is
desert on the coasts of Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia in the Horn of Africa. In South
Africa and Namibia, a coastal desert, the Namib, borders the Atlantic. The Kalahari
Desert, which lies inland from the Namib, is better described as steppe or semidesert than
as true desert. Along the northwestern and southwestern fringes of the continent are small
but productive areas of Mediterranean climate, while eastern coastal sections and
adjoining interior areas of South Africa have a humid subtropical climate. Bordering the
subtropical climate region is an area of marine west coast climate.
Total precipitation in the region is high but unevenly distributed; some areas are
typically saturated, while others are perennially bone dry. Even in many of the rainier
parts of the continent, there is a long dry season, and wide fl uctuations occur from year
to year in the total amount of precipitation. One of the major needs in Africa is better
control over water. In the typical village household, women carry water from a stream or
lake or a shallow (and often polluted) well. Use of more small dams would help provide
water storage throughout the year. Drought is a persistent problem in most of the
countries. Although all droughts create problems, some last for years with devastating
effects in this heavily agricultural region. Droughts have been particularly severe in
recent decades in the Sahel and in the Horn of Africa. The number of food emergencies,
most of them tied to drought, has tripled since the mid-1980s in sub-Saharan Africa. The
consensus among scientists is growing that this region may pay the highest price for
global climate change, even though it contributes the fewest greenhouses gases to the
atmosphere. United Nations studies predict even more severe droughts and crop losses,
along with the destruction of coastal infrastructure that will accompany rising sea levels.
Such dangerous environmental changes may be contributing to confl ict in the region as
well. Pastoralists and farmers already compete for scarce land and water resources in
many places, and droughts intensify those struggles.
The patterns of Africa’s land use reveal that the most productive lands are on river
plains, in volcanic regions (especially the East African and Ethiopian highlands), and in
some grassland areas of tropical steppes (notably the High Veld in South Africa). Soils of
the deserts and regions of Mediterranean climate are often poor. In the tropical rain
forests and savannas, there are reddish, lateritic tropical soils that are infertile once the
natural vegetation is removed and can support only shifting cultivation.
To support growing populations, farmers across sub Saharan Africa have
shortened fallow periods and pressed their lands to yield more crops. The result has been
an unprecedented degradation of the resource. In 2006, fully 75 percent of the region’s
farmland was severely low in the nutrients needed to grow crops, up from 40 percent a
decade earlier. Studies suggest that at current rates, crop yields will fall as much as 30
percent by 2022. Most African farmers cannot afford fertilizers and are not familiar with
the soil conservation techniques that would help reverse this ominous trend.
Africa’s soils favor subsistence agriculture (people farming their own food but
producing little surplus for sale) and pastoralism, and over half of the region’s people
practice these livelihoods. Women do a large share of the farm work—they produce 80 to
90 percent of Africa’s food—in addition to household chores and the bearing and
nurturing of children. Mechanization is rare, fertilizers are expensive, and so crop yields
are low. In the steppe of the northern Sahel, both rainfall and cultivation are scarce. The
more dependable rainfall of the southern Sahel creates a major area of rain-fed cropping,
with unirrigated millet, sorghum, corn (maize), and peanuts the major subsistence crops.
In the tropical savannas south of the equator, corn is a major subsistence crop in most
areas, with manioc (cassava) and millet also widely grown. Corn, manioc, bananas, and
yams are the major food crops of the rain forest areas.
Many peoples, particularly in the vast tropical grasslands both north and south of
the equator, are pastoral. Herding of sheep and hardy breeds of cattle is especially
important in the Sahel. An increasing problem is that farmers often drive pastoralists
from traditional grazing lands. Confi ned to smaller areas in which to browse and graze,
the nomads’ cattle, sheep, and goats often overgraze vegetation and compact the soil.
Although cattle raising is widespread throughout the savannas, cattle are largely
excluded from extensive sections both north and south of the equator by the disease
called nagana, which is carried by the tsetse fl ies that also transmit sleeping sickness to
humans. In tropical rain forests, tsetse fl ies are even more prevalent and few cattle are
raised, but goats and poultry are common (as they are in tsetse-frequented savanna areas).
Most Africans who live by tilling the soil also keep some animals, even if only
goats and poultry. Among African peoples such as the Maasai of Kenya and Tanzania
and the Tutsi (Watusi) of Rwanda and Burundi, livestock not only contribute to the daily
diet but are also an indispensable part of customary social, cultural, and economic
arrangements. Cattle are particularly important, with sheep and goats playing a smaller
role. Traditional Maasai pastoralists are probably the most famous African example of
close dependence on cattle. They milk and carefully bleed the animals for each day’s
food and tend them with great care. The Maasai give a name to each animal, and herds
play a central role in the main Maasai social and economic events through the year.
Madagascar is a good example of an African country in which cattle represent
status, wealth, and cultural identity. Malagasy livestock owners tend to want higher
numbers of the animals, rather than better-quality stock, to enhance their standing. A
Malagasy family practicing the ritual commemoration of deceased ancestors sacrifi ces a
large number of zebu cows for fellow villagers, and similar feasts accompany other
important ritual dates. Due to such demands, the population of zebu cattle on the island is
about 11 million. Their forage needs have grave consequences for Madagascar’s rain
forests and other wild habitats. People clear the forests and repeatedly set fi re to the
cleared lands to provide a fl ush of green pasture for their livestock, causing a rapid
retreat of the island’s natural vegetation.
Africa has the planet’s most spectacular and numerous populations of large
mammals. The tropical grasslands and open forests of Africa are the habitats of large
herbivorous animals, including the elephant, buffalo, zebra, giraffe, and many species of
antelope, as well as carnivorous and scavenging animals, such as the lion, leopard, and
hyena. The tropical rain forests have fewer of these “game” animals (as Africans call
them); the most abundant species here are insects, birds, and monkeys, with the
hippopotamus, the crocodile, and a great variety of fi sh in the streams and rivers draining
the forests and wetter savannas.
c. Cultural and Historical Geographies
Many non-Africans are unaware of the achievements and contributions of the
cultures of sub-Saharan Africa. The African continent was the original home of
humankind. Recent DNA studies suggest that the fi rst modern people (Homo sapiens) to
inhabit Asia, Europe, and the Americas were descendants of a small group that left Africa
via the Isthmus of Suez about 100,000 years ago. After about 5000 b.c.e., indigenous
people were responsible for agricultural innovations in four culture hearths: the Ethiopian
Plateau, the West African savanna, the West African forest, and the forest-savanna
boundary of West Central Africa. Africans in these areas domesticated important crops
such as millet, sorghum, yams, cowpeas, okra, watermelons, coffee, and cotton. From
Africa, these diffused to populations in other world regions.
Civilizations and empires emerged in Ethiopia, West Africa, West Central Africa,
and South Africa. In the fi rst century c.e., a Christian empire based in the Ethiopian city
of Axum controlled the ivory trade from Africa to Arabia. Ethiopian tradition holds that a
shrine in Axum still contains the biblical Ark of the Covenant and the tablets of the Ten
Commandments, which disappeared from the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 b.c.e. Several
Islamic empires, including the Ghana, Mali, and Hausa states, emerged in West Africa
between the 9th and 19th centuries. All of these agriculturally based civilizations
controlled major trade routes across the Sahara. They profi ted from the exchange of
slaves, gold, and ostrich feathers for weapons, coins, and cloth from North Africa. Three
kingdoms arose between the 14th and 18th centuries in what are now the southern
Democratic Republic of Congo and northern Angola. These included the Kongo
kingdom, which had productive agriculture and was the hub of an interregional trade
network for food, metals, and salt. In what is now Zimbabwe, the Karanga kingdom of
the 13th to 15th centuries built its capital city at the site known as Great Zimbabwe. Its
skilled metalworkers mined and crafted gold, copper, and iron, and merchants traded
these metals with faraway India and China.
The Niger-Congo language family (sometimes considered a subfamily of the
Niger-Khordofanian family) is the largest. It includes the many West African languages
and the roughly 400 Bantu subfamily languages that fall into seven branches: Benue-
Congo, Kwa, Atlantic, Mandé, Gur, Adamawan, and Khordofanian. Most of these are
spoken south of the equator. The Bantu language of the BenueCongo branch is the most
widespread. The Afro-Asiatic language family includes Semitic languages (such as the
Amharic language of Ethiopia and Arabic) and tongues of the Cushitic (Oromo and
Somali of the Horn of Africa, for example) and Chadic (especially the Hausa of northern
Nigeria) branches. People living in the area adjoining the Sahara, from West Africa to the
Horn of Africa, speak these languages. Even some of the Niger-Congo languages
originating south of the Sahara, such as the Swahili (Kiswahili) tongue spoken widely in
East Africa, have borrowed much from Arabic and other languages with roots elsewhere.
The prominence of Arabic words in Swahili refl ects a long history of Arab seafaring
along the Indian Ocean coast of Africa; in fact, Swahili means “coastal” in Arabic.
The religious landscape of Africa is complex and fl uid. Spiritualism is extremely
strong, but spiritual affi liations and practices are more interwoven and fl exible than in
most other world regions. It is not uncommon for family members to follow different
faiths or for an individual to change his or her religious beliefs and practices in the course
of a lifetime.
Broadly, however, some dominant patterns of religious geography can be
discerned. Islam is the dominant religion in North Africa and the countries of the Sahel
on the southern fringe of the Sahara. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church, closely related to
the Coptic Christian faith of Egypt, makes Ethiopia an exception to the otherwise Islamic
Horn of Africa region. Islam is also the prevailing religion of the East African coast,
where Arab traders introduced the faith. Muslims are a majority or strong minority in
rural northern Nigeria and Tanzania, and there are minority Muslim populations in cities
and towns across the continent. Christians are a majority in southern Nigeria, Uganda,
Lesotho, and parts of South Africa. Both Christianity and Islam are strongest in the cities,
whereas traditional religions prevail or overlap with these monotheistic faiths in rural
areas.
Until about 1,000 years ago, the cultures of Africa south of the Saharan desert
barrier remained largely unknown to the peoples north of the desert. Egyptians, Romans,
and Arabs had contact with the northern fringes of this region, and some trade fi ltered
across the Sahara, but to most outsiders, Africa was the “Dark Continent,” a self-
contained, tribalized land of mystery. Even at the opening of the 20th century, vast areas
of interior tropical Africa were still little known to Westerners.
The tragic impetus for growing contact between Africa and the wider world was
slavery. Over a period of 12 centuries, as many as 25 million people from sub-Saharan
Africa were forced to become slaves, exported as merchandise from their homelands. The
trade began in the 7th century, with Arab merchants using transSaharan camel caravan
routes to exchange guns, books, textiles, and beads from North Africa for slaves, gold,
and ivory from sub-Saharan Africa. As many as two-thirds of the estimated 9.5 million
slaves exported between the years 650 and 1900 along this route were young women who
became concubines and household servants in North Africa and Turkey. Male slaves
usually became soldiers or court attendants (some of whom eventually assumed
important political offi ces). From the 8th to 19th centuries, about 5 million more slaves
were exported from East Africa to Arabia, Oman, Persia (modern Iran), India, and China.
Again, most were women who became concubines and servants.
Portugal was the earliest colonial power to build an African empire. The epic
voyage of Vasco da Gama to India in 1497–1499 via the Cape of Good Hope was the
culmination of several decades of Portuguese exploration along Africa’s western coasts.
During the 16th century, Portugal controlled an extensive series of strong points and
trading stations along both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts of the continent.
European penetration of the African interior began in 1850 with a series of journeys of
exploration. Missionaries like David Livingstone, as well as traders, government offi
cials, and adventurers and scientifi c explorers such as James Bruce, Richard Burton, and
John Speke, undertook these expeditions. By 1881, when Africans still ruled about 90
percent of the region, foreign exploits had revealed the main outlines of inner African
geography, and the European powers began to scramble for colonial territory in the
interior. Much of the carving up of Africa took place at the Conference of Berlin in 1884
and 1885, when the French, British, Germans, Belgians, Portuguese, Italians, and Spanish
established their respective spheres of infl uence in the region. By 1900, only Ethiopia
and Liberia had not been colonized. For more than half a century, sub-Saharan Africa
was a patchwork of European colonies, and Europeans in these possessions were a
privileged social and economic class.
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, only three countries—South Africa,
Egypt, and Liberia—were independent. The United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Italy,
Portugal, and Spain controlled the rest. But after the war, mainly in the 1960s and 1970s,
a sustained drive for independence was mounted. Ceasing to be a colonial region, Africa
emerged with more than a quarter of the world’s independent countries. This was a
peaceful process in most instances, but bloodshed accompanied or followed
independence in several countries.
Although formal political colonialism has vanished, most countries still have
important links with the colonial powers that formerly controlled them, and many foreign
corporations that operated in colonial days still maintain a signifi cant presence. France
has a long history of postindependence intervention in the political and military affairs of
its former African colonies. France is the only ex-colonial power to keep troops in Africa
(with the highest numbers in Djibouti, Ivory Coast, the Central African Republic, and
Chad). France took steps to ensure that most of its former colonies trade almost
exclusively with France and in turn supported national currencies with the French
treasury. But France found this paternalistic approach to be extremely expensive and has
been reducing its military presence and other costly assistance to its African clients.
d. Economic Geography
Great poverty is characteristic of sub-Saharan Africa; 25 of the world’s 30 poorest
countries are there. All of the economies except South Africa’s are underindustrialized.
Africa’s place in the commercial world is mainly that of a producer of primary products,
especially cash crops and raw materials (particularly minerals), for sale outside the
region. In most nations, one or two products supply more than 40 percent of all exports—
for example, oil in Angola and coffee and tea in Kenya. Such a country is vulnerable to
international oversupply of an export on which it is vitally dependent. The value of
imports far exceeds that of exports in sub-Saharan Africa, with imports consisting mainly
of manufactured goods, oil products, and food.
Social and structural problems contribute to the region’s underdevelopment. Most
African societies lack a substantial middle class and the prospect of upward economic
mobility. Instead, most are hierarchical, and any signifi cant income tends to fl ow into
the hands of a small elite controlling the lion’s share of the nation’s wealth. There are not
enough schools to promote the economic welfare that can accompany literacy, and
attendance in many is poor. Even with recent growth in attendance, only 70 percent of all
children attend primary school, the lowest percentage of any world region. Bureaucratic
obstacles and corruption can make starting up a new business a long, painful, and costly
ordeal, discouraging investment both by Africans and foreigners.
Per capita food output in most of sub-Saharan Africa has declined or remained fl
at since independence. The average African consumes 10 percent fewer calories than two
decades ago, and malnutrition affl icts almost half the region’s children. Rapid population
growth and drought are partly responsible for this trend. Many regimes have also invested
more in their militaries than in getting food to their citizens. Food shortages also relate to
government preference for cash crops over subsistence food crops. Coffee, cotton, and
cloves, for example, provide a means of gaining foreign exchange with which to buy
foreign technology, industrial equipment, arms, and consumption items for the elite. The
proportion of crops grown for export to overseas destinations and for sale in African
urban centers has therefore risen signifi cantly in recent times.
Mineral exports have had a strong impact on the physical and social geographies
of sub-Saharan Africa. The three primary mineral source areas are South Africa and
Namibia; the Democratic Republic of Congo–Zambia–Zimbabwe region; and West
Africa, especially the areas near the Atlantic Ocean. Notable mineral exports from these
regions include precious metals and precious stones, iron alloys, copper, phosphate,
uranium, petroleum, and high-grade iron ore, all destined principally for Europe, the
United States, and China.
Large multinational corporations, fi nanced initially by investors in Europe or the
United States and most recently by China, do most of the mining in Africa. Mining has
attracted far more investment capital to Africa than any other economic activity. Money
is invested directly in the mines, and many of the transportation lines, port facilities,
power stations, housing and commercial areas, manufacturing plants, and other elements
in the continent’s infrastructure have been developed primarily to serve the needs of the
mining industry.
Poor transportation hinders development in sub-Saharan Africa. Few countries
can afford to build extensive new road or railroad networks, and much of the colonial
infrastructure has deteriorated. The region critically needs a good international
transportation network, together with a lowering of trade barriers, to enlarge market
opportunities. Poor transportation is also often a contributing factor to famine. In
Ethiopia, for example, the road network is so poor that it is extremely diffi cult to get
food from the western part of the country, which often has crop surpluses, to the eastern
part, which has chronic food shortages. On more than one occasion, it has proved cheaper
to ship food from the United States to eastern Ethiopia than to truck it across the country!
Similarly, a recent World Bank study showed that it cost $50 to ship a metric ton of corn
from Iowa 8,500 miles (13,600 km) to the Kenyan port of Mombasa but $100 to move it
from Mombasa 550 miles (880 km) inland to Kampala, Uganda. Transportation problems
contribute to the high costs of agricultural inputs like fertilizers, which in this region cost
two to three times what they do in Asia; indeed, fertilizer consumption in Asia is 10 times
what it is in sub-Saharan Africa.
Africa’s status as a supplier of raw materials to world markets has channeled
signifi cant new wealth into countries that have oil and other resources for which demand
is high in China and other major consuming countries. In the decade 1996–2006, the
commodities boom brought annual economic growth rates of about 5 percent to 16 sub-
Saharan African countries. This windfall does not guarantee economic development,
however, and there are several critical areas where reforms are needed.
One of the major obstacles to African economic development is that many
countries outside the region have effectively closed their doors to African imports. These
restrictions typically take the form of subsidies, high tariffs, or low quotas imposed on
agricultural products (like cotton) or manufactured goods (like textiles). Potential
importing countries, such as the United States, impose these restrictions to protect their
own industries. For instance, the United States and Africa are the world’s leading
exporters of raw cotton. The U.S. government spends $2 billion each year to subsidize its
25,000 cotton farmers. This means higher U.S. production and exports and consequently
lower cotton prices and incomes for African farmers.
Africa scholars speak of the failed-state syndrome, a pernicious process of
economic and political decay that is eating away at countries including the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. Some African countries are
little more than shell states. A shell state appears to have all the institutions of a country:
a constitution, a parliament, ministries, and so on. But most of the positions are occupied
by friends and family of the country’s ruler, who are happy to line their pockets rather
than pursue development for their fellow citizens. Nine of the world’s 15 most corrupt
countries are in this region, according to Transparency International, a leading watchdog
group on corruption. How bad can corruption be for a country’s development? In Liberia,
former President Charles Taylor passed a law allowing him to personally sell any of the
country’s “strategic commodities,” including mineral resources, forest products, art,
archaeological artifacts, fi sh, and agricultural products. The wealth taken by such
countries’ leaders generally does not fi nd its way back into the economy but is either
spent on grandiose personal accommodations or parked in foreign bank accounts.
One of the assumptions of international lenders and aid agencies is that
democracy helps weed out such economic bloodletting. True democracy, they observe, is
still in short supply in the region. Foreign lenders and donors want to see more, telling
African leaders that if they do not institute democratic reforms, hold fair elections, or
improve bad human rights records, there will no longer be development aid or lending.
Often the leaders make just enough concessions to win the aid without instituting real
reform—a phenomenon known as donor democracy. Some Africa observers say that
positive development assistance must go where it is needed most, channeled directly into
rebuilding destroyed institutions such as the civil service, courts, police, and the military.
e. Geopolitical Issues
Sub-Saharan Africa has waxed and waned as a theater of geopolitical interest
since the end of World War II. Initially, the great powers were interested in the region.
To boost their competing aims during the Cold War years, the Soviet Union and the
United States played African countries against one another, arming them with weapons
with which to wage proxy wars. The superpowers also extended aid generously to many
African nations.
Great power concerns about Africa changed with the end of the Cold War around
1990, and the nature of confl ict in Africa changed. The great powers withdrew support,
but their weapons remained to prolong smoldering confl icts. The United States helped
build the arsenals of eight of the nine countries involved in the recent Democratic
Republic of Congo confl ict, for example. Cold War–era weapons like AK-47 assault rifl
es were “dumped”—sold at low prices—in Africa, where they were not considered
obsolete and where they fanned the fl ames of confl ict. Increasingly, fi ghting began to
spread across international borders. Previously, the United States and the Soviet Union
had maintained a kind of security balance that kept warfare from becoming
internationalized, but that restraint no longer existed. The scenario of regional or even
Africa-wide wars was realized with Africa’s fi rst “world war,” centered on the
Democratic Republic of Congo. In the absence of regional or international powers to
keep the peace, some countries (for example, Sierra Leone) simply imploded,
fragmenting into fi efdoms run by factions that claimed to be revolutionaries but were
essentially profi teers. Other national governments (as in Ethiopia) spent vast sums on
expensive military aircraft while their people suffered from malnutrition.
Increasingly, the United States will be competing with China for these dwindling
fi nite reserves, and given current trends, the geopolitical landscape of sub-Saharan
Africa will see Asia on the rise and American clout in decline. Countries that are not
pleased with Washington’s wishes or demands will fi nd partners elsewhere, particularly
in Asia. Some military analysts describe the emerging U.S.-China rivalry in Africa as a
modern Great Game, comparable to the British-Russian contest over central Asia in the
19th century.
For many years following the deaths of U.S. service personnel in Somalia in
1993, there was great reluctance to project U.S. military power in African trouble spots.
In 2007, the Pentagon reshuffled its bureaucracy and created a command center dedicated
exclusively to the region. There are plans to establish U.S. military bases in several key
countries, beginning with Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon, and possibly to
secure air base rights in Benin, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria. The U.S. Navy would like to
establish bases in São Tomé and Príncipe and in Equatorial Guinea. Some Africa
observers say the Iraq War will dampen U.S. ambitions in the region; not only are
military resources stretched thin, but anti-American sentiment related to the war is
entrenched, particularly in the Muslim countries.
f. The Sahel: On the Shore of a Great Desert
Climatically and fl oristically, the Sahel region ranges from desert (parts of the
Sahara) in the north through belts of tropical steppe and dry savanna in the south. One
country is exceptional: nearly surrounded by Senegal, the Gambia consists of a narrow
strip of savanna 10˚E 40˚E 50˚E 20˚E 30˚E 10˚S Equator Sahel West Africa West Central
Africa East Africa Horn of Africa Southern Africa Indian Ocean Islands. Regional
groupings of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa. 589, 619 grassland and woodland only
20 miles (32 km) wide, extending inland 300 miles (c. 500 km) along the banks of the its
namesake river. The name Sahel in Arabic means “coast” or “shore,” referring to the
region as a front on the great desert “sea” of the Sahara. Since the late 1960s, the area has
been subjected to severe droughts, which, in combination with increased human pressure
on resources, have prompted a process of desertifi cation.
This area has seen many dramatic changes in climate and vegetation. There is
abundant evidence, particularly in the form of prehistoric rock drawings, that much of the
now extremely arid northern Sahel and Sahara region was a grassy, well-watered savanna
some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Many of the large mammals now associated with East
Africa frequented the region. Now, even though under much less favorable conditions,
the raising of sheep, goats, camels, and cattle, combined where possible with subsistence
farming, is the major livelihood for peoples of the Sahel. There are new hopes in the
region that farmers will be able to expand cultivation of a drought-tolerant plant called
jatropha in order to feed the world’s growing demand for biofuels. Jatropha beans, from
which the fuel is made, can be produced with far less water, fertilizers, and pesticides
than the corn, soybeans, and sugarcane conventionally used to make plant-based fuels.
European aid agencies and investors are already working with Sahelian farmers to boost
their jatropha output.
The Sahel is the border region between mainly Arab and Berber North Africa and
mainly black sub-Saharan Africa. Relations between the ethnic groups are good in most
countries, but there are problems in some. In Mauritania, for example, the government—
led by the country’s majority Arabic-speaking Moors—expelled black Mauritanians
across the border into Senegal in 1995 and has not allowed them to come back. Analysts
continue to fear that the Mauritanian government aims eventually to “cleanse” the
country of its 40 percent black population. Laws passed to outlaw the enslavement of
blacks have yet to be enforced.
Chad has north-south tensions that are reminiscent of those of Sudan and Nigeria.
The northerners, who now dominate Chad’s political life, are mostly Arabic-speaking
Muslims whose historical mainstay has been cattle pastoralism. The southerners are non-
Arab Christians (mainly of the Sara ethnic group) whose livelihood is farming. The
French favored the Christian southerners and empowered them more than the northerners,
and now that the tables are turned, the northern elite is discriminating against southerners.
Historically, northerners have enslaved southerners, and there are reports that they
continue to do so. There are frequent land disputes as northern pastoralists overrun
southern farms. The government’s recent backpedaling on its promise to share oil wealth
with the poor also fuels fears that as in Sudan and Nigeria, the dominant northern power
will skim off the benefi ts from the newly developing oil industry and leave the oil-
bearing region in poverty.
g. West Africa: Populous and Struggling to Leave Strife Behind
West Africa extends from Guinea-Bissau eastward to Nigeria. Its nine political
units make up about 800,000 square miles (c. 2 million sq km), or nearly onefourth of the
area of the United States. These nine countries are Guinea-Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin, and Nigeria. The spatial, demographic,
political, and economic giant of the region is Nigeria.
Climatic and biotic contrasts within this region are extreme, ranging from tropical
steppe, dry savanna, and wetter savanna to areas of tropical rain forest along the southern
and southeastern coasts. An estimated 90 percent of the region’s tropical forest has been
lost to commercial and subsistence deforestation. Most of the countries’ more populous
areas are in the zone of tropical savanna climate.
As is typical of much of Africa, the West African countries depend heavily on
subsistence farming and livestock grazing, along with selected agricultural or mineral
exports. In the wetter south, subsistence agriculture relies mainly on root crops such as
manioc and yams and on maize, the oil palm, and in some areas, irrigated rice. In the
drier, seasonally rainy grasslands of the north (in northern Nigeria and northern Ghana,
for example), nomadic and seminomadic herding of cattle and goats coexists with
subsistence farming of millet and sorghum.
The major export specialties of West African agriculture are cacao (from which
cocoa and chocolate are made), coffee, and oil palm products in the wetter, forested south
and peanuts and cotton in the drier north. Ivory Coast leads the world in cacao exports,
producing almost half the global total in 2007. Nigeria was once the world leader in
exports of palm oil and peanuts, but these exports almost vanished as Nigerian agriculture
was neglected during the oil boom of recent decades.
West Africa has an impressive total population of 224 million, or about three-
fourths that of the United States. The most striking single aspect of West Africa’s
population distribution is that about two-thirds of the region’s people reside in one
country, Nigeria. This unusual concentration of people, which existed even before
European contact, is related in part to the region’s agricultural productivity and resource
wealth.
Only about 37 percent of West Africa’s people are city dwellers, but the urban
population is increasing rapidly. The world’s large cities are associated mostly with trade,
centralized administration, and large-scale manufacturing, but West Africa’s big cities are
different. They include national capitals and seaports, but as the region has only minor
manufacturing, they have developed mainly in areas of productive commercial
agriculture. In nearly every country in the region, the capital is a primate city, far larger
than the nation’s second-largest city.
West Africa was an advanced part of sub-Saharan Africa when the European Age
of Discovery began. A series of strong pre-European kingdoms and empires developed
there, both in the forest belt of the south and in the grasslands of the north. In colonial
times, it became a French and British realm, except for a small Portuguese dependency
and independent Liberia. Of the present countries, Sierra Leone, Ghana (formerly Gold
Coast), and Nigeria were British colonies; Guinea, Ivory Coast, Togo, and Benin
(formerly Dahomey) were French; and Guinea-Bissau was Portuguese. Liberia is unique,
having become Africa’s fi rst republic in 1822, when 5,000 freed American slaves sailed
there and settled with support from the U.S. Treasury. The country’s capital, Monrovia,
was named for U.S. President James Monroe. Its fl ag is a variant of the U.S. stars and
stripes, and its currency is the Liberian dollar. Many Liberians speak fondly of the United
States as their “big brother.”
In West Africa today, the English, French, and Portuguese languages continue in
widespread use, are taught in the schools, and are offi cial languages in the respective
countries. European languages are a useful means of communication in this region, where
hundreds of indigenous languages and dialects, often unrelated, are spoken. Economic,
political, and cultural relationships between West African countries and the respective
European powers that formerly controlled them continue to be close. Britain maintains
ties with Anglophone (English-speaking) Africa through meetings of the Commonwealth
of Nations, to which all its former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa belong. France supplies
economic and military aid to its former colonies in this and other parts of Francophone
Africa. France perpetuates relations with its former dependencies by inviting their leaders
to summit conferences to discuss matters of common interest. France also has some
colonial-style economic relations with some of its former colonies.
The largest of Nigeria’s 250 or more ethnic groups are the mostly Muslim Hausa
and Fulani (together, 29 percent of the population) mainly in the north, the mostly
Christian Yoruba (21 percent) in the southwest, the Ibo (Igbo) (18 percent) mainly in the
southeast, and the Ijaw (10 percent) of the southern delta region. Tensions and violence
have erupted between some of these groups, especially between the mainly Muslim
Hausa and mainly Christian Yoruba, and each has formed militias. Muslim northerners
have traditionally dominated Nigerian politics, and the long rule of Christian Yoruba
President Obasanjo was a concession by the northerners to prevent the country from
fragmenting. For the 2007 elections, the northern Muslim power base insisted that one of
theirs should be president, and Obasanjo handpicked a successor from their ranks. The
subsequent election of his man, Umaru Yar’Adua, was widely viewed inside and outside
Nigeria as fraudulent. Polls show that Nigerians have gone from overwhelmingly
optimistic to extremely pessimistic about their future, and the rigged election raises
serious concerns about the country’s future stability.
Mainly as a means of blunting former President Obasanjo’s perceived Christian
leanings, most of the Muslim northern states in 1999 adopted sharia (Islamic) law. The
Christian minorities of these regions fear persecution and intolerance. For their part,
Christians have attacked and killed Muslims elsewhere in the country, and violence
between the groups has taken thousands of lives. Some of the unrest here is related to
livelihood as well as religion: longtime residents are mainly Christian farmers, and they
resent a recent infl ux of Muslim cattle herders. Cattle theft and crop burning are typically
part of their skirmishes. The prospect of violent devolution hangs over Nigeria, reviving
memories of deaths of a million people in 1967–1970 when the country’s ethnic Ibo
population struggled to establish the separate nation of Biafra.
By 2002, three rebel groups in the north were suffi - ciently organized to pose a
challenge to the government. They were poised to take control of the rest of the county
and might well have succeeded. But France, the country’s former colonial power,
intervened, sending 2,500 Legionnaires to block the rebel advance. The legendary fi
ghting force quickly separated the warring sides and was joined by peacekeepers from the
Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The French government
managed to persuade leaders from both sides to attend peace talks in Paris as a means of
averting all-out war and perhaps the country’s partition.
In a peace treaty signed in Paris in 2003, the southernbased government under
President Laurent Gbagbo made large concessions to the rebels, especially in agreeing to
share power with them. The new “national reconciliation” government was supposed to
allow the rebels to achieve their main aim in a nonmilitary fashion: an end to the offi -
cial discrimination against the mainly Muslim northerners. In a subsequent pact signed in
2007, the main rebel leader became the country’s prime minister. A degree of normalcy
has returned to Ivory Coast; road networks have reopened, and cotton and sugar produced
in the north is again being trucked to Abidjan. The European Union is promising
generous economic aid if the peace can hold.
h. West Central Africa: Colonial “Heart of Darkness”
Parts of West Central Africa are mountainous, with the most prominent mountain
ranges lying in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo near the Great Rift
Valley and in the west of Cameroon along and near the border with Nigeria. Volcanism
has been important in mountain building in both instances.
As in West Africa, the coast is fairly straight and has few natural harbors. Most of
the region is composed of rolling or hilly plateaus. An exception to the generally uneven
terrain is a broad area of fl at land in the inner Congo Basin, once the bed of an immense
lake. The greater part of West Central Africa lies within the drainage basin of the Congo
River. The heart of the region has tropical rain forest climate and vegetation grading into
tropical savanna to the north and south. The biological resources are immense. The
tropical forests that cover much of the two Congos, Gabon, Cameroon, Equatorial
Guinea, and a small corner of the Central African Republic make up one-fi fth of the
world’s remaining tropical rain forests.
One of the region’s most problematic environmental and economic issues is the
fate of these forests. They are being cut, mainly for commercial logging, at a rate of about
3,000 square miles (8,000 sq km) per year. At that pace, they will be gone by 2020. In an
effort to slow the destruction, the World Wildlife Fund has reached an agreement with
the World Bank whereby the bank will not extend loans in this region unless the
borrowing governments can demonstrate they are using, or planning to use, their tropical
forest resources in a sustainable manner.
Cameroon won a protracted oil-related dispute with Nigeria over possession of
the Bakassi Peninsula, which juts into the Gulf of Guinea near the border between the
two countries. The two nations nearly went to war in 1981 over control of Bakassi; the
International Court of Justice ruled that it was part of Cameroon in 2002. Control of the
peninsula gives Cameroon ownership of promising offshore oil reserves of the Gulf of
Guinea. Cameroon is also receiving royalties and lost-land compensation for the
shipment of Chadian petroleum in a pipeline to the Atlantic through Cameroon’s
territory. Copper from the mineral-rich Katanga province in the southeast part of the
Democratic Republic of Congo was long the country’s main export, but civil war
disrupted the industry. There are also rich cobalt deposits there, and diamonds are in the
adjoining Kasai region. Another important resource in the DRC is coltan, a rare mineral
used in the manufacture of cell phones and fi ghter jets.
In West Central Africa as a whole, population densities are low and populated
areas are few and far between. Rough terrain, thick forests, wetlands, and areas with
tsetse flies tend to isolate clusters of people from each other. The savanna lands and
highlands are more densely populated than the rain forests.
Most of the countries have an overall population density well below that of sub-
Saharan Africa as a whole. The Democratic Republic of Congo is sub-Saharan Africa’s
largest country; it is about the size of western Europe, or Alaska, Texas, and Colorado
combined, but its estimated population in 2007 was only 62 million, or well under one-
half that of the continent’s most populous country, Nigeria. Within the subregion,
however, it is by far the most populous country. Nearly half of the Democratic Republic
of Congo is an area of tropical rain forest in which the population is extremely sparse.
In colonial days, France held three of the present units— Central African
Republic, Congo-Brazzaville (its colonial name was Middle Congo), and Gabon—in the
federation of colonies called French Equatorial Africa. Cameroon consisted of two trust
territories administered by France and Britain. Belgium held what is now the Democratic
Republic of Congo, Spain held Equatorial Guinea, and Portugal held the islands of São
Tomé and Príncipe. During the last quarter of the 19th century, the Congo Basin was
virtually a personal possession of Belgium’s King Léopold II, whose agents ransacked it
ruthlessly for wild rubber, ivory, and other tropical products gathered by Africans. This
lawless era inspired Joseph Conrad’s famous novel Heart of Darkness (1902), in which
the trader Kurtz, at the point of death, evokes the ravaged Congo region with the cry “The
horror! The horror!” In 1908, the Belgian government formally annexed the greater part
of the Congo Basin, creating the Belgian Congo colony.
Pressure for independence built rapidly in 1959, and Belgium yielded to the
demands of Congolese leaders. In 1960, three months before adjacent French Equatorial
Africa became the independent People’s Republic of the Congo, Belgium’s Congo
colony became the independent Republic of the Congo. In 1971, it took the name Zaire,
meaning “river.” Following the overthrow of Zaire’s government in 1997, the country
was renamed Democratic Republic of Congo.
The country appeared to be on the verge of dissolution when Laurent Kabila was
assassinated by a bodyguard in 2001. He was succeeded by his son Joseph, a Congolese
leader seemingly, fi nally, committed to halting the country’s decline. A formal peace
treaty was reached in April 2003 when Joseph Kabila agreed to have several formal rebel
groups and political parties join him in a government of national unity, meant to pave the
way for national elections in 2006. Kabila kept his post as president in what was widely
seen as a fair election.
Conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo was enormously profi table for the
warring factions, foreign governments, and some foreign companies. United Nations
investigators singled out Uganda and Rwanda for looting the eastern part of the country
of its gems, minerals, timber, agricultural produce, and wildlife, including elephant ivory
from some of the country’s national parks. African, European, and U.S. companies were
able to exploit the country’s mineral wealth without paying corporate taxes. Despite fi
ghting by Rwandan and Ugandan rebels operating inside the country and by forces loyal
to the presidential candidate who lost the 2006 election, hopes rose that the long
nightmare of Congo’s plunder would end. A United Nations peacekeeping mission
known by the French acronym MUNOC stayed on the ground to help ensure the
country’s stability, but rebellion simmered in the east.
i. East Africa: Mauled but Healing
East Africa’s terrain is mainly plateaus and mountains, with the plateaus generally
at elevations of 3,000 to 6,000 feet (c. 900 to 1,800 m). All fi ve countries include
portions of the Great Rift Valley. International frontiers follow the fl oor of the Western
Rift Valley for long distances and divide Lakes Tanganyika, Malawi, and Albert and
smaller lakes in different countries. The more discontinuous Eastern Rift Valley crosses
the heart of Tanzania and Kenya. Lake Victoria, lying in a shallow downwarp between
the two major rifts, is divided between Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania.
The two highest mountains in Africa, Kilimanjaro (19,340 ft/895 m) and
Kirinyaga are extinct volcanoes. Both are majestic peaks crowned by snow and ice and
visible for great distances across the surrounding plains; recent scientifi c observations,
however, suggest that Kilimanjaro’s legendary snows may be melted completely by
2015. Most of East Africa’s productive agricultural districts are in the fertile soils of
these volcanic areas.
Over much of East Africa, moisture is too scarce for nonirrigated agriculture.
There are great variations in the quantity, effectiveness, and dependability of
precipitation and in the length and time of occurrence of the dry season. Long and
sometimes catastrophic droughts occur. From 1998 to 2001 and again in 2006, Kenya
suffered historic droughts. Millions of people were in need of food aid as crops shriveled
and livestock died. As the country’s hydropower reserves were depleted, Kenyan cities
suffered long periods without electricity. Tanzanian, Kenyan, and Ugandan efforts to
stave off future emergencies in part by damming and redistributing waters of the Nile
Basin for irrigation, drinking water, and hydropower have aroused the ire of downstream
Egypt.
The main subsistence crops are maize (corn), millet, sorghum, sweet potatoes,
plantains, beans, and manioc (cassava). Elevation has such a strong effect on
temperatures that in some areas, midlatitude crops like wheat, apples, and strawberries do
well. Kenyan tourist brochures boast that Nairobi (elevation 5,500 ft/1,676 m) has a
springlike climate year round. Some cultivators depend exclusively on crops for
subsistence, and others also keep livestock. Cattle are the most important livestock
animals.
The highest population densities are in a belt along the northern, southern, and
eastern shores of Lake Victoria; in south central Kenya around and north of Nairobi; and
in Rwanda and Burundi, which have among the world’s highest population densities,
aside from those of city-states and some islands. As recently as the early 1990s,
population growth rates in this region were so high that East Africa was a common
academic example of the Malthusian scenario. But after sharp reductions as a result of
falling birth rates and increasing AIDS-related deaths, the population growth rates of the
fi ve East African countries moderated, averaging 2.4 percent as of 2007. There were
some exceptions. Rwandan women bear an average of six children, and the government
was delicately trying to bring the birth rate down in a country that lost nearly a million
people in the 1994 genocide (to be discussed shortly). The region’s populations are
overwhelmingly rural. Only about 8 and 12 percent of the people of Burundi and Uganda,
respectively, live in cities. Kenya and Tanzania are the most urbanized at 36 and 22
percent, respectively.
The most agriculturally productive parts of East Africa are bound together by
railways that form a connected system leading inland from the seaports of Mombasa in
Kenya and Dar es Salaam and Tanga in Tanzania. Mombasa is the most important
seaport in East Africa. From Mombasa, the main line of the Kenya-Uganda Railway
leads inland to Kenya’s capital, Nairobi (population 3.9 million), the largest city and most
important industrial center in East Africa. It is also the busiest crossroads of international
air traffi c and the main outfi tting and departure point for safaris into East Africa’s
world-renowned national parks. It is a gritty, crime-ridden city that many locals call
“Nairobbery.” Nairobi was founded early in the 20th century as a construction camp on
the railway, which continues westward to Kampala (population 1.7 million), the capital
and largest city of Uganda. Dar es Salaam (“House of Peace” in Arabic; population 2.9
million) is the main city, main port, and main industrial center of Tanzania, with rail
connections to Lake Tanganyika, Lake Victoria, and Zambia. Dar es Salaam had been the
capital of Tanzania since colonial times, but the government is in the process of moving
to the small inland city of Dodoma. Zanzibar wants to become a free economic zone,
modeled after Singapore and Hong Kong, that would boast the region’s most modern
city. Rwanda’s capital is in the highlands at Kigali (population 800,000), and Burundi’s
capital is on the northernmost point of Lake Tanganyika at Bujumbura (population
400,000). All of the East African capitals are primate cities.
Aside from small minorities of Asians, Europeans, and Arabs, the population of
East Africa is composed of a large number of African ethnic groups; for example,
Tanzania alone has about 120. Among the large groups are the Kikuyu and Luo of
Kenya, the Baganda of Uganda, the Sukuma of Tanzania, the pastoral Maasai of Kenya
and Tanzania, and the Tutsi and Hutu of Rwanda and Burundi. Most East African peoples
speak Bantu tongues of the Niger-Congo language family, but some in northern Uganda,
southern and western Kenya, and northern Tanzania speak Nilo-Saharan languages.
Swahili, a Bantu language drawing heavily on Arabic for vocabulary, is a widespread
lingua franca (and is the national language of Tanzania), as is English. Christian, Muslim,
and animist faiths thrive in all the countries. The Muslim religion refl ects a long history
of Arab commercial enterprise in the region, including slave trading.
j. The Horn of Africa: Refuge for Judaism, Christianity, Islamist Militancy
Much of the Horn of Africa lies at elevations above 10,000 feet (c. 3,000 m), and
one peak in Ethiopia reaches 15,158 feet (4,620 m). The highlands where the Blue Nile,
Atbara, and other Nile tributaries rise receive their rainfall during the summer.
Temperatures change from tropical to temperate as elevation increases. Bananas, coffee,
dates, oranges, fi gs, temperate fruits, and cereals can be produced without irrigation.
Highland pastures support sheep, cattle, and other livestock. The region’s people are
concentrated in the relatively well-endowed highlands; most of Ethiopia’s 77 million
people live there.
East of the mountain mass, in Eritrea, Djibouti, and Somalia, lower plateaus and
coastal plains descend to the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, and the Indian Ocean. Extreme
heat and aridity prevail at these lower levels, and nomadic and seminomadic peoples
make a living by herding camels, goats, and sheep. Dwellers of scattered oases carry on a
precarious agriculture. The arid lowland sections have many characteristics more typical
of the Middle East than other areas of sub-Saharan Africa. The populations of these
countries are small compared to Ethiopia: Somalia with 9 million, Eritrea with 5 million,
and Djibouti with less than a million. Ethiopia has substantial resources, perhaps
including significant mineral wealth. However, its resource base remains largely
undeveloped, and the country is poor. Coffee and animal hides are the main exports. With
foreign assistance, a few textile and food-processing factories have been built, and with
Chinese help, the massive Tekaze Dam is being built on a tributary of the Blue Nile to
harness part of the country’s large hydroelectric potential.
Ethiopia’s people are ethnically and culturally diverse. About 45 percent,
including the politically dominant Amhara peoples, practice Ethiopian Orthodox
Christianity, an ancient branch of Coptic Christianity that came to Ethiopia in the 4th
century from Egypt. The entire area has had important cultural and historical links with
Egypt, the Fertile Crescent, and Arabia. The Ethiopian monarchy based its origins and
legitimacy on the union of the biblical King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, who,
tradition holds, gave birth to the fi rst Ethiopian emperor, Menelik. Until a Marxist coup
brought an end to the emperorship in the 1970s, Ethiopia’s rulers were always Christian.
Ethiopia has many outstanding Christian artistic and architectural treasures, including the
11 churches of Lalibela, carved from solid rock in the 12th and 13th centuries. Most of
the rest of Ethiopia’s people are either Muslims (who make up about 40 percent of the
population) or members of Protestant, Evangelical, and Roman Catholic churches. There
are still small numbers of Falashas, or Ethiopian Jews, in Ethiopia, a remnant of a very
ancient and isolated Jewish population. The majority, about 100,000, have fl ed to Israel
since the mid-1980s. Because this mountainous country has long served an isolated
refuge for such unique groups, it has been nicknamed the “Galápagos Islands of
Religion.”
Eritrea’s population, like Ethiopia’s, is about half Muslim and half Christian.
Djibouti is about 95 percent Muslim and 5 percent Christian. In Somalia, about 99.8
percent of the people are Sunni Muslims and 85 percent are ethnic Somalis. They share
the same language and the same nomadic culture. This is one of the most homogeneous
populations in the world, a fact that would suggest peace and stability, but rivalries
between clans tore the country apart in the 1990s, as will be related shortly.
Colonialism had a big impact on the region’s peoples. European powers seized
coastal strips of the Horn of Africa in the late 19th century. Britain was fi rst with British
Somaliland in 1882, and then France annexed French Somaliland in 1884. Finally, Italy
took control of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea in 1889. These areas along the Suez–Red
Sea route have never had much economic importance, but they have had great strategic
significance.
For its part, the United States kept a vigilant watch on Somalia as a potential base
for al-Qa’ida and on its waters as a dangerous, pirate-ridden threat to international trade.
In 2006, a loose coalition of Islamist groups, including a small number of al-Qa’ida
personnel, succeeded in gaining control of Mogadishu and some other cities in Somalia.
With their characteristic motto of “Islam is the solution,” they argued that clan
differences should be subservient to a broader unity of faith. This philosophy attracted a
growing number of war-weary Somalis. The United States was alarmed that Somalia
could fall to radical Islam. Neighboring Ethiopia worried that Somali Islamists, with
support from Ethiopia’s enemy Eritrea, would encourage Muslim rebellion within its
borders. In late 2006, from bases in Ethiopia, Djibouti, and Kenya, the United States
mounted air assaults on the Somalia Islamists, while Ethiopian troops moved in on the
ground. As the Islamist forces were killed or melted back into the countryside, and
hundreds of thousands of civilians fl ed by sea to Yemen, Ethiopian troops took control
of Mogadishu. Somali resentment of the occupation by the county’s historical Ethiopian
enemy led to a rapid withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and the deployment of an African
Union peacekeeping force made up mainly of Ugandans. A provisional government was
established in Mogadishu with the aim of restoring order to the country. But with the
country’s clan-based factionalism again at the fore, the prospect of peace seemed very
distant.
Somalia since 1991 has fractured into three de facto states. The southernmost,
centered on Mogadishu (still much in ruin and without services), is Somalia, the only one
with international recognition as a sovereign country. To the north is Puntland, which
includes the tip of the Horn of Africa and considers itself autonomous (with a president
of its own) but not independent of Somalia. To the northwest, bordering Djibouti and
Ethiopia, is Somaliland (the former British Somaliland). It proclaimed itself independent
of Somalia in 1991 and has a president and broadly representative government based in
the city of Hargeysa. Fearing fragmentation of their own countries, even African nations
do not recognize its independence. Its port city of Berbera has served as Ethiopia’s main
trade outlet to the sea since Ethiopia’s confl ict with Eritrea began. Somaliland’s
economic mainstay was exports of cattle to the Muslim nations of the Arabian Peninsula
until an outbreak of Rift Valley fever led to a complete cessation of the trade in 2001.
Now Somaliland is pinning its hopes on exports of gemstones, frankincense, vegetable
dyes made from henna, and products made from qasil plants, such as hair conditioners
and body cleansers.
