I.

Introduction

Africa, second-largest of the Earth's seven continents, with adjacent islands, covering about 30,330,000 sq km (11,699,000 sq mi), or about 22 per cent of the world's total land area. At the end of the 20th century more than 13 per cent of the world's population lived in Africa.

Straddling the equator, Africa stretches 8,050 km (4,970 mi) from its northernmost point, Cape Blanc (Ra’s al Abyad;) in Tunisia, to its southernmost tip, Cape Agulhas in South Africa. The maximum width of the continent, measured from the tip of Cape Vert in Senegal, in the west, to Cape Xaafuun (Ras Hafun) in Somalia, in the east, is about 7,560 km (4,700 mi). The highest point on the continent is the perpetually snowcapped Mount Kilimanjaro (5,892 m/19,330 ft) in Tanzania; the lowest is ‘Asal Lake (153 m/502 ft below sea level) in Djibouti. Africa has a regular coastline characterized by few indentations. Its total length is about 30,490 km (18,950 mi), which in proportion to its area is less than that of any other continent.

The main islands associated with Africa, which have a combined area of some 621,600 sq km (240,000 sq mi), are Madagascar, Zanzibar, Pemba, Mauritius, Réunion, the Seychelles, and the Comoro Islands in the Indian Ocean; São Tomé, Príncipe, and Bioko in the Gulf of Guinea; St Helena, Ascension, and the Bijagós Archipelago in the Atlantic; and the Cape Verde Islands, the Canary Islands, and the Madeira Islands in the North Atlantic. Although considered geographically part of Africa, St Helena, Ascension, the Bijagós Archipelago, the Canary Islands, and the Madeira Islands have few, if any, economic, political, or cultural links with the continent. Their ties are rather with western Europe: St Helena and Ascension are dependencies of the United Kingdom; the Canary and Madeira islands are an integral part of metropolitan Spain and Portugal respectively.

II.

The Natural Environment

The African continent comprises a vast, rolling plateau; just 10 per cent of its land area lies at less than 500 ft above sea level, compared with 54 per cent of Europe and 25 per cent of North America. Only in the extreme south and north have great folded mountain ranges been built up. Elsewhere in the continent differences in elevation have been caused either by the faulting which produced the Rift Valley, or by the creation of the enormous river basins—notably those of the Congo, the Niger, the Nile, the Volta, and the Zambezi—which are a more prominent feature of the geography of Africa than that of any other continent. At its margins the plateau gives way, via steep escarpments, to the narrow coastal plain that surrounds the continent. All the great rivers of Africa, except the Niger-Benue and Zambezi-Shire systems, plunge in falls or rapids over the escarpments, making effective navigation inland from the sea impossible.

A.

Geological History

The African continental plateau is a vast shield of ancient, hard rock, dating from the Precambrian and related in age and history to South America's Brazilian Highlands. The shield extends south from the Atlas Mountains to the Cape of Good Hope. To the east, it includes the Arabian Peninsula and Madagascar, which were split off from Africa during the Tertiary Period (see Plate Tectonics). Within these ancient rocks some of the earliest traces of life on Earth—fossil micro-organisms 3.2 billion years old—have been found. Geologically, the folded Atlas Mountains of north-west Africa are part of Europe, having been created by the same forces that produced the Alpine mountain ranges of southern and central Europe.

The tectonic forces that split Africa and South America apart during the breakup of the supercontinent Gondwanaland, over 150 million years ago (see Jurassic Period), have continued into more recent times, creating the Rift Valley during the Tertiary Period and triggering eruptions of the East African volcanic cones, Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro.

B.

Physiographic Regions

Africa may be divided into three major regions: the Northern Plateau, the Central and Southern Plateau, and the Eastern Highlands. In general, elevations increase across the continent from north-west to south-east, the average being about 560 m (1,900 ft). The coastal plains, with the exception of the Mediterranean and the Guinea coasts, are generally narrow.

The outstanding feature of the Northern Plateau is the Sahara, the great desert that occupies more than one-quarter of Africa. At the fringes of the Northern Plateau are several mountainous regions. To the north-west lie the Atlas Mountains, a chain of rugged peaks linked by high plateaux, extending from Morocco into Tunisia. Other prominent uplands are the Fouta Djallon, in the south-west, and the Adamawa Plateau and the Cameroon mountain range, in the south. The Lake Chad basin is situated in the approximate centre of the Northern Plateau.

The Central and Southern Plateau is considerably higher than the Northern Plateau, averaging more than 900 m (3,000 ft) in height. It includes west-central and southern Africa, and contains several major depressions, notably the Congo River basin and the Kalahari. South of this plateau is the folded chain of the Drakensberg of South Africa, which runs some 1,100 km (700 mi) along the south-eastern coast of the continent. In the extreme south is the Karoo, an arid plateau covering about 259,000 sq km (100,000 sq mi).

The Eastern Highlands, the highest part of the continent, lie near the eastern coast, extending from the Red Sea south to the Zambezi along the fault line of the Rift Valley. The region has an average elevation of more than 1,500 m (5,000 ft), and in the Ethiopian Plateau it rises in stages to about 3,000 m (10,000 ft). Ras Dashen (4,620 m/15,157 ft) in northern Ethiopia is the highest point of the plateau. South of the Ethiopian Plateau are a number of towering volcanic peaks, including Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Kenya, and Mount Elgon. The most distinctive feature of the Eastern Highlands is the Rift Valley, the vast geologic fault system that begins in Anatolia, in eastern Turkey, stretches through the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea, and then follows down the length of the Red Sea to Lake Turkana (formerly Lake Rudolph). At the southern end of Lake Turkana, the rift divides around Lake Victoria, but joins again at the head of Lake Malawi (Lake Nyasa), from where it runs down the Shire and Zambezi rivers, and finally out to sea. Altogether the Rift Valley extends around almost one-fifth of the Earth, and contains some of its deepest lakes. West of the Rift Valley is the Ruwenzori Range, which rises up to 5,109 m (16,762 ft) above sea level. The topography of the island of Madagascar features a rugged central highland extending in a generally north-south direction near the eastern coast.

Except for a few incursions from the sea, Africa has been a land area since Precambrian times. Its soils have therefore developed locally, chiefly by weathering. A few areas have alluvial soils laid down by rivers or ocean currents. African soils, for the most part, have irregular drainage and no definite water tables. Being typical tropical soils, most are relatively infertile, lacking humus and subject to mineral leaching from heavy rainfall and high temperatures. Desert soils (aridisols and entisols), which have the least organic content, cover large areas. The most fertile soils include the mollisols, also known as chernozems and black soils, of eastern Africa, and the alfisols, or podzolic soils, of parts of western and southern Africa.

C.

Drainage and Water Resources

Africa contains some of the world's greatest rivers. In all, six major networks drain Africa. With the exception of those draining into the Lake Chad basin, and those surrounding the Kalahari, all have outlets to the sea. The River Nile drains north-eastern Africa, and, at 6,695 km (4,160 mi), is the longest river in the world. It is formed from the Blue Nile, which originates at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, and the White Nile, which originates at Lake Victoria. The two converge at Khartoum in Sudan, from where the Nile flows west and north before emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. The River Congo, some 4,375 km (2,720 mi) long, drains much of central Africa. It originates in Zambia, in southern Africa, and flows north, west, and south to empty into the Atlantic Ocean in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The third longest African river, the Niger in west Africa, is about 4,180 km (2,600 mi) long; its upper portions are navigable only during rainy seasons. The Niger rises in the highlands of the Fouta Djallon and flows north and east before turning south to empty into the Gulf of Guinea. The River Zambezi, about 3,540 km (2,200 mi) long, originates from tributaries that begin in Zambia and Angola, and converge in Zambia; it then flows south and east to empty into the Indian Ocean in Mozambique. The Zambezi is cut by numerous rapids, the most spectacular being the Victoria Falls. Draining southern Africa are the Limpopo and Orange rivers. The Orange River, with its tributary, the River Vaal, has a length of about 2,090 km (1,300 mi). It rises in the Drakensberg and flows west to the Atlantic. The River Limpopo originates in South Africa and runs 1,610 km (1,000 mi), east and south to drain into the Indian Ocean in southern Mozambique.

The Rift Valley contains a series of great lakes. This equatorial lake system includes lakes Turkana, Albert, Tanganyika, and Malawi. Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa and the third-largest in the world, is, however, not part of this system; it occupies a shallow depression in the Eastern Highlands. Lake Chad, a shallow freshwater lake with an average depth of only about 1.2 m (4 ft), drains nearby rivers and constitutes the largest inland drainage system on the continent.

Achieving effective control of water supplies is a major problem in Africa. Vast areas suffer low rainfall; still larger areas receive only irregular rainfall and must store water as insurance against drought or poor rains. Other areas have an over-abundance of water: there are great swamps, like the Sudd of southern Sudan, and large areas suffer from periodic flooding. Since the 1950s many dams and reservoirs have been built to channel water for irrigation and for hydroelectric power. The continent's numerous rivers and their abrupt descent over the coastal escarpments have led to estimates that Africa has approximately 40 per cent of total world hydroelectric power potential.

D.

Climate

The climate of Africa is the most generally uniform of any of the continents. This results from the position of the continent in the Tropical Zone, the impact of cool ocean currents, and the general absence within the continental plateau of mountain chains serving as climatic barriers.

Seven main African climatic zones can be distinguished. The central portion of the continent and the eastern coast of Madagascar have a tropical rainforest climate. Here the average annual temperature is about 26.7° C (80° F), and the average annual rainfall is about 1,780 mm (70 in). The climate of the Guinea coast resembles the equatorial climate, except that rainfall is concentrated in one season; no months, however, are rainless.

To the north and south the rainforest climate is supplanted by a tropical savannah climate zone that encompasses about one-fifth of Africa. Here the climate is characterized by a wet season during the summer months and a dry season during the winter months. Total annual rainfall varies from 550 mm (20 in) to more than 1,550 mm (60 in). Away from the equator, to the north and south, the savannah climate zone grades into the drier steppe climate zone. Average annual rainfall varies between 250 and 500 mm (10 and 20 in) and is concentrated in one season.

Africa has a proportionately larger area in arid, or desert, climate zones than any continent except Australia. Each of these areas—the Sahara in the north, the Horn of Africa in the east, and the Kalahari and Namib deserts in the south-west—has less than 250 mm (10 in) of rainfall annually. In the Sahara, daily and seasonal extremes of temperatures are great; the average July temperature is more than 32.2° C (90° F); during the cold season the night-time temperature often drops below freezing.

Mediterranean climate zones are found in the extreme north-west of Africa and in the extreme south-west. These regions are characterized by mild, wet winters and warm, dry summers. In the highlands of eastern Africa, particularly in Kenya and Uganda, rainfall is well distributed throughout the year, and temperatures are equable. The climate on the high plateau of southern Africa is temperate.

E.

Vegetation

African vegetation can be classified according to rainfall and climate zones. The tropical rainforest zone, where the average annual rainfall is more than 1,270 mm (50 in), has a dense surface covering of shrubs, ferns, and mosses, above which tower evergreens, oil palms, and numerous species of tropical hardwood trees. A mountain forest zone, with average annual rainfall only slightly less than in the tropical rainforest, is found in the high mountains of Cameroon, Angola, eastern Africa, and parts of Ethiopia. Here a ground covering of shrubs gives way to oil palms, hardwood trees, and primitive conifers. A savannah woodland zone, with annual rainfall of 890 to 1,400 mm (35 to 55 in), covers vast areas with a layer of grass and fire-resistant shrubs, above which are found deciduous and leguminous fire-resistant trees. A savannah grassland zone, with annual rainfall of about 500 to 890 mm (20 to 35 in), is covered by low grasses and shrubs, and scattered, small deciduous trees. The thornbush zone, a steppe vegetation, with an annual rainfall of about 300 to 510 mm (12 to 20 in), has a thinner grass covering and a scattering of succulent or semi-succulent trees. The sub-desert scrub zone, with an annual rainfall of 130 to 300 mm (5 to 12 in), has a covering of grasses and scattered low shrubs. The zone of desert vegetation, found in areas with an annual rainfall of less than 130 mm (5 in), has sparse vegetation or none at all.

F.

Animal Life

Africa has two distinct faunal zones: the North and North-western zone, including the Sahara; and the Ethiopian zone, including all of sub-Saharan Africa. The North and North-western zone is characterized by animals similar to those of Eurasia. Sheep, goats, horses, and camels (introduced by the Romans) are common. Barbary sheep, African red deer, and two types of ibex are native to the north African coast. Desert foxes are found in the Sahara, along with hares, gazelles, and the jerboa, a small leaping rodent. The Ethiopian zone is famous for its great variety of distinctive animals and birds, although many of these are now under threat of extinction from loss of habitat and poaching. The woodland and grassland areas are the traditional habitats of numerous species of antelope and deer, of zebra, giraffe, buffalo, the African elephant, rhinoceros, and the baboon and various monkeys. Carnivores, or meat-eating animals, include the lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, jackal, and mongoose. The hippopotamus is found in the rivers, emerging at night to graze. The gorilla, the largest ape in the world, inhabits the rainforests of equatorial Africa, as do monkeys, flying squirrels, bats, and lemurs. However, many of these species, notably the elephant, rhinoceros, leopard, lion, and gorilla, are now found only in specially delineated game reserves.

Most bird life belongs to Old World groups. The guinea fowl is a leading game bird. Water birds, notably pelicans, goliath herons, flamingos, storks, and egrets, congregate in great numbers. The ibis is common in the Nile region, and the ostrich is found in eastern and southern Africa. Reptiles are also mainly of Old World origin and include lizards, crocodiles, and tortoises. A variety of venomous snakes, including the mamba, are encountered throughout the Ethiopian zone. Among the constricting snakes, pythons are found mainly in western Africa. Boa constrictors are indigenous only to Madagascar, which has a large number of unique species. Freshwater fish abound, with more than 2,000 known species. The continent has a variety of highly destructive insects, notably mosquitoes, driver ants, termites, locusts, and tsetse flies. The tsetse transmit sleeping sickness (or trypanosomiasis) to humans and animals.

G.

Mineral Resources

Africa is very rich in mineral resources, possessing almost all types of the known minerals of the world, many of which are found in significant quantities, although the geographic distribution is uneven. Fossil fuels are abundant, including major deposits of coal, oil, and natural gas. Africa has some of the world's largest reserves of gold, diamonds, copper, bauxite, manganese, nickel, platinum, cobalt, radium, germanium, lithium, titanium, and phosphates. Other important mineral resources include iron ore, chromium, tin, zinc, lead, thorium, zirconium, vanadium, antimony, and beryllium. Also found in exploitable quantities are clays, mica, sulphur, salt, natron, graphite, limestone, and gypsum.

III.

The People

The Sahara serves as a dividing line between the peoples of northern Africa and those of sub-Saharan Africa—although historically it has not acted as a barrier to trade or dissemination of ideas between the north and west of the continent. Numerous classification systems have been applied to the people of the continent, many of them of dubious nature, being based on essentially racist assumptions. The geographical division appears the most useful today.

A.

Ethnography

In the northern portion of the continent, including the Sahara, Caucasoid peoples—mainly Berbers and Arabs—predominate. People of Arab descent are also found along the east African coast. Caucasoid peoples constitute about one-quarter of the continent's population. South of the Sahara, Bantu-speaking peoples, constituting some 70 per cent of Africa's population, predominate. Pockets of Khoisan peoples, the San (formerly called Bushmen) and Khoikhoi (formerly called Hottentots), are located in southern Africa. The Pygmies are concentrated in the Congo basin. Scattered through Africa, but primarily concentrated in southern Africa, are some 5 million people of European descent. An Indian population, numbering some 1 million, is concentrated along the eastern African coast and in southern Africa.

More than 3,000 distinct ethnic groups have been classified in Africa. The extended family is the basic social unit of most of these peoples. In much of Africa the family is linked to a larger society through kin groups such as lineages and clans. Kin groups generally tend to exclude marriage among their members. The village is frequently constituted of a single kin group united by either male or female descent.

B.

Demography

Although Africa covers about one-fifth of the total world land surface, it has only about 12 per cent of its population. In 2007 the total population of the continent was estimated at 935,812,580. Average density, some 31 people per sq km (81 per sq mi; 2007 estimate), is just above half the world average. This figure includes large areas, such as the Sahara and Kalahari deserts, which are virtually uninhabited, and smaller areas, such as the Nile Valley, of very high population density. When the population living on arable or productive land is calculated, the average density increases to some 139 people per sq km (362 per sq mi). The most densely settled areas of the continent are those along the northern and western coasts; in the Nile, Niger, Congo, and Sénégal river basins; and in the eastern African plateau. Nigeria, with a population of 135,031,160 (2007 estimate), is the most populous nation in Africa.

Africa's rate of population growth averages about 2.08 per cent a year; in contrast the growth rate in Europe is about -0.01, and in Latin America is 2 per cent. The spread of medical services since World War II has been responsible for a sharp decrease in the death rate, which averages about 15 per 1,000 but varies considerably between countries. The age distribution is weighted heavily towards the young. In most African countries, about half the population is 15 years of age or younger.

Africa's population remains predominantly rural, with only about one-fifth of the population living in towns of more than 20,000 inhabitants. Northern Africa is the most urbanized region, but there are individual countries with high levels of urbanization, such as Zambia (50 per cent urbanized), and major cities are located in every part of the continent. African cities that have populations of more than 1 million include Cairo, Alexandria, and Giza in Egypt; Algiers, Algeria; Casablanca, Morocco; Lagos, Nigeria; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire; Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo; and Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Soweto in South Africa. The urban centres act as magnets, attracting large numbers of rural migrants who come either as permanent settlers or as short-term workers. Urban growth has been particularly rapid since the 1950s. A substantial international labour migration has also developed, particularly of Africans from central Africa to the mines and factories of Zambia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa, and of North and West Africans to France and Italy, and, more recently, to the European Union as a whole. Civil wars in a number of countries in recent years—notably Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Sudan, Liberia, and Rwanda—have led to a massive displacement of population, as have droughts and famines. Africa has the world's largest concentration of refugees, including people displaced within their own countries, as well as people who have fled across borders in search of safety.

C.

Languages

More than 2,000 languages are spoken in Africa. Although more than 50 languages have at least 500,000 speakers each, the majority of African languages are spoken by relatively few people. Apart from Arabic, the most widely spoken are Swahili (in eastern and southern Africa, primarily) and Hausa (West Africa). African languages are divided into four linguistic families or groups: Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic (formerly known as Hamito-Semitic), the largest groups, consisting of over 1,400 and 400 languages respectively; Nilo-Saharan, spoken in north-central and East Africa, and Khoisan, spoken among the San and Khoikhoi of southern Africa. Many Africans, particularly those of sub-Saharan Africa, are multilingual, speaking their own languages as well as those of previous European colonizers. See African Languages.

D.

Religion

Christianity is today probably the most widespread religion in Africa. It was introduced into northern Africa in the 1st century and spread to the Sudan and Ethiopian regions in the 4th century. Christianity survived in Ethiopia and Egypt through the Coptic Church, but in the other areas, was swept away by Islam after the 7th century. It was reintroduced by missionaries and spread through tropical Africa with the 18th-century rise of European overseas expansion. Today Protestant and Catholic groups are about equally represented throughout the continent.

Islam, the fastest-growing religion in Africa, was introduced throughout northern Africa in the 7th century and in following centuries was spread down the River Nile, along the east African coast, and through the grasslands of west Africa. In the 20th century, Islam penetrated into the rest of the continent. The earliest of the Muslim schools of law, the Maliki, prevails over most of Muslim Africa except in Egypt, the Horn, and the east African coast.

About 15 per cent of Africa's people practise only indigenous, or local, religions. Many more, however, retain elements of traditional beliefs in their lives, and Christianity and Islam in Africa have also incorporated indigenous practices. Although indigenous religions are of great diversity, they tend to have a single god or creator figure and a number of subordinate spirits—nature spirits who inhabit trees, water, animals, and other natural phenomena—and ancestral spirits, such as founders of the family, lineage, or clan—who affect everyday life. See Religion.

Certain modern indigenous religious movements have developed, fusing mainly orthodox Christian rites and beliefs with indigenous religious elements. Led by individual prophets, these separatist groups have spread throughout Africa, although they appear most widespread and powerful in southern and central Africa.

Small numbers of Jews are located in northern and southern Africa; until the 1980s there was also a sizeable Jewish community in Ethiopia, the Falashas; Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist peoples are scattered throughout eastern and southern Africa.

E.

Cultural Activity

Most traditional cultural activity centres on the family and the ethnic group. Traditional arts, music, and oral literature serve to reinforce existing religious and social patterns. The heavily Westernized elite, influenced by European culture and Christianity, first rejected African traditional culture, but, with the rise of African nationalism around independence in the 1960s, a cultural revival occurred. The governments of most African nations foster national dance and music groups, museums, and, to a lesser degree, artists and writers. Even so, Western ideas, habits, music, and fashions have—through film, radio, television, and travel—permeated all but the most remote areas—influencing local music, styles of dress, eating habits, and so on, especially among the young. In the 20th century, however, African art and music also had a considerable reverse influence in the West. Artists like Pablo Picasso were influenced by African artworks like the Benin Bronzes. More recently, African music and its practitioners have influenced many kinds of western music from jazz to rock and roll. Western interests in the many different types of modern African music led to the development of so-called “World” music. See African Art and Architecture; African Literature; African Music; World Music.

IV.

Patterns of Economic Development

Traditionally, the vast majority of Africans have been farmers and herders who raised crops and livestock for subsistence. Manufacturing and crafts were generally carried on as part-time activities. Most markets were local, although numerous states over the centuries developed long-distance trade systems, and in these places complex exchange facilities as well as industrial specialization, communication networks, and elaborate governmental structures maintained the flow of commerce. They included the medieval west African kingdoms and empires of Ghana, Songhai, Kanem-Bornu; and of great Zimbabwe in southern Africa; trans-Saharan trade, which began before the Romans, continued until well into the 19th century.

Gold, slaves (on a small scale), kola, copper, kola nuts, ostrich feathers, and salt, were all items in Africa's export trade for many hundreds of years before the advent of Europeans. With the Europeans, initially, there came increased demand for one of the traditional staples of African trade—slaves (see Slavery: Slavery in the Modern Period). The numbers required, however, were vastly more than had ever been traded before, leading to distortions and disruptions in African politics and society, and robbing the west and centre of the continent of millions of its people. Colonization brought overseas demand for new agricultural and mineral products and internal labour migration; new and faster communication systems were constructed; European technology and crops were introduced, not always, by any means, beneficially; and a modern exchange economy evolved. Local industries and crafts—textiles and iron making, for example—were frequently undermined by cheaper or more prestigious European goods. Modern processing industries developed, as did new ports and administrative centres. A variety of consumer industries sprang up to fill newly created local consumer needs. A feature of the African economy is the side-by-side existence of both subsistence and modern exchange economies. Future growth depends on the availability of investment funds, the world demand for local raw materials, fair world prices for these raw materials, the availability of energy sources, the size of local markets, a solution to the foreign debt problem which is crippling so many African economies, and the willingness of the industrialized economies to reduce trade barriers to processed and manufactured African goods. See Development Economics.

A.

Agriculture

Despite the expansion of commerce and industry, most Africans remain farmers and herders; although the majority of these are producing for the market, at least in a small way, and many are highly market orientated. In northern and north-western Africa, wheat, oats, maize, and barley are the important grain crops. Dates, olives, and citrus fruit are the main tree crops; a variety of vegetables are grown. Goats, asses, sheep, camels, and horses are the most significant livestock kept. In the Sahara region, nomadic herders raise camels and goats, and a few farmers, situated in oases, grow dates and grains. South of the Sahara, in the Sahelian region, and in the most fertile areas north of the coastal forests, slash-and-burn agriculture—a method in which small areas were burned, cleared, and planted and then allowed to revert to bush—has given way to settled farming. Grains, especially maize, sorghum, millet, and rice, are the main crops outside the rainforests. Yams, manioc, okra, plantain, and banana are important crops, especially in the coastal hinterlands and forested areas of central Africa. Cattle cannot be raised in tsetse fly-infested areas, which cover more than one-third of the continent. Outside the tsetse fly areas and dense forests, cattle are raised; many are still kept for traditional reasons of social prestige and wealth, but commercial stock rearing is increasing. Dairy farming is limited, located primarily around urban centres in eastern and southern Africa.

Although some 60 per cent of all cultivated land is in subsistence or semi-subsistence agriculture, commercial or cash-crop farming is common in all parts of the continent. Foodstuffs are grown for local urban markets, but cloves, coffee, pineapples, cotton, cacao, sugar, tea, maize, rubber, sisal, groundnuts (peanuts), palm oil, and tobacco are among the long-established crops grown by Africans for export. In the past 15 years there has been significant development of new export crops, aimed at the high-value end of the Western, primarily European market, including green beans, roses and other flowers, and kiwi fruit. For certain traditional African agricultural exports, such as cacao, groundnuts, cloves, and sisal, the continent produces the majority of the world supply. Large-scale plantations and farms, often owned by foreign companies or farmers of European descent, and found mainly in eastern and southern Africa, concentrate on citrus, tobacco, tea, and other export crops.

B.

Forestry and Fishing

Although about one-quarter of Africa is covered by forest, much of the timber has little value except as local fuel. Gabon is a major producer of okoume, a wood used in making plywood; Côte d'Ivoire, Liberia (before the civil war), Ghana, and Nigeria are major exporters of hardwoods. Inland fishing is concentrated in the Rift Valley lakes and in the increasing numbers of fish farms. Ocean fishing is widespread for local consumption; it is commercially important off Morocco, Mauritania, Namibia, Mozambique, and South Africa.

C.

Mining

Mineral extraction provides the bulk of African export earnings, and extractive industries are among the most developed sectors in most African economies. Almost half of Africa's mineral income comes from South Africa, mainly derived from gold and diamond mining but also from chromium, asbestos, coal, and copper. Other leading mineral-producing countries include Libya (oil), Nigeria (oil, natural gas, coal, tin), Namibia (diamonds, uranium), Algeria (oil, natural gas, iron ore), and Zambia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (copper, cobalt, lead, zinc), Zimbabwe (gold, asbestos, coal, chromium, iron ore, and nickel), and Ghana (gold, bauxite, and diamonds). Oil is also found along the western African coast, in the Gabon basin, the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Angola.

A significant proportion of uranium mined world-wide comes from Africa, chiefly in South Africa, Niger, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and Gabon. The largest radium supply in the world is located in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Some 20 per cent of the world's copper reserves is concentrated in Zambia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Africa, and Zimbabwe. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia also possess about 90 per cent of the world's known cobalt, and Sierra Leone has the largest known titanium reserves. Africa produces some three-quarters of the world's gold; South Africa, followed by Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Ghana, are the major producers. The mines of Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo produce the majority of the world's gem and industrial diamonds. Iron ore is found in all parts of the continent. Most of Africa's mineral wealth has been and is being developed by large, multinational corporations (MNCs). Increasingly, in recent years, African governments have become substantial shareholders in the operations within their own countries.

D.

Manufacturing

Stemming from mineral and oil extraction are processing industries, such as refining and smelting, which are located in most mineral-rich countries with adequate energy. South Africa is the most industrialized of Africa's countries, but virtually all other countries have developed a manufacturing base of some sort; Zimbabwe and Nigeria as well as the North African countries have very sizeable industrial sectors. Heavy industry, such as metal producing, machine making, and transport equipment, is concentrated in southern Africa and Nigeria. Significant industrial centres have also developed in Kenya, Egypt, Morocco, and Algeria amongst others. Mineral-related industries are well developed in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia; Kenya, and Côte d'Ivoire have developed primarily in textiles, light industry, and building materials. In many other countries manufacturing is limited to making or assembling consumer goods, such as shoes, bicycles, textiles, food, and beverages. Such industries are often confined by the relatively small size of the consumer market. African countries' attempts to develop their manufacturing bases further, particularly by processing their agricultural exports to increase their added value, have been very much hindered by protectionism in the industrialized countries, which impose heavy tariffs on such goods. Poor intra-African trade connections have also been a problem.

E.

Energy

Nigeria, Libya, Algeria, and Angola are major world producers of oil, and several other African countries are also oil exporters, including Gabon. Africa's natural-gas exports are centred in Algeria. Coal production is concentrated mainly in Zimbabwe and South Africa, although many other countries have sizeable reserves (such as Botswana), which await development because of a lack of markets. The bulk of African coal production is used internally. Most African countries must import fuels, especially petroleum and oil. The oil price rises of the 1970s were disastrous for many of them, precipitating many of the balance of payments and debt problems which undermined their economies in the 1980s and early 1990s. Although Africa has some 40 per cent of the world's hydroelectric power potential, only a relatively small portion has been developed owing to high construction costs, inaccessibility of sites, and their distance from markets. Since the 1950s, however, a number of the world's largest hydroelectric installations have been built in Africa; these include the Aswān High Dam on the River Nile, the Volta Dam on the River Volta, and the Kariba and Cabora Bassa dams on the Zambezi; the huge Highlands Water Scheme under construction in Lesotho also has a hydroelectric power component.

F.

Transport

The economic development of virtually all African nations has been hindered by inadequate transport systems. Most countries rely on road networks that are frequently composed largely of dirt roads, which become impassable during the rainy seasons. Road and rail networks built during the colonial era tended to link the interior of a country to the coast; few provided cross-country links internally, or links with adjacent countries. Since independence, however, a number of important trans-African routes have been built providing road and rail links, notably for the landlocked countries. Most African nations support a national airline and there has been much improvement in recent years in coordinating timetabling. Rail and shipping systems are best developed in southern Africa.

G.

Trade

The economies of most African states rely heavily on one or a few export commodities. The bulk of trade occurs with industrialized nations, which require raw materials and sell industrial and consumer goods. Trade between African states is limited by the competitive, rather than complementary, nature of their products and (to a decreasing extent) by trade barriers, such as tariffs and the diversity of currencies, and the fact that most are not “hard”, that is, they are legal tender only within their own countries, so most trade is carried out in US dollars or pounds sterling. Most former British colonies in Africa continue to have loose trade relations with the United Kingdom and keep monetary reserves in London. Most former French colonies have maintained closer ties with France, and the majority are members of the Franc Zone. In addition, most African states have economic ties with the European Union through the Lomé Convention, and benefit from some tariff barrier reductions. Few successful intra-African economic systems have emerged. The most durable are the Economic Community of West African States and the Economic Community of Central African States; the most successful are the Southern African Development Community, and the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa. The Organization of African Unity also promotes intra-African trade and economic development.

V.

History

Africa is generally agreed to be the cradle of the human race; genetic testing in recent years has confirmed archaeological finds. Some 5 million years ago a type of hominid, a close evolutionary ancestor of present-day humans, inhabited southern and eastern Africa. More than 1.5 million years ago this toolmaking hominid developed into the more advanced forms Homo habilis and Homo erectus. The earliest true human being in Africa, Homo sapiens, dates from more than 200,000 years ago. A hunter-gatherer capable of making crude stone tools, Homo sapiens banded together with others to form nomadic groups; eventually these nomadic Khoisan-speaking peoples spread throughout the African continent. Gradually a growing Bantu-speaking population, which had mastered animal domestication and agriculture, forced the Khoisan-speaking groups into the less hospitable areas. Today they are found primarily in the Kalahari. In the 1st century ad the Bantu began a migration that lasted some 2,000 years, settling most of central and southern Africa. Negroid societies typically depended on subsistence agriculture or, in the savannahs, pastoral pursuits. Political organization was normally local, although large kingdoms would later develop in most parts of the continent, and especially western, central, and southern Africa.

The first great civilization in Africa began in the Nile Valley about 5000 bc. Dependent on agriculture, these settlements benefited from the Nile's flooding as a source of irrigation and new soils. The need to control the Nile floodwaters eventually resulted in a well-ordered, complex state with elaborate political and religious systems (see Egypt: History). The Kingdom of Egypt flourished, influencing Mediterranean and, to a lesser extent, African societies for thousands of years. Iron-making, according to some theories, was brought south from Egypt around 800 bc, and spread into tropical Africa; other theories suggest independent development of Iron Age culture. Ideas of royal kingship and state organization were also exported, particularly to adjacent areas such as Cush and Punt. The east Cushite state, Meroë, was supplanted in the 4th century ad by Āksum, which later evolved into Ethiopia.

During the period from the late 3rd century bc to the early 1st century ad, Rome had conquered Egypt, Carthage, and other North African areas; these became the granaries of the Roman Empire. The empire was divided into two parts in the 4th century. All lands west of modern Libya remained territories of the western Empire, ruled by Rome, and lands to the east, including Egypt, became part of the eastern or Byzantine Empire, ruled from Constantinople. By this time the majority of the population had been converted to Christianity. In the 5th century the Vandals, a Germanic tribe, conquered much of north Africa. Vandal kings ruled there until the 6th century, when they were defeated by Byzantine forces, and the area was absorbed by the Byzantine Empire.

A.

Northern Africa

Islamic armies invaded Africa within a decade of the death of Muhammad in 632 and quickly overcame Byzantine resistance in Egypt (see Spread of Islam). From bases in Egypt, Arabs raided the Berber states to the west; in the 8th century they conquered Morocco. While the coastal Berbers began converting to Islam, many others retreated into the Atlas Mountains and beyond into the Sahara. Arab minorities established autocratic polities in Algeria and Morocco. The Christian states of Alwa and Makuria in the area of the modern Republic of the Sudan were conquered; only the Christian kingdom of Nobatia was strong enough to resist the invaders, forcing the conclusion of a treaty that maintained its independence for 600 years. Along the coast the Arab conquerors remained a small ruling minority for several centuries.

Trade across the Sahara, already thousands of years old, received a new boost during the 8th century. Caravan leaders and religious teachers spread political, religious, and societal values to the people along the trade routes. Even earlier, Muslim invaders from Yemen forced the peoples of coastal Āksum into the interior and established a series of city-states such as Adal and Harar. The Red Sea now belonged to the Muslim traders.

Several rival dynasties emerged on the north African coast. In the 8th century north African Muslims conquered most of the Iberian Peninsula, and they continued raids and expeditions of conquest against Christian Europe for centuries. By the time of the Crusades a few highly advanced Islamic states dominated the southern and eastern Mediterranean. In the 14th century Christian Sudan fell to the armies of Mameluke Egypt. The Ottoman Turks conquered Egypt in 1517 and within 50 years had established nominal control over the north African coast. The real power, however, remained in the hands of the Mamelukes, who ruled Egypt until their defeat by Napoleon I (Bonaparte) in 1798. The Ethiopians were overrun by the armies of the sultanate of Adal, but they defeated (1542) the Muslims with the aid of Portugal.

B.

Western Africa

In western Africa a number of black kingdoms emerged in the Sahelian region whose economic base lay in their control of trans-Saharan trade routes. Gold and slaves were traded from further south, for cowries (used as currency), salt, and weapons from the north; luxury items such as kola nuts, textiles, and leather goods also went north in return for specially dyed cloth and beads.

B.1.

Ghana

The earliest of these states, the Kingdom of Ghana, had come into being by the 5th century ad in what is now south-eastern Mauritania. (Its capital, Kumbi Saleh (Koumbi Saleh), has been excavated in modern times.) By the 11th century, the armies of Ghana, equipped with iron weapons, made it master of the trade routes extending from present-day Morocco in the north to the coastal forests and gold-producing areas of western Africa in the south. Nomadic Berbers of the Sanhaja Confederation (in present-day central Mauritania) formed the main link between Ghana and the north. Once Arabs gained control of the north-western coasts, they began to exploit these trade routes. By the early 11th century Muslim advisers were at the court of Ghana, and Muslim merchants lived in large foreign quarters from which they conducted lucrative large-scale trade. Late in the 11th century, Ghana was destroyed by the Almoravids, a militant Muslim movement founded among the Sanhaja Berbers. In the early 11th century they raised a jihad (holy war) and controlled the caravan routes of the Sahara. The movement then split; one group pushed north to conquer Morocco and Spain, while the other moved south to raze (about 1076) the capital of Ghana. During the next century the Soso people of the Fouta Djallon, formerly vassals of Ghana, gained control of the area, but they in turn were conquered by the people of Mali about 1240.

B.2.

Mali and Songhai

Centred on the upper reaches of the Senegal and Niger rivers, the Empire of Mali evolved by the early 11th century from a group of Mande chieftaincies. In the mid-13th century, the state began a period of expansion under the vigorous ruler Sundiata Keita. Soon afterwards the rulers of Mali appear to have converted to Islam. The high point of the Mali Empire was reached under Mansa (king) Musa, who conducted a pilgrimage to Mecca in 1324-1325, opened diplomatic relations with Tunis and Egypt, and brought a number of Muslim scholars and artisans to the empire; from the time of Mansa Musa onwards, Mali appeared on the maps of Europe. After 1400 the empire declined, and Songhai emerged as the leading state in the western Sudan (Sahelian zone). Although Songhai dates from before the 9th century, its greatest period of expansion occurred under Sunni Ali and Askia Muhammad. During the latter's rule Islam flourished at the court, and Timbuktu became a major centre of Muslim learning, renowned for its university and its book trade. Attracted by its wealth, the armies of al-Mansur of Morocco overran the Songhai capital of Gao in 1591. Following the collapse of Songhai, a number of small kingdoms—Macina, Gonja, Ségou, Kaarta—strove to dominate the western Sudan, but continual strife and economic decline were the only results.

B.3.

Hausa States and Kanem-Bornu

To the east of Songhai, between the Niger River and Lake Chad, the Hausa city-states and the Kanem-Bornu Empire emerged. The Hausa states (Biram, Daura, Katsina, Zaria, Kano, Rano, and Gobir) originated before the 10th century, and after the fall of Songhai, the trans-Saharan trade moved eastwards, where it came under the control of Katsina and Kano. These became centres of flourishing commerce and urban life. Islam appears to have been introduced into the Hausa states in the 14th century from Kanem-Bornu.

The latter empire existed in the 8th century as a loosely knit state north and east of Lake Chad. It was first ruled by a nomadic people, the Zaghawa, but they were replaced by a new dynasty, the Saifawa, who ruled from about 800 to 1846. The new rulers were converted to Islam about the 11th century. In the late 14th century they moved into the Bornu region, and the older Kanem area fell to the Bulala people from the south. The best-known Bornu ruler was Mai Idris Alooma (reigned about 1580-1617), who introduced firearms purchased from the Ottoman Turks. At its pinnacle, Kanem-Bornu controlled the eastern Saharan routes to Egypt, but by the middle of the 17th century it had begun a slow decline.

B.4.

Spread of Islam

During the period of the great Sudanic empires, the lives of ordinary farmers, pastoralists, and fishers remained virtually unchanged. Imported goods or luxuries were enjoyed only by the ruling classes; the farmers lived in subsistence economies, subject to periodic tax gathering and occasional slave raids. Islam was associated with the great urban centres, and was the religion of some of the ruling classes and of the foreign residents. By the late 15th century, however, the nomadic Kunta Arabs began to preach, and during the mid-16th century the Qadiriyya brotherhood, to which they belonged, began to spread Islam throughout the western Sudan. At about the same time, the Fulani, a nomadic pastoral people, were moving slowly eastwards from the Futa Toro region in Senegal, gaining converts for Islam. During this period, Islam became a personal religion rather than merely a religion of state. Indeed, Islam appears to have declined among the ruling classes, and non-Muslim dynasties ruled in old Muslim strongholds until the 18th century. Islamic reform and revival movements then began among the Fulani, Mandingo, Soso, and Tukolor.

Old dynasties were overthrown, and theocratic states were founded that spread Islam to new areas. In the Hausa states, Shehu Usuman Dan Fodio, a Muslim teacher, led a revolt among the Fulani who, between 1804 and 1810, overthrew their Hausa rulers and established new dynasties. An attempt to sweep into Bornu, however, was successfully resisted by the religious leader al-Kanemi. The new Fulani Empire was initially divided between the shehu's brother Abdullahi and his son, Muhammad Bello, but after 1817 Muhammad and his successors were the sole overlords.

Another theocratic state was formed in Macina in 1818 by Seku Ahmadu, a Fulani Muslim. During his rule an empire embracing the whole of the Niger River region, from Jenne to Timbuktu, was created. Upon his death in 1844 his son took power, but in 1862 Macina fell to another Muslim reformer, al-Hajj Umar, who created the vast Tukolor Empire in the Senegambia region before his death in 1864.

C.

Eastern Africa

The first records of East African history appear in the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (c. ad 100), which described the commercial life of the region and its ties to the world beyond Africa. Indonesian immigrants reached Madagascar during the 1st millennium ad bringing new foodstuffs, notably bananas, which soon spread throughout the continent. Bantu-speaking peoples settled in the immediate interior in clan-oriented polities, absorbing the Khoisan peoples, and Nilotic peoples occupied the so-called interlacustrine, or interlake, areas further inland. Arab traders controlled the coast and established trading towns. Ivory, gold, and slaves were the main exports. By the 13th century a number of significant city-states had been established. Among these Zenj states were Mogadishu, Malindi, Lamu, Mombasa, Kilwa, Pate, and Sofala. An urban Swahili culture developed through mutual assimilation of Bantu and Arabic speakers. The ruling classes were of mixed Arab-African ancestry; the ordinary people were Bantu, many of them slaves. These mercantile city-states were oriented towards the sea, and their political impact on inland peoples was virtually non-existent until the 19th century.

The complex, advanced lake states first developed in the 14th century. Little is known of their early history. One theory is that more advanced Cushite peoples from the Ethiopian highlands came to dominate the indigenous Bantu. Other Cushites are believed to be ancestors of the Tutsi peoples of modern Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi. Located between lakes Victoria and Edward, the early kingdoms ruled by the Bachwezi flourished before 1500, when they were supplanted by an early wave of Luo peoples migrating from the area of the modern Republic of Sudan. The new immigrants adopted local Bantu languages in Bunyoro country, but in Acholiland, Alurland, and in the Lango country (all in modern Uganda) they retained their own separate language. New states were founded later, among them Bunyoro, Ankole, Buganda, and Karagwe. Of these states, Bunyoro was the most powerful until the second half of the 18th century. Then Buganda began to expand, and its armies raided wide areas. An elaborate centralized bureaucracy was founded, with most district and sub-district chiefs appointed by the kabaka (“king”).

Farther to the south, in Rwanda and Burundi, a cattle-raising pastoral aristocracy founded by the Bachwezi (alternatively called Tutsi Bututsi, or Bahima, in this area) ruled over the settled Bantu peoples from the 16th century onwards.

D.

Central Africa

Even less known than the interlacustrine states are the ones formed in central Africa. In the Congo savannah, south of the tropical rainforests, Bantu-speaking peoples established agricultural communities by the beginning of the 9th century. In some places, long-distance trade to the east coast developed, with copper and ivory among the main exports. During the 14th century the Kongo Kingdom was established, dominating an area in present-day Angola between the Congo and Loge rivers and from the River Kwango (Cuango) to the Atlantic. An elaborate political system developed, with provincial governors and a king elected from among the descendants of the founding king Wene. In the area between the upper Kasai and Lake Tanganyika, various small chiefdoms were organized, about 1500, into the Luba Empire. Its founding figure, Kongolo, subdued several small villages in one area and then used this as a base for wider conquest. No adequate centralizing mechanisms were developed, however, so dynastic struggles and breakaway states were a continual problem. About 1600 one of the younger sons of the dynasty left the kingdom and founded the Lunda Empire. The Lunda state itself soon split, with members of the royal dynasty leaving to found such new states as the Bemba Kingdom, Kasanje, and Kazembe. The last-named became the largest and most powerful of the Luba-Lunda states, and between 1750 and 1850 it dominated southern Katanga and parts of the Zimbabwean plateau.

Bantu-speaking peoples moving east from the Congo region during the 1st millennium ad are thought to have assimilated local Stone Age peoples. Later Bantu immigrants, called the Karanga, were the ancestors of the present-day Shona people. The Shona built up several kingdoms from the 11th century, notably that of Zimbabwe, centred on the city and royal compound of Great Zimbabwe, whose massive stone walls still remain. They also formed the Mutapa Empire, which derived its wealth from large-scale gold mining. At its height in the 16th century, its sphere of influence stretched from the Zambezi River to the Kalahari, and to the Indian Ocean and to the Limpopo.

E.

Southern Africa

Before the 19th century, Bantu-speaking peoples had pushed aside or assimilated their Khoisan-speaking predecessors in southern Africa and had established a number of sedentary states. In the early 19th century population pressures and land hunger resulted in a series of wars (the mfecane) and large-scale migrations throughout southern and central Africa. The mfecane began about 1816, when the Zulu ruler Shaka developed new military techniques and embarked on wars of conquest against neighbouring peoples. The tribes defeated by the Zulu migrated from the south-east portion of South Africa. Remodelling their own fighting techniques on those of the Zulu, they overwhelmed more distant peoples, who, in turn, were forced to seek new homes. The Ndwandwe, led by their chief Sobhuza, moved north and established the Swazi Kingdom in the 1820s. The Ngoni also moved north, pushing through Mozambique and beyond Lake Malawi, where, about 1848, they split into five kingdoms, which raided extensively between Lake Victoria and the Zambezi. Another group, led by Soshangane, migrated into southern Mozambique, where they founded the Gaza state about 1830. The Kololo migrated north into Barotseland and began a struggle for domination with the local Lozi people. The Ndebele moved west (1824-1834) and then north (1837) into what is now Zimbabwe, founding a kingdom there in Matabeleland.

F.

Early European Imperialism

The first sustained European interest in Africa developed through the efforts of Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal. Numerous expeditions were sent out after 1434, each extending European knowledge of the African coastline southward, until, in 1497-1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India.

The Portuguese explorations were motivated by a variety of impulses: a desire for knowledge, a wish to spread Christianity, the search for potential allies against Muslim threats, and the hope of finding new and lucrative trade routes to the east, and sources of wealth. Wherever the Portuguese—and the English, French, and Dutch who followed them—touched, they disrupted ongoing patterns of trade and political life and changed economic and religious systems.

F.1.

Trade Routes and the Slave Trade

The Portuguese established a chain of trading settlements along the west African coast. El Mina, founded on the Gold Coast in 1482, was the most important; in fact, it was only on the Gold Coast and in the Kongo and Luanda areas that the Europeans found trade to be really lucrative. African gold, ivory, foodstuffs, and slaves were exchanged for ironware, firearms, textiles, and foodstuffs. The Portuguese attracted rival European traders who, in the 16th century, created competing stations or attempted to capture the existing trade. In western Africa the new trade had profound effects. Earlier trade routes had been oriented northwards across the Sahara, primarily to the Muslim world. Now the routes began to be reoriented to the coast, and as the states of the savannah declined in economic importance, states along the coast increased their wealth and power. Struggles soon developed among coastal peoples for control over trade routes and for access to the new firearms introduced from Europe.

With the rise of the slave trade to the Americas, wars over the control of African commerce became more intense. During the four centuries of the slave trade, untold millions of Africans fell victim to this traffic in human lives. European susceptibility to Africa's many diseases meant that Africans were used as middlemen in the slave trade, and most slaves were captured by other Africans and exchanged for various consumer goods with slave traders based on the coast. The first major kingdom to profit from the slave trade was Benin in modern west Nigeria, established in the 15th century. By the end of the 17th century, it had been supplanted by the kingdoms of Dahomey and Oyo. In the mid-18th century the Asante began their rise as a major west African power. Under Asantehene (king) Osei Kojo (reigned 1764-1777), Asante armies began to push south towards European trading stations located along the Gold Coast. Although they failed to clear the routes of middlemen, they secured steady supplies of firearms, which were used to expand northwards and to contest their eastern frontiers with Dahomey. Farther east the Yoruba kingdom of Oyo declined in the late 18th century, bringing civil war and the intervention of Fulani forces from the north, and an increase in the number of slaves available for trade. About 1835 the imperial capital, Old Oyo, was abandoned, but in the Battle of Oshogbo (c. 1840) the Fulani were driven back. The civil wars lasted until 1893, when Yoruba power was divided among several competing states.

During the latter 18th century, economics and sentiment in Britain turned against the slave trade. Following the Mansfield decision of 1772, which freed slaves in Britain, plans were made for a west African colony for former slaves. The first attempt (1787-1790) at St George's Bay (in present-day Sierra Leone) failed; a second attempt was made by abolitionists, who, in 1792, founded Freetown in the same area. When the British outlawed the slave trade for British citizens in 1807, they saw Freetown as a desirable base for naval operations against such trade; in 1808, Sierra Leone was made a Crown Colony. The example of Sierra Leone appealed to Americans interested in black emancipation, and in early 1822 the American Colonization Society succeeded in establishing its colony, Liberia, at nearby Cape Mesurado.

The British desire to suppress the slave trade (for economic as much as humanitarian reasons—slaves provided their competitors with cheap labour) found expression in attempts at redirecting African commerce, distorted by the trade in human beings, towards other exports, such as palm oil, in heightened missionary activity, and in the imposition of British government jurisdiction over territory previously held by British merchants. Such developments frequently involved Britain in struggles with African states, and led to its assumption of sovereignty over increasing amounts of African territory. On the Gold Coast, the British government, in 1821, took control of a series of forts. Through misunderstandings, the first of a series of Asante-British wars occurred from 1823 to 1826; these conflicts were to continue intermittently until the end of the century. Although the government gave up control of the forts in 1828, it again assumed jurisdiction in 1843. British authority over the Asante, however, was not firmly established until 1900. In the Niger delta of Nigeria, the British abolition of slavery brought about a shift in trade from slaves to palm oil, and in pursuit of this commodity Britain required a nearby port; in addition, the British were eager to eliminate the middlemen in such delta states as Calabar, Bonny, and Brass. In 1852, therefore, they forced the ruler of Lagos to accept British protection, and in 1861 Lagos was annexed as a Crown Colony.

F.2.

Central and East Africa

In central and eastern Africa the European impact was different. When the Portuguese arrived on the Congo-Angola coast in the 1480s, they quickly allied themselves with the rulers of the Kongo, who became converted to Christianity and attempted to create a westernized state. This aim was frustrated, however, by fraternal wars, and by the Portuguese introduction of the slave trade. The region was soon immersed in strife, and during the 16th century the kingdom collapsed. Farther south, the Portuguese founded Luanda in 1575 as a base for their penetration of the Angolan hinterland, and it was here that about half of all the slaves sent to the Americas originated. When they reached the east African coast, the Portuguese attempted to cut off the area's trade with the Muslim world. In the process a number of the city-states were destroyed; others were occupied, and the entire area went into economic decline. After the Portuguese were finally expelled from Mombasa in 1698, the coast reverted to local rule, but during the 18th century the rulers of Oman established at least nominal control. In the early 19th century, Sultan Sayyid Said, ruler of Oman, transferred his capital to Zanzibar, which then served as a base to strengthen his control of the coast and to penetrate inland for trade with the interlacustrine states. British efforts to control the east African slave trade, always much smaller than the European-dominated western African slave trade, led, in 1822, to a treaty prohibiting the sale of slaves to subjects of Christian countries. An active slave trade continued, however, for large numbers of Africans were seized for the clove plantations of Zanzibar and for Middle Eastern slave markets.

In Ethiopia the arrival of the Portuguese had helped stave off conquest by the Muslims. In 1542 a combined Portuguese-Ethiopian force crushed a Muslim army, and the Ethiopians regained much of their lost territory. After doctrinal disputes between Coptic Churchmen and Portuguese Jesuits, however, the Portuguese were expelled in 1632. Ethiopia went into a period of isolation and, by the 18th century, the monarchy was in collapse. From about 1769 to 1855, Ethiopia endured the “age of princes”, during which the emperors were puppet rulers controlled by powerful provincial nobles. The era came to an end with the crowning of Emperor Theodore II, a minor chief who rose to the throne by defeating his rivals.

F.3.

South Africa

Although the Portuguese largely ignored southern Africa, their rivals, the Dutch, beginning in 1652, developed the area as a way station to the East Indies. For a short period, colonists were encouraged to settle around Cape Town, and soon a new culture and people, the Boers, or Afrikaners, began to develop. Despite British government opposition, they began to move inland in search of better land and, after 1815, to escape British control. As they trekked inland, they encountered the Zulu and other Bantu peoples expanding southwards. The result was a series of land wars. During the course of their migrations, the Boers were among the first whites to explore the African interior.

In the late 18th century, scientific interest and the search for new markets began to stimulate an age of exploration. The British explorer James Bruce reached the source of the Blue Nile in 1770, while his countryman Mungo Park explored (1795 and 1805) the course of the River Niger. The German explorer Heinrich Barth travelled widely in the Muslim western Sahelian Sudan, and the Scottish missionary David Livingstone explored the River Zambezi, and in 1855 named the Victoria Falls, already known to the local people as Musi-Ua-Tonya (“the smoke that thunders”). The British explorers John Hanning Speke and James Augustus Grant, travelling downstream, and Sir Samuel White Baker, working upstream, solved the mystery of the source of the Nile in 1863. Following the explorers (and sometimes preceding them) were Christian missionaries and then European merchants.

F.4.

European Politics

As European private interest in Africa grew, the involvement of their governments multiplied. The French began the conquest of Algeria and Senegal in the 1830s, but the systematic occupation of tropical Africa did not occur until well into the second half of the century. As European citizens and administrators penetrated inland, they encountered resistance from dominant peoples, and welcome from subordinated peoples seeking allies or protectors. From about 1880 to 1905, following the Conference of Berlin, most of Africa was partitioned among Belgium, France, Germany, Britain, Italy, and Portugal. In 1876 King Leopold II of the Belgians established the International Association of the Congo, a private company, for the exploration and colonization of the region. His principal agent for this task was Sir Henry M. Stanley. By 1884 the intense rivalry of the European powers for additional African territory, and the ill-defined boundaries of their various holdings, threatened their international relations. To resolve these issues the Conference of Berlin was called, to which the nations of Europe, together with the United States, sent delegates.

At the conference (1884-1885) the European powers defined their spheres of influence and laid down rules for future occupation on the coasts of Africa and for navigation of the Congo and Niger rivers. Among the important provisions of the General Act of Berlin was the rule that, when a power acquired new territory in Africa or assumed a protectorate over any part of the continent, it must notify the other powers signatory to the conference. During the next 15 years, numerous treaties were negotiated between the European nations, implementing and modifying the provisions of the conference. Two such treaties were concluded in 1890 by Britain. The first, with Germany, demarcated the spheres of influence of the two powers in Africa. The second treaty, with France, recognized British interests in the region between Lake Chad and the River Niger and acknowledged French influence in the Sahara. Other agreements, notably those between Britain and Italy in 1891, between France and Germany in 1894, and between Britain and France in 1899, further clarified the boundaries of the various European holdings in Africa.

F.5.

African Resistance

No African states had been invited to the Berlin conference, and none was signatory to these agreements. Whenever possible, the decisions made in Europe were resisted when applied on African soil. The French faced (1870) a revolt in Algeria and resistance (1881-1905) to their efforts to control the Sahara. In the western Sudan the Mandinka ruler Samory Touré and Ahmadu, the son and successor of al-Hajj Umar of the Tukolor state, attempted to maintain their independence. Both were defeated by the French, however—Ahmadu in 1893 and Samory five years later. Dahomey was occupied by French forces in 1892; the Wadai region was the last area to fall to the French, in 1900. British administrators encountered similar resistance from the Boers and Zulu in South Africa during the periods 1880-1881 and 1899-1902. British and Boer settlers conquered Matabeleland in 1893, and three years later both the Matabele (Ndebele) and their subordinates at that time, the Shona, revolted. Revolts broke out in Ashantiland in 1893-1894, 1895-1896, and 1900 and in Sierra Leone in 1897. The British conquest of the Fulani-Hausa states was resisted (1901-1903). Sokoto revolted in 1906. The Germans faced (1904-1908) the Herero insurrection in South West Africa and Maji Maji revolt (1905-1907) in Tanganyika. Only the Ethiopians under Emperor Menelik II (ruled 1889-1911) were successful in resisting European conquest, annihilating an Italian force at the Battle of Ādwa (Aduwa) in 1896.

F.6.

Increasing Development

Once the territories were conquered and generally pacified, the European administrations began to develop transport systems to facilitate the shipment of raw materials from the interior to the ports for export, and to institute tax systems which would force subsistence farmers either to raise cash crops or to engage in migrant labour. Both policies were well under way when World War I disrupted these efforts. During the course of the war, the German territories in West Africa, as well as South West Africa, were conquered and later were mandated by the League of Nations to the various Allied powers. Thousands of Africans either fought in the war or served as porters for the Allied armies. Resistance to the war was limited to the short-lived 1915 rebellion of John Chilembwe, an African clergyman, in Nyasaland (now Malawi).

After World War I, the exploitation of the colonies was tempered, in the British and French spheres of influence by efforts to provide basic education, health services, and development assistance and to safeguard African land rights. In Portuguese colonies, however, the post-1918 period saw little improvement in attitudes towards the indigenous peoples. Nevertheless, the white settler colonies, such as Algeria, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and Kenya, were given considerable internal self-government. Southern Rhodesia was made an internally self-governing Crown Colony in 1923 with virtually no provision for African voting. During the inter-war years, various types of African-organized protest and nationalist movements began to emerge. On the whole, however, membership was limited to western-educated African groups. Mass parties developed only in Egypt and Algeria, where large numbers of peoples had abandoned their traditional way of life and were developing new identities and allegiances. Ethiopia, which had earlier successfully resisted European colonization, fell to an Italian invasion in 1936 and did not regain its independence until World War II. With the coming of the war, Africans served in the Allied armies in even greater numbers than before, and the colonies generally supported the Allied cause. Fighting on the continent, which was limited to north and north-east Africa, ended in May 1943.

G.

The New Africa

Following the war, the European colonial powers were physically and psychologically weakened, and the balance of international power shifted to the United States and the Soviet Union which, while anticolonial in stance, increasingly came to use Africa as a battleground for ideological conflicts during the so-called Cold War. In north Africa French rule was opposed from 1947 onwards with sporadic terrorism and rioting. The Algerian revolution began in 1954 and continued until independence in 1962, six years after Morocco and Tunisia had received independence. In French sub-Saharan Africa, an effort had been made by President Charles de Gaulle to stave off nationalist movements by granting the inhabitants of the overseas territories full status as citizens and by allowing deputies and senators from each territory to sit in the French National Assembly. Nonetheless, the qualified franchise and communal representation given to each territory proved unacceptable. In the British areas the pace of change also quickened after the war. Mass parties, enrolling as wide a range of social, ethnic, and economic groups as possible, began to appear. In the Republic of Sudan, disagreements between Egypt and Britain over the direction of Sudanese self-government led the British to accelerate the pace, and in 1954 Sudan achieved independence. During the 1950s, the examples of newly independent nations on other continents, the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya, and the effectiveness of such popular African leaders as Kwame Nkrumah further quickened the pace. The independence of Ghana in 1957 and Guinea in 1958 set off a chain reaction of nationalist demands. In 1960 alone 17 sovereign African nations came into existence.

By the end of the 1970s almost all of Africa was independent. The Portuguese possessions—Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique—finally became independent in 1974-1975 after years of violent struggle. France relinquished the Comoro Islands in 1975, and Djibouti gained independence in 1977. In 1976 Spain yielded Spanish Sahara, which then was divided between Mauritania and Morocco. Here, however, a bitter war for independence ensued (see Western Sahara). Mauritania gave up its part in 1979, but Morocco, taking over the entire territory, continued the fighting with the local Polisario front. Zimbabwe gained legal independence in 1980 (see Zimbabwe: History). The last remaining large colonial dependency on the continent, Namibia, attained independence in 1990. Although it was not until 1994 that the black majority in South Africa achieved their “independence” through a majority, democratically elected government.

The young African states faced a variety of major problems. One of the most important has been the creation of a nation-state. Most African countries retained the frontiers arbitrarily drawn by late 19th-century European diplomats and administrators. Ethnic groups in many cases have been divided by national boundaries; loyalties to such groups were often stronger than those to the state leading to civil unrest in many countries. When the African states attained independence, the dominant nationalist movements and their leaders tended to install themselves in virtually permanent power. They called for national unity and urged that multi-party parliamentary systems be discarded in favour of the single-party state. When these governments proved unable or unwilling to fulfil popular expectations, the resort was often military intervention. Leaving day-to-day administration to the permanent civil service, the new military leaders posed as efficient and honest public guardians, but they soon developed the same interest in power that had characterized their civilian predecessors. In many African states, the early 1990s brought renewed interest in multi-party parliamentary democracy.

Economic development also presented a major problem. Although many African states have considerable natural resources, few have the finances to develop their economies. Foreign private enterprise often regarded investment in such underdeveloped areas as too risky, and this view was justified in many instances. The major alternative sources of financing were foreign banks and national and multinational lending institutions. The foreign banks were happy to lend huge amounts to African countries during the 1970s, often for highly suspect projects, and even more dubious regimes. They were encouraged in this by western governments, particularly the United States, as part of Cold War politics. Repayment of these loans, together with the borrowings from the multinational lending bodies, almost destroyed many African economies during the 1980s.

Expectations in African nations for a better living standard have increased. However, while the prices of imported consumer and other manufactured goods have risen steadily, the world prices of most African primary products lagged behind. A worldwide recession in the early 1980s multiplied difficulties that were initiated by the oil-price increases of the 1970s. Serious foreign-exchange problems and the burden of foreign debt have aggravated public discontent. Famine and drought plagued the northern and central regions of the continent in the 1980s, and millions of refugees left their homes in search of food, increasing the problems of the countries to which they fled. Medical resources, already inadequate, were overwhelmed by epidemics of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS), cholera, and other diseases. In the late 1980s and the first half of the 1990s protracted local conflicts in Chad, Somalia, Sudan, the Saharan area, southern Africa, and elsewhere on the continent destabilized governments, halted economic progress, and cost the lives of thousands of Africans. After Ethiopia's civil war came to an end in 1991, a separate government was established in Eritrea, which declared its independence in 1993. In April 1994 fighting erupted between Rwanda's two main ethnic groups, the Hutu and Tutsi, after the presidents of both Rwanda and Burundi were killed in a plane crash.

Another major problem has been Africa's inability to project an effective voice in international affairs. Most African states regard themselves as part of the developing world and the non-aligned nations. Because of their lack of military or financial power, however, the views of African nations rarely appear to be taken into account. The end of racial segregation polices in South Africa in the early 1990s led to that country's first multiracial elections in April 1994. The transfer of power to South Africa's black majority pointed towards new power alignments in Africa as the 20th century neared to a close.

Nevertheless, as the 21st century dawned, Africa remained a continent of sharp contrasts and paradoxes. Democratic oppositions clashed with the corruption of authoritarian regimes; poverty and malnutrition, augmented by natural disasters, in many regions did not halt historically motivated internal tribal conflicts and wars between states; and, while tourism to Africa increased considerably and conservation efforts intensified, the search went on to find an appropriate response to the AIDS epidemic, which continues to devastate the population. This is likely to be the most important issue for Africa for the foreseeable future. Approximately 10 per cent of adults on the continent have HIV/AIDS, and the disease will increasingly strain the economic resources of African nations. Medical services are already struggling to cope and vast numbers of people removed from the work force owing to illness or looking after sick relatives will have a devastating impact on productivity. According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Africa is the only region in the world where poverty is expected to increase in the 21st century. Other problems include a further loss of agricultural land because of desertification and other factors; deforestation; and the increasing scarcity of freshwater supplies.