Section 1: History and Governments

Ariadne Van Zandbergen/Lonely Planet Images

Early African History

Early Africans lived as hunter-gatherers, or people who moved from place to place to hunt and gather food.
Around 3000 B.C., the people known as the Bantu began migrating from modern-day Nigeria to the west and south, spreading their farming and iron-working skills and their language.

Early African History (cont.)

Axum, in what is now Ethiopia, prospered from the flow of goods from Africa, the Mediterranean area, and East Asia. In the A.D. 300s, King Ezana made Axum a major Christian power in East Africa.
Arab Muslims in the 600s gained control of much of the surrounding region, isolating Axum, although it remained a center of African Christianity.

Early African History (cont.)

The Great Zimbabwe Empire arose inland in southeastern Africa and supplied gold, silver, and ivory to the East African coast during the 1400s.

Early African History (cont.)

Ghana, West Africas earliest empire, controlled trade between the Sahara and West Africas rain forests. By taxing the trade of salt, cloth, gold, and ivory, Ghana became very wealthy.
In the late 1000s, North African invaders disrupted Ghanas trade and the kingdom collapsed.

Early African History (cont.)

After Ghanas fall, the empire of Mali replaced it and grew wealthy from farming and control of the gold and salt trade. Its most famous ruler, Mansa Musa, was a skilled administrator who led Timbuktu to become a center of trade, education, and Islamic culture.

European Contact
Europeans did not introduce slavery or the slave trade to the African continent.
For centuries, African rulers had enslaved and traded prisoners.

Arab traders had brought enslaved Africans to the Islamic world since the A.D. 800s.
The slave trade did, however, greatly increase when Europeans began shipping Africans to the Americas.

European Contact (cont.)

Between about 1500 and the late 1800s, nearly 12 million Africans were sent to the Americas. Business leaders in Europe wanted Africas gold, timber, hides and palm oil for their growing industries. Missionaries wanted to convert Africans to Christianity.

European Contact (cont.)

Europeans carved the region into colonies for profit and political advantage, ripping apart once-unified regions and throwing together ethnic groups that had little in common. By 1914, almost the entire region was under European control.

Independence
As the 1900s began, feelings of nationalism arose among Europeaneducated Africans. Nationalism is a peoples desire to rule themselves and have their own independent country. Eventually, leaders came forth who convinced greater numbers of Africans to demand freedom.

Independence (cont.)
After World War I, more Africans became politically active, staging staged protests against discrimination, or unfair and unequal treatment of a group.
European governments responded with force and arrests, and they also made some reforms, but Africans demanded complete independence.

Independence (cont.)
In the early 1950s, Kwame Nkrumah led a nationalist movement in Britains colony of the Gold Coast in West Africa, and in 1957 that country, now renamed Ghana, became independent.
By the end of the 1960s, most African territories had thrown off European rule.

Independence (cont.)
After independence many countries in Africa south of the Sahara kept the old colonial borders and mix of sometimes conflicting ethnic groups.
Many of the new African countries suffered from civil wars, and ethnic conflicts divided people in Nigeria, Sudan, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Independence (cont.)
In South Africa, white South Africans strengthened their rule through a system knows as apartheid. Apartheid, or apartness, was carried out through laws that separated ethnic groups and limited the rights of black South Africans.

Independence (cont.)
Black South Africans protested the laws, and the white government responded by arresting the protesters. Many black leaders, such as Nelson Mandela, were jailed.
The United Nations condemned apartheid, and many countries cut off trade with South Africa.

Independence (cont.)
Because of this pressure, the white-run government ended apartheid in the early 1990s and released Nelson Mandela from prison.
In 1994, South Africa held its first democratic election in which people of different races were allowed to vote. South Africans elected Nelson Mandela as their nations first black president.

Section 2: Cultures and Lifestyles

Ariadne Van Zandbergen/Lonely Planet Images

The People of Africa South of the Sahara

The rate of population growth in Africa south of the Sahara is among the highest in the world, with about 750 million people at present. Two reasons are that better sanitation and medical care have lowered the death rates for infants and children and that the region has a high birthrate, with families averaging five to seven children.

The People of Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

Africa South of the Sahara has been unable to feed its people. Although 70 percent of Africans work in agriculture, they cannot grow as much food as they once could.

The People of Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

The regions growing population is unevenly distributed due to climate and land features. Most of the regions people are crowded into the coastal areas of West Africa, the lakes region of East Africa, and along the eastern coast of southern Africa because of their plentiful rainfall, milder temperatures, and fertile soil.

The People of Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

Most people in Africa South of the Sahara live in rural villages. Despite population growth and better health care in Africa south of the Sahara, the regions death rate remains high compared to other world regions.

People in many parts of Africa south of the Sahara suffer from malnutrition, or poor health due to not eating the right foods or enough food.

The People of Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

Many rural Africans lack clean water to drink, as well as adequate sanitation, or removal of waste products. Famines have killed many people, especially in East Africa and areas bordering the Sahara. Diseases such as malaria are widespread. Insects such as the mosquito and tsetse fly transfer viruses to people and animals.

Culture in Africa South of the Sahara

African cultures influence other cultures worldwide.

In the past, enslaved Africans carried their culture and music to other parts of the world. Modern forms of music such as jazz, rock and roll, and rap, for example, have their roots in African music.

Culture in Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

Many Africans feel a stronger loyalty to their ethnic group than to a national government. In Africa, a persons particular ethnic group is most commonly defined by the language he or she speaks. The most widely spoken language is Swahili, which is spoken by about 50 million people in East Africa.

Culture in Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

Most people in the region are Christian or Muslim.
Hundreds of traditional African religions also are practiced, most of which include belief in a supreme being, other gods, and the spirits of dead ancestors, all of whom influence everyday life.

Weavers design brightly colored textiles, such as West Africas kente cloth, for people to wear.

Culture in Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

For Africans, music and dance are expressions of a communitys life.

The roles that people have in these dances often reflect their social status, or position in the community. Many Africans include special dancing in ceremonies called rites of passage that mark particular stages of life, such as when young boys or girls reach adulthood.

Culture in Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

Africans also have a storytelling tradition. Stories are told aloud and passed down from generation to generation. In West Africa, griots, or storytellers, preserve a groups history by telling these stories. In modern times, written literature has become popular. African writers including Chinua Achebe and Nadine Gordimer have gained international fame.

Daily Life in Africa South of the Sahara

About 70 percent of all Africans live in rural areas and depend on farming or livestock herding for their livelihood. Some farmers work on large, companyrun farms that grow cash crops to send overseas. These crops include coffee, cacao, cotton, tea, peanuts and bananas.

Daily Life in Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

In the past, families often lived in a compound, or a group of houses surrounded by walls. The homes of rural Africans are often made from dried mud with straw or palm leaves for roofs.

Daily Life in Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

In rural areas, most people live in extended families, or households made up of several generations, including grandparents, parents, and children. In the cities, nuclear families, or a husband, a wife, and their children, are becoming more common.

Daily Life in Africa South of the Sahara (cont.)

African families traditionally have been organized into clans, a large group of people who are untied by a common ancestor in the far past. Many Africans also belong to a particular lineage, or a larger family group with close blood ties.