Geography of Africa

There is not only a Africa but of the Africas since this Continent watch a great cultural and human plurality, and also a great physical and climatic diversity.

Physical geography

The Africa covers a space of 30 million km ². It extends on 7500 km from west in is and 8000 km of north in the south. It presents a massive profile to the rectilinear coasts on 23000 km length.

Great areas

There are several great areas, plus the large island of Madagascar:

the septentrional Africa: the the Maghreb, the area of the Atlas
the desert of the the Sahara (8 million km ²)
the Horn of Africa, around the Ethiopia. Characterized by very sprinkled and fertile high plateaus, it is an area of pastors. The volcanic activity generated lakes there.
the zone of Sudan, “Village be Souden” (country of the Blacks), in Western Africa, not to confuse with the State Sudan. It is a zone of savanna, which includes/understands the the Sahel. Marked by early contacts with the Arab world, it was also a surface of colonization.
the equatorial Africa tropical and wet
the Southern Africa: forest in the center, mountain on the sides and great richness of animals.
Madagascar: specific dimension: one finds the various African climates there, of many animal species and vegetable are preserved there.

Climate

Various climates:

close to the equator: equatorial climate (wet forest); Gabon, Cameroun, Central Africa, Guinea Equatoriale.
season dries: tropical climate; the forest is degraded to make place with the Savane S, then at the ic zones Désert. That has as a consequence a great brittleness of ecology.

Pluviometry: irregularity of the rains with zones where precipitations are very important and other zones where they are insufficient.

Very strong deforestation: the forest occupies nothing any more but 10% of the continent because of the cultures on denshering; there are less and less varieties of trees. Blow the aridity progresses, the desert advances. Before agriculture was based on a system of fallow, but the logic of sale of the colonial era impoverished the grounds. It is estimated that the 2/5e grounds are désertifiées today.

Human geography

First discovered of Africa by Europeans go back to the 15th century (Portuguese). The Southern Cape is discovered in 1458, but it is only at the 19th century that the whole of the grounds is explored. The first contacts are commercial contacts, first of all with the Arab world (the Sahel) then with Europeans. Thereafter the exploitation came from the continent with the development of the logic of colonization and the slave system.

Demographic specificity of the continent

The States having a low administrative capacity, the figures are to be taken as orders of magnitude (the statistics do not have exact reality).

In 1975: 302 million habitants
In 2001: 591,3 million inhabitants (source: UNDP)
In 2004: 855 million inhabitants (approximately) (source: INSERTED)

In 2005: 922,01 million inhabitants (source: UNO)
Forecast for 2015: 1224 million inhabitants.

11% of the world population are in sub-Saharan Africa. This continent with the population growth (growth rate: 2,4%, are 15 million inhabitants moreover per annum) fastest of the world, but paradoxically it is a under-populated continent from the point of view of the density.

It is a very young population with 17 years a median age (the world mean is 23 years). 45% of the Africans have less than 15 years (21% of the population in OECD, 30% in the world), and the most 65 years account for only 3% of the population (against 13% in the rest of the world).

Birth rate: 43 per thousand (26 per thousand in the world)
6 children per woman on average (2,8 in the world).

The life expectancy is in increase: 48,8 ans
Death rate remains constant: 47,5 for mille
Infant mortality is of 100 per 1000, that is to say twenty times more than in France. It is about one of the great African stakes.

Until the 20th century, the demographic pressure did not weigh on the resources of subsistence because the agricultural growth ensured a balance.

Why Africa is populated relatively little?

a difficult climate
of the historical factors: it is the impact of slavery and colonization; the draft négrière, which lasted of 17th in the middle of 19th, involved a problem of ratio of the sexes insofar as they are especially young men in age to procreate who were treated. The fall of fruitfulness generated a hole in the population pyramid. Moreover of the epidemics were brought by the colonizer, who also upset ecology and deteriorated production capacities.

Since the 20th century, Africa meets a demographic explosion without precedent. 45% of the population live in four countries: the Nigeria, the Ethiopia, the Democratic republic of Congo, the South Africa.

There is a change on the level of space with a reinvestment of the forest: the 5/8e of the population lives in the forest.

The average density is of 20 inhabitants to the square km, but there are arid zones (less than 1 hab. /km ²) and zones extremely populated.

Ethnographic dimension

The ethnographers distinguish several ethnicities:

the Pygmy S: it is the oldest group and fewer (150 000 people). Historically, they are located in the forest zone and live exploitation of the forest, but they are pushed back little by little by the other populations.
the Bochimans: they are nomads hunters (bushmen).
the Hottentots: old population in the desert of Nabib.
the Éthiopides, the Somali S and the Toubous: these three populations approach Arabic on the register.
Négro-African: Sudan board (Senegal…), Guinea NS, Bantou (Congo, central Africa), Nilotic (high plateaus of the rift), Massaï, Tutsis.
the Indo-Europeans
Malagasy

Linguistic disparities

There is between 200 and 2000 different languages according to the distinction which one makes between languages and dialects.

Among the languages are distinguished:

the group of languages " bantoues" according to the neologism (Ba ntu) forged by Wilhelm Heinrich Immanuel Bleek about 1860, and gathering the languages in which plural is marked by " ba" and the word meaning " to be humain" approaches " ntu" or " nto" : e.g. lingala, douala, kikongo, kilari, most of central Africa
the swahili (pertaining to the bantou group): 15 million people, spoken in Eastern Africa
the haoussa: Niger, Nigeria, Chad
the languages mandeng: 6 million people (Mali, Burkina Faso…)

There are also languages which are lost or of the very specific languages, like the language of Bushmen (Botswana)

In the majority of the old colonies, the official language is the imported language of the ex-metropolis; however only 10% of the population speak it, which shows the importance of the local languages. The only countries having their native tongue for official language are the Lesotho, the Rwanda and the Burundi.

Religious disparities

Islam: 260 million followers; it is developed in the zone sahélo-Sudanese woman because of the exchanges with the Maghreb, and on the Eastern coast because of the exchanges with the Middle East.
Christian religions: 220 million (including 80 million Protestants and 75 million catholics)
the religions animists (traditional): officially 100 million followers, but this figure wants nothing to say because Africa is marked by a strong syncretism.

Economic disparities

On 49 LDCS, 36 are African. This situation is all the more paradoxical as the African continent is very rich as regards natural resources (it is the continent which is best equipped with it).

oil: Angola, Congo, Gabon, Nigeria
mining resources:

gold: Ghana (Gold coast)
diamond: Liberia, Sierra Leone, Zimbabwe
uranium: Central Africa, Niger (which is for a long time a source of supply for France, and which plays a part in the regional inversions).
copper-cobalt: Congo-Kinshasa, Togo

There is very a Net shift between the richness of the countries and its natural resources: the richnesses are exploited in a colonial logic which continued with the local elites (saving in revenue, commercial logic). The agricultural specialization which was done under the colonization and which perduré thereafter is not profitable.

There is a low capacity of redistribution of the richnesses: 46% of the population live in lower part of the Poverty line (which is of 1$ per anybody and day), that is to say 298 million people. Total GNP of sub-Saharan Africa, of 2 billion $, is equivalent to that of Belgium.

This situation is still worsened by a great number of factors:

historically there is a deterioration of the terms of trade for the African products, deterioration which was still accentuated.
the weight of the debt: in the Years 1960 and 1970, much of money was lent to Africa (in particular with the easy money of the petrodollars). Then, in the Years 1980, one passed to a logic of plans of structural adjustments because of incapacity of the countries to refund their debt (with the example of Mexico). The rise to power of the the IMF and the the World Bank pushed towards an austerity policy. One is today in a policy of rationalization of the use of the assistances.
the problem of the Schooling
the absence of public policies in terms of health or education
medical crises, the Pandemia S like the AIDS (in particular in South Africa). These countries can have up to 11% of orphans, which involves a social destabilization. It is a true bomb with delayed-action: if the epidemic continues to progress to its current rhythm, the life expectancy should drop by 20 years on the continent. It is also necessary to take into account the Malaria (paludism), which is the second cause of mortality in Africa.

Urbanization

The Urbanisation, which exploded during second half of the 20th century, is a very important phenomenon to include/understand the dynamic territorial ones today with work on the continent. Because of a raised population growth, Mégapole S appeared, such as Lagos, Johannesburg or Addis-Abeba.
Territorial disparities were done day between rural areas and urban areas, but also inside the cities they even, where the variations of richness are more visibles.

In West Africa, the rate of urbanization was of 33% in 1999.

List urban surfaces

to see: List of the urban surfaces of Africa

References

Random links: