Africa, second-largest continent (c.11,677,240 sq mi/30,244,050 sq km, including adjacent islands; 1997 estimated population 743,000,000).
Boundaries
Broad to the N (c.4,600 mi/7,400 km wide), Africa straddles the equator and stretches c.5,000 mi/8,000 km from Ras Bani Sakka (Tunisia) in the N to Cape Agulhas (South Africa) in the S. It is connected with Asia by the Sinai Peninsula (which is crossed by the Suez Canal) and is bounded on the N by the Mediterranean Sea, on the W and S by the Atlantic Ocean, and on the E and S by the Indian Ocean.
Islands
The largest offshore island is Madagascar; other islands include Saint Helena and Ascension in the S Atlantic Ocean; São Tomé, Príncipe, Pagalu (Annobón), and Bioko (Fernando Po) in the Gulf of Guinea; the Cape Verde, Canary, and Madeira islands in the N Atlantic Ocean; and Mauritius, Réunion, Zanzibar, Pemba, and the Comoros and Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean.
Plateaus
Most of Africa is a series of stable, ancient plateau surfaces, lower in the N and W and higher (rising to more than 6,000 ft/1,830 m) in the S and E. The plateau is composed mainly of metamorphic rock that has been overlaid in places by sedimentary rock. The escarpment of the plateau is often in close proximity to the coast, thus leaving the continent with a generally narrow coastal plain; in addition, the escarpment forms barriers of falls and rapids in the lower courses of rivers that impede their use as transportation routes into the interior. N Africa is underlain by folded sedimentary rock and is, geologically, more closely related to Europe than to the rest of the continent of Africa; the Atlas Mountains, which occupy most of the region, are a part of the Alpine mountain system of S Europe.
Lowest and Highest Points
The entire African continent is surrounded by a narrow continental shelf. The lowest point on the continent is 512 ft/156 m below sea level at Lake Assal, Djibouti; the highest point is Mount Kibo (19,340 ft/5,895 m), a peak of Kilimanjaro in NE Tanzania.
Mountain, Rivers and Lakes
From N to S the principal mountain ranges of Africa are the Atlas Mountains (rising to more than 13,000 ft/3,960 m), the Ethiopian Highlands (rising to more than 15,000 ft/4,570 m), the Ruwenzori mountains (rising to more than 16,000 ft/4,880 m), and the Drakensberg Range (rising to more than 11,000 ft/3,350 m). The continent’s largest rivers are the Nile (the world’s longest river), the Congo, the Niger, the Zambezi, the Orange, the Limpopo, and the Senegal. The largest lakes are Victoria (the world’s second largest freshwater lake), Tanganyika, Albert, Turkana, and Nyasa (or Malawi), all in E Africa; shallow Lake Chad, the largest in W Africa, shrinks considerably during dry periods. The lakes and major rivers (most of which are navigable in stretches above the escarpment of the plateau) form an important inland transportation system.
Earth Movements to Form Contients and Rifts
Geologically, recent major earth disturbances have been confined to areas of NW and E Africa. Geologists have long noted the excellent fit (in shape and geology) between the coast of Africa at the Gulf of Guinea and the Brazilian coast of South America, and they have evidence that Africa formed the center of a large ancestral supercontinent known as Pangaea. Pangaea began to break apart in the Jurassic period to form Gondwanaland, which included Africa, the other S continents, and India. South America was separated from Africa c.76 million years ago, when the floor of the S Atlantic Ocean was opened up by sea-floor spreading; Madagascar was separated from it c.65 million years ago; and Arabia was separated from it c.20 million years ago, when the Red Sea was formed. There is also evidence of one-time connections between NW Africa and E North America, N Africa and Europe, Madagascar and India, and SE Africa and Antarctica. Similar large-scale earth movements are also believed responsible for the formation of the Great Rift Valley of E Africa, which is the continent’s most spectacular land feature. From c.40–60 mi/60–100 km wide, it extends in Africa c.1,800 mi/2,900 km, starting from the N end of the Jordan Rift Valley in SW Asia to near the mouth of the Zambezi River; the E branch of the rift valley is occupied in sections by lakes Nyasa and Turkana, and the W branch, curving N from Lake Nyasa, is occupied by lakes Tanganyika, Kivu, Edward, and Albert. The lava flows of the recent and subrecent epochs in the Ethiopian Highlands, and volcanoes farther S, are associated with the rift; among the principal volcanoes are Kilimanjaro, Kenya, Nyamlagira, Elgon, Meru, and the Virunga range with Mount Karisimbi. A less spectacular rift, the Cameroon Rift, is associated with volcanic activity in W Africa and trends NE from Saint Helena Island to São Tomé, Príncipe, Bioko, and as far as the Tibesti Massif in the Sahara.
Climate
Generally, Africa’s climatic zones are largely influenced by the continent’s location astride the equator and its almost symmetrical extensions to approximately 35° latitude in the N and S hemispheres. Thus, except where continentality or altitude exerts a moderating influence on temperature or precipitation (permanently snow-capped peaks are found near the equator), Africa may be divided into six general climatic regions. Areas of W and Central Africa near the equator and on the windward shores of E Madagascar have a tropical rain forest climate, with heavy rain and high temperatures throughout the year. N and S of the rain forest are belts of tropical savanna climate, with high temperatures all year and a seasonal distribution of rain during the summer season. The savanna grades poleward in both hemispheres into a region of semiarid steppe (with limited summer rain) and then into the arid conditions of the extensive Sahara (N) and the Kalahari (S) deserts. Belts of semiarid steppe with limited winter rain occur on the poleward sides of the desert regions, most notably in N Africa. Patterns in E Africa are modified by rainshadow effect of Madagascar and monsoonal changes in winds paralleling the Somali coast. At the N and S extremities of the continent are narrow belts of Mediterranean-type climate with subtropical temperatures and a concentration of rainfall mostly in the autumn and winter months.
People
African peoples, who account for more than 12% of the world’s population, are distributed among fifty-four contemporary political units and are further distinguishable in terms of linguistic and cultural groups, which number c.1,000. The Sahara forms a great ethnic divide. N of it, mostly Arabs predominate along the coast and Berbers (including the Tuareg) and Tibbu in the interior regions. Sub-Saharan Africa is occupied by a diverse variety of peoples and include, among others, the Amhara, Mossi, Fulani, Yoruba, Igbo, Kongo (see Kongo, Kingdom of ), Zulu (see Zululand ), Akan, Galla, Maasai, and Hausa. Europeans are concentrated in areas with subtropical climates or tropical climates modified by altitude; in the S are persons of Dutch and British descent, and in the NW are persons of French, Italian, and Spanish descent. Lebanese make up an important minority community throughout W Africa as do Indians in many coastal towns of S and E Africa. There are also significant Arab populations both in E Africa and more recently in W Africa. As a whole, Africa is sparsely populated; the highest densities are found in Nigeria, the Ethiopian highlands, the Nile valley, and around the Great Lakes (which include Victoria and Tanganyka). The principal cities of Africa are usually the national capitals and the major ports, and they usually contain a disproportionately large percentage of the national populations; Cairo, Lagos (Nigeria), Kinshasa (Zaire), Alexandria, and Casablanca are the largest cities of Africa.
Economy
Most of Africa’s population is rural, but agricultural production is low by world standards; Africa produces three-quarters of the world’s cocoa beans and about one-third of its groundnuts. Rare and precious minerals (including most of the world’s diamonds) are abundant in the continent’s ancient crystalline rocks, which are found mostly to the S and E of a line from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sinai Peninsula; extensive oil, gas, and phosphate deposits occur in sedimentary rocks to the N and W of this general line. Manufacturing is concentrated in the Republic of South Africa and in N Africa (especially Egypt and Algeria). Despite Africa’s enormous potential for hydroelectric power production, only a small percentage of it has been developed. Africa’s fairly regular coastline affords few natural harbors, and the shallowness of coastal waters makes it difficult for large ships to approach the shore; deepwater ports, protected by breakwaters, have been built offshore to facilitate commerce and trade. Major fishing grounds are found over the wider sections of the continental shelf as off NW, SW, and S Africa and NW Madagascar.
History to the 15th Century
Africa has the longest human history of any continent. African hominids date from at least 4,000,000 years ago; agriculture, brought from SW Asia, appears to date from the 6th or 5th millennium B.C. Africa’s first great civilization began in Egypt in 3400 B.C.; other ancient centers were Cush and Aksum. Phoenicians established Carthage in the 9th century B.C. and probably explored the NW coast as far as the Canary Islands by the 1st century B.C. Romans conquered Carthage in 146 B.C. and controlled N Africa until the 4th century A.D. Arabs began their conquest in the 7th century and, except in Ethiopia, Muslim traders extended the religion of Islam across N Africa and S across the Sahara into the great medieval kingdoms of the W Sudan. The earliest of these kingdoms, which drew their wealth and power from the control of a lucrative trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, and slaves, was ancient Ghana, already thriving when first recorded by Arabs in the 8th century. In the 13th century, Ghana was conquered and incorporated into the kingdom of ancient Mali, famous for its gold and its wealthy capital of Timbuktu.
History - 15th Century to 18th Century
In the late 15th century, Mali was eclipsed by the Songhai empire and lost many provinces but remained an autonomous kingdom. There are few written accounts of the S half of the continent before 1500, but it appears from linguistic and archaeological evidence that the older inhabitants were gradually absorbed or displaced by agricultural, iron-working peoples speaking related Bantu languages who originated from near the modern Nigeria-Cameroon border. Between the 1st century B.C. and A.D. 1500, Bantu-speaking peoples became dominant over most of the continent S of the equator, establishing small farming villages and powerful kingdoms, such as Kongo, Luba, and Mwene Mutapa. Prior to and after 1500, pastoralists moved S until they encountered the various Bantu groups and founded the kingdom of Kitara in the 16th century. They subsequently founded the kingdoms of Bunyoro, Buganda, Rwanda, and Ankole, all of which had elaborate social structures based on a cattle-owning aristocracy. The period of European domination of Africa began in the 15th century with Portugese exploration of the coasts of Africa in an attempt to establish a safe route to India and to tap the lucrative gold trade of the Sudan and the E coast trade in gold, slaves, and ivory conducted for centuries by Arabs and Swahili. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope; in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached the E coast and, the following year, India. In the centuries that followed, coastal trading stations were established by Portugal and later by the Dutch, English, French, and other European maritime powers; under them the slave trade rapidly expanded. At the same time Ottoman Turks extended their control over N Afr. and the shores of the Red Sea, and the Omani Arabs established suzerainty over the E coast as far S as Cabo Delgado.
History - Exploration of Africa
Explorations in the 18th and 19th century reported the great natural wealth of the continent while capturing the imagination of Europeans, who viewed Africa as the “Dark Continent.” These were key factors in the ensuing wave of European imperialism; between 1880 and 1912 all of Africa except Liberia and Ethiopia fell under control of European powers, with the boundaries of the new colonies often bearing no relationship to the realities of geography or to the political and social organization of the indigenous population.
French and British Colonies
In the NW and W, France ultimately acquired regions that came to be known as French West Africa, French Equatorial Africa, and the French Cameroons, and established protectorates in Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Other French territories were French Somaliland (Djibouti), French Togoland, Madagascar, and Réunion. The main group of British possessions was in E and SE Africa; it included the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, British Somaliland, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika (after World War I), Zanzibar, Nyasaland, Northern Rhodesia and Southern Rhodesia, Bechuanaland, Basutoland, and Swaziland. Following Britain’s victory in the South African War (1899–1902), its South African possessions (Transvaal, Orange Free State, Cape Colony, and Natal) became a dominion within the British Commonwealth of Nations. Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Nigeria were British possessions on the W coast.
Portugese, Belgian, Spanish, German and Italian Colonies
Portugal’s African empire was made up of Portugese Guinea (Guinea-Bissau), Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, and São Tomé and Principe. Belgium held the Belgian Congo and, after World War I, Ruanda-Urundi. The Spanish possessions in Africa were the smallest, being composed of Spanish Guinea, Spanish Sahara, Ifni, and the protectorate of Spanish Morocco. The extensive German holdings—Togoland, the Cameroons, German South-West Africa, and German East Africa—were lost after World War I and redistributed among the Allies; Italy’s empire included Libya, Eritrea, and Italian Somaliland.
History - 1910 to 1950
The Union of South Africa was formed and became virtually self–governing in 1910; Egypt achieved a measure of sovereignty in 1922; and in 1925, Tangier, previously attached to Morocco, was made an international zone. At the end of World War II, a rise in international trade spurred renewed exploitation of Africa’s resources. France and Britain began campaigns to improve conditions in their African holdings, including access to education and investment in infrastructure. The Africans were also able to pressure France and Britain into a degree of self-administration. Belgium and Portugal did little in the way of colonial development and sought greater control over their colonies during this period.
History - The Colonies Become Independent
Beginning in the 1950s, in the face of rising nationalism, the former colonies and protectorates were granted independence by all the European powers except Portugal, which began to grant its territories independence in 1974. The sequence of change included independence for Libya in 1951; independence for Eritrea in 1952 in a federation with, and in 1962 merged with, Ethiopia (again separated in 1993 after a protracted war); in 1956 independence for Morocco, Sudan, and Tunisia and the return of Tangier to Morocco; in 1957 independence for Ghana; in 1958 independence for Guinea and the return of Spanish Morocco to Morocco.
In 1960 independence was granted to the former French colonies of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Republic of the Congo–Brazzaville (renamed People’s Republic of the Congo in 1970), Dahomey (renamed Benin in 1975), Gabon, the Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire), the Malagasy Republic (renamed Madagascar in 1975), Mali (briefly merged in 1959–1960 with Senegal as the Mali Federation), Mauritania, Niger, Senegal, and Upper Volta (renamed Burkina Faso in 1984); also newly independent in 1960 were the Republic of the Congo (renamed Zaïre in 1971; again renamed in 1997 the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Nigeria, Somali Democratic Republic (Somalia), and Togo.
In 1961, Sierra Leone and Tanganyika (renamed Tanzania in 1964) became independent, the Portugese enclave of São João Baptista de Ajudá was seized by Dahomey, the former British Cameroons were divided between Nigeria and the Republic of Cameroon (thereafter the Federal Republic of Cameroon until 1972 when renamed the United Republic of Cameroon, then reverting back to the Republic of Cameroon in 1984), and the Union of South Africa became a republic.
In 1962, Uganda, Algeria, Rwanda, and Burundi became separate and independent nations. Remaining British possessions after 1962 were Zanzibar, which gained independence in 1963 and joined with Tanganyika to form Tanzania in 1964; Kenya, which became independent in 1963; Malawi (formerly Nyasaland) and Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia), independent in 1964; the Gambia, independent in 1965;Lesotho (formerly Basutoland) and Botswana (formerly Bechuanaland), independent in 1966; and Mauritius and Swaziland, independent in 1968. Rhodesia (formerly Southern Rhodesia) unilaterally declared itself independent in 1965, but Great Britain termed the act illegal and imposed trade sanctions against the country.
After a protracted civil war, Rhodesia gained its independence under black majority rule in 1980 and was renamed Zimbabwe. In the mid–1970s, Great Britain retained control of the isls. of Saint Helena and Ascension. The Seychelles gained independence in 1976. The former French territory of the Comoro Islands became independent in 1976 and in 1977 the Afars and the Issas became the independent Republic of Djibouti. Réunion remains a French Overseas Department.
In 1968, Spain granted independence to Equatorial Guinea, including Río Muni on the mainland and the islands of Bioko (Fernando Po) and Pagalu (Annobón), and in 1969 returned Ifni to Morocco; it retained the Canary Islands and Ceuta and Melilla, two small enclaves on Morocco’s coast. Spain relinquished the Spanish (now Western) Sahara to joint Moroccan-Mauritanian control in 1976; Mauritania relinquished its claims to the territory to Morocco in 1979, but there remain unresolved problems between Morocco and the Polisario Front for ultimate control of Western Sahara.
In 1974 Portugese Guinea became independent as Guinea-Bissau. The former Portugese territories of Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Principe all became independent in 1975. South West Africa (Namibia) had been administered by South Africa since 1922 under an old League of Nations mandate; South Africa’s continued administration of the territory was declared illegal by the UN Security Council in 1970 and by the International Court of Justice in 1971. Namibia became independent in 1990, ending 75 years of South Africa occupation.
History - After Independence
Recognition that greater power was to be found in increased unity and cooperation aided the cause of Pan-Africanism, and in 1963 at Addis Ababa the Organization of African Unity was established. In the early post-colonial period, the most pressing problems facing new African states were their need for aid for the development of natural resources, for education, and for the improvement of living standards; threats of secession and military coups; and shifting alliances among the states and with outside powers. African nations formed alliances based on the cold war politics of the USSR, the U.S., Cuba, and other countries in order to receive badly needed aid. This period saw the overthrow of democratic forms of government and numerous coups resulting in the installation of military regimes and single-party governments. Beginning in the late 1960s and continuing through the mid-1970s, a severe drought desiccated the Sahel region S of the Sahara. The resulting famine, disease, and environmental degradation caused the death of thousands of people and forced the southward migration of additional hundreds of thousands to areas less affected by the drought.
From 1975 through the early 1990s, Africa continued to experience bouts of political, social, and economic upheaval. The post-independence era has also been marked by a rise in nationalist struggles. Wars in the Sudan, Ethiopia, and Somalia continued, and political instability in these nations worsened. Droughts in the early 1980s devastated already war-torn Ethiopia, resulting in massive starvation and disease. Beginning in the 1970s, Chad fought Libyan expansionist activity with help of the French military. Relations between Chad and Libya were finally normalized in 1989. In the late 1980s, there was also a decline of Marxist influence in Angola, where Cuban troops began to withdraw in 1989, as well as from civil war-torn Mozambique. Civil conflict continued in the immediate post-cold-war period in Angola, althought a tenuous UN-brokered peace agreement between government and rebel forces was signed in 1996.
South African blacks led an enduring struggle against white domination with frequent revolts (such as the Soweto uprising in 1976) leading to government repression and escalating violence. Throughout the 1980s, the international community applied pressure in the form of economic sanctions in order to force the South African government to negotiate with the African National Congress (ANC). In 1989, newly elected Prime Minister F. W. de Klerk promised reforms that would phase out white rule, and in 1992 the legal underpinnings of apartheid were largely dismantled. Consequently, South Africa’s black majority participated in the country’s first fully democratic elections in April 1994 that brought Nelson Mandela and the ANC to power.
Other African nations began to introduce democratic reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s that included multi-party elections; transitions to democratically elected leadership have taken place in countries such as Mali, Zambia, Benin, and Malawi. Political instability and civil strife still plague several regions of the continent, most notably Liberia and Sierra Leone in W Africa and Congo, Rwanda and Burundi in the Great Lakes region. In Rwanda in 1994, a Hutu-led government that provoked ethnic tensions leading to the genocide of nearly one million persons was overthrown by Tutsi-led forces of the Rwandan Patriotic Front. In 1997, thirty years of dictatorical one-man rule in Zaire were brought to an end by rebels of the Alliance of Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Congo, and the country’s name was changed to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Under tight conditions imposed in the 1980s by the International Monetary Fund, several African countries made positive strides in managing market-oriented economic reform by the mid-1990s, most notably Ghana, Uganda, and Malawi. The scourge of AIDS has continued to pose a major health threat to many African nations as a lack of economic resources has prevented an effective response. In the early 1990s, it was estimated that one in forty Africans was infected with one of the viruses that cause AIDS; the nations of Uganda, Congo, and Kenya have been hardest hit. Late in 1992, substantial but initially inadequate relief efforts from the international community sought to stem the spread of famine across portions of sub-Saharan Africa. Recurrent drought and numerous civil wars are the primary causes of the famine, which has most severely affected the nations of Somalia and Mozambique.
