Africa, the third largest continent on Earth, occupying, with the adjacent islands, an area of about 30.33 million km2 or 22% of the total land mass.
Natural environment
With the exception of the northern coast and the Atlas mountains, the African territory is a vast, undulating plateau, disfigured by large basins.
Africa can be divided into three regions: the northern highlands, central and southern highlands and the eastern mountains. In general, the altitude of the continent increases from northwest to southeast. The low coasts, except the Mediterranean coast and the coast of Guinea, are narrow and rise sharply towards the plateau.
The peculiar characteristic of the northern plateau is the Sahara, which stretches for over a quarter of African territory. The central and southern highlands encompass several major depressions, especially the Congo Basin and the Kalahari desert. Other elements in the south of the plateau are the Drakensberg mountains to the coast to the southeast, and the Karoo.
The eastern mountains, which form the highest part of the continent, extends from the Red Sea to the Zambezi River. The region has an average elevation above 1500 m, although in the Ethiopian plateau gradually increases until it reaches 3000 m. South of the Ethiopian plateau, rise several volcanic peaks, like Mount Kilimanjaro, Kenya and Elgon. One element of topography is the Rift Valley. The west is the Ruwenzori Mountains.
There are six major drainage networks, punctuated by waterfalls, such as the Victoria Falls or rapids that impede navigation. Are the basins of the Nile, Congo, Niger, Zambezi, Orange and interior basin of Lake Chad, the largest drainage area of the continent. Among the numerous lakes, stand out from Turkana, Albert, Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria.
Can distinguish seven climatic zones and vegetation. In the center of the continent and the eastern coast of Madagascar, the climate and vegetation are tropical. The climate of Guinea coast resembles the equatorial climate, but has only one rainy season.
In the north and south, the climate of tropical forest itself is replaced by a zone of tropical savanna that involves one-fifth of Africa. Away from the equator, north and south, the savanna climate zone becomes a zone of dry steppes. The areas of northwest and southwest edges are of Mediterranean climate. In the high plateaus of southern Africa, the climate is temperate.
Africa has an area of arid or desert, more than any other continent except Australia. In the Sahara to the north, the Horn of Africa to the east and the deserts of Kalahari and Namibia to the southwest, the annual rainfall is less than 250 mm and the vegetation appears only in the oases.
With regard to wildlife, Africa has two different areas. The north and northwest, including the Sahara and features by a fauna similar to that of Eurasia (the pomp, the African Red deer and two kinds of ibis originates in the northern African coast). The other is the area of Africa south of the Sahara, with a wide variety of animals, among which are the antelopes, giraffes, African elephants, lions and leopards.
Africa is rich in mineral resources. It has most of the minerals known, many in appreciable quantities. It has large deposits of coal, oil and natural gas as well as the world's largest reserves of gold, diamonds, copper, bauxite, manganese, nickel, radio, germanium, lithium, titanium and phosphate.
Population
In the northern hemisphere, including the Sahara, predominantly Caucasian peoples, mainly Arabs and Berbers. Constitute about a fourth of the population of the continent. South of the Sahara, the predominant Negroid people, about 70% of Africans. In southern Africa, there is a concentration of Khoisan peoples, San (Bushmen) and Khoikhoi (Hottentots). The Pygmies are concentrated on the Congo River Basin and Tanzania. Grouped mainly in southern Africa, living five million whites of European origin.
In the mid-1980s, the total population was estimated at 550 million, equivalent to 11% of the world. The average population density, about 18 inhabitants / km 2, includes large desert areas that are virtually uninhabited. When we calculate the density of productive land, the density increases up to 139 inhabitants / km 2. The most densely populated areas are the northern and western coasts, the basins of major rivers and the eastern plateau.
The birth rate is 46%. The mortality was 17%. The population grows annually by 2.9% and half are 15 years of age or less. The majority of the population remains rural, and only one-fifth lives in cities with over 20,000 inhabitants. Urban growth has greatly increased from the 1950s. The northern zone is the most urbanized.
In Africa, speaking to over a thousand different languages. In addition to Arabic, the most spoken are Swahili and Hausa. The main language groups or families are the Congolese cordofana, the Nilo-Saharan, the Camit african-Semitic or Asiatic and Khoisan languages. See African Languages.
Christianity, the most popular religion, and Islam are major religions. Approximately 15% of people of African or local practice animist religions. See Religion.
Much of the African cultural activity focuses on family and ethnic group. With the intensification of nationalism, the African traditional culture has recently had a major resurgence. See African literature.
Economy
Most of the Africans are traditionally farmers and shepherds. The European colonization increased foreign demand for certain agricultural products and minerals. To meet it, were built communications systems were introduced to European crops and technology and has developed into a modern economic system of trade, which continues to coexist with subsistence economy.
Although about 60% of all cultivated land is occupied by subsistence agriculture, Africa produces and exports more than half of world production of cocoa, cassava, cloves and pita. The farms and plantations, properties located in Europe and Eastern and Southern Africa, producing citrus, tobacco and other food products intended for export. Outside the forest areas, farming is practiced extensively, but rarely for commercial purposes.
Although one quarter of the African territory is covered by forests, much of the wood only has value as fuel. Gabon is the largest producer okoumé, a derivative of wood used in the preparation of plywood (wood veneer). Ivory Coast, Liberia, Ghana and Nigeria are major exporters of hardwood. The inland fishing is concentrated in the Rift Valley lakes. Sea fishing, which is very widespread and focused on local consumption, has become important commercial in Morocco, Namibia and South Africa
Mining represents the highest revenue among the products exported. The industries of mineral extraction are the most developed sector in much of the African economy. Africa accounts for about one-third of world production of uranium, 20% of world reserves of copper, cobalt and 90% of three-quarters of the world's gold. Furthermore, Sierra Leone has the largest known reserves of titanium. The mines of South Africa and Zaire produce almost all of the gems and industrial diamonds in the world. The bulk of the mineral wealth is exploited by large multinational companies.
The nation's most industrialized South Africa, although there have already been deployed remarkable industrial centers in Zimbabwe, Egypt and Algeria. In much of Africa, the manufacture is limited to the manufacture or assemble consumer goods.
History
There are approximately 5 million years, a type of hominid lived in the southern and eastern Africa. There are about 1.5 million years ago, the hominids evolved into more advanced forms: Homo habilis and Homo erectus. The first African man, Homo sapiens, dates from more than 200,000 years (see Hominization). The Negroid population, which dominated the domestication of animals and agriculture, drove the Bushmen groups for the most inhospitable areas. In the first millennium BC, the Bantu people, one of the dominant groups, began a migration that lasted 2,000 years and most of the populated central and southern Africa.
The first great African civilization began in the Nile Valley around 5000 BC The kingdom of Egypt was developed and influenced the African and Mediterranean societies for thousands of years.
Between the end of the third century BC and early first century, Rome conquered Egypt, Carthage and other areas of northern Africa. The empire was divided into two parts in the fourth century. All territories west of Libya continued to belong to the Western Empire, ruled by Rome, while the territories east, including Egypt, have become part of the Byzantine Empire, under the command of Constantinople. In the fifth century, the Vandals conquered much of North Africa and ruled until the sixth century, when they were defeated by Byzantine forces and the area was absorbed by the Eastern Empire. The Islamic armies invaded Africa in 623, after the death of Muhammad, and quickly overcame the resistance in Byzantine Egypt.
From their bases in Egypt, the Arabs invaded the Berber kingdoms of the west. While the Berbers of the coastal converted to Islam, many others retreated to the Atlas mountains and the interior of the Sahara.
The Ottoman Turks conquered Egypt in 1517 and during the next 50 years established an apparent control over the North African coast. Real power, however, remained in the hands of the Mamelukes who ruled Egypt until being defeated by Napoleon in 1798.
In West Africa, came a series of kingdoms of the black population whose economic base was in control of trade routes transarianas. See Kingdom of Ghana, Mali and Songhai Empire. To the east of Songhai, between the River Niger and Lake Chad, arose the Hausa city-states and the empire of Kanem-Bornu. It seems that Islam was introduced in the Hausa kingdoms in the fourteenth century, from Kanem-Bornu.
The first documents the history of eastern Africa, which appear in the tour of the Sea of Eritrea (c. 100), describe the commercial life of the region and its ties with the world outside Africa. Indonesian immigrants reached Madagascar during the first millennium with new food products, especially bananas, which was immediately introduced into the continent. Bantu-speaking peoples, who settled in the interior, formed tribal kingdoms and absorbed the Bushmen and Nilotic peoples who occupied the areas interlacustres, inland. The Arab settlers occupied the coast and established trading towns. In the thirteenth century, were created some notable city-states, facing the sea, although its political impact on the peoples of the interior has been minimal until the nineteenth century.
The first sustained effort of the Europeans with respect to Africa only came from Don Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal. After 1434, numerous expeditions were organized, and from 1497 to 1498, Vasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached India.
The Portuguese trade attracted European commercial rivals, who in the sixteenth century created their own enclaves and outposts to capture the existing trade. With the increase of the slave trade to the Americas, wars for control of African trade became more intense. During the four centuries of slave trade, untold numbers of Africans were victims of this trade in human lives (see Slavery). The first important kingdom that has benefited from the slave trade was Benin. At the end of the seventeenth century, was replaced by the kingdoms of Dahomey and Oio. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Ashanti people became the greatest power in West Africa.
The desire to end the British slave trade was based on the prospects of reorganizing the African trade with a view to other exports, increasing missionary activity and impose the jurisdiction of the British Government on properties that had belonged to British merchants. These actions led him to assume the sovereignty of certain African territories.
In the late eighteenth century, scientific interest and the pursuit of new markets began to stimulate an era of farms, on which stand figures like James Bruce, Mungo Park, Heinrich Barth, David Livingstone, John Speke Haning, James Augustus Grant and Samuel White Baker. The explorers followed, or in some cases preceded the Christian missionaries and later the European traders.
At the Berlin Conference (1884-1885), the powers defined their zones of influence and Africa was practically divided between them. See Imperialism.
World War II psychologically and physically weakened the colonial powers. The seesaw of international power tipped to the United States and the Soviet Union, two anti-colonial states. In the '50s, the example of the new independent nations from other continents, the activities of revolutionary movements and effectiveness of charismatic leaders sped up the process of independence. In the late '70s, almost all of Africa had become independent.
Young African states face several basic problems such as economic development, neocolonialism and the inability to make themselves heard in international affairs. Most African states is considered part of the Third World.
African languages, indigenous languages of Africa. Are spoken in Africa over a thousand different languages. With the exception of Arabic, which exceeds the continent, the languages most spoken are Swahili and Hausa who have each had more than ten million speakers. Few have written literary documents, although most provide extensive tradition of oral testimonies.
Language classification
Classified into four major families: Camit-african-Semitic or Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan Africa, Khoi-san and Niger-Kordofan. Called family of languages, language group coming from a common trunk. Families are divided into classes consisting of cognate languages and inter-related.
Family Camit-Semitic
Constitutes the most important group. The Arab, the most important branch is the most spoken language in the northern mainland and the Republic of Sudan Aramaic, spoken by five million people, is the official language of Ethiopia. Among the Semitic languages spoken in North Africa, are Tigre and Tigrinya of Eritrea.
The branch Berber is spoken by almost the entire population of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, as well as the groups spread throughout North Africa. The Cushitic branch is located in Ethiopia, Somalia, the Red Sea coast and includes the orominga and Somali. The ancient Egyptian, now childless among living languages, it was this same family (see Coptic language). The Chadic branch extends to northern Nigeria and most important is the Hausa language.
Nilo-Saharan family
It is spoken over a territory that stretches along the banks of the River Niger to Ethiopia through the valley of the Upper Nile and parts of Uganda and Kenya. The westernmost member of this family is Songhai, spoken in much of the Upper Niger, Mali and Niger. The Saharan branch includes the languages of northern Nigeria, the Republic of Chad and Libya in some settlements. The Chad-Nile branch has a million speakers in Sudan, northern Chad, part of Uganda and Kenya, and the northwest boundary of the Congo. Nubian languages are located on the southern border of Egypt, along the upper Nile.
Family Khoi-san
It is formed by the languages that have fewer speakers, no more than a hundred thousand in the whole continent. Languages are spoken by people of southern Africa, the San and the Kikuyu. The most talked about is the nama. To the northwest of Tanzania there are two languages of the same family, the Sandawe and Hadza.
Family Niger-Kordofan
Includes two subfamilies: the Kordofan and Niger-Congo. The first covers about thirty languages and is located in a small area in southern Sudan, the Nuba Mountains. The Niger-Congo is spread over almost the entire continent south of the Sahara desert.
As a result of migration, the Niger-Congo subfamily fragmented into several branches for over 5,000 years. The Bantu languages belong to a branch of this subfamily and the best known are the Zulu of South Africa, the Swahili and Sukuma of Tanzania and Rwanda in Luanda. Currently, it begins to be known literary writers of the Bantu languages.
Other language families
Families Indo-European and Malayo-Polynesian languages are also present in Africa. In the Indo-European family belong to the Afrikaans and English, languages of the Republic of South Africa and Zimbabwe, the French spoken in the former French African colonies, and Spanish Guinea and the Spanish provinces of Ceuta and Melilla. The Malagasy language of Madagascar, belongs to the Malayo-Polynesian family.
