Transcript 2-28 Warm-up - SanabriaWorldGeography

Intro to Africa
Physical Geography
Location:
 centered on Equator (from
35N to 35S)
Size:
 Second largest, and second
most populous continent
 Three times the size of the
U.S.
 20% of the Earth’s land
surface.
Physical Geography



Tropical climate along the equator and in the south.
Sahara desert (world’s largest) dominates the north.
Years of drought are becoming more common.
Religion in Africa



Christianity: (central, southern and eastern Africa)
Islam: (Northern and western Africa)
African traditional religions dispersed throughout
the continent
Human History

Africa is the birthplace of early humans (homo erectus) around 2 million years ago.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Sub-Saharan Africa




809 million people live in Sub-Saharan Africa
It has a growth rate of 2.5% per year
It contains several of the world’s fastest-growing
economies
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to some of the world’s
richest deposits of oil, gold, platinum, copper, and
other strategic minerals
The Geographic Setting

Physical Patterns
- Mount Kilimanjaro (19,324 feet [5890 meters]
high)
- Mount Kenya (17,057 feet [5199 meters] high)
- Both have permanent ice and snow, but their
features have shrunk dramatically due to climate
change
Landscape




The surface is like a raised platform or plateau,
bordered by coastal lowlands
The platform slopes downward to the north, with
several high peaks to the southeast and lower
areas to the northwest
Steep escarpments (long cliffs) between plateau
and coast have hindered connection to the outside
world
It continues to break apart along its eastern flank,
leaving the Red Sea; these rifts continue to break
Africa apart (Great Rift Valley)
Bandiagara Escarpment –
Mali
Home of the indigenous Dogon tribe
More escarpments!
Blyde River Canyon –
South Africa
Climate and Vegetation




Sub-Saharan Africa has a tropical climate with an
average temperature above 64oF (18oC); has
provided good agriculture for thousands of years
Most rain comes from the intertropical
convergence zone (ITCZ), a band of atmospheric
currents that circle the globe around the equator
ITCZ brings rain north to the Sahel, an area where
steppe and savannah grasses grow
The Horn of Africa is one of the driest places on
the continent due to wind patterns, which greatly
affect this region
Vegetation - Broadleaf
Evergreen Forest
Congo Basin An area of major rain forests
centered on the equator in
central Africa.
Tropical Wet Climate/ Broadleaf Evergreen Vegetation Gabon
Tropical grassland / Found in arid, semiarid, and
tropical wet/dry climates
“Big Game Country” “Savanna”
*Temperate grassland has shorter grasses,
like the prairies and plains of N/S America
Desert Scrub Vegetation / Arid and
Semiarid Climate - Namibia
Desert - Libya
Chaparral Vegetation / Semiarid and
Mediterranean Climates
Small, dry plants
Intertropical Convergence Zone cloud – Mali (as seen from space)
Sub Saharan Africa
Vulnerability to Climate Change
Environmental Issues



Africans have contributed very little to greenhouse
gases
Deforestation is making significant contributions to
global climate change
Because of Africa’s poverty, the people of this
region are much less adept to deal with these issues
Deforestation and Climate Change




Deforestation is the main contributor to CO2 emissions
6 of the top 8 countries with the highest rates of
deforestation are African
Leading causes for deforestation are demand for
farmland, fuelwood, and logging
Agroforestry, the raising of economically useful trees, is
a leading contributor to taking pressure off forests for
fuelwood and construction material
Children bring water back to their home in Somalia. Drought,
poverty and political instability come together in Somalia to
create extremely high vulnerability.
Sub Saharan Africa
Food Production and Water Resources
SSA - Food Production and Water
Resources
Review of Terms:
 Subsistence Agriculture - provides food for only the
farmer’s family; the surplus is sold
 Mixed Agriculture - raising a wide array of crops
and a few animals as livestock
 Commercial agriculture - crops grown specifically to
be sold rather than for family food
Recent shifting to commercial agriculture is
putting a strain on the environment
SSA - Food Production and Water
Resources


Africans had previously used shifting cultivation, in
which forests are cleared and cultivated for just 3
years and left to regrow
Commercial agriculture puts a strain on soil and
water because forests have to be permanently
converted to farms
 causes
crops to fail, calling for the use of chemical
fertilizers to help crop production, which ultimately
pollutes the land
Tea harvested for export in Kenya. Commercial crops can
increase the resilience of farmers to climate change by
providing cash to buy food if necessary, but often requires
expensive and polluting fertilizers.
Climate change has forced many to look to
irrigation as a stable water source.
Ex. Mali and Niger want to dam the
Niger River for irrigation projects
that will help feed 26 million people
Small hand and foot pumps can be
used to pump water from rivers or
ponds to bring water directly to
individual plants that need it.
These pumps are cheaper than dams
and they also protect against the
ecological disruption of larger
projects
A farmer in Senegal uses a footpowered pump.
Vulnerability to Global Climate Change
Desertification - process which turns productive into nonproductive desert as a result of poor land-management and
drought. Process is self-reinforcing…
 Occurs mainly in semi-arid areas bordering on deserts.
Ex. In the Sahel, the desert moved 100 km southwards
between 1950 and 1975.
 Use of fences and water pumps have led to overgrazing of
large livestock
 The reduction in plant cover leads to accelerated soil erosion
by wind and water. Ex. South Africa losing approximately 300400 million tons of topsoil every year.
 As vegetation cover and soil layer are reduced, rain drop
impact and run-off increases.
Wildlife and Climate Change




25 to 40% of species in Africa’s national parks may
become endangered due to climate change
Farmers will often hunt wild game (bushmeat) as
part of their food and income
If climate change diminishes crops, farmers will
become more dependent on bushmeat as a source
of income
Ecotourism is helping combat poaching by creating
jobs and money based on the survival of the natural
wildlife
The annual wildebeest
migration in Tanzania and
Kenya.
Sub Saharan Africa
Human Patterns Over Time
Early Agriculture, Industry, and Trade in
Africa



People began to cultivate as early as 7,000 years
ago
Agriculture was brought south to equatorial Africa
about 2,500 years ago and to southern Africa
about 1,500 years ago
Trade routes spanned all of Africa, extending north
to Egypt and Rome, and east to India and China
Early Agriculture, Industry, and Trade in
Africa

The Great Zimbabwe Empire - By 700 C.E. a
remarkable civilization with advanced agriculture,
iron production, and gold-mining technologies
emerged in what is now Zimbabwe
 It

collapsed around 1500 for reasons unknown
Great empires developed in the forests and
savannas of the western Sahel
- Ghana empire (700-1000 C.E.)
- Mali Empire (1250-1600 C.E.)
Europeans and the African Slave Trade


African history shifted dramatically in the mid1400s, when Portuguese sailing ships began to
appear off Africa’s west coast
The names given to stretches of this coast
reflected their interest in Africa’s resources
- The Gold Coast
- The Ivory Coast
- The Pepper Coast
- The Slave Coast
Europeans and the African Slave Trade



By the 1530s the Portuguese created a more brutal
and widespread African slave trade than any
before it with the Americas
Later the slave trade was taken over by the British,
Dutch, and French
The African slaves became part of an elaborate
production system that supplied the raw materials
and money that fueled Europe’s Industrial Revolution
Europeans and the African Slave Trade



Slavery still exists in Africa today, mostly in the
Sahel, where slavery was officially made illegal
only recently
Slaves often work as domestic servants or as
prostitutes, and they are increasingly used in
commercial agriculture, mining, and war
The number of current slaves is estimated from
several million to 10 million
Slaves collect water at a well in western Niger. Though
slavery was made a criminal offense in Niger in 2003, it
remains deeply embedded in society.
The Scramble to Colonize Africa



The European slave trade fell apart in the midnineteenth century
European countries competed avidly for territories
and their resources, and by World War I only
Liberia and Ethiopia were still independent
Africa was formally partitioned in 1884 at the
Berlin Conference, and these boundaries are some
of the root causes of conflict today
The Aftermath of Independence


European colonialism in Africa lasted from roughly
the 1810s to the 1960s
Ghana was the first sub-Saharan African state to
gain its independence, with Eritrea being the last in
1993
The Aftermath of Independence



Today independent governments continue to mimic
colonial policies that distance them from their
citizens
Abuse of power stifles individual initiative, civil
society, and entrepreneurialism (Totalitarianism)
Democracy, where it exists, is often weak
Sub Saharan Africa
Current Geographic Issues
Democratization and Conflict

Democratic and economic progress has been held
back by frequent civil wars that are the legacy of
colonial era policies of “divide and rule” - The
deliberate intensification of divisions and conflicts
by European colonial powers
 To
make it hard for Africans to unite and overthrow their
foreign rulers, the borders of the African colonies were
designed so that different (sometimes hostile) groups would
be put together under the same jurisdiction
Colonial governors
could seem impartial
with no ethnic loyalties
After independence,
African officials
inevitably belonged to
one local ethnic group
or another.
Traditions for resolving
ethnic conflict had
been erased during
the colonial era
Demonstrators attack
a city bus in Kenya
after their candidate
lost an election that
was rigged.
Supporters of Joseph Kabila in
Kinshasa, Congo. Irregularities
in the election led to mistrust of
the govt and post-election
violence leaving 1 million
homeless
Shelves go bare in
Zimbabwe during an
economic crisis. Fraudulent
elections in 2008
discouraged foreign aid
donors from helping.
Troops guard ballot boxes in
Kenya in 2008.
Genocidal Violence




Rwanda, 1994 - 800,000 killed
Darfur region of Sudan, 2003 – 400,000 killed,
2.5million displaced
Ethiopia, 2004 – uniformed Ethiopian soldiers killed
400 members of the Anuak tribe
DRC, 1885-1908 – population decreased by 10
million people
 Ongoing
ethnic violence since 1996 has killed 5.6
million people
Conflicts Create Refugees



This region has 28% of world’s refugee population
Women and children make up ¾ of the refugee
population because adult men who would be
refugees are either combatants, jailed, or dead.
Life in refugee camps is difficult, but the presence
of these camps burden the areas that host them.
 Their
own development is complicated by the arrival of
so many people who must be fed, sheltered, and given
health care.
Refugee camp in Somalia