Sub-Saharan Africa: Post-Independence Starting in the late 1950s, Sub-Saharan Africans intensified the struggle for independence from their European colonizers, and the white rulers. So came to Sub-Saharan Africa the process known as decolonization. Following World War II, the region’s European rulers came to realization that their control over the colonies could not continue as usual. Two main forces emerged to challenge the European domination of Africans. First, challenges came from African nationalists who wanted something so simple yet so difficult to realize: Africa for Africans. Second, after World War II, which was framed as epic battle against undemocratic tyranny of totalitarianism, Africans began to challenge why the allies could not uphold the same democratic values in Africa. To many African nationalists, it was an example of supreme irony that nations that defeated Nazism and Fascism were doing something Hitler’s Germany wanted to do in Europe, conquest and exploitation. (The above is a picture of the founding members of the anti-apartheid organization later became African National Congress.) They obviously felt justified in resisting European colonization more aggressively after World War II, which, by the way, destroyed and weakened European societies. This decolonization process was relatively peaceful in countries like Kenya, Tanzania, and Ivory Coast. However, independence did not come easily in southern part of Africa. In Rhodesia, a formal British colony, 250,000 white residents who owned the country’s farmlands refused to let their power and domination pass away peacefully. Instead of accepting the black majority rule, they declared Rhodesia independent as a white-supremacist state. The blacks in turn declared war against the white rulers and the civil war continued until 1975 when the Rhodesian government capitulated. So came the birth of Zimbabwe, but at a heavy human and material cost. Something similar happened in Angola and Mozambique, both Portuguese colonies. When Lisbon refused to grant independence to these countries, people of Angola and Mozambique turned to guerrilla warfare. The war in Angola became even more violent, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union turned that civil war into a theater of their own superpower competition. The Marxist groups within guerrilla movement, supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba, eventually succeeded in forcing Portugal to leave Angola and Mozambique, and setup leftist governments. The U.S. and South Africa perceived the leftist governments in Angola and Mozambique as thereat to their interests and financed guerrilla forces seeking to topple the Marxist government of Angola and Mozambique. The fighting continued well into the 1980s. The war ended at least in Mozambique due in large part to the Soviet Union and the U.S. losing interest in it following the end of the cold war. In Angola, low intensity war drags on, however. .

1. Sub-Saharan Africa: Post-Independence
Starting in the late 1950s, Sub-Saharan Africans intensified the
struggle for independence from their European colonizers, and
the
white rulers. So came to Sub-Saharan Africa the process known
as
decolonization. Following World War II, the region’s European
rulers
came to realization that their control over the colonies could not
continue as usual. Two main forces emerged to challenge the
European domination of Africans. First, challenges came from
African nationalists who wanted something so simple yet so
difficult
to realize: Africa for Africans. Second, after World War II,
which was
framed as epic battle against undemocratic tyranny of
totalitarianism, Africans began to challenge why the allies could
not
uphold the same democratic values in Africa. To many African
nationalists, it was an example of supreme irony that nations
that
defeated Nazism and Fascism were doing something Hitler’s
Germany wanted to do in Europe, conquest and exploitation.
(The
above is a picture of the founding members of the anti-apartheid
organization later became African National Congress.) They
obviously felt justified in resisting European colonization more

2. aggressively after World War II, which, by the way, destroyed
and
weakened European societies.
This decolonization process was relatively peaceful in countries
like Kenya, Tanzania, and Ivory Coast. However, independence
did
not come easily in southern part of Africa. In Rhodesia, a
formal British colony, 250,000 white
residents who owned the country’s farmlands refused to let their
power and domination pass away
peacefully. Instead of accepting the black majority rule, they
declared Rhodesia independent as a white-supremacist state.
The blacks in turn declared war against the white rulers and
the civil war continued until 1975 when the Rhodesian
government capitulated. So came the birth of Zimbabwe, but
at a heavy human and material cost.
Something similar happened in Angola and Mozambique,
both Portuguese colonies. When Lisbon refused to grant
independence to these countries, people of Angola and
Mozambique turned to guerrilla warfare. The war in Angola
became even more violent, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union
turned that civil war into a theater
of their own superpower competition. The Marxist groups
within guerrilla movement, supported by the Soviet Union and
Cuba,
eventually succeeded in forcing Portugal to leave Angola and
Mozambique, and setup leftist governments. The U.S. and South
Africa
perceived the leftist governments in Angola and Mozambique as

3. thereat to their interests and financed guerrilla forces seeking to
topple the Marxist government of Angola and Mozambique. The
fighting continued
well into the 1980s. The war ended at least in Mozambique due
in large part to the
Soviet Union and the U.S. losing interest in it following the end
of the cold war. In
Angola, low intensity war drags on, however. In any event, as
one geographer has
noted, “the countryside in both states is now so heavily riddled
with landmines that it
can hardly be used.” Probably the most tragic aspect of Sub-
Saharan Africa’s many
conflicts is wide use of the so-called “boy soldiers,” as shown
in the above pictures.)
Another example of turbulent decolonization process took place
in the Republic of
South Africa. In the 1960s, the black majority launched an
organized opposition to
apartheid, system of racial segregation and discrimination that
relegated the black
majority to the life in the impoverished and miserable ghettoes
called townships. (As shown in the picture to your left, even the
bridges were segregated.) From there, blacks emerged in the
morning to enter white residential areas to work there. They, of
course,
came back to their shantytowns after work. The South African
government met this challenge by throwing anti-Apartheid
activists
into jail. The most popular among the imprisoned leaders of
anti-
apartheid struggle was Nelson Mandela who had spent 27 years
of his

4. life in incarceration. As it is said, all things come to pass, and
apartheid
was no exception. This inhumane system of race control and
subjugation came under increasing criticism from other
countries. Also
the angry young blacks who had, literally, nothing to live for
therefore,
nothing to lose became increasing violent in their struggle
against
apartheid. In 1994, the white minority rule finally ended when
Nelson
Mandela, who was first released from his prison term, was
elected
president of the Republic of South Africa. (Picture here shows
president
Mandel in his old jail cell.) The presidency of Mandela and his
successor,
Thabo Mbeki, have not shed all of the legacies of South
Africa’s racist
past. With whites still dominating economic life of the country,
and
blacks feeling the improvement in their lives too slow and
insignificant,
South Africa has a long way to go in bridging the gap that still
separates black and white life.
One of the legacies of the colonization of Sub-Saharan Africa
by Europeans that has been a cause of underdevelopment is
social
fragmentation. Sub-Saharan Africa, without European
colonization, already is a multi-linguistic, ethnic, and cultural
society. Just in
terms of language there are 1,000 different languages spoken in
Africa. Also, in Africa, there has been a strong tradition
clanocracy,
rule by clan (or tribal) authorities. European colonizer worsened

5. this problem of fragmentation by imposing arbitrary division
and
union of people. When European drew lines separating their
colonies, Africa’s clan/ethnic Pandora’s box was opened. As
one
geographer writes, “All over Africa, different ethnic groups
found themselves forced into the same state with peoples of
disparate,
linguistic and religious backgrounds, many of whom had
recently been their enemies. At the same time, a number of
the larger ethnic groups of the region found their territories
split between two or more countries.” The outcome of this
particular legacy of western colonization has been an
unending series of postcolonial conflicts that generated
millions of refugees and displaced persons, not to speak of
disruptions to the daily lives of people and economic
production.
This environment of division and conflict is exacerbated by the
tendency on the part off European rulers to pit competing
ethnic and religious groups against each other. This particular
method of colonial rule is commonly called “divide and
conquest (or rule).” One example is Rwanda. In this country,
there are two competing ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi, which
once constituted separate kingdoms. During Rwanda’s colonial
rule under first Germans and later Belgians, Tutsis were favored
against Hutu. After independence, Hutus secured upper hand in
Rwandan society and repressed Tutsi. In 1994, ethnic violence
broke
out between the two groups, leading to waves of mass slaughter.
The conflict also caused million of refugees (above) to flee to

6. neighboring countries that were destabilized by infusion of the
refugees. Unity is a precious commodity in Africa. By late
1990s,
there were estimated 4 million refugees in Africa.
Sub-Saharan Africa’s poverty is also a product of
mismanagement and
corruption. After their independence, Sub-Saharan African
countries sought
to build their economy by exporting mineral and agricultural
products. The
price of these products in international markets remained
relatively high back
then, therefore, enabling African countries to earn foreign
exchange and
attract foreign investment. The trouble came when “the
relatively buoyant
economies of 1960s and early 1970s were to disappear in the
1980s as most
commodity prices began to decline.” Thereafter, “sizable
foreign debt began
to weigh down many Sub-Saharan countries. By the end of the
1980s most of
the region entered a virtual
economic tailspin.”
Economic failures were also
engendered by the misguided developmental policy of focusing
on heavy
industries, which made the country look industrially powerful
and advanced, but
whose products were not competitive in the global market. In
addition, many
countries that survived on agricultural export focused on cash
crops that could be
sold in the international market while neglecting food

7. production. When natural
calamities such as draught hit, people did not have enough to
eat. (Here you are
looking at two faces of underdevelopment in Sub-Saharan
Africa.) Then there is
the infamous problem of corruption, which is another deadly
blow to Sub-Saharan
Africa’s developmental potential. One particularly harsh critic
notes,
“In many cases inefficient and often corrupt government
ministries took over large segments of the economy….With
millions
of dollars in loans and aid pouring into the region, officials at
various levels were tempted to skim from the top. African
states…were dubbed kleptocracies. A kleptocracy is a state
where corruption is so institutionalized that politicians and
government bureaucrats siphon off a huge percentage of
the country’s wealth.”
(Les Rowntree, et al, Diversity Amid Globalization)
Corruption and mismanagement in African countries is in many
cases a product of what geographers call “Big Man” politics. In
other words, in many Sub-Saharan countries, “presidents, both
military and civilian, grabbed onto the reigns of power and
refused to let go. Military governments, one-party states, and
presidents-for-life became the norm” Some of these Big Man
leaders, literally and figuratively, are know for their use of
violence, and pilfering of national coffers. (One of the most
well
known “Big Man” of Africa is Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe
whose
legacies are caricatured here to the right.)

8. Nigeria is a typical example of how a resource-rich country
suffers from underdevelopment because of mismanagement,
corruption,
dictatorship, and colonial imprints. (Nigeria by the way
produces about three percent of the
worldwide petroleum production.) Yet Nigeria’s GNP per capita
is $300. When has gone wrong?
This is what our textbook argues.
“But before long Nigeria’s oil wealth brought more bust than
boom. Misguided development plans
now focused on grand, ill-founded industrial schemes and costly
luxuries such as a national
airline;…the agriculture fell into neglect. Worse, poor
management, corruption, outright theft of
oil revenues during military misrule, and excessive borrowing
against future oil income led to
economic disaster. The country’s infrastructure
collapsed….Basic [public] services broke down.”
As if these problems are not enough, Sub-Saharan Africa suffers
from diseases that afflict and
claim the lives of a large number of people. (There are three
types of disease, endemic, epidemic,
and pandemic, in the order of how large a population is
afflicted.) Africa’s natural environment
characterized by high temperatures and humidity provides
breeding grounds for organisms that
carry disease. Diseases that afflict a large number of Africans
include trypanosomiasis, better known as African sleeping
sickness and
malaria. Sub-Saharan Africa’s disease problem is exacerbated

9. by wide use of untreated water for drinking and cooking.
(Orphans of
Africa to your left.)
Recently, however, AIDS (Acquired Immune Deficiency
Syndrome) has become the main epidemic
of Sub-Saharan Africa. According to a U.N. report, of the 32
million people worldwide who are
known to be infected by HIV that causes AIDS, 27 million live
in 34 tropical African countries. In
several tropical African countries, between 20 to 25 percent of
the entire population is inflicted
with HIV. There have been nearly 12 million AIDS deaths in
Africa, quarter which are children.
There are 11 million children in Sub Saharan Africa orphaned
by AIDS. Experts believe that the
reasons for such a rapid spread of the disease is due to lack of
funding for education for safe sex
and medical treatment, as well as cultural resistance to using
contraceptives among the male
population. (Mother and child victims
of AIDS is shown to the right.)
In conclusion, Sub-Saharan Africa is
still suffering from overwhelming array
of problems: environmental challenges,
historical exploitation by Europeans
including slave trade, postcolonial
conflicts exacerbated by superpower
rivalry in Africa, and mismanagement of natural resources by
corrupt and
dictatorial leaders, just to mention the big ones. However, that
does not
mean that it is hopeless. It still is the largest reservoir of natural
resources. Could you suggest ways in which Sub-Saharan

10. African
countries could expedite their economic and social
developments? In
other words, how could Africa smile as brightly as these
children here? That question truly is the challenge of our time.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonization and Exploitation
In my previous lecture on Sub-Saharan Africa’s
underdevelopment, I talked about the physiographical
challenges. However, Sub-
Saharan Africa’s soil and climate cannot be the only source of
the region’s poverty
and other sufferings. We must turn to the history of colonization
and exploitation of
Sub-Saharan Africa by European colonizers, going back to the
15
th
century.
Sub-Saharan Africa is the cradle of humanity and home to
ancient civilizations. In
the current day Mali and Sudan, great ancient civilizations
sprung up and flourished.
In West Africa, there is a country named Ghana, another home
to ancient civilization.
Ghana means, a land of gold. To you right is the ruins of Great

11. Zimbabwe in the
eastern cost of Africa where it is clear that once there stood a
majestic city. (You
want to know more about the ancient African civilizations?
Click right here.
In the 15
th
century the Portuguese merchants arrived in the west coast of
Africa and
established trading posts. Portuguese merchants shipped out of
Africa mostly gold
and silver, but some slaves. In the following century, other
Europeans, including the
British, Dutch and French arrived in Africa and intensified
trading in gold and ivory,
as well as slaves that the Portuguese had first exported out of
Africa in much smaller
scale.
There is a good reason why the trading in human cargo became
the mainstay of
European commerce in Africa. Unlike in Americas, Europeans
failed to establish
permanent
immigrant settlements. The inhospitable and disease prone
climate, for one, discouraged the influx of Europeans settling to
live in Africa for generations to come.
Also, constant battles between rival clans and nations produced
prisoners of war that were sold to European merchants by their
captors. This is the reason why some argue that slave trade was
essentially African-initiated tragedy. In any event, Europeans,

12. Arabs, and collaborating Africans forced perhaps thirty million
persons out of their homeland in bondage.
http://www.pbs.org/wonders/index.html
In the 19
th
century, Europeans’ imperial conquest intensified. Many
factors contributed to what was later called “Scramble for
Africa.” Leading to European penetration into inland regions
where white
settlers occupied the lands and converted them into farms and
plantation,
thereby making European exploitation more permanent. First,
the discovery
and wide use of quinine, the anti-malaria drug that is quiet
effective when
taken daily. This allowed Europeans to defeat armed resistance
from
Africans. Second, the invention of rapid firing machines gun
and other
modern weapons overwhelmed Africans who had successfully
repelled
European military encroachments in the past. There was also a
cultural
force that energized European expansion into Africa. Europeans
had at this
point convinced themselves that colonization is a natural
manifestation of
the law of nature: the survival of the fittest. In other words,
according to
Charles Darwin’s observation, the fittest (Europeans) had
natural right to

13. conquer the not-fitting (Africans). In the process, as Darwin
argued, the
unfitting will would learn (or struggle) to be more fit, in the
image of
Europeans. In the final analysis, they felt that colonization was
ultimately
their mission of civilizing the Africans,
therefore, making them more fit to survive.
To do this, one British poet wrote was the
“White Men’s Burden.” Oh well…. (Mr. Darwin to your right.)
In 1884, European powers finally got together in Berlin,
Germany, and partitioned Sub-Saharan Africa
into their respective colonies and spheres of influence. As one
student of the history of European
imperialism wrote, “Sub-Saharan Africa was carved up and
traded like properties in a game of
Monopoly.” In many cases, drawing of boundaries was arbitrary
at best. Sometimes people of a
single community was divided into two or more entities, for no
other reason than that what the
European colonial masters had agreed on.
Also, rival groups were forced to live in the same colony,
thereby, sowing the potential for clan or
sectarian conflict. A geographer writes that such an arbitrary
partition of Africa by the Europeans left
a “legacy of political fragmentation that could neither be
eliminated nor made to operate
satisfactorily….African politico-geographical map is thus a
permanent liability that resulted from…ignorant, greedy
acquisitiveness…search for minerals and markets” by European
colonizers. (I will have more to say about fragmentation of
Africa and

14. its consequences in the following lecture.) Interestingly,
Liberia, a nation established by freed
African slaves in North America, and Ethiopia were spared from
colonization. However, by 1900,
rest of Sub-Saharan Africa was colonized completely by
European powers.
Down in the south, the Dutch settlers, who were known as
Afrikaners, established two white
republics after battling the African tribes, namely the famously
resistant and resilient Zulus, with
the help of the British armed forces. These Afrikaner republics
were sitting on one of the richest
mineral basins in the world. Lured by these rich mineral
deposits and fertile land of southern
Africa, Great Britain moved to colonize the domain and
imposed restrictions on the Afrikaners of
the Dutch origin.
The Boers, as Afrikaners were known, rebelled
and there ensured a brutal guerrilla war
known as the Boer War, which was met by
equally violent counter insurgency by the
British. (To your left is a rather heroic image
of the British soldiers in the Boer War.) By
1905 the Boers, or Afrikaners relented to the British rule, but
the Afrikaners
sought to reinforce their rule over the black majority by
formalizing and
systematizing policy of racial segregation and separation known
as apartheid, or
“separateness.”
A partheid had three levels of discriminatory measures designed
to insure white

15. supremacy. First, segregation of public facilities -- toilets,
roads, buses, water
fountains and more -- as was the case in America’s own Jim
Crow. Second,
dividing of cities and towns into white and non-white
residential areas. Third, and most grand of the three, the
creation of
“homelands” for Africans who became legally independent
nations in the likeness of American Native reservations in the
U.S. These
homeland for blacks were “rural, overcrowded, and on marginal
land.” Millions of blacks were forcibly relocated to these
miserable
places.
Apartheid will last nearly a century, in the process pushing the
lives of the black
majority of South African into poverty, degradation, and anger,
as well as armed
resistance. At the same time, British imported cheap South
Asian laborers (from the
Indian Subcontinent) into South Africa who were called
“colored,” the racial
category right above the blacks. In so doing, British authorities
had sown the seed of
another tension, this time between blacks and decedents of
South Asian, mostly
merchants by profession, whom blacks consider as an exploiting
class.
One of the most bizarre cases of exploitation of Africans by
European colonizers was
the Congo Free State under the rule of Leopold II, the king of

16. Belgians. Beginning in
the 1880s, Leopold, who held the colony almost as his private
property, cultivated
natural rubber plantation in the Congo Free State. He imposed
rubber quota, which
meant that individuals had to collect certain amount of rubber.
People who could
not meet the quota, were punishable by death. So, what
happened was that
enforcers of Leopold’s rules went out to the village and, instead
of killing those who
had failed to collect enough rubber, which is unsavory thing to
do, they cut their
hands as a proof that they were actually killed. I guess that was
considered more
humane than killing the villagers. Here is one testimony of this
cruel and bizarre
practice:
The baskets of severed hands, set down at the feet of the
European post commanders, became the symbol of the Congo
Free State. ...
The collection of hands became an end in itself. Force Publique
soldiers brought them to the stations in place of rubber; they
even went
out to harvest them instead of rubber... They became a sort of
currency. They came to be used to make up for shortfalls in
rubber quotas,
to replace... the people who were demanded for the forced
labour gangs; and the Force Publiquesoldiers were paid their
bonuses on the
basis of how many hands they collected.
What benefits did Africa offer to European colonizers and white

17. settlers?
Plenty. The 19
th
century was a time when Europe was going through the
Industrial Revolution, and Sub-Saharan African colonies
provided
industrialized countries of Europe with cheap natural resources,
agricultural products, labor, markets, and investment
opportunities, for
their colonizers’ economic development.
Let us look at a couple of examples. In terms of natural
resources, Africa
has most of everything, including precious metals to diamond,
and
crude oil. Agriculturally, lush plains of east Africa offer such
cash crops
as coffee, tea, rubber, palm oil, peanuts, and cotton, and more.
(Left is
is an early African gold mine, owned by European, but worked
by
Africans, as usual. To the right is a
female work in Kenya’s coffee
plantation mostly developed and owned by European settlers.)
There is another harmful effect of western colonialism in Africa
– authoritarian political tradition.
Here is how de Blij discusses this issue: “In many countries, the
elites that gained advantage and
prominence during the colonial period also have retained their
preeminence. This has led to
authoritarianism in some postcolonial African states… and to
violence and civil conflict in others.

18. Military takeovers of national governments have been a
byproduct of decolonization, and hopes for democracy in
the struggle against colonialism have too often been
dashed.” In other words, Europeans planted ugly weeds
that chock the green grass of democracy. (To your left is
the British-supported Idi Amin of Uganda who brutalized
his population for many years with his monstrosity before
being driven to exile by rebellious Ugandans.)
In the final analysis, Europeans turned Africa into a more
productive
economic base, by transforming its subsistence farming to
plantation
economy, and introducing mechanized mining in Africa. In the
process, Africa became an integral part of worldwide
capitalism.
Who benefited from this history of colonization and human and
resource exploitation? The industrialized world as a whole did.
What
about the Africans? Well, Sub-Saharan Africa stands for
poverty,
backwardness and conflict. Also, it is the most disease-stricken
place
in the world. The answer is clear; in the last two centuries,
Africans
have been the victims of their own richness of physiography.
To the left is an obvious image of how European colonial legacy
still
remains in present-day African life.
Before we move to the next lecture, I would like to suggest that

19. we
read the poem, Africa, written by Maya Angelou.
Thus she had lain
sugercane sweet
deserts her hair
golden her feet
mountains her breasts
two Niles her tears.
Thus she has lain
Black through the years.
Over the white seas
rime white and cold
brigands ungentled
icicle bold
took her young daughters
sold her strong sons
churched her with Jesus
bled her with guns.

20. Thus she has lain.
Now she is rising
remember her pain
remember the losses
her screams loud and vain
remember her riches
her history slain
now she is striding
although she has lain.
Sub-Saharan Africa: Physiography
Friends, we are going to spend some time in Sub-Saharan
Africa, three lectures altogether. There is a good reason for
that. Sub-
Saharan Africa truly is the underbelly of human civilization
because of its underdevelopment, backwardness, and its many
conflicts. I
want you to think in terms of what could be done to alleviate
the mass misery and a sense of hopelessness the people of this
continent live with. Why should we care? We live a globalized

21. world in which what happens in the farthest corners of the
world
affects the rest of the world in one way or another.
Africa south of the Sahara Desert (the picture) is a vast and
varied region,
and it is home to over 500 million people. It also is a great store
of
natural resources. Yet, when we think about this region, a
variety of
images, most of them negative, come to our mind: jungles,
deserts,
drought, famine, ruthless dictators, wars, poverty, and more.
Some of
these images are product of our being influenced by exaggerated
and
unfair portrayal of Africa in the mass media. However, we
cannot deny
the fact that it is a region that still symbolizes
underdevelopment,
backwardness, and to many, hopelessness. We are going to try
to
understand why.
Let me start with some numbers first. A Sub-Saharan African’s
life
expectancy is 47 for male and 49 for female. As a whole, this
realm’s per capita Gross National Income (GNI) is about
$1,970. Nearly
half of the people in the region survive on less than $1of
income per
day. Africans who constitute about 20 percent of worldwide
population generates 1.5 percent of the worldwide Gross
National
Product. In the last 30 years, there have been 30 wars and 80

22. coup
d’états. In the last 40 years Sub-Saharan Africa received $400
billion
in foreign assistance, but without much to show for in terms of
socio-
economic development. The map below show which areas suffer
from chronic malnutrition, food shortages, and famines.
US Agency for International Development reports the
following: “The
problem of hunger in Africa is widespread and getting worse.
The
numbers are staggering. It is estimated that one in three people
in
Africa are currently undernourished and that a third of all the
world’s
undernourished people reside in sub-Saharan Africa. According
to a
USDA study, by 2010 Africa may account for nearly two-thirds
of the
undernourished people in the world.” I can go on like this, but
let me stop here. Refer to the map below. What happened to this
continent that symbolizes richness of natural resources?
I am going to devote this lecture to physiography of Sub-
Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa’s physical environment is
beautiful, yet,
challenging. The following is how one geographer describes
Sub-Saharan Africa’s environment.
“The landscape of Sub-Saharan Africa offers a palette of intense

23. colors: deep red soils studded with plantings of subsistence
crops; the blue of the tropical sky; golden savannas that ripple
with the movement of animal herds; dark rivers meandering
through towering rainforests; and sun drenched deserts. Amid
this beauty, however, one finds relatively poor soils, endemic
disease, and vulnerability to drought.”
In other words, Sub-Saharan Africa looks good from the sky,
but as far as supporting a large population, it possesses major
challenges. Let’s discuss the soil first. How is rich farmland
begotten? Fertile
agricultural land is generated by the alluvial soil deposited by
“rivers, volcanoes,
glaciers, and windstorms” over a long period of time. Over the
years, this
deposits form a thick layer of soil with rich nutrients thereby
capable of
supporting intensive food production. A typical alluvial soil is
found along the
stream that is rich in nutrients. In Sub-Saharan Africa,
unfortunately lacks this
“agent of soils renewal” mostly because it lacks extensive river
systems, such
as Amazon in South American, Mississippi in the U.S., or Nile
in Egypt. In other
words, Sub-Saharan Africa does not have a whole lot of alluvial
lowlands where
rivers periodically deposit fertile silt that makes land
productive. Now, what
type of land is found in Sub-
Saharan Africa?
First, tropical rainforest. Sub-Saharan Africa lies entirely in

24. tropical and subtropical
latitudes, which means it has extremely high level of heat and
moisture. Thus in
the plateaus and river basin, helped by this combination of high
moisture and
heat, vegetation grows uncontrollably. The rainforests are
environmental treasure
clove, but as far as food production and human habitation is
concerned, it is most
challenging. What is happening in the rainforest is that trees
and wild plants
consume most of the nutrients in the soil. Without clearing the
trees and wild
vegetation, food-producing crops have no chance of survival
there. Therefore,
farmers slash trees and burn them to enrich the soil first, then
plant. This slash and burning, on the other hand, causes
environmental and ecological destruction thereby inviting
heavily criticism
from the outside world. But from a practical point of view, slash
and burn
is not an efficient way of agricultural production. After a couple
of years
of farming the soil starts to exhaust because there is no “agent
of soil
renewal.”
Then there are the savannas (mostly in the outer fringe of
tropical
rainforests that are “dominated by a mixture of trees and tall
grasses in
the wetter zones…and shorter grasses with fewer grasses in the
drier

25. zones.” (By the way Savanna serves as an essential habitat for
Africa’s
wildlife.) The Savanna is rich with iron and aluminum but few
nutrients.
Here, crazing is more common than food production. Also, in
the dry
savanna, the sun bakes the soil hard and dry so farmers must
water and
fertilize them to ensure a crop. But water is scarce and fertilizer
expensive.
Obviously yields tend to be small. (Savanna is beautiful, as seen
in the
picture here but is it conducive to food production?)
And there is Sahel (to the right) -- a semi-desert transition zone
between the Sahara and
Savanna. As far as quality of soil is concerned, Sahel does
allow some food production.
However, because it is situated near deserts, Sahel is exposed to
drought that leads to massive
famines northeastern Africa is well known for. Africa’s Sahel is
increasingly being turned into
deserts as shown in the picture to your right. This
desertification results from improper
cultivation and over grazing, leading to the loss of soil. Desert
of course cannot support a large,
organized society.
To your left, you will find what is known as
elevation data. Green signifies moist
lowland, whereas red reflects high/dry area.
That means some of the reddish areas are
prone to drought. Apply what we discussed
in this lecture on Africa’s physiography in

26. reading this map. You will realize that Africa
does not have that many places where
intensive food production can be done, such
as the Midwestern part of the United States.
Also, it is not difficult to see that Africa is not crisscrossed by
network of rivers. Not
all corners of Sub-Saharan Africa are arid, dry, or infertile. For
example, the
Ethiopian Highlands in East Africa is well known for its fertile
soil. However, such
places are only a small part of Africa.
To borrow what our textbook writes, with
population exploding, soil exhaustion is even more
intensified. “Soils cannot rest, and pastures are
overgrazed. As land becomes degraded, yields decline. Let us
take a look at Nigeria, which used to be
the world’s largest producer and leading exporter of palm oil.
Now, because of soil exhaustion as well
as mismanagement, Nigeria has to import palm oil. As I have
said, there are good lands in Africa, of
course. However, productive lands taken away from black
tribes and clans in the process known as land alienation,
are mostly owned by white farmers. In case of South Africa,
as one Geographer has noted, Black population “was
forcibly resettled onto ‘homelands’ with poor agricultural
potential in the eastern half of the country. Due in part to
overcrowding, these areas have suffered from severe
forms of environmental degradation, especially soil erosion
and overgrazing.”
Well, all blame should not be placed on the quality of soil for
Sub-Saharan Africa’s

27. agricultural crisis. Western colonialism contributed
significantly to this process. Before Western countries began to
colonize Africa,
land ownership was mostly communal. In other words, farms
did not belong to individuals
who had legal claims. In that system of communal land
ownership, individuals could not
exhaust soil for one’s own gain. For example, in the old days,
communities could decide to
let certain farms to lie fallow. Also, the villages could limit the
number of animals to prevent
overgrazing, which lead to desertification. (The legacies of
Western imperialism on Africa
will be discussed in more detail in the next lecture.) In any
event, in the region where
seventy percent of people depend on farming for their
livelihood, eleven million tons of
cereal must be imported from outside markets every year. (One
interesting feature of Sub-
Saharan agriculture is the fact that women are responsible for
farming whereas men are
responsible for animal grazing and public affairs.)
As we have discussed while studying Western Europe,
strong agricultural base is the prerequisite of a highly
developed society. Strong agricultural base provides
more than food to defeat the hunger. It allows capital
accumulation via selling of agricultural surplus and
cash crop. That capital then can be invested into other
productive endeavors. Also, a strong agricultural
society provides social cohesion because quite often
farming requires organized labor and village
cooperation. Lacking it due to environmental

28. challenges and legacies of colonialism, as well as
internal conflicts that disrupt people’s lives, Sub-
Saharan African remains the agricultural continent that cannot
feed itself.