Africa
Africa is the second largest continent in the world, being smaller only than Asia. lt is about 11.7 million square miles in extent, i.e. about three times the size of Europe, and covers about one fifth of the total land space in the world. Its population currently (2006) is estimated at about 890 million, which is about l3.7% of the overall world total. Africa can therefore be described as relatively underpopulated. This is largely because the great Sahara desert (about 3.5 million square miles) ocupies about one third of` the whole continent. The ancestors of all black people on earth came from Africa. This continent has left its mark on their behaviour even though many black families have no immediate connection with their original homeland. There is something distinctly African about black art, sculpture, language, literature, music, religion, and sport which makes black culture different from others. For many years, white scholars tried to leave the impression that Africa was inhabited by savages and remained uncivilized until the Europeans conquered it during the nineteenth century Recent scholarship has shown, however, that several vibrant civilizations existed there long before the white people arrived. In fact, African history is marked by the genius of several individual rulers and the success of many huge empires from ancient times onwards. Today African culture has become partially Europeanized after a century of foreign domination. Most African literature, for instance, is written in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish, and most African peoples speak at least one European language. But such native African languages as Amharic, Ewe, Fante, Ga, Swahili, Twi, Xhosa and Zulu still hold their own in many countries and several African authors have been publishing useful texts in their native tongues. Africans have learnt to merge their traditional patterns with European models and this has been clearly reflected not only in their language and literature but in their art, music, science, philosophy and religion. Africa’s geography is so harsh that the continent remains the poorest on earth. Africa is mainly a mixture of desert, lakes, swamps, marshes, jungles and mountains. Hence the relative sparseness of its population. Apart from areas in Egypt, Nigeria, South Africa and Zimbabwe, the land is often too sandy and rocky to be suitable for agriculture on a grand scale. Nor is the general inadequacy of the agricultural soil accompanied by a generous supply of precious metals and minerals (apart from diamonds and gold in South Africa). Even Ghana, once known as the Gold Coast, is now but a shadow of its former self after centuries of European exploitation and exhaustion of its rich mineral reserves. Some oil is found in Nigeria, but Sub-Saharan Africa, generally speaking, is by no means as fortunate in this respect as most of the countries in the Middle East. Alternate heat, drought and floods then combine to add to the general discomfort. Africa also suffers from its history. After centuries of fierce internal competition for limited resources, the continent was badly administered by Europeans who established too few schools, hospitals or industries during the colonial period. Thus too many African countries were basically too poor to stand on their own economically after having achieved their political independence in the 1950s and 1960s. Even those countries with some potential for industrial development oftern lacked the necessary financial reserves to take full advantage of their mineral and other resources. To make matters worse, the African political boundaries drawn arbitrarily and whimsically by the Europeans in the nineteenth century paid too little attention to the actual traditions of the inhabitants. Most of the modern African states therefore are not really nations at all. They are little more than unwieldy combinations of multicultural and multiethnic units of competing peoples who find it difficult to cooperate for a common cause. While the last several decades have consequently witnessed much physical violence, economic hardship and political unrest in most parts of Africa, that continent still continues to produce an incredible amount of excellent art, sculpture, literature, music and philosophy.