Development in Sub-Saharan Africa

1. Development in Sub-Saharan Africa GEOG 3500 Spring 2011 Doug R. Oetter

2. Population Patterns • Population is unevenly but, generally, sparsely distributed. Some areas have very high densities with few resources and extremely high growth rates. These issues compromise living standards and the provision of education and health care. • Defining Density • Carrying capacity is limited by water shortages, leached soils, and diseases. • Carrying capacity is also affected by cultural, social, economic, and political factors.

3. Population Growth • African populations are growing faster than any others, posing a threat to human well-being in areas where the carrying capacity has been reached or exceeded. • Africans are still having large families because infant mortality rates are high, and children are seen as a source of labor and an essential link between the past and the future. • In some places, smaller families are becoming desirable, as women are becoming educated, gender restrictions are being relaxed, and infant mortality declines. Education, communication between husband and wife, breast-feeding, and monogamous relationships also reduce family size.

4. Population and Public Health • Sub-Saharan Africa has long been troubled by infectious diseases that are harmful and difficult to control, including sleeping sickness, schistosomiasis, malaria, and river blindness. • Infectious diseases cause about 50 percent of all deaths in Africa. Many diseases go untreated because people cannot afford the drugs needed to cure them.

5. HIV-AIDS in Africa • Africa’s greatest public health issue is HIV-AIDS, which threatens to drastically change population growth and life expectancy patterns. • AIDS is difficult to control in Africa, as most do not learn they have HIV until several years after being infected, passing the disease onto others. • Rapid urbanization has contributed to the spread of HIV-AIDS. • The social consequences of HIV-AIDS are enormous. Time, money, and energy are invested in treatment of victims and care of orphans instead of education and controlling other diseases. • Education is playing a role in the spread and control of HIV-AIDS; drug companies are making attempts at making drug treatment more affordable.

6. Economic and Political Issues • After colonization, Africa was left with underdeveloped human capital, ill-trained leaders, intense competition for resources, and economic hardships. • Many hope that a move toward democracy and assistance from outside the region will provide the stability needed for economic development.

7. Postindependence Economies • Africa’s difficulties in the postindependence era include: • Its role as a supplier of cheap resources and low-cost labor in the global economy. • Political problems and corruption. • Civil unrest and wars. • Steep oil price increases. • Ill-advised economic reorganization and structural adjustment programs.

8. Subsistence Agriculture: A Major Source of Livelihood • Most Africans produce their own food by farming small plots, raising livestock, or a combination of both. • Increases in population and situations that restrict people’s access to land are changing agricultural practices; drought and encroachment on pastures are causing pastoralists to reduce or divide herds. • Agriculture is economically significant in urban areas, providing nutrition and employment.

9. Exporter of Raw Materials to the Global Economy • The economies of most African countries are still centered around exporting one or two raw materials. • Large-scale commercial cultivation for export crops is increasing despite infertile soils because of improved crop varieties, environmental management, and investment in roads and water. • Zimbabwe is experiencing controversial land reform, as wealthy white farmers have had their farms confiscated and redistributed to poor Zimbabweans and Robert Mugabe’s henchmen. Food production has dropped significantly.

10. Political Issues: Colonial Legacies and African Adaptations • Origins of Conflict • European-created borders are partly to blame for political turmoil in Africa. • Governments often practiced ethnic discrimination, and civil wars arose from attempts to crush ethnic or regional separatist movements.

11. The Cold War in Africa • The cold war between the United States and the former Soviet Union complicated and prolonged many conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa.

12. Elite Rule • Many countries are controlled by African elites who have continued the colonial traditions of authoritarian and corrupt rule, creating huge, inefficient, and corrupt government bureaucracies.

13. Religion • Indigenous Belief Systems • Africa has the most ancient religions, which are based on maintaining contact between departed ancestors and living people in a timeless spiritual community that extends into the future. • Spirits of the deceased are believed to be all around and offer protection in return for respect. • Religious beliefs in Africa evolve continually as new influences are encountered. • Islam and Christianity in Africa • Islam is the predominant religion in most of northern, eastern, and western Africa because Islamic leaders helped the British colonize. • Christianity spread during the nineteenth century when missionaries first became active in West Africa. Christian missionaries provided education and health services that colonial administrators had neglected.

14. Gender Relationships • Strict division of labor and responsibilities between men and women is a long-standing African tradition. • Overall, women are responsible for domestic activities and men are responsible for preparing land for cultivation; however, women are the majority of agricultural laborers. • On average, rural men do not have as many responsibilities as women nor do they work as hard or for as many hours. • In precolonial times, most marriages were social alliances between families. Husbands and wives spent most of their time with family members of their own sex rather than with each other. • Islam, European Christian cultures, and colonization had an effect on gender relationships, as men gained power and women lost options.

15. Ethnicity and Language • Very rarely do groups occupy discrete and exclusive spaces. • Several ethnic groups will often share space, practicing different but complementary ways of life. • Other people can share an ethnic identity yet have little in common culturally or in the spaces they occupy. • Some groups may be similar culturally and occupy overlapping space, but identify themselves different ethnically. • More than a thousand languages are spoken in Africa; however, some languages are dying out. A few lingua francas are taking over.