6. SUB-SAHARAN AFRICAAfrica is a large, complex, and often misunderstood world region, with commonperceptions ranging from a fertile tropical forest rife with exotic diseases to an idyllicgame reserve or from a harsh landscape devastated by war and drought to a placewhere rich cultural traditions reach back to the dawn of humanity. Africa has greatmineral wealth and agricultural potential but is ranked lowest among world regions onindicators of economic development, social and health conditions.The continental land mass called Africa straddles the equator, stretching 8000kilometers (5000 miles) miles from the Mediterranean in the north to the southern tip atabout 35 degrees south latitude (Figure 6.1). At its widest, Africa spans 7400 kilometers(4600 miles) from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to Somalia on the Indian Ocean. Thetotal area is 30365000 square kilometers (11,724,000 square miles). Geographershave argued that the countries of North Africa that border the Mediterranean Sea -Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and Egypt - have more in common with the MiddleEast than with the other countries of Africa that lie south of the Sahara desert. NorthAfrica is considered to share characteristics with the Middle East that include similarphysical environments of dry climates and human geographies that reflect a dominantArabic language and ethnicity and Islamic religion.Sub-Saharan Africa has been defined and divided from North Africa based oncommon historical, physical and social characteristics that include a legacy of Europeancolonialism and slavery, a tropical climate and the darker skin of many inhabitants. Therace-based definition of sub-Saharan Africa has been used by Africans and non-Africansto identify the region as "Black Africa". It includes 43 mainland countries, 5 islandnations and the French territory of Reunion. The region includes large populationsgrowing their own food and living in small rural villages with less than 30% living in urbanareas. Sub-Saharan Africa has an area of 22 million square kilometers (8.5 millionsquare miles) and a population of 600 million. In this text, we discuss North Africa withthe Middle East because of shared characteristics and because one chapter on thewhole of Africa would be very large. However, the physical and human links across thecontinent of Africa are such that several sections of this chapter, including the section onhumans and the environment that follows, discuss broader patterns across the wholecontinent and refer to Africa as a whole rather than Sub-Saharan Africa specifically.We recognize that the geographical, racial, ethnic and religious basis for dividingAfrica into these two world regions is somewhat artificial and controversial,oversimplifying both the cultural and historical distinctiveness of the two regions, theoverlaps between them and the great variety that they contain. For example, theSahara desert is a large area, rather than a clear dividing line, and includes territory fromboth North and Sub-Saharan African countries (Figure 6.1). The River Nile links theNorth African countries of Egypt and the Sudan through a long fertile corridor to the sub-Saharan countries of Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Rwanda, Burundi, the CentralAfrican Republic and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire). There areconsiderable populations of Arab or European ethnicity or Islamic beliefs in Sub-SaharanAfrica, and significant numbers of black Africans and people with non-Islamic religiousbeliefs in North Africa. Traders have linked the economies of North and Sub-SaharanAfrica for centuries and the Organization of African States includes members fromthroughout the African continent. The Sudan exemplifies the challenges of treatingAfrica as two distinct world regions because the north part of the country is dominated byan Islamic and Arabic culture whereas the south hosts a predominantly black andChristian population. We discuss the Sudan, the largest country on the African continentin Chapter 5.The world region of Sub-Saharan Africa is frequently divided into subregionalclusters of countries that share common geographical characteristics and has somedistinctive landscapes that include parts of several countries . Commonly discussedsubregions include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa as wellas the distinctive landscapes of Equatorial Africa, the Horn of Africa, the Indian OceanIslands, and the Sahel (Figure 6.3).Figure 6.1: Chapter Opening map of AfricaEMVIRONMENT AND SOCIETY IN AFRICAThe continent of Africa is the heart of the ancient super continent calledPangaea, the southern part of which broke off to form Gondwanaland about 200 millionyears ago (see Chapter 2). The theory of plate tectonics tells us that when the regionsthat we now know of as Latin America and Asia broke away from Gondwanaland, thehigh plateau that remained became the continent of Africa.Figure 6.2: Satellite Image of AfricaFigure 6.3: Major subregions of Africa - political map with text, boundaries and shadingto show major regionsHalf of the African continent is composed of very old crystalline rocks of volcanicorigin that hold the key to Africa's tremendous mineral wealth (Figure 6.4). Ancienttropical swamps became sedimentary rocks containing oil and other fossil fuels. Theseinclude coal in southern Africa, Nigeria and the Congo basin and oil and gas in WestAfrica, particularly Nigeria and Gabon. Iron and manganese are found in western andsouthern Africa, and most of the world's known chromium is found in Africa especially inZimbabwe and South Africa. Vast copper reserves are located in the Copper Belt ofZambia, where they are accompanied by cobalt, and the southern Congo; and bauxite,important in making aluminum, is found in a belt across West Africa. Gold is found inseveral regions of Africa including Ghana and Zimbabwe, and in South Africa, where asmuch of half of the world's gold reserves are found in the region around Johannesburg.South Africa is very famous for diamonds, also found in Botswana, Namibia, at theedges of the Congo basin and in Sierra Leone in West Africa.Figure 6.4: Mineral map - this map shows the location of the most important regions ofmineral development in Africa including oil, gold and diamonds.These mineral resources have played important roles in African history. Goldwas important in West Africa from early times, worn and traded by the kings and