Caring about Africa

[yovargas]

What vested interests could have so much power to control media, especially in an era where the internet is part of the media?

[axordil]

The same ones that have been extracting wealth from Africa for generations. Extractive industries like oil, mining, and lumber interests. Agribusinesses such as cocoa producers. And of course weapons manufacturers.

There are now two taps to turn off, it's true. The mainstream media tap gets turned off at the top. The internet media tap never gets turned on, by making sure there's insufficient infrastructure to allow much information out. But some gets out nonetheless...it's just not enough to make a difference right now. Yet.

None of this is denying that there's a bit of a cavalier attitude in the West towards "black people killing each other." But that attitude wouldn't still exist if it hadn't been strategically reinforced over the decades.

[yovargas]

After spending a few hours this morning reading about the mess that is Haitian politics, about the plight of American immigrants, and finally about the Congo War, I am nearly in tears at the extrodinary at the amount of suffering that's going on unnoticed and ignored. If only our government could be made to answer to articles like this:

http://www.nuvo.net/archive/2003/05/07/ ... congo.html

[Jnyusa]

We reveal part of the problem when we ask the question this way: What's up with Africa?

If Zaire (Congo) alone is as big as Europe, why do we refer to the entire continent as a single entity? How could we possibly zero in on the suffering of individual ... units ... like the various tribal divisions within Zaire, when our first category is so broad that we are looking at the problem as if from outer space?

It would be as if, wanting to learn more about the Mothers of the Disappeared in Buenos Aires, one went on to the internet and keyed in Western Hemisphere.

The word 'Africa' has geologic meaning, but it has no human meaning, no political or social meaning, nor even ecological meaning.

The problem really begins at the earliest point in our educational system, here in the US. The only part of the world that gets taught it all beyond major rivers and mountain ranges is the Northwestern Hemisphere. Everyplace else is designated by its position in the continental drift. No humans living there as far as we are concerned. (And this neglect embraces Australia too, in the US system at least.)

Jn

[yovargas]

I recently bought a big world map (to hopefully help cure myself of my heavy geographical ignorance). Looking at it - really looking at it - it dawned on me that Europe is tiny compared the other continents - a small fraction of the world's populated land. And yet it compromises the good majority, and in some case the only, part of history that is taught in our schools. I imagine that in some part this is because, being a part of that history, we are simply far more knowledgeable of it and understand it better. But the more and more global information becomes, the more and more inexcusable our selective ignorance becomes.

[axordil]

Northwestern Hemisphere.

Shouldn't that be quadrant? Or hemisemisphere? Or something?

yovadude--The trick is taking the sea of information and turning into something learnable...and then figuring out what in the curriculum it replaces. Just because another area of knowledge becomes more relevant doesn't make existing ones less so, and there are only so many hours in the school year.

[Primula Baggins]

My kids' International High School IB program does a pretty decent job of covering world history, geography, literature, and culture. It can't be covered in depth, but they help by synchronizing all the classes so the kids are immersed in examples of art, literature, music, dance, and even foods of a region while they are studying its history and geography.

They also must take a full-year economics class.

What they give up is intensive study of American history and American literature (and a lot of leisure time—it's an intense program). I think it's worth it.

[Faramond]

If Zaire (Congo) alone is as big as Europe

But it's not! Europe has four times the land area of Congo ( formerly Zaire ).

Congo is bigger than say France, Germany, Spain and Italy put together, though.

[yovargas]

I'm not saying teach everything, but if you're going to teach a World History class, do so proportionately to the world. If Europe doesn't have the most land or the most people, it shouldn't get the most coverage.

[Hachimitsu]

I hate when people refer to Africa as one entity. I always find myself asking where in Africa are they talking about. (As in the name of the country.)

Lack of media coverage is a huge problem and also it's corporate intrests and some countries intrestst in Africa's natural resources. Why help a continent when people are already getting what they want/profitting from they way things currently are? Many countires outside Africa have intrests there but right now the way things are, are currently working for them. I mean who wants the different African countries debt written off? Like sheesh, the countries may actually build their own economy!!!! Then they might actually demand fair wages and better education then all of a sudden prices go up for really cheap stuff. With the west also recruiting the educated elite from poorer countries who is gonna teach the kids and run the communities?

The best way to maintain the status quo is to make sure people don't know.

Also Yov I always wondered about history class too. I remember when we were learning about the Renaissance and how the Europeans learned about stuff from the ancient world through the arab countries. What, the Arabs were just sitting on books and works of art for thousands of years waiting for the Europeans to come visit them?

[Jnyusa]

But it's not! Europe has four times the land area of Congo ( formerly Zaire ).

I should have been more specific, but was thinking people would remember back to the geography thread. If you exclude the Scandinavian countries, the British isles (and other island countries or territories), continental Europe is the same size as Congo. But that too depends on where you draw the line of Europe in the east. When I first started posing this question to my economic geography students, "Europe" meant to them western Europe + East Germany. This fits inside Congo with room to spare. The average person educated on a Mercator projection believes Congo to be about the same size as France or Spain, and this is way off the mark.

Africa is HUGE compared to Europe. All of Europe, including Scandinavia and all the eastern Europe countries could fit into the African cape, and that doesn't even touch anything below the Sahel or any of east Africa.

Jn

[Faramond]

I remember the geography thread, but ... to me it isn't natural to equate "Europe" with western Europe minus the UK.

Sudan and Algeria are both larger than DR Congo in area. I'm guessing you could fit all of Europe in the five largest African countries.

Africa has more people than Europe, but not by that much. This gap is projected to get much larger in the next 50 years, though.

Both France and Germany have larger populations that DR Congo.

Europe has a comparable amount of coastline to Africa, which was likely a significant factor in how they historically developed.

That's enough random facts.

[Griffon64]

Africa has more people than Europe, but not by that much. This gap is projected to get much larger in the next 50 years, though.

Which way, though? Africa has low life expectancy and exploding AIDS deaths. The two continents' populations counts may diverge slower than past trends suggest.

I've stood in a cemetery in Pretoria three years ago, and I was horrified by the overwhelming number of fresh graves. When you go back to the 1980's, the cemetery was growing much slower then. But then its growth exploded. Deaths from AIDS, deaths from crime. New graves added daily. And this in an affluent part of Africa. Closer to the townships, where things are worse, the growth of the space taken by the dead is much faster. The continent bleeds human life away from spotlight.

[Holbytla]

I recently bought a big world map (to hopefully help cure myself of my heavy geographical ignorance). Looking at it - really looking at it - it dawned on me that Europe is tiny compared the other continents - a small fraction of the world's populated land. And yet it compromises the good majority, and in some case the only, part of history that is taught in our schools. I imagine that in some part this is because, being a part of that history, we are simply far more knowledgeable of it and understand it better. But the more and more global information becomes, the more and more inexcusable our selective ignorance becomes.

Well..a disproportionate part of recorded history comes from Europe.
Other than Egypt and a few other countries, I am not so sure how prolific recorded history was in Africa as a whole.
Africa, also seems to have been more isolated physically and developmentally. I think on the whole there has been less material to work with. Not less history perhaps, but less recorded history and more isolated history that was less globally seen.
For the longest time the world's powers and movers and shakers were found in places not in Africa.
Now certainly things are changing in today's world, albeit slowly.
Population density and technological advances in infrastructure also play a part maybe.
You know in some ways my cynical side tells me Africa is better off being isolated. One less part of the world we can pollute and screw up.
I know the continent is in dire need of humanitarian efforts though and that outweighs deforestation and all the other ills of our society.

[Jnyusa]

Which way, though?

I think that's a real question. The trend among my collagues is to expect a slow depopulation of the African continent.

Both France and Germany have larger populations that DR Congo.

Yes, the northern continents are more densenly populated than the southern continents in general. This makes the provision of infrastructure cheaper per person, but I really think that the original impetus for differential 'development' was the presence of winter.

Europe has a comparable amount of coastline to Africa, which was likely a significant factor in how they historically developed.

That's an interesting fact, Faramond. I've never given thought to how much difference this might make ... except in the most obvious ways of course - e.g. Mali does not have a navy and neither does Switzerland.

It is my inclination to think that fresh water (rivers, lakes) has played a more important role than coastline in historical/economic development, but there is a marked change of perspective on trade during the 15th century. When we look at the negative interactions between European countries and their trading partners, as in the subsitution of colonies for trading partners, it begins at the same time. It is my opinion that this shift from overland trade to sea trade also caused some profound philosophical changes in the way we view the human race.

Jn

[Faramond]

I'd better admit straight up that I didn't actually check up on the coastline lengths as I did for the other things. But it's pretty clear from looking at both continents that Europe has a lot more coastline per landmass, or coastline density, if you will. Coastline measurements are tricky in any case, since they sort of depend upon which scale you measure them in. If you measure every mile of coast you'll get a different answer than if you carefully measure every foot at a smaller scale.


The book "Guns, Germs and Steel" does a great job of trying to explain why Europe came to dominate the rest of the world and not the other way around. Off the top of my head, here's what I remember from it related to Africa:

Africa is by far the most genitically diverse continent ( in the human population ). So, another argument for not treating it as a single entity. I think Africa also has the greatest diversity of languages in the world.

Sub-saharan Africa lacked any large mammals suitable for domestication. Without domesticated large animals you can't build up a complicated civilizations as easily.

Africa is largely on a north-south axis, which introduces a temperature gradient, which means that any domesticable plant species will end up being rather local in extent. The Mediterranean, fertile crescent, India and China are all on more or less the same east-west axis so that all the grain species domesticated in the fertile crescent could spread east and west. But not south into Africa. South Africa is suitable for a lot of these crops, but there was too great a distance for them to get there until people with a head start related to domesticated animals and plants and writing could invent seafaring and arrive in ships.

Writing apparently has arisen independently only three or so times in human history; most places have acquired it by being exposed to it from another source. Writing could easily spread from the fertile crescent east and west, but not across the Sahara into lower Africa.

The diseases of the tropics are a big problem, of course.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I'm a little bit surprised to hear that people here are largely unfamiliar with the recent, very bloody Congolese war. True, the media coverage was lighter than it should have been, and much less than other conflicts, but there was plenty of coverage of the war, even in the mainstream press. I was able to follow things fairly closely, without having to dig too far. Of course, I do have a vested in interest because, while my main interest is in West Africa, particularly Guinea, I do have Congolese friends who had family members who were affected by the war.

I do think that there is a tremendous lack of information about African culture and history. I agree that there is a tendency to lump "Africa" together in a way that doesn't tend to happen with other geographic areas, which is ironic, because there is probably a greater wealth of different cultures (and languages) in Africa than anywhere else in the world. Still, there ARE certain generalizations that can be made. I think there is a certain "African sensibility" that is fairly common across most of the continent, though I don't think this is the correct place to try to quantify what that sensibility is (if I could even do so, which I doubt). There is also the question of pan-African-ism, and the movement to join the continent together to maximize the political and economic power that her people could wield. Again, this is not the correct place to talk about that movement (nor am I the right person to do so).

More to the point, there is a history of exploitation of Africa's resources which is largely continent-wide and continues to this day. I was listening to an interview on the radio/TV program "Democracy Now" the other day with a fellow named John Ghazvinian, who has written a book called Untapped: The Scramble for Africa’s Oil, and he made the following observation:

You know, you start to see this again and again and again, as I did, you know, as I traveled through all these oil towns in Africa. You have often hundreds, if not thousands, of oil workers from all over the world sent on four-week shifts in to work on the rigs, and they’re often housed in these extraordinary compounds with kind of -- behind these very high razor-wire walls in these kind of sprawling Southern California-style compounds with, you know, swimming pools and air-conditioned basketball courts, and so on, and, you know, kind of everything that you’d want, really, all the food flown in from the States or from Europe.

And then, just on the other side of the wall, you have people who are living without any running water, who are walking for miles just to fill up their buckets of water, people who are suffering from malaria, living on less than a dollar a day, and so on. I mean, the contrast is one of centuries, really -- the gap, the gulf, if you will, in living styles. And this is a real affront, actually, in the face of the people who are sitting there, who realize, you know, there’s a lot of oil in our country, there’s a lot of money being made, but somehow we’re not seeing any of that. And that’s something that you hear a lot of anger and a lot of frustration about just on a very visceral level.

Prostitution also is a big problem in a lot of these places. You know, obviously, you have these guys, and they’re all sort of men, really, who come and work on the rigs from all over the world and have a lot of money, obviously, that they bring with them. So you have girls coming from all over the place, you know, to kind of service their needs, as it were. And that obviously, you know, contributes to HIV and broken homes and all kinds of social problems, as well.

But, as I say, there is so much lack of understanding about Africa. Most people don't realize that the "recorded history" of many parts of Africa is actually better preserved than that of Europe, even though that "recorded history" comes from an oral tradition rather than a written tradition. I was at a naming ceremony for my teacher, Mamady Keita's new daughter on Sunday, and the Djeli (or Griot, as they are called in French) sang songs reciting the history of the family that go back to the time of Mamady's ancestor, Sundiata Keita, who founded the Mali Empire in the 13th Century. Most people don't know that from the 13th to 16th Century, the Mali Empire was both more powerful, and more culturally sophisticated, than any kingdom in Europe. Indeed, as I think I have talked about before, when the great king Mansa Musa made his pilgrimage to Mecca in the 14th century at the height of the Empire, he was so rich that the gold that he gave away actually devalued currencies throughout Europe.

I think that these three separate points that I have raised in this post, the failure to pay attention to what happens in Africa, the continued exploitation of her resources and her people, and the lack of understanding of her incredibly rich history and cultures, are all related. But I'm not quite sure that I can express how. I do know this, however. That amorphous, many, many headed entity that we call "Africa" has a tremendous amount to offer to the world. I feel that so strongly, particularly when I have visited Guinea and gotten to know some of the people there, as well through my experiences with African people from different parts of the continent.

I wish I could be more articulate about what I am saying. I probably should not post this post, but I probably will anyway. It is a subject that I care so much about. I apologize sincerely for being so incomprehensible about it.

[Jnyusa]

That made perfect sense to me, Voronwë.

I was listening to an interview on the radio/TV program "Democracy Now" the other day with a fellow named John Ghazvinian

He gave a long interview on our public radio station last week. (He's at U. Penn now, so I expect he'll be giving quite a few lectures on this topic.) It was fascinating, really, because he did what so few researchers actually do - go out into the countryside and observe what is happening, talk to the people, analyze what they see ... I wish I had a nickel for every World Bank report written by the poolside of the Intercontinental Hotel.

Africa is largely on a north-south axis, which introduces a temperature gradient, which means that any domesticable plant species will end up being rather local in extent. The Mediterranean, fertile crescent, India and China are all on more or less the same east-west axis so that all the grain species domesticated in the fertile crescent could spread east and west.

You've got the importance of this distinction absolutely right, imo, but I think the horse and the cart are reversed. Human migrations were east-west in the northern temperate zone because this conserved information about the seasons, from the star constellations which remain constant over the year at constant latitude. Such information is only important when there is a significant portion of the year during which food cannot be grown. In other words, the east-west migration was a response to climate, and it then followed that foods and culture and trade would follow the migratory pattern.

In the equitorial zones different migration and trade patterns emerge because a different kind of information has to be preserved, specifically intergenerational land/people ratios where the soils are quickly exhausted. Voronwë is quite correct that equitorial peoples are better 'keepers of history,' and they do so orally but very effectively. Some of them were on 150-year migration cycles before they were colonized, and the destruction of those cycles and their associated information is partly to blame for the relatively low agricultural productivity of modern Africa.

The east-west pattern in the northern hemisphere versus the circle pattern near the equator can be seen quite clearly in the distribution of language groups.

Jn

[PrinceAlarming]

It isn't that I don't care... The plight of AIDS in a lot of African countries is sad, the lack of education is enough to make me want to go to school again... But you are dealing with an entire continent of people where the last 300 years includes civil war, colonization, slavery, rape and genocide...

Africa is beautiful, and when I go (hopefull sometime in the near future) maybe I will be driven to act... But right now the best I can do is to learn the history of the Congo, or Liberia, or Ghana, and try to share knowledge with the rest of my western bretheren.

I think the international policy of the US sucks... Is it any wonder why a war break out between two nations with large pockets of oil that the US steps in... But when a small country starts murdering each other in Africa... over diamonds... we shrug?

I don't know enough to form a broad opinion about Africa... There are too many peope, too many lanuguages and beliefs, I don't know if I ever could.

I will continue to educate myself on the matter.

[yovargas]

I wish I could be more articulate about what I am saying. I probably should not post this post, but I probably will anyway. It is a subject that I care so much about. I apologize sincerely for being so incomprehensible about it.

Why in the world are you apologizing!? That was a great (and perfectly coherent) post! I definately want to hear more from you on the subject, not less.