• West most countries of African region
• Member of Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
• Benin, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Mali, Niger

• Eastern region of Africa containing the countries Eritrea, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Somalia
• Mountains uplifted through the formation of the Great Rift Valley 

• 220 million years ago there was one huge formation: Pangea
• It split through plate tectonics into:
• Gondwana and Laurasia
• Idea was proposed by German metereologist
• Africa has hardly moved
• this means no continental mountains like the Himalayas

• when the super continent was together (Pangea), rivers flowed into basins
• But because of continental drift, rivers now flow into the ocean

• North: (Bwh) Dry and arid
• Middle region: (Aw and Af) Dry winter
• Southern middle: (Cwa) Humid, dry winter
• Southern region: (Bwh) Dry and arid

      III. Correlations Between Patterns of Disease and Environmental Factors (GIS)

• Exists in equilibrium with the population
• Many develop an immunity of sorts
• Saps energy, lowers resistance, shortens lives
• (malaria, sickle cell anemia, bilharzia)

• The carrier of a disease
• Many develop an immunity of sorts
• Tse Tse fly for African sleeping sickness
• Mosquito for malaria and yellow fever
• Snail for bilharzia

• an area or a species from which a disease spreads
• savanna wildlife is resorvoir for African sleeping sickness
• African monkeys are the reservoir for yellow fever 

• Sudden outbreak at local, regional scale (SARS)

• Worldwide spread (AIDS)

• 24.5 million of 34.3 million cases were in Africa in 2009
• 30 million deaths worldwide since early 1980s
• In 2007, 2.0 million people died of AIDS in Africa, 75% of world toll
• Medicine is too expensive for most Africans
• Started Central Africa and spread to Haiti (Congo was French and so was Haiti)

• Kush lasted 23 centuries
• Nubia was a Christian state
• Axum controlled Red Sea and lasted 6 centuries
• Bantu migrations for 5,000 years-led to powerful Zulu Empire 

• Shona people
• Work began in the early 11th century and went on for some 400 years
• The palace was surrounded by a huge stone wall
• Outside, a city with a population of about 10,000 developed
• It is not known why the city was abandoned in the 15th century, but it may have been because the soil could no longer maintain the population 

• Ghana, Mali, Songhai, Nok
• Dry north and west South were complementary (salt for ivory, spices and dry foods)
• Note N-S orientation of modern countries
• Timbuktu as trading center 

• Ports established along the West African coast as way stations to South Asia and Southeast Asia (Portuguese were first)
• African peoples along the coasts profited from raiding the interior for people and selling them as slaved to the Europeans
• Benin and Nigeria were built on the slave trade
• Perhaps 30 million people were forcibly removed from the continent

• 14 States divided up Africa without consideration of cultures
• Results of superimposed boundaries 
• African peoples were divided
• Unified regions were ripped apart
• Hostile sociesties were thrown together
• Hinterlands were distrupted
• Migration routes were closed off

• (Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe)
• Indigenous power structures were left intact to some degree and local rulers were made representatives of the crown 

• Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast
• Enforced a direct rule which propagated the French culture through language, laws, education and dress (acculturation)

• Guinea-Bissau, Angola, Mozambique
• First to enslave and colonize and one of last to grant independence
• Maintained rigid control; resource oriented

• Rwanda, Congo, Burundi
• Treated Africans as though they where children who needed to be tutored in western ways; did not try to make them Belgian (10 million Congolese murdered)
• Raw resource oriented; ignored the development of natives

• Over 1000 languages- centrifugal force
• Colonial languages became the lingua franca in many places
• Niger-Congo family is pervasive
• Nilo-Saharan Family is second most important 

• Khoisan uses clicks
• Africaans in South Africa (65% of whites)
• Malagsy is a Malay-Polynesian language
• Hause (24 million speakers)
• Yoruba (28 million speakers)
• Nigeria has 250 languages-English is used to communicate among groups 

• Christianity came with colonialism, except for Coptic Christiansin Ethiopia (4th Century) and Axum
• Islam went down the coast of East Africa and crossed the Sahara
• Christianity was fused with African cutoms, Islam was not 

• Almost 50 states
• OAU not the AU (African Union)
• Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS)
• South African Development Community (SADC) 

• This is not an urban realm with relatively low overall urbanization (34%)
• Changing rapidly as rate of urbanization is high 
• City living is harsh
• informal sector of economy