Africa has over fifty-four different countries but the Western Sahara is a non-self governing territory. Africa is the world’s oldest populating country and is also known for being the second populous continent with 1.1 billion people. Africa gives the entire world about 16% of its populations. Africa is also known to be the poorest and undeveloped country. There are over 2.5 million people infected with a sexual transmitted disease called Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) which is a life threatening infection. South Africa is still facing many problem with AIDS, unemployment, poverty, and crime rates, not enough education, public services, and severe water supply.
Africa has always played a good role on influencing other parts of the world with their culture and roots. The word “Africa” came from ethnonyms like “Afira” which means to be dusty in Arabic. The English version comes from the Latin word “Africanus’. Back in the ancient Africa they found a hominid subfamily. There was only one thing surviving is was called the Homo sapien. Researchers found evidence that there were modern human like species that once lived in Africa. The species for which humans belong to are called Australopithecines. This generation of species departed from their ancestors of chimpanzees about 6 million years ago. In Africa is where you can find the oldest fossils from passed humankind ancestors. Africa is known for finding evidence of the key stages of the evolution. In the 1920’s there were countless number of Australopithecus fossils found through the East and South of Africa. Australopithecus are human like creatures that walked the earth before man. The first bone of Australopithecus was near a cave in Taung, Africa. The bone they found was...
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...ate in Africa is called Nigeria. In 1960, Nigeria claimed independence from Britain. The former British administrative capital in Lagos, placed three regions under a republican constitution from the national government in 1964. The three regions were the Eastern, Western, and Northern. The largest ethnic and linguistic groups are major from the regions, Igbo in the Eastern, Yoruba in the Western, and Hausa and Fulani in the Northern region. Since the 1980s the languages had been recognizable and accepted for the federal business. The official Nigerian language has become English.
The Negro race in southern Africa is ethnologically known as “Bantu”. Some of them vary only slightly in their vocabulary. The other vocabularies are different because it can only be understood from tribes that are at least 100 miles apart. While the others have intelligible languages.
In summary, Davidson successful traces Africa’s earliest origins and demonstrates that this is a civilization far from having no arts, technology, sophistication and unique culture. Culture and civilization as we know it today can be traced back to Africa, and modern science has verified the early perceptions of Europeans to be wrong. He provides more than adequate evidence of Africa having a history complete with vast and rich civilization, including archaeological finds and specialized interviews with distinguished scholars and philosophers. Despite the fact that society possesses a more positive attitude towards African civilization today in terms of recognition, equality, and acceptance than in the past, negative stereotypes are still acknowledged and modern day racism unfortunately exists. I believe that the existence of Davidson’s work and videos such as Different but Equal are crucial to challenging these stereotypes and discrimination in order to create a more accurate image of Africa and its history. Overall, Davidson proves that the continent of Africa is home to a history that is just as meaningful, comprehensive, and progressive as that of any other civilization in the
About a million years ago, early humans spread out of Africa into Asia and Europe. These tools remind us that human technology, culture and the species itself all began in Africa.
It is because of the activities we have done, and more importantly the people I have been introduced to, such as Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop that I am able to expand my horizons and maybe get a glimpse on what I have been missing. When a man who himself is African and shows how he believes so strongly in where he came from, it’s hard not to start to believe it yourself. Not only did he express his opinions, but he provided several research studies and findings that can link our evolution to Africa and prove himself. With skulls of different species, they could tell what race the men were and it even showed the development from the beginning to a homosapien sapien. With the fifth out of six species not having much of a forehead, you could come to the conclusion that the brain would also be different; sure enough it was missing the anterior lobe of the brain. That to me is just mind blowing and allowed me to be open to the idea that maybe there was an evolution from one species to the next.
Africa is considered to be a multi-lingual country. There are eleven officially recognized languages their, many of which are often spoken but not widespread. English is generally understood across the country. It is one of the eleven common spoken languages but it only ranks 5th out of the eleven spoken languages. During the 15th and the 19th century, major changes had happened to the African and North American continents. Europeans ventured to Africa where they began a trans-Atlantic slave trade. Many Africans were taken as free people and then forced into slavery in South America, the Caribbean and North America. This slave trade had brought about a different type of racism. It was the color of your skin that determined whether a person would be a free citizen or be enslaved for life. This slave trade also devastated African lives and their heritage.
Africa is the second largest of the earth's seven continents, covering about twenty-two percent of the world's total land area. From its northern most point, to its southern most tip is the distance of nearly five thousand miles. Africa is both north and south of the equator. The Atlantic Ocean is located west of the continent, and the Indian Ocean is on the east. Width of the continent is also nearly five thousand miles. Although Africa is so large, much of it is inhabitable. Desert soils, which have little organic content, cover large areas. The Sahara Desert, in the northern part, covers more than one fourth of Africa, and the Kalahari Desert is in the southern part of the continent. These two deserts are a natural detriment to the African continent because they make it difficult to reach the inland where most of the people live. Although Africa is relatively close to Europe, travel by land over the Sahara desert is very prohibitive. Another topographical feature that also isolates the central region of Africa is the coastline.
“The first great wave of Globalization was the migration of our ancestors from Africa in what is being referred to as the Africanization of the World” (De Blij and Muller 282). Africa is basically located in the heart of the world with countries closely
Africa has had a long and tumultuous road of colonization and decolonization the rush to colonize Africa started in the 17th century with the discovery of the vast amounts of gold, diamonds, and rubber with colonization hitting a fever pitch during World War I. However, the repercussions of colonization have left deep wounds that still remain unhealed in the 21st century. Early on, European nations such as Britain, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and Belgium scrambled for territories. Countries wanted land so they could harvest the resources, increase trade, and gain power. The European colonization of Africa brought racism, civil unrest, and insatiable greed; all of which have had lasting impacts on Africa.
Problems began for Africa when there was the “scramble for Africa. Africa was extremely divided throughout the continent. There was no nation intact. Even though they were divided into colonies, they still had no sovereignty. Since they had no form of nationalism it made it impossible to succeed as a nation. This really hurt Africa economically. If they would have been able to come together as a nation they could have pulled all of their assets together and exploit them in order to make money. By not doing this it allowed the government to exploit the people. This is why there are starving people in Africa on television. The states of Africa were created in order to make money by exporting all the various resources, whether it was slaves, minerals, or agriculture. There was much to gain by owning a chunk of land in Africa. This reason being because Africa is so rich in their resources for trade. After the race was over it left Africa severely divided.
In the end, what holds African countries such as Nigeria together is their shared pride. Modern, western influences can bring positive changes to society, but new cultures cannot completely eradicate the foundational cultures to which a society is founded on.
According to Samuels in Case Studies in Comparative Politics, Nigeria began as a group of states and empires, which were conquered by the British Empire who ruled Nigeria through indirect rule with varying degrees of rule in North and South Nigeria (Samuels, 323-326). Since they were granted independence in 1960, three republics have been created and each has ended by military rule, which led to the creation of the fourth, and current republic in Nigeria. In the current regime Nigeria’s GDP is ranked 108 of 156 and has been decreasing, lower than some of the non oil-producing nations in Africa (“Nigeria”).
The Centers for disease control (CDC) has declared AIDS a global pandemic. No one person or group is safe from contracting this virus; knowledge, and safety is the only way you can protect yourself. However, the first black South African diagnosed with AIDS was in 1987, and currently South Africa is home to over 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, making it the largest population on earth with people infected. (3)
Nigeria is a developing country in West Africa that was colonized by the British in 1884 at the Berlin conference where Africa was divided by European powers (Graham 2009). The British wanted to expand their empire, which meant taking over other countries that had resources that they wanted, and would allow them to expand their trade market and economy. One of the colonies that British colonized was Colonial Nigeria, which was forced to participate in the slave trade in the past and was controlled by the British through the set up of trading posts and selling manufactured goods. The British split Nigeria into the north and the south regions (Temple 1912). The Southern and Northern Nigeria Protectorates controlled these two regions.
The English language has expanded and developed crossing borders between countries; therefore, the lexicon has progressed in different ways, to the extent that English has acquired characteristics that were not originally intrinsic in its nature. While, Africa, certainly had its impact on English, during the British colonization of Africa, American English has a large historically significant connection to the content as well. During the peak Transatlantic slave trade years from 1741-1810, a large portion of slaves imported came from Bantu speaking nations, particularly Angola. (Franke, 2017) Bantu referrers to a denoting branch of Niger-Congo languages, most popularly spoken in central and southern Africa consisting of Swahili, Xhosa, and
Before the Western world had an influence on them, Africa, like the other continents had stable systems that differed, but resembled other civilizations around the world. Ibn, Battuta, Visit from Mombasa
South Africa is a nation with a wonderful and varied culture. This country has been called “The Rainbow Nation”, a name that reflects the diversity of such amazing place. The different ethnic and cultural groups of the South Africa do, however, appreciate their own beliefs and customs. Many of these traditions, besides African culture, are influenced by European and Western heritage. The complex and diverse population of the country has made a strong impact to the various cultures. There are forty-five million people; about thirty million are black, five million white, three million coloured and one million Indians. The black population has a large number of rural people living in poverty. It is among these inhabitants that cultural customs are preserve the most.