5.6. - Human Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa

Africa's rich and ancient history is often overshadowed by the changes that came with European colonialism. These changes were so powerful that their effects continue to be felt today.

Africa was the home of the first humans. It was probably in Eastern Africa, in the highlands of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda that one of the first human species (homo erectus) evolved more than 2 million years ago.  Modern humans evolved about 200,000 years ago in Africa and migrated toward the eastern Mediterranean about 90,000 years ago. They then spread across mainland and island Asia and eventually to Europe. 

Early Agriculture, Industry and Trade in Africa

Agriculture dates back 7000 years in the Sahel and the highlands of Sudan and Ethiopia and was brought south into the rest of Africa 2500 years ago. Trade routes spanned the continent, extending into Egypt and Rome and east into India and China. Gold, elephant tusks, and timber were exchanged fro salt, textiles, beads and other goods.

About 3400 years ago, the people who lived near Lake Victoria learned how to smelt iron and make steel. By 700 AD there were advanced civilizations with advanced agriculture, iron production and gold mining technology in Zimbabwe. the Great Zimbabwe Empire.

Powerful kingdoms rose and fell throughout Africa in Mali, Ghana, and Mauritania. Africa's kingdoms enslaved people captured during war.  A slave trade developed with Arab and Asian lands to the east. After the spread of Islam in 700 AD, the slave trade continued and Muslim traders exported close to 9 million African slaves to parts of Southwest, South and Southeast Asia.  

Slavery

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In the mid 1400's Portuguese traders came to Africa's west coast. The names given to stretches of this coast by the Portuguese and other early European traders stuck: the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, the Pepper Coast and the Slave Coast. They also reveal what these traders were looking for.

By the 1530's, the Portuguese had organized a slave trade with the Americas that was more widespread and brutal than any trade of African enslaved people that preceded it. The slave trade was eventually dominated by British companies, but French, Dutch and Portuguese companies played a major role.

European companies established forts on Africa's west coast and paid nearby African kingdoms with weapons, trade goods and money to conduct slave raids into the interior. Some enslaved people were taken from enemy kingdoms in battle but most were kidnapped from their villages. Most were male because they brought the highest prices. Between 1600 and 1865 about 12 million captives were shipped to the Americas. 25% died at sea. Of those that made it, 90% went to plantations in South America and the Caribbean. Between 6 and 10 percent came to North America. 

Slavery, continues today. It is most common in the Sahel region, where several countries officially made it illegal within only the last few years. People may become enslaved during war; they may be sold off by their parents to pay debts or they may be tricked into slavery when migrating to a city.  In Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso and Nigeria, forced child labor is common particularly in cacao production. In Liberia, Sierra Leone, Cameroon and Congo, young boys have been enslaved as miners and soldiers. Since 2014, the Islamic militant group Boko Haram has kidnapped more than 2000 young girls. There are estimates that there are over 9 million slaves in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Colonization

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As the slave trade was dismantled in the mid 1800's many European companies in Africa switched to buying raw materials to supply European industry. Eventually these trading companies grew into formal colonial governments that controlled most of the region.

The Colonial governments were interest in resource extraction and had no interest in setting up stable governments or prospering economies. Subsistence farms and farmers were turned to cash-crops (cotton, rubber, palm oil) and resource extraction. Previously prosperous Africans became poor and hungry. African industries that might compete with European industry were "discouraged". In 1884, the competing European trading companies carved up Africa at the Berlin Conference. With a few exceptions, the boundaries of most African nations were established by Europeans between 1840 and 1916.  By WW I only two areas were independent - Liberia and Ethiopia.

Boundaries were drawn to divide tribal groups and weaken them. Nomadic groups were cut off from their previous environments and confined to small areas. Access to resources shrank and hostilities between groups grew. This "divide and conquer" strategy left Africans with major complications after independence. Old tribal conflicts persisted and leadership was often seen as partisan and corrupt.

Independence

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Progress towards independence was slow up until the mid-20th century. By 1977, 54 African countries had seceded from European colonial rulers. Though colonialism in Africa was relatively short-lived - about 80 years from the 1880s to the 1960s - its impacts are still felt today in the political and economic instability that plagues the region. Few countries have achieved true prosperity and political freedoms have only expanded recently. Most countries have done their best to operate inside borders created to make it easier for Europeans to extract resources and to weaken African resistance to foreign control. Tensions between tribal groups have broken out repeatedly and often violently.

Learn More

Africa's Great Civilizations Links to an external site. - This is a PBS series on Africa's ancient cultures and kingdoms

Life Aboard a Slave Ship Links to an external site.

The Scramble for Africa: A History of Independence Links to an external site.