African American

File “EC” is the question. 500-600 words.

·Discussion Assignments

You are required to answer one of the discussion questions in between 500 and 600 words. You will be penalized for having less than 500 words or exceeding 600 words.

· Your essay should be titled using both the number identifier for and the exact wording of the question that you are attempting. This becomes the title/subject of your essay. Do not use your name or the Discussion number as the title/subject of your essay. A penalty of half a point (0.5) penalty will be imposed on a violation of this requirement.

· The relevant Course readings must be referenced using in-text citations (author and page number – MLA style) in every discussion. Non-course materials may be used to supplement the course readings. However, a “Works Cited” with full bibliographic information must be provided for non-course materials. PowerPoint lectures may be used and cited but they are not considered course readings (they are lectures). You will lose a full point for not referencing assigned course readings in your discussion essay. A violation of this requirement will also make you ineligible for a rewrite on the said assignment.

· Your essay must include a word count at the end using this format: Word Count: xxx. This word count excludes the title and references at the end of the essay. You will lose half a point (0.5) for not including a word count at the end of your Discussion essay. A violation of this requirement will also make you ineligible for a rewrite on the assignment.

· You will be penalized half a point (0.5) for falsifying your word count. This will also make you ineligible for a rewrite on the said assignment.

Video:

Watch the video, then choose and write on one question from below. Use the question that you are attempting as the title of your essay. Discussion essay should be between 500 and 600 words long. Your discussions must include references from the assigned course readings and a Word Count at the end of your essay.

1. What are the major arguments of Dr. Basil Davidson in the video documentary, “Africa, Voyage of Discovery: Different But Equal”?

2. What are the major reasons why the narrator referenced the Egyptian civilization in this documentary?

Reading material: (PDF attached)

CHAPTER

Africa: The Continent
and Its People
Africa is not one country. It’s a continent: the second

largest continent. Not only is it vast, but it also overwhelms
the rest of the world in the diversity of its people, the

complexity of its cultures, the majesty of its geography,
the abundance of its resources, and the resiliency

and vivacity of its people.

INTRODUCTION
People writing about Africa customarily begin with a brief reference to how little Africa is known among
Americans. Unlike European powers, the United States never had colonies in Africa, although Liberia (in
West Africa) was founded in 1847 by freed African slaves from the United States, and the U.S. government
has maintained special ties with Liberia from then until now. Since the early 1960s, when dozens of African
colonies became independent nations, public ignorance in the United States about Africa has declined
markedly. Air travel between Africa and America has increased since then, and American television has
reported on a wide range of African problems—from severe drought and famine throughout the Sahel and the
Horn to political crises in Libya, Nigeria, and Rwanda. Educated Americans now realize that countries such
as Egypt, which had formerly (and mistakenly) been regarded exclusively as part of the Middle East (Asia
Minor), are actually located in Africa.

The United States has long been a favorite destination of Africans in search of higher education. During
the early years of Africa’s independence, tens of thousands of African students traveled to the United States
to further their education. The presence of these students made it possible for many educated Americans to
meet Africans from different parts of the continent and to show some appreciation for the diversity of the
African continent and its people. As the struggle for racial justice and equality in America has involved
increasing numbers of African Americans, traditional civil rights organizations like the National Association
for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the National Urban League have joined efforts with
such lobbying groups as Africa Action (formerly the American Committee on Africa) and Trans Africa
Forum in seeking actively to influence U.S. government policies toward Africa. Although Africa accounts for
the smallest proportion of new American immigrants, nevertheless more African students and visitors are
choosing to live permanently in the United States, thereby helping to expand Americans’ familiarity with
Africa.

Despite such developments and the fact that media coverage of events in independent Africa hasC

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improved significantly since colonial times (before 1960), many Americans do not fully appreciate the
physical size and ethnic diversity of the African continent. Living in such a huge country as the United
States, Americans tend to view Africa as a single country rather than as a continent that includes over fifty
different countries; they even assume that it is as easy to travel from Cameroon to Tanzania as it is to drive
from Colorado to Tennessee. For instance, it is not uncommon for an American to ask an African visitor from
Nigeria whether he knows someone from Senegal or Zambia. This chapter introduces some of the
geographic, demographic, and cultural-linguistic diversity in Africa, so that American students can begin to
understand the incredible complexity and richness of Africa’s various landscapes and cultures.

GEOGRAPHY
Africa is indeed a very large place, the world’s second largest continent. Its land area is 30 million square
kilometers, stretching nearly 8,000 kilometers from Cape Town (South Africa) to Cairo (Egypt) and more
than 5,000 kilometers from Dakar (Senegal) to Mogadishu (Somalia). It is nearly three and one half times the
size of continental United States. The political geography of this huge continent consists of fifty-four modern
nations, including island republics off its coasts. With the exception of Western Sahara, unilaterally and
forcefully annexed by Morocco when Spain suddenly relinquished its colonial control in 1976, these African
countries are independent states with their own political institutions, leaders, ideologies, and identities. All
these countries belong to a continental forum called the African Union (formerly the Organization of African
Unity, OAU), which is permanently headquartered in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia. South Africa was
admitted into the organization only in 1994 after being excluded for more than thirty years because its white
minority government had constitutionally denied full rights of citizenship to its nonwhite majority. Each of
these African nations—except for a handful of states like Somalia, Swaziland, Lesotho, and Botswana—is
multilingual. Nigeria, for instance, encompasses more than 300 different language groups (probably more
than any other nation), Tanzania has more than 100, Kenya has more than 40, and so on.

Geographically, Africa has been described as a vast plateau and is the most tropical of all continents,
lying astride the equator and extending almost equal distances toward both north and south of the equator.
Dominating the northern third of the continent is the world’s largest desert—the vast Sahara Desert. Africa’s
most significant geological features—the highest and lowest elevations, largest lakes, and source of the
world’s longest river, formed by unique patterns of “drift” between the African, Somali, and Arabian
continental plates—lie along East Africa’s Great Rift Valley, the earth’s deepest continental crevice. One end
of the Great Rift Valley follows the Red Sea northward from Lake Assai (Ethiopia) to the Dead Sea
(Palestine); southward, along the rift between the African and Somali continental plates, lie Africa’s highest
mountains and largest lakes. Whereas Lake Assai lies many hundreds of meters sea level, suchbelow
long-extinct volcanoes as Mt. Kilimanjaro (5,900 meters or 19,340 ft.) and Mt. Kenya (5,200 meters or
17,040 ft.) rise hundreds of meters higher than the highest peaks in the continental United States. Many
mountain ranges throughout the continent (e.g., Ethiopian, Drakensberg, Cameroon, and Atlas Mountains)
include peaks between 3,000 and 4,900 feet and support dense populations living in various ecozones
between 3,000 and 8,000 feet above sea level. Many of Africa’s plateaus and highlands have provided
sustenance (and in some cases, refuge) for some of the continent’s densest and most productive populations.

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MAP 1.1
Africa: Political Map
Source: Adapted from , African American Institute of New York, 1964.Africa Report

Other dense and productive populations in Africa have settled along the shores of the continent’s
freshwater lakes and rivers, as well as along parts of its tropical coastlines. Africa’s great lakes—including
Lake Victoria (the world’s second largest freshwater lake, after Lake Superior), Lakes Tanganyika and
Malawi (among the four deepest and eighth largest in the world), Lakes Turkana, Nakuru, and Rukwa—lie
on the floor of the Great Rift Valley, while shallower lakes like Chad and Bangweulu (or the Okavango
Swamp) have served as life-giving water catchments for nearby savanna (or rolling grassland) regions
elsewhere in the continent. On a continent where deserts have been expanding and savannas have been
becoming drier, not just during past decades but in past millennia, Africa’s river systems (like her lakes) have
also been crucial to people’s growth and survival.

Beginning with ancient Egyptian and Cushitic civilizations several thousand years ago, the Nile River
Valley has provided the vital water needed to sustain large populations along the only fertile strip that cuts
across the entire Sahara Desert. The longest river on earth (more than 6,400 kilometers), the historic Nile
originates from Lake Victoria-Nyanza and derives two-thirds of its waters from the Ethiopian Highlands
before plunging over several cataracts downriver (northward) into the rich Nile Delta on the Mediterranean
Sea. In modern times, the Lower (northern) Nile has become an important source of hydroelectric power, as
well as vital irrigation water, to the Egyptians and the Sudanese who benefit from the electricity generated at
the Aswan Dam. Much further upstream (southward) and beyond the Sudd marshlands of southern Sudan, the
Ugandans and the Kenyans “plug in” to smaller hydroelectric projects at Nalubaale Dam (formerly called the
Owen Falls Dam) and Kiira Dam, both near Jinja (Uganda).

Flowing from Lake Bangweulu in central Africa and draining the entire Congo tropical rain forest into
the Atlantic Ocean is the world’s tenth longest (and second most voluminous) river—the Congo (over 4,300

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kilo-meters)—which is fed by large tributaries such as the Ubangui, Kasai, and Cuango Rivers. Hydroelectric
projects around cataracts near Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo provide electricity for nearby
modernizing cities. Also from central Africa, flowing eastward into the Indian Ocean at the southern end of
Africa’s Great Rift Valley is the Zambezi River (about 2,600 kilometers) where the Kariba and Cabora Bassa
Dams have harnessed much hydroelectric power (creating, as elsewhere, large new reservoirs), even while
preserving Africa’s most famous single cataract—the beautiful and wondrous Victoria Falls (called Mosi la
Tunya in the local Bemba language). Over in West Africa, where the Sahara Desert has been perceptibly
expanding southward into the dry savannas of the Sahel during recent decades, the Niger River (about 4,800
kilometers) has long been regarded as a “lifeline” to the tens of millions of people it serves in about a half
dozen nations but especially in Niger and Mali. Along with its major tributary (the Benue River) and such
other prominent West African rivers as the Senegal, the Gambia, and the Volta (where the continent’s first
major hydroelectric dam was built in Ghana), the Niger’s waters are collected by interior highlands and
plateaus.

The Sahara Desert, which is nearly as large as the continental United States and still growing, engulfs
much of the northern third of Africa. The Namib and Kalahari Deserts of southern Africa cover much of
modern Namibia and Botswana, and Africa’s Horn (especially in eastern Ethiopia, northeastern Kenya, and
Somalia) is rapidly devolving from dry savanna into desert proper. Other than such vast and thinly populated
deserts and particular areas of densely populated mountain terrain, river valleys or deltas, lake basins, and
fertile coastal strips, much of rural Africa is characterized by scattered villages of farmers and herders living
on savannas. Less than 10 percent of the continent’s landscape, contrary to popular imagination, can be
classified as tropical rainforest or “jungle.” In so far as “jungle” still exists, it is mostly found in the Congo
drainage basin (which is lightly populated). Most tropical rainforest on the coastlines are now used for
farming, fishing, lumbering, and city life. It can be seen that African people have adapted to countless
different, and challenging, local environments. Even now, San hunters-gatherers have been forced to adapt
their traditional lifestyles to harsh living conditions on the edge of the Namib and Kalahari Deserts. Nuer and
Dinka cattle keepers persist in following intricate traditional patterns of transhumance in the Sudd marshes
amid prolonged civil war in the Sudan. Fulani herders and Bozo fishers, despite recent decades of severe
drought and famine in the Sahel, continue to practice their traditional patterns of cattle husbandry and
canoecraft, while coexisting and trading with local farmers. Africans living in such vastly different local
circumstances have naturally developed different customs and lifestyles, although communities that survive
today as hunters-gatherers, herders, or fishers are very few compared to the vast majority ofprimarily
African farming communities (where hunting, gathering, fishing, and/or herding may be seen as
supplemental activities).

Especially in humid tropical rainforests, lake basins, or river valleys, untold varieties of insects and
bacteria abound, including many species unknown in more temperate climates. Africans living in areas so
rich in life have also had to cope with the lethal varieties of illness that abound in tropical climates. As of1

2008, it was estimated that over 300 million people in the tropics (including Africa) suffered from malaria
(which kills nearly 2.7 million people annually and is caused by a parasite carried by the anopheles
mosquito), 300 million suffered from schistosomiasis, also known as , a debilitating illness carriedBilharzia
by freshwater snails, and another 130,000 (in 1995) suffered from guinea worm disease, carried by water
fleas. It was estimated that 5 million children die each year in the tropics of diar-rheal illness, 2 million die of
tropical fevers, and 1.5 million from measles. There are estimated to be 18 million cases of onchocerciasis
(river blindness) in West Africa, more than 66 million cases of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) mainly in
East and central Africa, and 90 million cases of filaria-sis, a debilitating worm illness, throughout the
continent. Trypanosomiasis also severely affects domestic animals, thereby impeding the development of
animal husbandry. Tuberculosis and polio, which have been virtually eradicated from much of the world, are
still killing Africans, particularly in urban areas. Since 1980, the AIDS virus has spread rapidly across central
Africa, from Kinshasa (Democratic Republic of Congo) to Nairobi (Kenya) and Dar-es-Salaam (Tanzania),
through the use of unclean syringes and contaminated blood transfusions as well as unsafe sex, leading some
experts to estimate that 10 percent of the babies in central Africa are now being born with the AIDS virus.
Thus, the very abundance of life generated in Africa’s humid ecozones, in all these ways, has led to the
proliferation of organisms that carry deadly or debilitating illnesses. In the case of malaria, Africa’s major
“killer” illness, many Africans have used leaves from the neem tree as an antidote, while some coastalCo

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peoples have inherited a sickle-cell trait in their bloodstreams as a protective adaptation against lethal doses
of malaria. When Americans study Africa, they should remember that people living in humid tropical
environments have to confront a much wider variety of life forms—and life-threatening illnesses—on a daily
basis than do those living in temperate climates such as those of North America, Europe, or Japan.

MAP 1.2
Africa: Physical Map

Source: Drawn by James D. Graham and Vincent B. Khapoya.

DEMOGRAPHY
The Population Reference Bureau in Washington estimates that in 2011 Africa was host to nearly 1.05 billion
people. Compared to other continents, Africa is not terribly crowded, with a population density of only about
32 people per square kilometer. This compares with 72 in Europe, 93 in Asia, 14 in North America, and 33 in
South America. However, when one considers the continent’s high population growth rate (about twice that
of the rest of the world), the vast arid and semiarid regions, and the diminishing supplies of arable land, there
are serious grounds for concern about Africa’s future capacity to feed its own people.

As in other continents, pockets of population density in Africa have emerged in various rural areas
because of favorable local climates, freshwater supplies, cultivable land, or useful minerals. Africa’s largest

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current concentrations of people have historically expanded along the shores of interior rivers and lakes, as
well as in well-watered highland areas—near river deltas or mouths—and in Mediterranean strips along some
of Africa’s coastlines. Although most of Africa’s interior geography was unknown to Europeans until the
nineteenth century, its shorelines were more accurately mapped 300 years earlier by European explorers,
traders, slave-raiders, and pirates. Many centuries before then, Africans along the Mediterranean Sea, the Red
Sea, and the Indian Ocean coasts were intermediaries between diverse interior trade routes and
long-established seagoing commerce.

Africa’s Mediterranean coastal climate supports densely settled agricultural populations, especially in
the Maghreb (north of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia) and the Nile River Delta. The
Maghreb has a Mediterranean climate (also typical of the coastal foothills and plains near the extreme
southwestern portion of South Africa), which is both well-watered and temperate. A rich variety of foods and
wines have traditionally been raised there that the Maghreb was long ago known as “the breadbasket” of
Rome’s ancient Mediterranean empire. By turning desert into productive farmland through irrigation along
the lower (northern) Nile Valley, most people living in both ancient and modern Egypt and Sudan (about one
eighth of Africa’s current total population) have long been able to raise nutritional fruits, grains, and
vegetables, as well as livestock. Population along the Nile Valley, the Nile Delta, and the Maghreb coast, as
indicated earlier, is quite densely settled.

Much of the West African coast, between the Senegal and Congo Rivers, is also densely
populated—especially near the rich alluvial soils of the Niger River Delta and the mouths of other West
African rivers. The dominant coastal vegetation (where a few valuable hardwood trees still stand) is tropical
rain forest. Between what remains of this coastal rain forest and the vast reaches of the Western Sahara lie the
rolling grasslands of the West African Sahel. Prior to the beginnings of European colonialism about a century
ago, these West African savannas supported some of the continent’s largest and most famous cities,
kingdoms, and empires. After the colonial conquest, and with the deterioration of the more fragile savanna
ecosystems during the past few decades, a frightening process of dessication (drying up or desertification)
has forced many hundreds of thousands to leave their dried-up lands. West Africa’s highland areas and
plateaux, from the Futa Jalon eastward to the Cameroon Mountains, have continued to support sizable local
population densities with more patterns of regular rainfall. The continent’s largest remaining tropical rain
forest, the central interior drained by the Congo River and its tributaries, is relatively lightly populated except
near cities (primarily due to the fragile nature of rainforest soils, which are subjected to constant heavy rains
and to being “leached” of their nutrients).

From the East African Horn southward to the Zambezi River, tropical rain forests are limited primarily
to coastal or lowland areas (including the Lake Victoria-Nyanza Basin), although lower elevations in the
Horn are usually arid. Most of the East African mountain ranges and peaks, however, attract more than
adequate rainfall on some very good soils. Highland populations living on the more fertile hillsides of these
Rift Valley mountains are among the most densely settled peoples in East Africa. From the Rift Valley
savannas of central Kenya and Tanzania to the central savannas drained by the Zambezi River to the south,
large numbers of East Africans have traditionally practiced “shifting cultivation” and/or herding; these
lifestyles have encouraged much contact and local trade among these plateau peoples. Today, considerable
numbers of East African herders and mixed farmers continue to live in scattered settlements, depending
primarily on irregular rainfall for their water needs. Meanwhile, dwindling numbers of herders eke out their
daily existence on the dessicated former savannas of the Horn. East Africa’s densest populations live in its
fertile highlands, population centers along its lake and ocean coasts, and savanna towns.

South of the Zambezi River lies the region of southern Africa, where patterns of population density
parallel those discussed above. Density is lowest on the Namib and Kalahari Deserts, where dwindling
numbers of San hunters and gatherers persist in maintaining some semblance of their ancient lifestyles. Large
villages and towns are scattered among the rural plateaus and savannas of modern Angola, Zimbabwe,
Mozambique, and northern South Africa, while the densest populations of this region inhabit the areas which
have summer rainfall to the south and east of the Drakensberg Mountains as well as the most productive
highlands and river valley areas. Modern cities like Johannesburg and Bulawayo have grown up around
mineral deposits. Except for European immigrants (Afrikaners and British) and small remnants of the

region’s original Khoisan inhabitants, the vast majority of southern Africans have traditionally spoken Bantu
languages, practiced farming and herding, and developed complex cultures and civilizations that reflected
local differences as well as generally similar values.

Off the coast of southeastern Africa in the Indian Ocean lies the world’s fourth largest island,
Madagascar, as well as a number of smaller island nations such as Seychelles, Comoros, and Mauritius.
Together with Cape Verde Islands in the Atlantic Ocean, these are among Africa’s most densely populated
countries. As indicates, Africa’s smallest nation-states (in geographical area) are often among itsTable 1.1
most densely populated.

There are wide variations in population density both these African nations and them. Inwithin between
addition to particular ecozones favored by peoples within each country (e.g., the Nile Valley in Egypt and
Sudan), the populations of modern cities have expanded dramatically since World War II. Although
two-thirds of Africans still live in the countryside, high rates of rural-to-urban migration have been
documented throughout the continent, leading to urban unemployment and overcrowding. In both the
countryside and the cities, Africa’s population is growing at an alarming rate. At the continent’s current
population growth rate of about 2.4 percent a year, the number of Africans has already hit the 1 billion mark
by the year 2011. Indeed, the Population Reference Bureau projects the African population to be 1.4 billion
by the year 2025 and 2.3 billion by the year 2050. Mortality rates for African children—74 per 1,000 live
births—compared to 44 for the world and 5 for the industrialized countries are among the highest in the
world, yet more African children now survive due to modest increases in local availability of vaccines,
antibiotics, and clean water. Because the cities and the most productive rural lands of Africa are already
overpopulated and so much of the remaining land is arid, it seems to many outsiders (if not to many Africans)
that Africa’s high population growth rate will have to decline if the continent is to become self-reliant in
sustaining its people’s health and improving their material lives.

TABLE 1.1

Area, Population, and Population Density of African Nations
in Descending Order of Population (2011)

Country
Area (in square

kilometers)
Population
(in millions)

Density
(people/sq. km)

Nigeria 913,070 162.3 176
Ethiopia 1,091,509 87.1 79
Egypt 989,850 82.6 83
Congo, Democratic 2,317,699 67.8

Republic of South Africa 1,206,897 50.5 41
Tanzania 934,139 46.2 49
Kenya 573,647 41.6 72
Algeria 2,354,153 36.0 15
Uganda 238,249 34.5 143
Morocco 441,377 32.3 72
Sudan 1,864,215 31.1 17
Ghana 235,773 25.0 143
Mozambique 792,305 23.1 29
Côte d’Ivoire 318,725 22.6 70
Madagascar 792,305 21.3 36
Cameroon 469,934 20.1 42
Angola 1,232,259 19.6 16
Burkina Faso 270,828 17.0 62
Niger 1,252,323 16.1 13
Malawi 117,107 15.9 134
Mali 1,225,825 15.4 12
Zambia 743,892 13.5 18
Senegal 194,442 12.8 65
Zimbabwe 386,235 12.1 31
Chad 1,269,128 11.5 9
Rwanda 26,035 10.9 415
Tunisia 151,715 10.7 65
Guinea 243,013 10.2 42
Burundi 27,507 10.2 367
Somalia 630,275 9.9 16
Benin 111,316 9.1 81
South Sudan 619,745 8.3 13
Libya 1,739,159 6.4 4
Eritrea 116,237 5.9 51
Togo 56,133 5.8 103
Sierra Leone 70,909 5.4 75
Central African 615,764 5.0 8
Republic Congo 338,038 4.1 29
Republic ofLiberia 110,080 4.1 37
Mauritania 1,013,642 3.5 3
Namibia 814,743 2.3 3
Lesotho 29,998 2.2 72
Botswana 574,991 2.0 3
Gambia, The 11,169 1.8 157
Guinea-Bissau 35,702 1.6 45
Gabon 264,568 1.5 6
Mauritius 2,017 1.3 630
Swaziland 17,160 1.2 69
Djibouti 22,932 0.9 39
Reunion 2,481 0.9 341
The Comoros 2,204 0.8 813
Equatorial Guinea 27,725 0.7

Cape Verde 3,983 0.5 123
Western Sahara 249,201 0.5 2Co
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Mayotte 371 0.2 563
SãoTomé and Principe 952 0.2 187
Seychelles 445 0.1 194

Source: 2011 World Population Data Sheet (Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau, Inc., 2011). For South Sudan, which
became an independent state on July 9, 2011, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sudan, accessed on August 11, 201

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE
As African families settled and expanded in different ecozones during past millennia and throughout the
continent, they developed somewhat different customs and vocabularies to order and explain their lives.
During centuries of interaction, descendants of original settlers and subsequent immigrants to different
localities developed cultures and languages that distinguished their particular lifestyles from those of their
neighbors (who may have lived in different ecozones or organized their communities according to different
ancestral traditions). Anthropologists and linguists alike have argued that “language” and “culture” are
virtually the same. Each culture or subculture is most fully described in the particular language or dialect
which characterizes it; each language or dialect most intricately names and reflects its particular culture or
subculture. It is helpful, when studying the similarities and differences between African peoples, to adopt
such a perspective. In this text, a group’s common elements of language and culture are seen as being most
significant in identifying different “peoples” or ethnic groups sharing common language and culture. As
elsewhere in the modern world, African ethnicity has many variants and undergoes much redefinition through
time, yet one’s home “people” (whom one grows up with, knows, or is related to through extended networks
of kinship groups) remains a significant point of reference for most Africans today.

One of the most common (and often offensive) questions that Americans sometimes ask a newly
introduced African in this country is, “Oh, you are from Africa; what tribe are you from?” Not only do many
Africans regard the connotation of the word “tribe” (along with words like “primitive,” “superstitious,” and
“natives”) as derogatory, but most Africanist scholars have also come to regard the denotation of the word
“tribe” as both imprecise and misleading. Jan Vansina, who pioneered the rigorous collection and analysis of
Africa’s rich oral traditions a few decades ago, observed that (1) social groupings in tropical Africa have
increased and decreased dramatically (in both population size and geographical area) over time, and (2) the
static connotation of the word “tribe” cannot possibly reflect the intricacies of these ever-changing
relationships. Ironically, because the term “tribe” was popularized by colonial authorities in Africa and by
Western scholars writing about Africa, it is still retained (at least for administrative and political purposes) by
many independent African nations. These nations identify people by “tribe” in tax records and birth
certificates and on identification cards.

Some of the problems of describing African peoples as “tribes” were summarized by David Wiley and
Marylee Crofts:

Unfortunately, the term is a bad word to describe African societies. Even worse, it carries the connotation
of uncivilized, dangerous, uncontrolled, superstitious human beings unlike ourselves…. The word “tribe”
has been used by scholars from the West to describe people living in smaller societies with less material
technology than our own. Thus “tribes” are found in North America, Southeast Asia, ancient Israel, the
hills and deserts of the Middle East, and, most of all, in Africa.

However, we can find no definition in the scholarly literature of anthropology that really describes
these societies. Some say that tribespeople have a common ancestor, others believe that tribes have a
common language; some say persons who live under a chieftain are tribal; others say tribes share a
common government or common culture. In fact, when we look at the societies of Africa, we find none of
these definitions fits all of the societies that existed before colonial rule …

For these reasons, scholars prefer to discard the term “tribe” because it is misleading and creates an
image of an inferior and sub-human people. In fact, Africa’s small scale societies are much like the clans
of Scotland or the villages of Ireland and Wales whose people are not called “tribal.” More appropriate
terms are societies, ethnicities, classes or simply the name of the people such as the Yoruba or the Lunda.2

People familiar with names such as Hausa, Yoruba, and Ibo (the three largest and best-known peoples of
modern Nigeria) or the Kikuyu, Luo, Kalenjin, and Luhya (of Kenya) understand that these indigenous
peoples can be distinguished from others by virtue of their different languages, kinship systems, rituals, and
traditions. The larger groups of these peoples are often comprised of many subcultures, each speaking its own
dialect and maintaining its own traditions. The Hausa peoples of Nigeria, for instance, are comprised of many
subcultures, such as the Daurawa, the Gobir, and the Kanawa. Such subcultures, among the Hausa and
elsewhere, will often identify themselves as though they were distinct ethnic groups, even fighting fiercely
against neighboring and related subcultures.

Africanist scholars have come to regard the concept of “race” as even less accurate than the term “tribe”
in distinguishing peoples. Back in 1930, C. G. Seligman’s book culminated more than aThe Races of Africa
century of European scholars’ efforts to classify Africans, and others in our world, in terms of skin color as
well as physical traits like head form, nose form, hair type, lips, and so on. Since Linneaus (a famous
eighteenth-century Swedish botanist) classified the four “races” of humankind as being distinguishable (and
ordered divinely in the “Great Chain of Being”) by white, yellow, red, and black skin colors, other European
and American scientists have attempted to prove that skin color (genetically related only to eye and hair
color) could positively be correlated to head size, intelligence, language complexity, civilization, and so on.
Despite all their efforts to establish such implausible correlations, these scholars (including America’s
William Shockley, who spent the last two decades of his life trying to correlate skin color with IQ scores)
have been unable to prove any of their hypotheses.

Seligman, for example, attributed the development of great civilizations throughout African history
mostly to the long-term emigration of light-skinned “Hamites” from the ancient Middle East, because he (and
other colonialist scholars) could not admit that the dark-skinned “negroid race” could have developed such
remarkable civilizations as ancient Cush and Axum or medieval Mali and Songhay. This “hamitic
hypothesis” was widely accepted and taught during colonial times, until Joseph Greenberg (another
American scholar) published in 1956. Greenberg and otherThe Classification of African Languages
historical linguists have thoroughly exposed the flawed assumptions of Seligman’s hypothesis and suggested
that Hamites were a mere fiction, a confused intermixing of obscurely known physical characteristics with
inaccurate linguistic-cultural data. Scholars have subsequently demonstrated not only that culture and
civilization had nothing to do with people’s skin color but also that the more than 800 languages currently
spoken in Africa can be related to one another in only four major language families. Language differences,
based on Greenberg’s original classifications, have indeed become the Africanist’s primary tool in trying to
differentiate, classify, or compare and contrast the various cultures and peoples of Africa (see ).Table 1.2

TABLE 1.2

Selected Major Languages Spoken in African Countries

Country Languages Spoken
Algeria Arabic (official), French, Tamasight (Berber)
Angola Portuguese (official), Umbundu, Kimbundu, Kikongo, Chokwe-Lunda
Benin French (official), Fon-Ewe, Yoruba, Bariba, Ge, Dendi
Botswana English (official), SeTswana, Shona
Burkina Faso French (official), Mossi, Dyula, Mandé, Senufo, Fulani
Burundi French (official), Kirundi (official), Swahili
Cameroon French (official), English (official), Fulani, Bamileke, Bulu, Ewondo, Kirdi,

Douala
Cape Verde Portuguese (official), Crioulo (Creole)
Central African Republic French (official), Banda, Baya, Sangho (lingua franca)
Chad French (official), Arabic, Sara, Kirdi, Sangho, Wadai, Tubu
Comoros French (official), Arabic, Comoran-Swahili
Congo French (official), Kikongo, Teke, M’bochi, Lingala, ‘Mbete, Sanga
Congo, Democratic Republic of French (official), Lingala, Swahili, Kikongo, Tshiluba
Djibouti French (official), Arabic, Somali, Afar
Egypt Arabic (official), English
Equatorial Guinea Spanish (official), French, Fang, Bubi
Eritrea Arabic (official), English, Tigrinya, Tigre
Ethiopia Amharic (official), Oromo, Tigrinya, Somali
Gabon French (official), Fang, Bateke, Eshira, Mbete, Kota
Gambia English (official), Mandingo, Fulani, Wolof, Soninke
Ghana English (official), Twi, Ewe, Ga, Hausa
Guinea French (official), Malinke, Poular, Sousou
Guinea-Bissau Portuguese (official), Balante, Crioulo, Fulani, Mandinga
Ivory Coast French (official), Akan, Kru, Mandé, Senufo, Dioula, Abidji
Kenya English (official), Swahili (official), Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya, Kamba, Kalenjin
Country Languages Spoken
Lesotho English (official), SeSotho, Xhosa, Zulu
Liberia English (official), Kpelle, Mano, Kru-Bassa, Krahn
Libya Arabic (official), Tamazight (Berber)
Madagascar French (official), Malagasy
Malawi English (official), Chichewa, Lomwe, Ngoni, Yao
Mali French (official), Bambara, Fulani, Malinké, Senufo
Mauritania French (official), Arabic, Sarakole, Fulani, Wolof
Mauritius English (official), Creole, Hindi, Urdu, Tamil
Morocco French and Arabic (both official), Tamazight (Berber)
Mozambique Portuguese (official), Makua-Lomwe, Swahili, Chichewa, Shona, Tsonga
Namibia English (official), Afrikaans (official), Oshivambo, Herero, Kavango,

Nama-Dama (Khoisan), German.
Niger French (official), Hausa, Songhai, Fulani, Kanuri, Tuareg
Nigeria English (official), Hausa, Yoruba, Ibo, Tiv, Kanuri
Reunion French (official), Creole
Rwanda French (official), Kinyarwanda, Swahili
São Tomé and Principe Portuguese (official)
Senegal French (official), Wolof, Pulaar, Serer, Mandé
Seychelles French (official), English, Creole
Sierra Leone English (official), Creole, Temne, Mendé, Mandé, Krio, Fanti
Somalia Somali (official), Arabic, Swahili, English, Italian
South Africa official languages: English, Afrikaans, Zulu, Xhosa, Sotho, Swati, Tswana, Pedi,

Ndebele, Venda, Tsonga
Sudan Swaziland Arabic (official), Dinka, Acholi, Ta, Lango, English English (official), SiSwati,

Sesotho, isiZulu
Tanzania Swahili (official), English, Sukuma, Nyamwezi, Chagga
Togo French (official), Hausa, Ewe, Kabre, Moba, Kotocoli, Dagomba
Tunisia Arabic (official), French (official)
Uganda English (official), Luganda, Lusoga, Runyankole, Rutoro, Acholi, Swahili,

Lango

Western Sahara Arabic (official), Spanish, Tuareg, dialects of Tamazight
Zambia English (official), Bemba, Nyanja, Barotse, Lunda, Lozi
Zimbabwe English (official), Shona, IsiNdebele, Nyanja

Source: Donald George Morrison, Robert C. Mitchell, and John N. Paden. , 2nd EditionBlack Africa: A Comparative Handbook
(New York: Paragon House, 1989). Helpful suggestions from Keith Gottschalk of the University of the Western Cape, a Fulbright
Scholar-in-Residence at Oakland University, 2009–2010.

Greenberg’s successors in historical linguistics have developed some intriguing data (and hypotheses)
through the application of rigorous methods of lexicostatistics (and glottochronology) to present-day African
languages. Through such methods, it has been possible to determine how closely the basic vocabularies of
any two languages are related and to estimate approximately when such language groups may have originally
separated and begun to develop different dialects. Through lexicostatistics, historical linguists have
subsequently modified and elaborated on Greenberg’s original model of African language families—adding
newly researched languages, rearranging language subfamilies, and renaming the four major families.

For this text, it is sufficient to designate the major families (and a few significant subfamilies) of African
languages in Greenberg’s original terms. The four major language families that he first identified were
Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan (or Click). Except for Afrikaans (an amalgam of
Dutch, French, and German now spoken by the so-called Coloureds and about 2 million white South Africans
who also call themselves “Afrikaners”), Malagasy (a Malayo-Polynesian derivative spoken on the large
Indian Ocean island of Madagascar) and other European languages (English, French, Portuguese, Spanish,
Italian, and German), or local creole adaptations, all the many hundreds of languages and thousands of
dialects now spoken on the continent are historically related to one of these four basic language families.

The Khoisan languages (including Khoi and San subfamilies) are currently spoken only by isolated
groups of hunters and gatherers living on marginal lands in southern and central Africa. The distinctive
“clicks” of Khoisan languages seem to have survived from very early speech patterns, and some of these
click sounds have been incorporated into neighboring languages like Xhosa and Zulu (in South Africa). A
much larger present-day language family, but still considerably less widespread than the other two dominant
language families of modern Africa, is what Greenberg called the Nilo-Saharan. Several subfamilies and
dozens of different modern languages with Nilo-Saharan roots have been researched and recorded among
peoples now living in the area bounded by Lake Chad and the Nile River, the Sahara Desert, and Lake
Victoria. Sometimes referred to as Nilotes, such cattle-keeping peoples as the Luo and Maasai, the Nuer and
Dinka are linguistically related to one another.

Africa’s most widespread language family (which includes many hundreds of languages spoken
throughout the southern two-thirds of the continent) is the one Greenberg named Niger-Congo. He originally
identified a dozen Niger-Congo subfamilies, including the populous Mande and Kwa subfamilies of West
Africa and the most extensive language subfamily in all of Africa—Bantu. Historians have debated when,
why, and where the remarkable expansion of Bantu-speaking peoples started ever since Greenberg estimated
that about 400 different languages now spoken south of the Sahara have Bantu origins. These hundreds of
Bantu languages apparently began differentiating from one another within the past 3,000 years or so
(according to the estimates of glottochronologists). Consequently, many Bantu-speaking peoples, especially
those bordering on each other, have similarities in vocabulary and in culture. The most widely spoken Bantu
language, which has become somewhat of a lingua franca in East and central Africa, is Kiswahili.
Throughout the past millennium, east coast Swahili city states have incorporated different words from
Arabic, Asian, and European immigrants into their Bantu-based language, broadening their perspectives and
helping to expand their international commerce.

The most widely spoken language in the northern third of Africa is Arabic, which (along with the
Hebrew) is classified as part of the Semitic subfamily. Together with four other subfamilies, Semitic
languages are classified as part of Greenberg’s Afro-Asiatic family. Glottochronologists have hypothesized
that an original Afro-Asiatic mother tongue existed about 10,000 years ago, probably somewhere near the
confluence of the Blue Nile and the White Nile, before the original speakers of Semitic, ancient Egyptian,
Cushitic, Berber, and Chadic subfamilies separated and began to disperse in different directions. As the
ancient Egyptians went north, Berbers and Chadic (including Hausa) speakers moved westward, Cushitic

(including Amharic, Somali, and Galla) speakers inhabited Africa’s Horn, and the ancestors of ancient
Semites moved into what is now known as the Middle East. In ancient times, these various descendants of
Afro-Asiatic speakers built the first great cities and civilizations. Today, the descendants of those ancient
subfamilies vary widely in language, skin color, and local traditions, although Arabic (the language of Islam)
is widely understood throughout northern Africa and the Middle East.

Because language is so closely associated with culture, it would follow that African peoples have
developed more than 800 distinctive cultures (corresponding to their languages) that not only differ from
each other (as their languages differ) but also share many common characteristics and values. For example,
the Nuer, Dinka, Maasai, and Luo (all of whom, as noted, speak related Nilotic languages) have similar
traditions associated with cattle herding, initiation and age grades, even though their particular rituals,
traditions, and lifestyles vary considerably according to their local circumstances.

This chapter has only introduced some dimensions of diversity in the African experience. In the
following chapters, examples are drawn from different cultures and ecozones to illustrate some common,
cross-cultural continuities in African customs, values, and experiences. The very different kinds of ecozones
with correspondingly different population densities, the many hundreds of distinctive languages and cultures,
and the many dozens of modern nation-states found in Africa provide some indication of what size, variety,
and complexity exists on the continent. It is strongly recommended that readers of this text spend some time
studying Africa’s physical and political geography (as depicted in the maps in the preceding sections of this
chapter), as well as the demographic data ( ) and language/culture list ( on ). InTable 1.1 Table 1.2 p. 14
addition, please refer back to and while reading this text, so as to reaffirm constantly theTables 1.1 1.2
specific different circumstances in which various African peoples live throughout the continent.

Notes
Figures pertaining to various tropical diseases were obtained from the following websites in October 2008:
www.malaria.org/wheredoesitoccur.html, www.astdhpphe.org/infect/guinea.html,
www.emedicine.com/med/topic1667.html, and www.micro.msb.ac.uk.
David Wiley and Marylee Crofts, (Guilford, CT: Dushkin Publishing Group, 1984), pp.The Third World: AFRICA
63–65.

CHAPTER

African Traditional
Institutions

“I am because you are.” An African defines himself or herself by the group—the word
“tribe” is still inaccurately used—to which he/she belongs. “Communalism” or

“collectivism” is a term which captures the essence of this traditional value. It served the
Africans well in the past. Is it a curse in the twenty-first century?

INTRODUCTION
Most non-African scholars of Africa tend to emphasize the heterogeneity of the African continent and to
imply not only that the differences that exist outweigh the values and institutions that Africans share in
common but also that these differences are somehow unbridgeable. Certainly, differences do exist. They are
readily discernible in levels of economic development and in the multiplicity of languages.

Nigeria and Kenya are more economically developed than Somalia and Chad. Botswana and Senegal
have enjoyed reasonable political stability, whereas Somalia and the Central African Republic have
continually experienced painful civil strife. African countries have different languages, ideologies, and
political traditions. Indeed, the languages of Europe—English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish—continue to
be used by African countries that were colonized by the respective European nations. The adoption of
European languages as official languages is due to the fact that African states are politically unable to decide
which of their own indigenous languages should be adopted nationally. When attempts have been broached
to launch an indigenous language as the official language of a country, serious national conflict has often
loomed on the horizon, hampering national debate of the matter. In adopting nine African languages as
official languages in addition to the two—English and Afrikaans—which have been used for decades, South
Africa is a trailblazer on the language issue.

A wide ideological spectrum is represented among African states. There have been genuine Marxist
states in the past, such as Ethiopia under Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Republic of the Congo under Marien
Ngouabi, and Benin under Mathieu Kerekou. Monarchists in Uganda yearn for the return of traditional
kingdoms that were dismantled soon after Britain granted Uganda independence under the leadership of
Apollo Milton Obote. There are reigning monarchs in Swaziland, Lesotho, and Morocco with varying
constitutional powers. At one time, it was fashionable for African leaders to claim that they were socialists.C

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