Bangui—“The African City”: 2012

Sunday, April 1, 2012

Assignment, Week 8

Continue to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (3–4 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.

How is the “informal” conveyed within your city? Illustrate key informal/formal differences in spatial use through evidence provided in local newspaper, blog, or website insights. Map some aspect of this “informal”/”formal” dynamic with AfricaMap and/or Google Earth. Provide screenshots.

Excuse the slight departure from the assignment here: as I have mentioned before, Bangui’s Internet presence is next to nonexistent. What’s more, the news websites that do exist, for whatever reason, largely limit their coverage to the city’s formal sector. Their economic sections cover deals between the Central African government and foreign beneficiaries, or European countries that have won contracts to extract the country’s resources, but not the informal sector which has so much greater an effect on people’s everyday lives. There is one blog, La Lettre de C.B.M., which seems to give sharp and cynical social commentary. Naturally, of course, it’s not online right now.

In any case, Bangui’s informal economy has been studied in other contexts, so I will draw the contents of this post largely from scholarly sources.

A dichotomy between the formal and informal sectors of the economy exists in most, if not all, African cities. In Bangui, however, their relative sizes are more pronounced. It all goes back to colonial neglect: As France essentially did not care to develop Bangui beyond the tiny enclave that was the European city, at the time of independence there was barely any formal economy. As a result, in 2012, there is still barely any formal economy.

Bangui’s formal economy is, in simple numerical terms, woefully incapable of supporting large numbers of employees. Jobs in government ministries, international organizations and legitimate private-sector companies are exclusively limited to those with university education, but even among that subset of the population there is fierce competition. Additionally, in spatial terms, formal jobs are geographically inaccessible to the vast majority of the population. (More on that later.)

What of the rest? The remainder of Bangui’s population, though not officially employed, forms the lifeblood of its economy. They are street vendors, taxi drivers and repairpeople. They provide essential services for which the formal sector is unequipped, the services that are necessary for survival (Woodfork 147–148).

I did find one relevant article (after all that, one!). It was in the Journal de Bangui of 9 March 2012, and it reports on women selling salted fish in the streets. One is quoted as referring to fish-vending as a better way for women to support themselves than “whining” at their husbands (Journal de Bangui). This informal action is a good example of women collectively filling a void in the formal economy (affordable food) and at the same time advancing themselves.

Spatially, the dichotomy between formal and informal economy resembles the dichotomy between the planned and unplanned areas of the city. The relatively small former European city is the only place where one will find a formal economy, and yet it too is home to many informal economic activities. (The fish-sellers in the above article were stationed in front of Bangui’s main cathedral.) Outside of the city center, once the squatter settlements begin, there is only informal—and yet, this is really the economic heart of the city. Whereas the Marché Centrale specializes in luxury goods and imports, most Banguissoises do their shopping in the markets of Kilomètre 5 (informally K-Cinq, pronounced [ka sãk˺]) and other outlying areas of the city, where they can find affordable produce, clothing and other necessities (Villien et al. 140–141).

Informality is hard to map. I attempted, here, to find and highlight all the agglomerations of structures that looked like marketplaces in one area of Bangui, to give an idea of the prominence of informal markets in otherwise residential areas. (The big one on the top is Kilomètre 5.) See the interactive map here.

Rectification

Ah, yes. This might be my last map. It is of the Brazzaville region, back when the city across the river was called Léopoldville (and not Kinshasa). The other three I have been assigned are of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, but they may not actually be available to rectify. See the Brazzaville map below.

I rectified this using the latitude and longitude reference points in the corners of the map. They weren’t precisely accurate, but they were close enough that I decided to let it go. See the interactive map here.

References

Reseau des Journalistes R.C.A. “Bangui: Des Femmes Centrafricaines à La Recherche De Leur Autonomie.” Journal de Bangui, sec. Economie & Business: Web. 9 March 2012.

Villien, François, et al. Bangui, Capitale d’un Pays Enclavé d’Afrique Centrale : Étude Historique et Géographique. 4 Vol. Talence: Centre de Recherches sur les Espaces Tropicaux, Institut de Géographie, Université de Bordeaux III, 1990. Print.

Woodfork, Jacqueline. Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Assignment, Week 7

How do factors of migration, movement and transportation affect your city?

Using Google Earth, mark the nearest airport, rail and bus/taxi hubs, market (commercial center) and political center of your city. Measure the distance from the airport, rail station and bus/taxi hubs to the commercial center using Google Earth. Provide a screenshot of Google Earth with each of these points marked.

Continue to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (2–3 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.

Migration is a big issue in Bangui, mainly because it just keeps growing. This has been the case since the early 20th century, as discussed in earlier posts, but the reasons have changed. During the colonial era, it was the prospect of finding work that brought tens of thousands of workers from the countryside to Bangui’s cramped peripheries (Villien et al. 43–44). Today, to some extent, that factor still exists, but an additional draw is the fact that Bangui is the only part of the country over which the national government has any semblance of control. Everywhere else is perennially unstable, rendering the capital—whether by mythicized view or objective comparison—a desirable alternative.

Movement is difficult, as are many other things in Bangui. The city has a public transit system which consists of green buses and yellow taxis, all of which are known for being dangerously overcrowded due to deficiencies in fleet size and poor maintenance (State Department 2012). The city’s main bus station is the Gare Routière, 2.14 miles (3.44 kilometers) from the Central Market. Buses leave from here to go to other cities and towns like Bouar and Ndélé (Gheos).

Subway? Light rail? Freight trains? Don’t be silly. The nearest rail station is 355 miles (571 kilometers) away in Bondo, D.R. Congo (U.N.). Most raw materials are transported to Bangui by truck, then put on boats and transferred downriver to Brazzaville, then brought to Pointe-Noire by rail before going on to Europe, Asia or North America for refinement (C.I.A.). River transport is probably among the better-developed domains of regular movement in Bangui, as it provides large-scale transport of raw materials and ferries across the Ubangi in the absence of a bridge.

Bangui has the country’s only international airport, Bangui–M’Poko, which has one of the country’s two paved runways. BGF (its I.A.T.A. code) is a recent construction—it is not shown on a regional map from 1963, though information about its exact date of construction is not easily available. The 1963 map shows a military airport occupying the area around what is now the National Assembly a few miles outside of the city center. This appears to have been completely demolished and replaced by the new one, which is 5.11 miles (8.22 kilometers) northwest of the city center and has a longer runway (Zarhy 25).

The pushpins are, starting at the top, Bangui-M’Poko International Airport; the Gare Routière (bus terminal); the Palais Presidentiel (political center, surrounded by other government buildings); and the Marche Central (commercial center). To find a train station, follow these directions: From the city center, walk to the river and take a ferry across. Drive 93 kilometers southeast on the gravel-paved N23, make a sharp left and follow the N6 for 832 kilometers, then turn right onto the N4 for another 123 kilometers until you reach Bondo. Alternatively, charter an airplane.

Maps

I have continued with my rectification. I rectified two more maps of Libreville, shown below. These were really hard, because there weren’t too many solid reference points I could use. Both, from 1964, showed very little development and lots of dense forest. Currently, one of the two areas has been completely incorporated into metropolitan Libreville—and the other is still dense forest. I’m not sure which was harder to rectify. I ended up having to use coastlines (which looked like they had changed a bit) as references for both, but they came out O.K.

References

“Bangui.” Gheos World Travel Guide. 25 March 2012.Web. 25 March 2012 <http://gheos.com/atlas/index/place.php?Bangui>.

“Central African Republic.” The C.I.A. World Factbook. 21 March 2012.Web. <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ct.html>.

“Central African Republic: Country Specific Information.” Travel.State.Gov. 2 March 2012.Web. 25 March 2012 <http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/cis/cis_1085.html.

Democratic Republic of the Congo. New York: United Nations, 2011.

Zarhy, M. Les Centres Urbains et Régionaux de la République Centrafricaine. Jerusalem: Institut de Planification et de Développement S.A., 1963. Print.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Assignment, Week 6

Continue to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (2–3 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.
Select two of the additional cities you have rectified and compare them with your city from the vantage of spatial differences. Illustrate your findings with screen shots and other images.

The map-rectifying is going well. Predictably, my plans for high break-time productivity largely collapsed, but I did find myself with some free time last night to work on maps. I have now completed five out of my twelve: four of Douala, Cameroon, and one of Yaoundé, Cameroon. Screenshots below:

The southwest corner of Douala, closest to the harbor, was presumably the colonial “European” sector; it now has the majority of the city’s infrastructure, including government ministries, hospitals and embassies. See the interactive map here.

Moving east, there are still well-planned blocks, but few place-markers other than “École,” suggesting a colonial-era, now upper-class, residential area. Rectifying this map was made more difficult—and more useful—by the presence of no fewer than seven clouds obscuring the satellite image. See the interactive map here.

To the north of the previous map is also a large residential area, but a different color—literally. I don’t have a legend, but it seems as though the mapmakers drew any colonial or European-style buildings in red and everything else in gray, which is consistent with the color of the planned neighborhoods in the other maps and the much more chaotic ones here. Note that a marketplace, a couple of missions, a police station and a railway stockyard on this map are also red. See the interactive map here.

This northern part of the city looks like a commercial area, judging from the mixture of red and gray buildings. There are also large areas of undeveloped land, maybe parks or golf courses. See the interactive map here.

This is a map of central Cameroon, including the city of Yaoundé (center-left). It was a breeze to rectify, since it had latitude and longitude markers; they were not precisely accurate, but enough so that I didn’t think it worth it to refine any more. Yaoundé, from what I can see, has undergone unchecked sprawl in a large part dictated by the topography of the region (hills and plateaus and such); in this way it reminds me of Kigali. (See the white billowiness behind the map there? Well, it must have been overcast in Yaoundé that day.) See the interactive map here.

Douala is known for its sprawling, underdeveloped slums; most of them are not shown in the four maps I rectified, and there are probably a lot more of them now than there were when those maps were drawn in 1963. In this way, it shows a similar contrast between the decaying neatness and spaciousness of the former European city and the expanses of ramshackle slums to what is seen in Bangui. It is not quite on the same magnitude, though: Douala’s worst squatter-like slums are far away from the city center, and the remnants of its European city are fairly large; in Bangui, the European city was very small, and the completely unplanned settlements start just outside the city center. This is probably related to Douala’s longtime importance as a port city, as opposed to Bangui’s obscurity due to its remoteness. Additionally, Douala is simply larger: its population is well over 2 million, whereas Bangui’s is ambiguously at about 700,000. Interestingly, similar proportions of their respective countries live in them: 10.7% of Cameroonians live in Douala, and 12% of Central Africans live in Bangui (source).

Another unusual parallel between Douala and Bangui relates to their shared location on rivers—Douala at the mouth of the Wouri River, and Bangui a good distance up the Ubangi. One of the first things I notice about the first map of Douala I rectified is that the coastline that existed in 1963 is vastly different from the one shown by the recent satellite image. This could either be the result of landfilling or sedimentation, and possibly a mixture of the two, but there is simply a lot more land—and developed land!—in Douala now than there was 40 years ago.

The 1963 roadmap overlaid onto very recent Google satellite imagery: notice that, though the streets match up perfectly, the coastlines are completely different. See the interactive map here.

This happens in Bangui too—though on a smaller scale, and I’m fairly certain that it is all sedimentation (curve in the river and all that) and no landfilling. I mainly just notice that the same islands in the Ubangi river are shown as different sizes on every new map I try to rectify. The map-warper hates me for it.

It’s hard to compare Yaoundé with Bangui with so little detail on the map I rectified. The main thing that I notice is that Yaoundé’s expansion, as I noted in the above caption, seems to be much more determined by topographical variation than Bangui’s; it is true that Bangui’s sprawl is limited by the river to the south and a hill to the east, but other than that it has essentially radiated out evenly in all directions. Yaoundé, on the other hand, is not built on a body of water and has expanded in all directions—but to varying extents, apparently contingent upon the prevalence of hills and plateaus.

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Assignment, Week 5

Upload and rectify an early plan of your city. Analyze core differences between this early plan and the current city plan. Mark these differences and provide related screenshots. What, if anything do these changes convey about difference and identity in your city?

Select one article from an early newspaper addressing your city and discuss its main themes. Source: Historical Newspaper Project.

Begin to rectify the African city plans assigned to you (2–3 cities). Provide screenshots of these rectified maps on your blog.

Discuss briefly the subject(s) you would like to address in your final paper on your city.

A plan of Bangui from 1930 looks much like a plan of central Bangui today (Villien 41). To some extent, this is to be expected, as streets are generally stationary. What is unexpected is that, looking at Bangui then and now, it becomes clear that very little urban planning has taken place since that map was drawn.

Bangui’s city center has hardly changed at all since 1930. Images: Villien 41, Google Maps

In 1930, Bangui consisted of a European city with spacious boulevards and soundly constructed buildings, and several African “feeder” villages which sprang up around it to provide workers for European households and enterprises—or simply because people thought they had more of a chance in the city than in the country.

The feeders grew and grew over time. Soon, they dwarfed the planned city and butted right up against it. The French response was minimal: a map from 1963 shows a few more thoroughfares extending out into the urban sprawl, but no planning within the villages, which quickly became squatter settlements (Zarhy 25). Since 1963, aside from the construction of a civilian airport, there appears to have been no planned development in Bangui whatsoever. Meanwhile, the sprawl has continued unchecked, spilling over into the neighboring province as what paved roads existed fall into disrepair, building up to a planner’s perfect storm.

The white spaces to the north and west of the city center on this 1963 map were and are filled by unplanned squatter settlements.

Consistent with the de facto French policy of ignoring Equatorial Africa to the extent possible, Bangui received minimal coverage in newspapers before independence, except when mentioned as a stopover for daring explorers or as the end of multiple promised French railways that never materialized. Two events, however, did receive some amount of coverage.

The first was a widely reproduced letter from French explorer Pierre Sauvorgnan de Brazza, who had been appointed to assess conditions in various parts of French Equatorial Africa in 1905, in response to criticisms of rubber-harvesting in the Congo Free State. He visited Bangui and the region, and “found the conditions … intolerable,” though “[e]verything was done to hide the true state of affairs” (The Colorado Springs Gazette).

The accusations against the French administration—that local populations were forced to gather rubber at gunpoint, frequently flogged to death and imprisoned until they starved—were similar to those leveled against King Léopold in the Congo, and similarly true. One particularly distressing study has found a direct correlation between rubber production and bullets used on harvesters in one part of the Equatorial Africa. Luckily for the French, de Brazza died on his way back to France, and his complaints were forgotten (Hochschild 280–281).

So-called “red rubber,” however, did go out of style after its devastating effects in the Congo Free State were documented. It was reinstituted, however, when World War II necessitated a surge in production of raw materials. Mandatory gathering resumed, much to the chagrin of the victimized populations (Villien 42). An article in The New York Times from 1942 reports that “ ‘the 1942 rubber output is three times as large as last year’s,’ ” and connects this to the leadership of Charles de Gaulle without so much as mentioning that the rubber harvesters had no choice in the matter (The New York Times).

French Equatorial Africa as a whole spent its entire existence being ignored, and even after independence its component states have only managed to make headlines because of famines, civil wars or especially repressive dictators. For my final paper, I plan to address that neglect and its consequences. In particular, the most troublesome legacy of the colonial era in Bangui is the dichotomy between the planned city and the proliferation of unplanned slums. Good urban planning could have softened the impact of this “rural exodus,” as the French called it, but nothing of the sort materialized. In my paper, I will tentatively address the successes and failures of any French responses to this problem, and how urban sprawl continues to threaten Bangui today.

Maps I’ve Rectified

In addition to this blog, I have been assigned some maps to upload and warp over satellite imagery. We then put them on a cool web app called WorldMap, where they will be aggregated with other maps. I have been maintaining a section with maps of Bangui, which I don’t think I have mentioned here yet. I encourage you to have a look; the U.R.L. is http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/oubangui.

The maps which I have been assigned are as follows: four of Douala (Cameroon), one of Yaoundé (Cameroon), three of Libreville (Gabon), one of Brazzaville (Rep. of Congo) and three of Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso). These are to be rectified and uploaded throughout the semester. So far I have done two of Douala, screenshots of which appear below. With the first one, I am very satisfied, but weird stuff started happening with the second.

I’ll have to redo that second one later. To see these maps in all their interactive glory, go to http://worldmap.harvard.edu/maps/oubangui and scroll over to Douala, Cameroon.

References

“Economic Gains Sharp in Africa: Sees Free French Gain.” The New York Times, sec. News: 12. Print. 10 May 1942.

Hochschild, Adam. King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Print.

“Mission to French Congo Finds Bad State of Affairs.” Colorado Springs Gazette: 2. Print. 27 Sep 1905.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

Assignment, Week 4

How is your city depicted on the web? Provide the U.R.L.’s of five sites that offer different views of your city’s popular life.

Discuss one building of popular or political importance in your city. Describe its setting. Provide a photograph of this building (with label).

Create a polygon and point to identify the site of this structure and the area in which it is located. Provide a screenshot indicating the location of your building in Google Earth.

See, this is where making a blog about Bangui gets (more) difficult. The problem with describing how Bangui is depicted on the Internet is that, by and large, it isn’t. The Central African Republic’s 123,800 Internet users make up only about 2.5% of the country’s population (Internet World Stats). Thus, it should come as no surprise that to find websites related to popular life in Bangui is exceedingly frustrating. Here’s what I found:

Journal de Bangui: A Central African newspaper, Le Journal de Bangui has something resembling the “standard” array of sections expected in a periodical—Société, Musique, Arts, etc.—as well as news. The society- and culture-related sections are useful for getting a peak into popular life: articles about the National Central African Theater Troupe and a book about urban development by a Central African expatriate remind the reader that such things exist even in a city as decrepit and poor as Bangui, though they also make one wonder how accessible they are to the general public.
“La Lettre de C.B.M.”: “La Lettre de C.B.M.” provides political and social commentary about happenings in Bangui and the Central African Republic. It is not a newspaper, and so has no obligation to be unbiased; the result is that the perspective is often quite jaded, ending posts with phrases like, « Oh Centrafrique, jusqu’à quand ? » (“Oh, Central Africa, how long?”)
“Letters to Bangui”: A Swedish doctoral student spent nine weeks in the Central African Republic researching security sector reform, and maintained a blog about her experiences. They give some insight into the positive and negative aspects of life in Bangui.
“Bangui, Capital of Misery”: Disregard this journal’s affiliation with an anarchist group, and it provides a telling, almost comical, account of poverty and bureaucratic corruption in the C.A.R., as experienced by a group of Irish tourists.
Le Confidant: I didn’t want to use another newspaper, but you underestimate the utter lack of online material about Bangui. This site, notable for its wretched design, also has several sections about popular life that appear to be updated about once a week. What is interesting to note is that there appears to be little overlap between the coverage of Le Confidant and Le Journal de Bangui.

Sô Zowa Laâ and BanguiWeb are good aggregations of links, images and information. The former is made for the Central African diaspora, and the latter is something like a travel guide, on the off-chance that someone wants to go on a relaxing vacation to Bangui (not recommended, by the way).

In the architecture of Bangui’s Palais d’Assemblée Nationale, one can see the grandeur envisioned by its French architects; in the overgrown lawn, the collapse of public services in the city is also readily apparent. Image: http://img4.hostingpics.net

There are several interesting buildings in Bangui—though, admittedly, fewer than in a lot of other cities. Here, let’s talk about the National Assembly building. Built between 1953 and 1960 by French architects Cazaban, Legrand, Janin and Sarkovitch, it was completed just in time for independence to house the 140 deputies of the Central African Republic’s unicameral legislature. It was designed in angular, modernist style with efficient ventilation in mind, and the architects deliberately used a variety of local materials in its construction (Christin and Filliat 268).

The Palais d’Assemblée Nationale is not in the city center; this area was filled to capacity by the French long before they even considered giving Ubangi-Shari any measure of self-governance. It is on the outskirts of what was the “European city” of the colonial era, on a thin strip of planned city north of the central roundabout between the densely packed ethnic quarters of Mandaba, Fou, Outala, Banga and Miskine (Villien 54).

The National Assembly building’s location in Bangui, with the surrounding neighborhoods labeled.

References

“Africa Internet Facebook Usage and Population Statistics.” Internet World Stats. 10 Feb 2012. Web. 26 Feb 2012 <http://www.internetworldstats.com/africa.htm#cf>.

Christin, Olivier, and Armelle Filliat. “Destin Des Villes De Pouvoir.” Architectures Françaises Outre-Mer. Ed. Pierre Mardaga. Liège: Institut Français d’Architecture, 1992. 259–271. Print.

Villien, François, et al. Bangui, Capitale d’un Pays Enclavé d'Afrique Centrale : Étude Historique Et Géographique. 4 Vol. Talence: Centre de Recherches sur les Espaces Tropicaux, Institut de Géographie, Université de Bordeaux III, 1990. Print. Pays Enclavés.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Assignment, Week 3 (Part II)

Provide a short bibliography (minimum ten entries) of key academic or primary sources on your city.

I forgot to post this before—sorry! Anyway, here it is.

Amaye, Maurice. L’Identité des Populations Précoloniales de Bangui : Mythes et Réalités : Précisions Nouvelles d’Après les Sources Missionnaires. Bangui: 1991. Print.

Boulvert, Yves. Bangui, 1889–1989 : Points De Vue Et Témoignages. Paris: Ministère de la coopération et du développement, 1993. Print.

Bruel, Georges. L’Afrique Équatoriale Française : Le Pays — Les Habitants — La Colonisation — Les Pouvoirs Publics. Paris: É. Larose, 1918. Print.

Fedangaï, Jean. “Origines Diplomatiques et Politiques de la Création de Bangui.” WaMbesso 1.1 (1989): 6–28. Print.

Kalck, Pierre. Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2005. Print.

Pounouwaka, Martin. Les Explorateurs en Oubangui-Chari, 1884–1914. Bangui: Sanza Edition, 1996. Print.

“Les Rapides Du Haut-Oubangui.” Bulletin Société Royale Belge du Geographie 18 (1894): 494–501. Print.

Woodfork, Jacqueline. Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.

Zarhy, M. Les Centres Urbains et Régionaux de la République Centrafricaine. Jerusalem: Institut de Planification et de Développement S.A., 1963. Print.

Assignment, Week 3

Write a short history of your city. Include screenshots of your main points highlighted with polygons, points, and lines. When was it founded, by whom, and under what circumstances? What does the name of your city mean? What is the broader significance of this history and name? What questions does this name raise? What if any earlier names were there?

The area around Bangui was historically inhabited by the Bobangi, a merchant people who lived along the Ubangi River. They participated, if indirectly, in the Atlantic trade, which brought them European products in exchange for commodities like ebony, ivory and slaves (Amaye 4).

Europeans, meanwhile, were just beginning to explore Central Africa. France and Belgium’s King Léopold II both had colonial ambitions in the Congo, and a rivalry arose around the competing expeditions of the French Pierre Sauvorgnan de Brazza and the Belgian-funded Henry Morton Stanley in the 1870s.¹ The Congress of Berlin made the Congo River the official border between the French Congo and Léopold’s Congo Free State in 1885, and a contemporaneous Franco-Belgian treaty made the Ubangi River (as yet largely unexplored) the northern boundary (Pounouwaka 2–3).

In the following years, a succession of expeditions explored and charted the Ubangi River. A Belgian post was founded at Zongo in 1885 on the east bank near the rapids of modern Bangui (Pounouwaka 9). To make up for lost time,² in July 1889, a French post was built at the rapids and christened Bangui, from the French interpretation of the local word for “rapids” (Fedangaï 13).³ It had rough beginnings due to local hostility, flooding, and shortages of personnel and medicine. In four years, the command of the post changed hands nine times and the installation itself had to be moved twice (Villien et al. 22).⁴

Sites of the three successive posts set up by the French. The settlement across the river is Zongo.

In 1903, when Bangui was made the capital of the newly formed colony of Ubangi-Shari, it began to expand into a city, instead of two conjoined clearings in the forest (Villien et al. 26). By 1912, it had administrative buildings, a hospital and a hotel, and over 1,000 residents. The European population of Bangui grew steadily, quadrupling between 1911 and 1934; the African population, however, grew from 2,000 to 20,000 in the same period (Fedangaï 26). As the European city expanded, African towns sprouted on its periphery (Villien et al. 40). In the 1920s, roads were built and automobiles introduced, easing communications with the interior (Fedangaï 27).

Bangui, as it existed in 1930; as the city expanded, indigenous villages sprang up on its outskirts, all of which were later engulfed by urban sprawl. (Villien, et al. 40, overlaid onto Google satellite imagery)

After World War II,⁵ all travel restrictions were lifted, prompting a huge influx of Africans to Bangui; by 1956, the city had a population of 72,000, of whom only about 1,000 were European. This “rural exodus” slowed by the late 1950s, as the region’s unpredictable political climate discouraged investment (Villien et al. 43–44).

It was around this time that thoughts of independence first became prominent. France gave citizenship to residents of its colonies, and allowed for representatives from the colonies to sit in the National Assembly. The first of these, Barthélemy Boganda, charismatically called for full independence with “voluntary interdependence.” In 1958, Ubangi-Shari gained autonomy with Boganda as its executive (Villien et al. 44–45). The next year, however, on the eve of full independence, he died in a plane crash.⁶ David Dacko succeeded him as the first president of the independent Central African Republic. Dacko’s authoritarian rule ended in 1965 with a coup by Jean-Bédél Bokassa. Bokassa brutally ruled for 14 years, at one point crowning himself emperor of the new “Central African Empire” before being ousted in 1979.⁷ Dacko was reinstated, then promptly ousted by André Kolingba. An election in 1993 brought Ange-Felix Patassé to power, for the longest period of civilian rule in the C.A.R.’s history before he, too, was ousted in 2003 by the current president, François Bozizé (Woodfork 15–17).

This instability, unsurprisingly, has led to an exceedingly poor investment climate, difficulty governing and inability to provide basic services. The population of Bangui has ballooned to over 600,000, in part because it is the only part of the country which the government can reliably control (Brinkhoff). Public services have collapsed, buildings and roads are maintained little if at all, and there are continual strikes and riots over lack of pay by civil servants. In addition, flooding in 2005 left 20,000 people homeless and outbreaks of cholera and yellow fever have claimed many lives in recent years (Woodfork xxi). Bangui, at the moment, is calm, but remains constantly on the edge.

Areas of Bangui that are prone to flooding (Villien, et al. 61, overlaid onto Google satellite imagery)

Footnotes

¹	At around this time, campaigns by the Bobangui threatened to displace the Bateke, their neighbors to the south. Makoko, the king of the Bateke, was concerned enough that when de Brazza wandered in and offered to make the kingdom a French protectorate in 1880, he eagerly accepted (Amaye 4). A French outpost was established on the west bank of the Congo River which would become Brazzaville; a Belgian city, Léopoldville (now Kinshasa), was promptly built directly across the river. Thus, the French gradually dominated the land west of the River, and Belgians the east.
²	The first French mission to be sent up the Ubangi was led by Albert Dolisie in 1887. At Mossaka, a major Bobangui city in modern Congo-Brazzaville, the fleet was routed and forced to retreat. Shortly after, a military expedition was sent to burn Mossaka and install a French garrison there. Through all this, despite their willingness to trade, the Bobangui were determined not to be displaced by Europeans, and mission after mission was met with hostility (Amaye 5).
³	There were two existing towns in the area of the rapids called “Bangui,” now distinguished as “Bangui I” and “Bangui II” (Amaye 4).
⁴	In one of the more dramatic incidents, post overseer M. Maurice Musy was ambushed, killed and eaten while trying to intervene in a local conflict (Amaye 6). Conditions were so poor that the authorities in Brazzaville considered abandoning Bangui entirely, though in the end its strategic position was deemed valuable enough to be maintained (Fedangaï 17–18).
⁵	Ubangi-Shari sided with the Free French during the war, thereby separating itself completely from France and forcing it to become self-sufficient—which, to the chagrin of those involved, meant the institution of mandatory collection of rubber and cotton so infamously destructive in the Congo Free State (Villien et al. 42).
⁶	Boganda was a larger-than-life figure to the citizens of Ubangi-Shari, to the point that he was nearly deified. On the day of his death, crowds gathered at the shores of the Ubangi River waiting to see him walk on water (Le Vine 238).
⁷	The French government supported Bokassa in coming to power, and continued to support his regime; this included paying for most of his coronation ceremony, whose total cost of $20 million was equivalent to the country’s entire annual G.D.P. It took a massacre of dozens of schoolchildren in which Bokassa personally took part before France withdrew its support, eventually sending troops to help with his ouster (Woodfork 15–16).

References

Amaye, Maurice. L’Identité des Populations Précoloniales de Bangui : Mythes et Réalités : Précisions Nouvelles d’Après les Sources Missionnaires. Bangui: 1991. Print.

Brinkhoff, Thomas. “Central African Republic: Prefectures and Cities.” CityPopulation. 15 May 2009. Web. <http://www.citypopulation.de/Centralafrica.html>.

Fedangaï, Jean. “Origines Diplomatiques et Politiques de la Création de Bangui.” WaMbesso 1.1 (1989): 6–28. Print.

Le Vine, Victor T. ”Experiments in Power, 1958–2003.“ Politics in Francophone Africa. Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2004. 201-240. Print.

Pounouwaka, Martin. Les Explorateurs en Oubangui-Chari, 1884–1914. Bangui: Sanza Edition, 1996. Print.

Woodfork, Jacqueline. Culture and Customs of the Central African Republic. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2006. Print.

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Assignment, Week 2

Briefly describe your city’s setting (environment) and its most notable features.

Compare the different Google Earth "views" of your city (satellite, hybrid, roadmap, terrain, physical, street map). Compare two different neighborhoods using Google Earth satellite. How does your city appear in 1675 and 1770 maps (AfricaMap). Where does your city lie in malaria distribution?

Locate and mark (using Google Earth) the main city center and avenues/streets coming into it. Include screen shots of your results.

Discuss your city using five different layers of AfricaMap. Provide screen shots in your overview.

Bangui is situated in central Africa on the Ubangi River, at a point where the river pivots and begins flowing south instead of west from its source in the eastern Congo. The distinguishing feature of this segment of the Ubangi is a series of treacherous rapids which make it very difficult to navigate (“Les Rapides du Haut-Oubangui”). Inland to the north is sporadically forested savannah (Blier). Bangui is approximately 400 m above sea-level, with a forested hill approaching 600 m just north of the city center (Google Maps).

A simple Google roadmap of Bangui shows a neatly gridded, logically spaced district in the southeast corner of the city, close to the river; moving inland, there are at least a dozen vaguely rectangular, irrational clusters of streets that look more like tangram solutions than planned neighborhoods. Switching to satellite view reveals the reason: the city begins to disintegrate within 2 km of the city center. Planned neighborhoods give way to informal assemblages of small, white roofs which have roads in the most unusual arrangement—or none at all.¹ From a high enough elevation, these houses look very much like grains off salt shaken onto an uneven surface.

The nicely organized city center (bottom right) quickly gives way to a disorganized hodgepodge of ethnic slums.

The other features that jump out of the satellite image are the colors of Bangui. Two predominate (besides the white of the roofs): a dark green and a light reddish-brown. Green is the backdrop for every manmade feature in the city, from the spacious planned areas by the center to the cramped inland slums.² Reddish-brown is the color of dry, equatorial dirt, and is therefore also of most of Bangui’s roads.³ Only a few of the major thoroughfares are paved; the rest are simply worn down. In case there was any doubt, the Central African Republic is one of the world’s least-developed countries, and looking at a satellite picture of Bangui reinforces the impression that its capital is really not far removed from nature; unlike other cities, Bangui’s residents appear to coexist with their environment, rather than mastering it.

Admittedly, it has not had much time; the city is only about 125 years old (though some would point out that many newer cities have come out looking a lot better). Indeed, before the 1880s, no Europeans had ever navigated the Ubangi River—or even known it existed (“Les Rapides”).⁴ To early modern European cartographers, the entire interior of Africa was unknown and therefore to be filled with anecdotes and fantasy. Early maps tended to include the current location of Bangui at the eastern edge of the imaginary Kingdom of Biafar, just west of the make-believe Lake Niger and near the invented town of Guidan.⁵

The Gbaya, Ngbaka and Banda (left to right, respectively) converge on Bangui (outlined in red).

Though each is different, most ethnographic maps convey that Bangui is located approximately at the intersection of three ethnic groups: the Banda, the Gbaya and the Ngbaka-Ma’bo (Blier), which are linguistically similar but culturally distinct (Villien et al. 12–13). Partially because this, Bangui’s outskirts now comprise many semi-enclosed ethnic quarters (Adrien-Rongier).⁶

If one is interested in avoiding tropical diseases, one should stay away from Bangui. At just 4.36º N, it enjoys year-round malaria, and the adjacent prefecture of Ombella-M’poko reported a yellow fever outbreak in 2009 that required over 300,000 emergency immunizations (Blier; “Yellow Fever in the Central African Republic”).

Other layers of AfricaMap show that the C.A.R. has had a somewhat unusual history for an African country. To start, unlike other areas, its growth was not stunted by the slave trade because it is so far inland (Blier). On a different note, the Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset lists numerous events in Bangui, enough to rival Freetown or Mogadishu but of a different nature: in other failed states, violence in the capital often means a rebel group overrunning the government. In the C.A.R., this has never happened; here, most conflicts have involved mutinous government troops or rioting civilians, all usually discontented due to poor governance and inadequate pay (Blier).⁷

Bangui’s City Center, With Main Roads Marked

The city center is at the bottom right, and the Ubangi River runs horizontally just off the map to the south.

Footnotes

¹	The hybrid view shows that, in some cases, Google’s map-tracers simply gave up and left some of the smaller roads off of their street-map.
²	In the planned central district, it is likely that the colonists made a conscious choice to include abundant vegetation, but everywhere else the implication seems to be that the trees were simply never cleared.
³	Astute readers might remember from the first post that most of the Central African Republic consists of ferralsols, soils which are distinctive for their mineral deficiency and high iron content, from which comes their reddish color (“Ferralsols”).
⁴	The first European to navigate the Ubangi was the English pastor George Grenfell; he reached the area of what would become Bangui on 13 October 1884 (Pounouwaka 9).
⁵	The name “Biafra,” as in the secessionist Igbo region of Nigeria, is etymologically derived to this “Biafar,” but most of the locations so named on old maps have no resemblance to what would later be known as Biafra.
⁶	This agrees with what Europeans found when they arrived and founded the city, and even after the founding of the colonial city there were several African towns of various ethnicities on its outskirts (Villien et al. 40).
⁷	To be sure, the Central African Republic has had its fair share of revolts (some ongoing), but these have mostly been concentrated in the north and have been associated with spillover violence from Chad, Darfur and Southern Sudan (Polgreen). The unusual location of the capital in the southwestern corner of the country may have inadvertently made it easier to defend from said rebels.

References

Adrien-Rongier, Marie-France. “Les Kodro de Bangui : Un Espace Urbain « Oublié ».” Cahiers d’Études Africains 21.81/83 (1981): 93–110. Print.

Blier, Suzanne. ”AfricaMap.” WorldMap. 29 Jan 2012. Web. 29 Jan 2012 <http://worldmap.harvard.edu/africamap/>.

“Ferralsol.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/707602/Ferralsol>.

“Google Maps.” 5 Feb 2012. Web. <maps.google.com>.

“Les Rapides Du Haut-Oubangui.” Bulletin Société Royale Belge du Geographie 18 (1894): 494–501. Print.

Polgreen, Lydia. “Central Africa Guard Unit is Implicated in Atrocities” The New York Times, New York ed., sec. World: A12. Web. 16 Sep 2007.

Pounouwaka, Martin. Les Explorateurs en Oubangui-Chari, 1884–1914. 2 ed. Bangui, 1996. Print.

“Yellow Fever in the Central African Republic.” 5 Feb 2012. Web. <http://www.who.int/csr/don/2009_12_01/en/index.html>.

Friday, February 3, 2012

If I Didn’t Know Better…

…I would say there wasn’t much interest in the history of the Central African Republic around here. No one seems to know that Bangui even exists, and of the eleven relevant books I got from the library earlier today, only two of them had ever been checked out.

These are the books, in case anyone else thinks they’re as cool as I do:

Amaye, Maurice. L’Identité des Populations Précoloniales de Bangui : Mythes et Réalités : Précisions Nouvelles d’Après les Sources Missionnaires. Bangui, 1991. Print.
Boulvert, Yves. Bangui, 1889–1989 : Points de Vue et Témoignages. Paris: Ministère de la Coopération et du Développement, 1993. Print.
Bruel, Georges. L’Afrique Équatoriale Française : Le Pays — Les Habitants — La Colonisation — Les Pouvoirs Publics. Paris: É. Larose, 1918. Print. *Previously checked out in 1922, 1924, 1925, 1927, 1929, 1936, 1941, 1959 and 2003.
Godart, Louis, and Cyprien Zoubé. Nos Pères Dans la Foi : Les Anciens de la Mission Saint Paul. Bangui: Foyer de Charité de Bangui, 1986. Print.
Houlet, Gilbert. Afrique Centrale : Les Républiques d’Expression Française. Paris: Hachette, 1962. Print. *Previously checked out in 1963 and 1965.
Pounouwaka, Martin. Les Explorateurs en Oubangui-Chari, 1884–1914. 2 ed. Vol 1. Bangui, 1996. Print.
Remy, Jules. Voyage Preparatoire à la Fondation de la Mission Saint-Paul des Rapides : Bangui 9–17 Fevrier 1893. Bangui: Publications du Centenaire de l'Église Catholique en Centrafrique, 1994. Print.
Saulnier, Pierre. Bangui Raconte : Contes de Centrafrique. Paris: L’Harmattan, 2000. Print.
Tinturier, Dominque. Crise Économique et Développement Urbain à Bangui : Le Cas de l’Activité Productivité des Femmes. [Bangui]: s.n, 198[?]. Print.
Université de Provence Institut d'Histoire. Recherches Centrafricaines : Problèmes et Perspectives de la Recherche Historique : Sénanque, 24–25 Septembre 1981. Vol 16. Aix-en-Provence: Institut d’Histoire des Pays d’Outre-Mer, Université de Provence, 1982. Print.
Villien, François. Bangui, Capitale d’un Pays Enclavé d’Afrique Centrale : Étude Historique et Géographique. Vol 4. Talence: Centre de Recherches sur les Espaces Tropicaux, Institut de Géographie, Université de Bordeaux III, 1990. Print.

It’s an odd mix of neatly printed colonial-era books with abundant illustrations and beautiful fold-out maps, and crudely typewritten theses published by people affiliated with the University of Bangui. The one uniting characteristic is that they are in French—a language which I can sort of read, and which I plan to get much better at reading in the near future.

All upcoming posts on this blog will deal directly with Bangui. The first assignment was a sort of warm-up. There will be assigned posts due on Sundays; other posts, like this one, are there just because I felt like posting something.

Sunday, January 29, 2012

Assignment, Week 1

Blog Assignment: Explore the layers of AfricaMap (AfricaMap.harvard.edu). Select three of the layers from the following list: ethnographic and linguistic, environment (surface geology, major rivers), population density, utilities, and crisis mapping. Briefly address what these maps reveal about the potential differences and similarities between four African countries, each from a different part of the continent. Using Jing capture screen shots of your maps to include in your blog discussion.

Four African countries in which I have been especially interested in the past few years are Rwanda, Namibia, Mali and the Central African Republic. I don’t know why, as they have little more in common than any four countries would. As such, they will work well for this assignment. I will compare and contrast them using the following characteristics: languages, soil content and population density.

Language

Linguistically, there is a lot of variation. Rwanda is unique in that it is linguistically unified: virtually every Rwandan speaks Kinyarwanda, a Bantu language (Lewis).¹ The same cannot be said of any of the other three countries. Mali, Namibia and the Central African Republic are awkward juxtapositions of ethnic and linguistic groups, entirely created by colonial authorities.²

Mali’s most-spoken language is Bambara, concentrated in the country’s southwest; it is spoken natively by about a fifth of the population, and as a second language by many more (Lewis). Eastern Mali is divided between several regional families, with the arid north speaking Arabic or Berber (“AfricaMap”).

The Central African Republic primarily speaks Ubangian languages (AfricaMap).³ In this sense, it is relatively linguistically unified, and the national language, Sangho, is spoken in some capacity by upwards of 90% of the population (Lewis)—though many northern regions speak unrelated (Chadic) languages, and there is substantial spillover of Ubangian languages into Cameroon and the Congo (“AfricaMap”).

Namibia is a linguistic hodgepodge. The north speaks primarily Bantu languages, and accounts for about half the population. Most of the rest of the country, which is very sparsely populated, speaks Khoisan languages (“AfricaMap”). Namibia has one of the world’s highest concentrations of Khoisan languages, a dwindling and ambiguously related group⁴ spoken primarily by hunter-gatherers (Güldemann and Vossen).⁵ Also unusual is the presence of Afrikaans due to its past administration by apartheid South Africa. Because Afrikaans was forcibly taught to everyone under apartheid, it has become in some respects the national language that Namibia did not have—the position occupied by Kinyarwanda, Bambara and Sangho in the others (Fourie).

Soil Content

The four countries’ soil varies widely as well, and has profound implications for the ways of life of their people. The Central African Republic is covered largely by ferralsols,⁶ which are typical of rainforests and generally infertile because of low mineral content (“Ferralsol”). Indeed, only 3% of the C.A.R.’s land is defined as arable (The World Factbook).

Mali’s soil is split between three basic regions: the southern part of the country is mostly savannah and is dominated by semi-fertile luvisols; the north is the Sahara desert; and the middle forms part of a band of transitional (and semi-arable) regions known collectively as the Sahel (“AfricaMap”).

Apart from a small part of the north around the Etosha Pan, Namibia is entirely desert, which simultaneously allows for the survival of hunter-gatherers and ensures a lack of large-scale agriculture (“AfricaMap”). Namibia, Mali⁷ and the C.A.R. all have a shortage of land fit for intensive agriculture; therefore, subsistence agriculture is widespread.

Again unique, Rwanda is the only of the four with large amounts of soil that is actually good for crops. This is partly due to the volcanoes along its northwestern border, which yield fertile soils and may contribute to the dominance of the country’s export market by tea and coffee (“Rwanda -- Geography”).

Population Density

Rwanda is the most densely populated country in Africa (The World Factbook); this may be influenced by its history as a centralized state, its fertile soil and any number of other factors. Namibia, on the other hand, is the least (The World Factbook). This is, no doubt, due the inability of its desert ecosystems to support large populations.

Large swaths of Mali and the Central African Republic are also unpopulated, though for different reasons. Northern Mali, like Southern Namibia, is inhospitable desert (“AfricaMap”). The eastern part of the C.A.R. is a huge nature reserve (and heavily forested anyway) (“Zemongo [Central African Republic] - Protected Area Report”).

Footnotes

¹	This is because, immediately prior to colonization, Rwanda was a distinct, centralized state under a single political authority. Seeing this, German colonizers simply adopted the kingdom as a protectorate, maintaining its borders and even much of its political hierarchy (“Rwanda -- History”).
²	These colonial authorities were either ignorant of such divisions or conscious but determined to divide and conquer. The instability of many African countries has been convincingly connected with colonialists’ partitioning of ethnic groups (Englebert et al.).
³	The Ubangian language family is named for the Ubangi River, which forms the country’s southern border and lends its name to the national capital—and subject of this blog—Bangui. Note: The indigo and burnt-orange on the map are two branches of Ubangian.
⁴	The Khoisan “family” is an agglomeration of languages which are known for complex systems of tones and click consonants. Whether they are, in fact, related is a controversial matter that is likely impossible to prove one way or another because of lack of documentation: Khoisan languages have been declining for centuries due to the Bantu migrations, and most of those that survive are endangered (Güldemann and Vossen).
⁵	The exception to this is Nama, which is spoken by about 250,000 people and is used in education and administration (Lewis).
⁶	Ferralsols are so named because of their high iron content, and are recognizable by the resulting reddish tint (“Ferralsols”).
⁷	The Sahel region of Mali can be and has been intensively farmed, especially since colonialism. This has cause increasing desertification, large-scale soil erosion and persistent dust-storms (“Sahel”).

References

“Ferralsol.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. .

Blier, Suzanne. ”AfricaMap.” WorldMap. 29 Jan 2012. Web. 29 Jan 2012 .

Englebert, Pierre, Stacy Tarango and Matthew Carter. “Dismemberment and Suffocation: A Contribution to the Debate on African Boundaries.” Comparative Political Studies 35.10 (2001): 1093–118. Print.

Fourie, Kotie. “Afrikaans—The Unwanted Lingua Franca of Namibia.” Discrimination through Language in Africa? Perspectives on the Namibian Experience. Ed. Martin Pütz. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1995. 315–323. Print.

Güldemann, Tom, and Rainer Vossen. “Khoisan.” African Languages: An Introduction. Eds. Bernd Heine and Derek Nurse. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 99–122. Print.

Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com.

“Rwanda -- Geography.” East Africa Living Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2003. Web. 29 Jan 2012 .

“Rwanda -- History.” East Africa Living Encyclopedia. 13 Nov 2003. Web. 29 Jan 2012 .

“Sahel.” Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2012. Web. 29 Jan. 2012. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/516438/Sahel.

The World Factbook 2009. Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency. (2009). Retrieved 29 Jan 2012 from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

“Zemongo (Central African Republic) - Protected Area Report.” Assessment of African Protected Areas. 29 Jan 2012. Web. European Union. 29 Jan 2012 .

This Blog

Welcome! My name is Jake Freyer, and I am a freshman at Harvard College. I am creating this blog for a spring 2012 seminar, “The African City,” taught by Prof. Suzanne Blier—in case anyone was wondering why a site has suddenly appeared with such unusually structured, evenly spaced posts about a little-known African city.

For the purposes of the class, I will be posting one assignment per week from now through the end of the semester in April—but who knows? If something interesting comes up that is not assigned, or if my interest in Bangui continues after the class ends, perhaps the blog will continue as well. We shall see.

Anyway, I will do my best to make my writing clear, my posts accurate and my information use responsible. Enjoy!