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
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
