PEOPLE AND RELIGION OF AFRICA

PEOPLE OF AFRICA

Africa was the birthplace of the human species between 8 million and 5 million years ago. Today, the vast majority of its inhabitants are of indigenous origin. People across the continent are remarkably diverse by just about any measure: They speak a vast number of different languages, practice hundreds of distinct religions, live in a variety of types of dwellings, and engage in a wide range of economic activities.

Over the centuries, peoples from other parts of the world have migrated to Africa and settled there. Historically, Arabs have been the most numerous immigrants. Starting in the 7th century ad, they crossed into North Africa from the Middle East, bringing the religion of Islam with them. A later movement of Arabs into East and Central Africa occurred in the 19th century. Europeans first settled in Africa in the mid-17th century near the Cape of Good Hope, at the southern end of the continent. More Europeans immigrated during the subsequent colonial period, particularly to present-day South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Algeria. South Asians also arrived during colonial times. Their descendants, often referred to as Indians, are found largely in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa.

A

Demographics

In 2008, 955 million people—or about 13 percent of the world's population—lived in Africa. The most populous countries are Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Distribution of the population is highly uneven. Some parts of the continent, particularly the vast Sahara, have few permanent residents. Others rank among the world’s most densely populated areas, notably the Nile Valley of Egypt; the Atlantic coastal stretch from Côte d’Ivoire to Cameroon; Rwanda; Burundi; and South Africa’s province of KwaZulu-Natal. Overall, Africa’s population density was 32 persons per sq km (83 persons per sq mi) in 2008.

Until the mid-20th century census-taking was rare in Africa. Although most African countries have by now conducted at least several counts of their populations, reliable data on vital statistics are limited. Nonetheless, it is clear that Africa’s population has grown rapidly in recent decades. The continent-wide population growth rate peaked at 3.43 percent in 1979 and remained relatively high through the 1980s, averaging 2.69 percent. Rates have lowered since. In 2005 Africa’s growth rate was 2.08 percent, which is still high compared to other continents. In general, West, East, and Central Africa have experienced the fastest growth and North and southern Africa the slowest.

Birth Rate

In 2005 Africa’s overall birth rate was 35.3 births per 1,000 people, the highest among the world’s continents. The countries of North Africa have markedly lower rates than most sub-Saharan countries. South of the Sahara, fertility rates tend to fall in the 5 to 7 range (meaning that, on average, women give birth to 5 to 7 children over the course of their lifetimes). African societies have traditionally seen large families as signs of wealth and prestige, and value the presence of children in everyday life. Children are also an important source of labor, especially on farms, and eventually become the primary providers of assistance to elderly parents. In addition, a greater number of children means more marriages, resulting in wider family support networks, a crucial consideration in a continent where life is often hazardous. For all these reasons, to be childless is typically a cause for concern and often pity. As a result, birth control has not been accepted to the degree it has in other parts of the less developed world, such as Southeast Asia. The major exceptions are found among members of the newly emerging urban middle class, who have adopted nuclear family arrangements modeled on those in Western societies. Parents in nuclear families do not receive the higher level of support offered by extended families, so they find children costly in terms of money and time. These African families have therefore begun practicing birth control.

A high fertility rate translates into a young population, which has several important implications. It assures continued population growth, short of disaster occurring, into an indefinite future. Even if the fertility rate declines, the population will continue to grow because of the large number of women who will have reached their childbearing years. Population growth strains a nation’s child services, especially the provision of education and health care, and the problem becomes particularly acute when poverty is as widespread as it is in Africa. Competition for jobs intensifies as more and more people enter the labor market, and higher levels of unemployment can lead to increasing crime rates and wider social unrest.

Death Rate and Life Expectancy

Africa’s death rate—14.2 deaths per 1,000 people in 2005—is also the highest in the world. Again, the countries of North Africa have significantly lower rates than those of sub-Saharan Africa. Infant and child deaths, from an array of infectious and parasitic diseases, traditionally are the main contributors. Vaccination campaigns have helped lower death rates among children since 1980. However, over the same period, an increasing incidence of infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has actually resulted in the decline of life expectancy in some countries. For example, Botswana, after achieving a life expectancy of 60 in the early 1990s, saw the figure fall into the 30s in the first decade of the 21st century. The country’s population will soon be in decline due to the loss of large numbers of young adults to AIDS and the children they would have produced. South Africa is in a similar predicament and several other countries may soon be as well, depending on whether or not infection rates can be lowered. Across the continent, life expectancy in 2005 averaged 50.4 years.

Migration

Migration is a commonplace African phenomenon. Traditionally, migration was largely associated with the search for new and better farm or grazing lands. Some herders migrated seasonally, moving their livestock to available water and forage sites. During colonial times, labor migration to mines and plantations became common. More recently, increasing numbers of people have been migrating to Africa’s cities, which are perceived as places of opportunity not only to meet basic needs but to fulfill higher economic or social aspirations as well. Cyclical migration is also very common, as people move back and forth between cities and their home areas. Most Africans seek to maintain connections with the places where they were born.

Refugees make up another group of migrants. In total, Africa contains about 30 percent of the world’s refugee population, as classified by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. People generally flee turmoil in their home countries and become refugees in adjacent countries. Recent examples include southern Sudanese fleeing to Kenya, and Rwandans fleeing to Tanzania and the DRC. In some cases, turmoil grows worse in the nation harboring refugees, so the two countries literally exchange refugees. This happened in the late 20th century between Ethiopia and Somalia, and between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Most refugees eventually return to their home countries, although some manage to find new lives in their country of refuge.

Intercontinental migration is much less common. While many people in former French colonies have moved to France, for the most part their goal has been to earn enough to send money home periodically before returning themselves. An individual may repeat this process several times during his or her adult years. Several African nations have faced a so-called brain drain, as skilled and professional workers find better employment opportunities elsewhere, especially in Europe and North America. These workers may or may not leave permanently. In the second half of the 20th century, many Europeans left for good. Large numbers of settlers in Algeria returned to France during the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), and since 1980 many white South Africans and Zimbabweans have departed. During the 1960s and 1970s political pressures and deteriorating social and economic conditions led many South Asians to flee Uganda.

Urban Growth

Only 37 percent of Africans live in urban areas, making Africa the least urbanized continent. At the same time, however, it is also the most rapidly urbanizing continent. Africa’s major cities, often national capitals, are the primary destinations for the vast majority of migrants, and some experience population growth rates of 8 to 10 percent per year.

Dozens of African cities now have populations of more than 1 million. The largest cities in Africa include Cairo, Giza, and Alexandria in Egypt; Kinshasa, DRC; Casablanca, Morocco; Cape Town and Johannesburg, South Africa; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Lagos, Nigeria; and Luanda, Angola. Two of the world’s largest metropolitan areas are located in Africa: The combined Cairo-Giza metropolitan area has about 12 million inhabitants, and Lagos and its surrounding suburbs are home to close to 17 million people. By 2015 the population of the Lagos metropolitan area is expected to be more than 23 million.

Great differences in wealth and living standards are characteristic of all large African cities. Job opportunities in cities have not kept pace with population growth. Rates of unemployment in urban areas often exceed 50 percent, and most jobless people are young, male, and undereducated. Many residents earn their incomes from informal occupations such as selling newspapers and magazines, shining shoes, running errands, cleaning, and collecting trash. Begging, prostitution, and theft are also ways of making a living. Crime is on the rise in Africa’s large cities. Carjackings, sometimes accompanied by assault and murder, have become more common.

Urban housing also tends to be in short supply and thus relatively expensive. Workers often reside on the outskirts of cities in what are politely called unscheduled settlements (more commonly known as shantytowns) where rents are cheaper. While usually lively places to live, they are also overcrowded and lack basic services such as sewage systems and clean water supplies. This raises the risk, especially for children, of contracting infectious and parasitic diseases. Cholera is a particularly dangerous threat in urban areas.

To reverse the trend of overconcentration of population in urban areas, several countries have established new capital cities. The Nigerian government moved the capital from Lagos to the new city of Abuja in 1991, and Tanzania has tried since the 1970s to relocate its capital from Dar es Salaam to Dodoma, a small city in the center of the country. In neither case has the change worked in terms of population movement: Migrants continue to flood Lagos and Dar es Salaam.

As cities grow, so too does their ethnic diversity. Although mixing of ethnic groups occurs more than in the past, different groups tend to segregate themselves in different neighborhoods. This is especially true when groups have a history of political conflict. For example, in Nairobi, Kenya, the Luo and Kikuyu seldom mix; the same holds for the Igbo and Hausa in Nigeria’s largest cities. Immigrants, such as Mozambicans in South Africa, often cluster in particular districts. Many older West African cities feature so-called “stranger quarters” for immigrants.

Language and Ethnicity

African people identify themselves, or have been identified by others, as members of certain ethnic groups. While this identification can be based on a number of different criteria, a person’s mother tongue is often the most common determinant.

African Languages

The number of distinctive languages spoken in Africa is open to debate. Some experts put the number at around 2,000, while others count more than 3,000. Virtually all of these languages originated in Africa. The most widely spoken indigenous African language is Swahili, spoken by nearly 50 million Africans, followed by Hausa and Yoruba, each with more than 20 million speakers. Several languages have only a few thousand speakers. Scholars generally recognize four African language families: Niger-Congo, Afro-Asiatic, Nilo-Saharan, and Khoisan.

Most Africans are multilingual, meaning that they speak two or more different languages. Few can afford to be otherwise, since daily life often brings people into contact with others who speak different languages. For instance, more than 50 languages are spoken in Nigeria alone. Tanzania, with significantly fewer people, has nearly 100 languages, including at least one from each of the four language families.

North Africans and converts to Islam have spoken Arabic for centuries, and the use of European languages has spread across the continent since the dawn of colonialism. Today, the language of a country’s former colonial rulers often serves as its common tongue.

Niger-Congo Language Family

Niger-Congo is by far the largest language family. Niger-Congo languages are spoken by more than half the continent’s people, from the Sénégal River Valley in West Africa to the shores of the Indian Ocean in the east to the Cape of Good Hope in the south. Among its several language branches is Bantu. In one of the world’s great human migrations, Bantu speakers spread east and south from a starting point in what is now Nigeria and Cameroon beginning about 4,000 years ago. Today, various Bantu languages are spoken across most of the southern half of Africa. The Kongo of the DRC, the Ganda of Uganda, the Chagga of Tanzania, and the Shona of Zimbabwe are examples of peoples speaking Bantu languages. Kwa is another large Niger-Congo branch; Kwa language speakers include the Yoruba of Nigeria and the Ashanti of Ghana.

Swahili, widely spoken in East Africa and parts of Central Africa, is an interesting medley of languages. Its basic grammar and syntax are of Bantu origin (so it is classified as a Niger-Congo language), but many words come from Arabic, with a smattering of Portuguese, English, and even Persian words appearing as well. Developed as a trade language along the Indian Ocean coast, Swahili spread inland with merchants in the 19th century. It serves as an official language of Tanzania and Kenya.

Afro-Asiatic Language Family

Throughout much of northern Africa, Afro-Asiatic languages predominate. One branch of this language family is Semitic, which includes Arabic, as well as Amharic and Tigrinya, which are spoken in the Horn of Africa. The Cushitic branch extends south from the Red Sea coast, through the Horn of Africa, and into central Kenya and Tanzania. Its most commonly spoken languages are Somali and Oromo. The Chadic branch includes Hausa, widely spoken in Niger and northern Nigeria. Berber is yet a fourth branch, and includes the language of the Tuareg of the Sahara as well as many other tongues spoken in and around the Atlas Mountains of northwestern Africa.

Nilo-Saharan Language Family

As Afro-Asiatic languages spread over the last several thousand years, they seemed to have pushed out many Nilo-Saharan languages. Nilo-Saharan speakers today are largely confined to portions of the central Sahara and the savanna lands of East Africa. The Masai of Kenya and Tanzania speak a language in the Eastern Sudanic branch, as do the Nuer of southern Sudan.

Scholars disagree over the correct classification of Songhai, a language spoken along the banks of the middle Niger River. Songhai is usually placed within the Nilo-Saharan family, but some linguists now see it as unrelated to any of the four families. If Songhai truly is separate, then its speakers either represent the last survivors of a once far-flung language family, or they are descendants of migrants from some unknown place.

Khoisan Language Family

The Khoisan language family is named after its two primary representatives: Khoikhoi and San. These languages are distinctive for their use of click sounds, which speakers produce by sucking in air. Once widespread across southern Africa and possibly East Africa, Khoisan speakers were largely displaced by Bantu migrants over the last millennia. Today, San speakers (known as San) number only about 50,000, living in and around the Kalahari Desert in Botswana and Namibia. The Nama of Namibia are one of the last representatives of Khoikhoi speakers. Distantly related to them are the Sandawe of central Tanzania. It is unknown whether they represent a surviving indigenous Khoikhoi population or descendants of later immigrants.

Formation of Ethnic Identities

If ethnicity is considered synonymous with how people are identified, both by themselves and others, then throughout Africa, language serves as its primary marker. Language links people to a specific place of origin, which, in turn, signals a shared cultural history. In South Africa, for example, the Zulu and Xhosa speak languages that are almost identical, but the minor differences are enough for people to make the distinction between the two groups. This is important to their sense of identity because the Zulu and Xhosa have followed very different paths over the last several centuries of history. Some peoples have even deeper roots. The Songhai identity existed even before the group ruled a vast West African empire in the 15th and 16th centuries.

By way of contrast, the ethnic identities of many other peoples are more recent and often derive largely from external sources. The Gogo of central Tanzania are a case in point. In the mid-19th century they lived in many small clan-based chiefdoms that had no sense of being part of a wider Gogo group, even though they shared the same language. However, the phrase “gogo” was a part of several of the clans’ names, and their Nyamwezi neighbors picked up on this as a way to refer to all of them. When Arab and Swahili traders arrived in the area in the mid-19th century, they adopted this designation and passed it along to the first Europeans to enter the area. Because of repeated use, the name Gogo became accepted, eventually by the people themselves.

This process of naming groups on the basis of language similarities gained speed during the colonial era. This was done largely for administrative purposes, allowing colonial rulers to appoint chiefs to recruit labor and collect taxes from so-called tribes occupying specific designated areas. Anthropologists followed suit and classified ethnic groups by language similarities and locale. Without these external effects, it is unlikely that many of the overarching African ethnic identities now taken for granted would have developed.

The Hutu and Tutsi of Rwanda and Burundi demonstrate that factors other than language play roles in the formation of ethnic identities. Prior to the colonization of these regions, “Hutu” and “Tutsi” designated what might best be called classes, with the former referring to farmers and the latter designating cattle keepers. The two classes shared a common language, and people moved from one to the other by way of marriage or the ownership of cattle. When the Germans and subsequently the Belgians colonized the region, they assumed that the Tutsi were rulers, and thus privileged them with education and positions of authority in the colonial state. By the mid-20th century the boundaries between Hutu and Tutsi identities hardened to where they started to conceive of themselves as separate peoples. Since the independence of Rwanda and Burundi, this separateness has periodically led to one group treating the other as a hated enemy in efforts to rule the countries. In a real sense, they now conceive of themselves as separate ethnic groups.

Way of life, not language, is what differentiates some ethnic groups from each other. In Tanzania, the Masai and Arusha speak the same language, but those who herd cattle are known as Masai, while those that gave up herding to become farmers are known as Arusha. Similarly, not too long ago, whether or not a person herded sheep distinguished Khoikhoi from San in the Cape region of South Africa. In these cases, people who changed occupations ended up changing their ethnic identities as well.

A person’s religion sometimes is the crucial factor defining his or her identity. This is what differentiates Christian Copts from their Muslim neighbors in Egypt. In addition, people sometimes identify themselves as Arabs simply because they adopted the religion of Islam and developed supposed genealogical links to the Prophet Muhammad.

An interesting case of ethnicity involves the pygmy hunter-gatherers of equatorial Africa, among whom the Mbuti of the Ituri region of the DRC are best known. While there are indications that the various pygmy groups had their own unique languages at some point, they all adopted the languages of the nearby Bantu farmers with whom they interacted. In this case, occupation, residence, and physical differences all came together to create a sense of ethnic distinctiveness that both sides recognize.

Liberia is home to Americo-Liberians, a people who trace their ancestry to freed slaves from North America. Use of English, the Protestant religion, and a wide array of other American cultural traits immediately set them apart from their indigenous African neighbors, over whom they ruled until being ousted from power in 1980.

Upon independence, most African countries sought to create national identities for their people. These have yet to develop to any significant degree, and thus ethnic identities—whether forged long ago or only relatively recently—are what most people hold onto as an indication of where their true loyalties reside. Ethnic politics have thus become commonplace in Africa, with Rwanda and Burundi illustrating the extreme end of the scale. Zimbabwe is wracked by hostility between Shona and Ndebele. In Nigeria, Yoruba, Igbo, and Hausa compete, sometimes violently, with each other and with other minority groups. At the other end of the scale, ethnic politics is of little importance in Tanzania, which is so diverse that no group is particularly powerful. Sometimes older ethnic rivalries become submerged beneath other differences. This has happened in Sudan, wracked by a decades-long civil war between the Islamic, Arabic-speaking north and the non-Islamic, non-Arabic-speaking south. This conflict has put on hold long-standing disputes between the Dinka and Nuer of the south, which could surface again if the civil war were resolved.

Religion

If religion is defined as a set of beliefs and practices related to moral behavior on earth and to life after death, then each African society developed its own distinctive version. Despite the diversity, several common themes are fairly widespread. One is the belief in a creator, who brings the universe into being and then departs, perhaps to the sky or to some distant place like a mountaintop. Another commonality involves the importance of ancestors. Death does not end one’s existence, rather it moves one to a non-earthly realm to congregate with those who have gone before and those who will come after. Various rituals, including sacrifice, are conducted to honor and placate ancestors, to ensure that they help rather than cause trouble for the living. This is often referred to as “ancestor worship,” which is a misnomer: It is not so much worship of ancestors as it is recognition of the importance of community—past, present, and future. A third commonality is the presence of religious specialists, including rainmakers, healers, diviners, and priests, represented in various proportions depending on the African society in question. Yet another common element is the pervasiveness of religion in everyday life. Spirituality is present in sacred places, art, music, dance, storytelling, and ceremonies such as name giving, initiation, and marriage. Indigenous religions remain widely practiced throughout sub-Saharan Africa. In many countries, adherents to indigenous belief systems make up more than 20 percent of the population, and in some—notably Liberia, Benin, Sierra Leone, Central African Republic, and Mozambique—more than 50 percent.

The first world religion to reach Africa was Judaism, which spread into Egypt sometime during the 2nd millennium bc. Subsequently, Jewish people may have converted various Berber communities to the west. In addition, during the 1st century bc Jewish migrants crossed the Red Sea from the Arabian Peninsula and settled in the northern highlands of what is now Ethiopia. Over time, they won converts from the local populations and eventually formed a distinctive Jewish community called Beta Israel (referred to derogatorily as Falashas in Ethiopia).

During the first centuries ad Christianity spread across North Africa, more by conversion than migration. In Egypt, the Christian sect of Monophysitism gained preeminence, and Egyptian Monophysites became known as Coptic Christians, or Copts (see Coptic Church). From Egypt, Coptic Christianity spread south to Nubia, and reached Abyssinia during the 4th century, becoming the state religion of the Kingdom of Aksum and subsequent Ethiopian states. Catholicism prevailed over rival Christian sects in northwestern Africa with the help of Saint Augustine, an Algerian and one of the framers of Western theology.

In 639 Islam began its march across North Africa (see Spread of Islam). For the most part, even though Islam was brought by conquering armies, conversion was mostly voluntary. Converts were quickly won in northwestern Africa, where many people saw Islam as a vibrant spiritual and material alternative to a decaying Christian world. Scattered Catholic communities did, however, manage to survive in North Africa into the 15th century. Conversion to Islam moved more slowly in Nubia and in Egypt, where the Coptic Church is still strong.

In the 8th century Arab merchants brought Islam to coastal communities along the Horn of Africa, and the religion subsequently spread inland to other peoples, notably the Somali. In the 12th century, and possibly earlier, Islam gained adherents farther south along the Indian Ocean coast in what is now Kenya and Tanzania.

Another wave of Jewish immigration occurred in the late 15th century, when Christian armies reconquered the last Muslim-ruled areas of Spain. Jews in Spain were given a choice between exile or forcible conversion to Christianity, and many Jews crossed into North Africa, where they lived in peace with their Muslim neighbors.

In the mid-19th century, European missionaries reintroduced Christianity to Africa, and the process of winning converts picked up speed during the colonial era. Virtually all of the major branches of Christianity, and many of the minor ones, established mission stations in Africa, leading to an intricate pattern of religious denominations. Africans found conversion to Christianity attractive because the missionaries offered health services and educational opportunities for their children.

However, Christian missionaries made little headway in Islamic strongholds and the continent therefore became divided between an overwhelmingly Islamic north and a more Christian south. Roughly speaking, latitude 10° north serves as the dividing line from West Africa until East Africa, where it swings south of the equator to about 8° south. While Christians are few in number north of the line, Muslims are more common to the south of it. In Malawi and Mozambique, for example, 15 to 20 percent of the population count themselves as Muslims. Violence sometimes erupts between Islam and Christianity along the dividing line. This has been an ongoing social issue in Ethiopia for 800 years. Since 1970 Chad and the Sudan have seen ongoing strife and civil wars between the Islamic north and Christian-indigenous south. Sectarian violence has also occurred in Nigeria since the late 1990s. For the most part, however, the two religions are not in competition with one another and the continental dividing line seems unlikely to change.

New churches combining Christian doctrine and rituals with indigenous African ones are becoming increasingly common. Zambia and Zimbabwe have provided particularly fertile grounds for the growth of these syncretic churches. In Zimbabwe, 40 percent of the population claims membership in a syncretistic church, compared to 22 percent in more conventional Christian denominations.

Cultural Activity

Africa’s cultural traditions are extremely diverse. Traditionally, art, music, and oral literature served to reinforce existing religious and social patterns. During the colonial period, some educated city dwellers rejected traditional African cultural activities in favor of Western cultural pursuits, but a cultural revival sprang up with the rise of African nationalism and independence in the mid-20th century. Arabic written literature has a long history in North Africa, while European-language literature has developed more recently. The governments of most African nations sponsor national dance and music groups, museums, and to a lesser degree, artists and writers. See African Art and Architecture; African Music; African Literature; African Theater.

Education

Africans value education, and all governments see improving educational access and quality as essential to national economic and political development. Despite scarce financial resources, many countries have made noteworthy achievements in raising literacy rates in recent decades. Adult literacy rates of 70 percent or more are characteristic of East, Central, and southern Africa, except, notably, in Somalia, Angola, Ethiopia, and Mozambique. Gains have been less impressive in West Africa: Many countries still have literacy rates below 60 percent, and the rates in Niger, Burkina Faso, and Sierra Leone are among the world’s lowest. Cameroon, Ghana, and Nigeria are notable exceptions, with particularly high literacy rates. Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria in North Africa have rates of 90 percent or higher. Females have significantly lower literacy rates than males across most of Africa.

Compulsory school attendance, starting at either 6 or 7 years of age and lasting until the ages of 11 to 16, is now universal in Africa. In many instances, education is free. A major obstacle to universal education is the problem of providing enough teachers, schools, and classroom materials to meet children’s needs, especially in remote rural areas. Huge national debts, the economic austerity measures designed to eliminate them, and military expenditures have all limited the funds that most countries have available to devote to education. Another obstacle to ensuring that all children receive education is the fact that they are still an important part of the workforce across Africa. They provide childcare, work farms and herds, and perform a range of other menial jobs, such as drawing water and collecting firewood. Parents may also lack the financial means to send their children to school, or may be forced to choose which ones can go and which ones cannot. Boys are usually given preference over girls in access to education and they typically stay in school much longer. The rationale for this is based on future income-earning potential: As matters currently stand, males have access to more and better paying jobs than females. Deteriorating economic conditions have actually led the income-earning and literacy gaps between males and females to widen even more.

Universities have space for only a tiny fraction of secondary school graduates and competition to secure admittance is intense. Those who are admitted are not guaranteed a good education, however. University libraries are often poorly stocked and, most critically, lack up-to-date scientific journals. Computers are few and Internet access rare. Most campuses were built in the 1950s and 1960s and have deteriorated, the more so because of limited funds for maintenance. The quality of higher education is also affected by frequent student protests over issues ranging from poor living conditions to politics. On many occasions governments have responded with force and closed campuses for considerable periods of time. While faculties are usually of high quality, with many members having been trained in Europe and North America, the conditions severely constrain what they can do. As a result, many look outside Africa for employment, which contributes significantly to Africa’s brain drain.

Health

A combination of new diseases and reemerging old ones is putting the lives of millions of Africans in serious jeopardy. At the top of the list is HIV/AIDS, which is devastating much of sub-Saharan Africa. National health services are under serious stress as more and more funds and personnel have to be devoted to treating and caring for AIDS victims. This has drawn attention and resources away from other health problems, such as malaria and other infectious diseases. While various environmental and social issues can be identified as the cause of these afflictions, the real culprit is poverty. Until poverty is controlled, Africa’s health situation will remain precarious, and doubly so for the most vulnerable: children.

HIV/AIDS

To date, more than 70 percent of the victims of HIV/AIDS worldwide have been Africans. The world’s first case on record is traceable to a plasma sample from a man who died in 1959 in the Belgian Congo (present-day DRC), but clinical identification of the disease was not possible until the early 1980s. By then it had already reached epidemic proportions, with Uganda and Rwanda as the epicenter of occurrence. In subsequent years, the epicenter moved progressively southward, and now Botswana and South Africa are seeing the highest rates of infection. As yet, HIV/AIDS has progressed more slowly in West Africa, with the exception of Côte d’Ivoire, which has been hit hard. Rates are increasing, however, especially in Nigeria. West Africa also has cases of HIV-2, an apparently less virulent strain of HIV that seems to result in lower death rates. Few cases of HIV infection have as yet been reported in North Africa.

Two modes of transmission account for virtually all cases of infection in Africa. The most significant has been heterosexual intercourse. Spread of the virus has been facilitated by a tradition of men having multiple sexual partners. The increased mobility of the African population has also helped the spread of HIV. The earliest lines of transmission were along roads carrying heavy truck traffic, with the infection points being rest stops where prostitutes served truckers. Both populations soon became infected and began spreading the disease to others.

As it has progressed, infection rates have grown more rapidly among females, especially younger ones. Several factors are responsible for this trend. First and foremost, condom use is limited, either because its protective value is unknown or because it is disliked. In addition, teenage African girls often start their sex lives with older men—whether married to them or not—who are more likely to be infected than boys their age. At the same time, as knowledge of AIDS has spread, men have sought to have sex with even younger girls in the belief that they will not already be infected. And, in many large cities such as Nairobi and Cape Town, cases of rape are on the rise.

The increase of HIV among women brings about the second major mode of transmission, which is mother-to-child. More and more babies are entering the world infected, and many healthy newborns are infected through their mothers’ milk. Transmission through homosexual sex and intravenous drug use are uncommon in Africa.

In general, African governments have been slow to respond to the HIV/AIDS epidemic, or even to admit that a problem exists. Two significant exceptions are Uganda and Zambia, where efforts to halt the spread of HIV/AIDS date to the mid-1980s. The Ugandan program has been especially effective, and the disease there is receding. Zambia has also begun to see infection rates fall among its most vulnerable population, pregnant teenagers.

The impacts of the HIV/AIDS epidemic are many and far-reaching. Countries where rates are very high, such as Botswana, will soon notice a “missing” adult population, leaving the country numerically dominated by the elderly and young. Numbers of orphans are on the rise, an unusual situation in Africa, where extended families and communities traditionally provide childcare. The missing adult population has already begun to affect economic productivity across the board, whether on farms or in factories. The teaching profession has been especially hard hit. AIDS is now by far the leading cause of death among teachers in the Côte d’Ivoire, and Zambia has found it cannot replace the number of teachers who have died or fallen ill.

Malaria

Often called the “silent killer” due to the lack of attention it receives, malaria is spread by the bite of the female Anopheles mosquito. Worldwide, the disease afflicts between 300 million and 500 million people annually, and 90 percent of the cases occur in tropical Africa. In terms of mortality, children under age five are the most vulnerable group, with some 700,000 dying in Africa each year. This death toll exceeds that from AIDS. Adults are less likely to die from malaria, but still suffer from the sickness. Infection often peaks during the rainy season, and higher rates of bedridden workers affect the agricultural productivity of families, communities, and nations. Experts estimate that the annual costs of malaria treatment and lost productivity due to malaria total between $2 billion and $3 billion for the continent as a whole.

The World Health Organization (WHO) began malaria control programs in 1948, spraying mosquito-breeding sites with insecticides and administering antimalarial drugs. For a time, it appeared that the disease might be eliminated, or at least brought under control. But since the late 1970s malaria has resurged. Mosquitoes have developed resistances to insecticides, as have the malaria parasites to traditional chloroquine-based antimalarial drugs. Urban malaria is spreading, largely as a result of the growth of squalid shantytowns that provide numerous pools of standing water where mosquitoes can breed. Civil conflict and natural disasters such as floods are other contributors to malaria’s spread. The seriousness of the problem led the WHO and other international groups to launch Operation Roll Back Malaria in 1998. This operation aims to intensify monitoring, prevention, and treatment efforts, with the ultimate objective being the development of an antimalarial vaccine.

Other Afflictions

Tuberculosis is another age-old disease that has become more widespread since the early 1980s, largely because it is a common opportunistic infection in AIDS cases. Drug-resistant varieties of tuberculosis are making treatment more difficult for all sufferers.

Cholera, once uncommon on the continent, is now endemic in Africa. Outbreaks are associated with contaminated water supplies, and contamination has become ever more common in both rural and urban areas.

Malnutrition is another widespread health problem among infants and young children. Many babies are born underweight, often because their mothers suffer from malnutrition. Studies have shown that many African children experience a slowdown in growth following weaning, when their diet suddenly shifts from high-protein, high-energy mothers’ milk to predominantly starchy foods. Malnourished children often develop protein-energy malnutrition conditions such as marasmus (essentially infantile starvation) and kwashiorkor, characterized by body swelling. Both conditions can be fatal, the latter often in association with infectious and parasitic diseases such as measles and malaria, as well as diarrhea.