Africa: 1400s to Now

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Africa:

1400 to now

What are the issues that are still facing Africa today?

How has trade impacted the development of Africa?

Essential Questions

The Spread of Islam

Trade had two big impacts on Africa. One of the impacts was the spread of Islam. The Islamic empire spread throughout parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Northern Africa. Islam continued to spread throughout Africa along trade routes. The Arabic language spread throughout North, West, and East Africa.

• Settlement (create new farms, businesses, etc in a new land)
• Generate money
• Control trade in a particular region
• Take resources (minerals, gems, timber, animal furs)
• Create prisons
• Increase military strength and presence

Countries created colonies for many reasons:

Think of the 13 American colonies ruled by Great Britain

What is Colonization?

Colonization is a policy where a country occupies and rules over other areas. This is the second big impact of trade on Africa.

In the 1500s, African traders began selling enslaved people for guns and other European goods. As many as 13 million slaves were brought across the Atlantic Ocean to work on plantations in America, and hundreds of thousands died on the trip.

Atlantic Slave Trade

Many tribes, like the Agojie and Dahomey tribes depicted in 2022's The Woman King, were involved in the Atlantic slave trade throughout the 1600s and 1700s.

The slave trade caused Africans to fight one another for power and control, which left them weak and vunerable when other nations came to colonize them.

African colonies growth from 1878 to 1914

• Ghana became independent in 1957.
• Nigeria became independent in 1960.
• Kenya gained independence in 1963.

Many African colonies were frustrated with colonial rulers and wanted independence. Thanks to the Pan-African movement started by Kwame Nkrumah, leaders emerged in many African colonies demanding freedom.

• After South Africa became independent from Great Britain, the powerful white minority still wanted to keep power. They separated black and white people in South Africa through a policy called apartheid.
• Under apartheid, black people could not go to school, buy a house, go to work, etc in many parts of South Africa. No one could marry anyone from another race.
• Apartheid was destroying South Africa, and many people in and out of South Africa hated it.
• Nelson Mandela, a political activist, was put in jail for opposing apartheid. After the president of South Africa ended apartheid in 1990 and Mandela was released from prison.
• Mandela was voted in as president in 1994!

Apartheid and Mandela

Only one-sixth of all Africans have access to clean, safe-to-drink water.

In the Sahel, deforestation and drought combine to create desertification -- the expanding of desert-like conditions into grasslands.

Deforestation:

Drought:

When a region goes for long periods of time without precipitation (rainfall), it experiences drought.

Deforestation happens when more trees are lost than can grow back each year. This is particularly devastating in Africa's rainforests, like the Congo.

Environmental Challenges in Africa

Clean Water:

Desertification:

• NGOS are usually non-profit, meaning they do not make money
• NGOs are usually funded privately, meaning they rely on donations from individuals and corporations
• Many countries in Africa do not have stable governments and economies, so NGOs help many Africans in those regions who are struggling and have no other support.

AIDS kills about 1.5 million Africans per year.

A Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) is an organization that helps to deal with disease and poverty.

What are NGOs?