New Encyclopedia of Africa [PDF] [2entlg1eqp2g] (2023)

NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

AFRICA

NEW ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

AFRICA Volume 5 Taboo and Sin–Zubayr Index John Middleton CHIEF EDITOR

Joseph C. Miller PUBLISHER

T-Nord

taboo and sin.

The general idea of sin does not pose a particular problem in comparative religion. A sin is an evil act that transgresses God's laws. Its opposite tenets are crime, an evil act that entails the penalty of the law, and vice, a disapproved habit that can lead to sin and breaking the law. Sins are not usually illegal, and conversely, breaking the law is not necessarily a sin. Vice is a moral concept; the crime is defined by law and punishable by law; Sin is defined in religious doctrine. It is an intentional act committed knowingly and with a clear moral content. Taboo is a Polynesian word meaning a forbidden act or a general prohibition on touching or approaching anything. In Polynesia, for example, it was taboo to touch a chief's head, even accidentally. Taboos related to food and sex are important African examples. Like sin, taboo is a term for a transgression, but unlike sin, the moral content of the rule can be difficult to discern. It is evident that sinners prosper. If they sin and repent, they can be forgiven and get away with it, or if they receive divine punishment, it can be deferred to the afterlife. The theories of sin vary depending on the theory of the person: in some religions people reincarnate from previous existences, in which case they may atone for past sins or they may carry with them a preordained tendency to sin. Medieval Christianity paid close attention to divine retribution in the afterlife, developing descriptions of hell, purgatory, and heaven in terms of perfectly just and accurate divine retribution for vice and virtue. Buses

it must lead to purification, which is carried out in the priestly rituals. The theology of sin is clearly a means of social control. The idea of taboo also controls moral behavior, but the control is depersonalized: it is not inherently bound to any doctrine of personality or the afterlife or prenatal existence. It tends to focus on a forbidden intrusion into a sacred place or contact. In Central Africa, taboos protect pregnant women and young children even from indirect contact with adulterers: an adulterer who eats food cooked on the same fire or shares salt with the mother endangers the life of the child. In this case, the one who breaks the taboo is the woman who puts herself or her child in danger, and the adulterer seems to go unpunished. In general, taboo breakers must expect to be punished during their lifetime. As in the case of sin, the punitive effects can affect individuals, their families, or the entire community. This part of the belief mobilizes other people to monitor correct behavior. Neighbors will be concerned when a taboo is broken, so they are keen to keep it up. Regret is not necessary to break broken taboos because intent is not involved. Whether the action was intentional or unintentional, there must be a way to atone for it, a way to reverse its effects. The cleansing of sin and taboo is a ritual that reintegrates the offender into the community. Both sin and taboo can thus be treated as matters of public interest and viewed as attacks on the vulnerable community. Among the Leele of Zaire

taboo and sin

The birth of twins was fraught with danger, as twins were a specific and powerful divine intervention in the normal course of human fertility. Not only at birth, but throughout their lives, the person of twins was taboo; when a twin came into a town as a stranger, one had to observe so-called "taboos of respect" or the hunt would not flourish until the rite of entry of the twins was accomplished. When community spirit is weakened, sins become private and taboos disappear. In English there is no noun for the forbidden state or for the forbidden thing. In the centuries-long process of the privatization of sin, the eradication of purgatory, and the loss of any living conception of hell, taboo has come to be assumed to be an entirely foreign concept to English speakers, and so the foreign word "taboo" is adopted. Although the word generally fits into a system of religious teachings, English speakers tend to apply it to trivial secular contexts. For example, it was said that it was taboo to talk about death or sex over dinner; walking on weed in public places or smoking in restaurants can be taboo. These uses emphasize the impersonal and involuntary aspects of the word. They also illustrate the typical taboo attempt to control knowledge and defend property rights. But using the word for minor breaches of etiquette belittles and distorts the meaning of an idea as central to all religions, including those of sub-Saharan Africa, as the idea of sin. Sinners can find their retribution in life or in the hereafter. In the Bible, when the widow's son fell ill and was near death, she feared that she would be punished for her sins (1 Kings 17:18). In the Western Christian tradition, it is commonly believed that some sins have automatic physical consequences that punish the sinner. In Europe, there was a notion that certain sins would bring immediate retribution, particularly the sin of breaking an oath. The expression emphasizing the truth of an oath: "I swear I tell the truth, so kill me!" it is a holdover of the belief that perjury would be instantly killed by lightning. Most examples of taboos in Africa are of this type, with wrongdoers being automatically punished. Sometimes mistakes are difficult to relate to the moral code, such as taboos.

around the birth of twins; others show more easily the moral implications, such as sexual taboos punishing adultery with the death of babies or incest with leprosy. Respect taboos, like taboos against insults to high office, defend the political system as surely as sexual taboos defend the institution of the family. One way of representing the taboo is as a system of rules that separates two different spheres, the divine order and the order of nature, so that when the taboo is broken, the mixing of the two spheres has devastating consequences. This description is only impressionistic, as there are not two completely separate spheres in most religions. With an immanent God existing in the natural world, taboo is as much a part of the order of nature as earth and water are, and the physical elements are also a part of the divine order. The separation between nature and deity established in the development of secular science and education in the Renaissance makes the taboo difficult to understand. Because one finds it in foreign cultures as an impersonal force: a taboo works on its own; no spiritual being has to intervene to make it effective. A matter of credibility intrigued early explorers and missionaries seeking to understand African religions. To them it was absolutely believable that a curse should be feared and believed to have bad effects. Also, prophecy and sin could plausibly be expected to bring bad luck because of the implied reference to divine control and divine power to channel bad luck where it would punish wrongdoers. Taboos presented problems because they seemed to be isolated beliefs about how the world was made, tantamount to belief in the pull of gravity or the effects of weather. For example, taboos linking disease directly to immorality also sound like a failure of scientific reasoning or a foolish attempt to use adversity to enforce behavior. Why would anyone believe that incest causes skin diseases or adultery dangerous childbirth? Both are widespread in Africa. Or why, as in Judaism, should one strictly avoid eating pork or coming into contact with corpses? Non-culturalists can see no connection. The notion that breaking taboos on food could cause disease was once derided as being based on flawed nutritional science.

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Such interpretations are out of place when taboo, as it should be, is seen as an integral part of a theistic universe, along with prophecies, curses, and blessings. Just as it makes sense for a worshiper to believe in the real power of curses, sins, and blessings, it also makes sense for the worshiper to believe that God established human society and protected it by dealing with real dangers of injury associated with human rights. . divine laws. For reasons religions associate with mortality, one has no trouble understanding curses. On the one hand, if a curse effectively destroys the happiness of the cursed's enemy, it is because a spiritual being makes it work. It goes without saying that an offended father or old man, a debtor or a beggar, if treated unjustly, can cast a curse on the wrongdoer, and if misfortune later falls on the object of the curse, this can be taken for granted become. Sitting, which God made, is effective. The same is true of prophecy: there is no problem in understanding that the seer who predicts a good or bad event is, by divine calling, able to see into the future. The same applies to blessings. The theistic background of these beliefs makes them amenable to a simple religious explanation. Theists would have no trouble believing that God would step in to support curses and blessings and endow some people with prophetic powers. Curses and blessings also involve moral judgment: good behavior is expected to be rewarded and bad behavior punished, so it is very plausible that a just God would ensure that punishments and rewards were fairly distributed. For the same reason, the beliefs that correspond to the Christian image of sin are intuitively unproblematic. Sin is an offense against God, who can forgive it or get angry enough to punish it. Taboo is of a different class: a belief in catastrophe that will inexorably follow from the breaking of certain rules and operate within the created physical world without requiring any particular divine intervention. Other problems arise when the taboo is presented as a sin against God's law but has no moral aspect: how can God be angry or punish an act that is completely involuntary and harms no one? What kind of god makes laws that don't make sense? The common misconception that taboos are meaningless makes them difficult to interpret.

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Rules that are taboo against breaking often have an indirect moral implication if carefully observed. Very often they have an important function in maintaining the customs of the community. What might be thought of as three separate orders can be combined in the taboo system: the natural order, the divine order, and the social order. The superficial structure of the taboo implies only two things: the breaking of a rule, consciously or unconsciously, and the certain punishment; but underlying this simple scheme is a third assumption: that the world was created to behave in this way and is maintained in its functioning by God. The taboo depends on a divine order, or rather it is the way in which the divine order is maintained. Thus the universe was created and endowed with an arsenal that automatically punishes the sinner with the same certainty that fire burns, water drowns, and weight falls. To fully understand taboo, imagine a universe constructed as an abstract model of moral values and religious and social symbols, fully sensitive to human behavior. In this receptive universe, the full range of good deeds and acts of respect and piety imaginable would automatically bring blessings, and all injustices, insults, and disregard for symbolic distinctions would incur penalties. Homer's world would look something like this. Some of the variant forms can be named from the extreme case. In some religions, the automatic functioning of the taboo is expected to be understandable: if one has unwittingly broken a taboo, it is assumed that one could and should have known about the crime. In other religions there are so many taboos and their connection to social life is so weak that no one can expect to observe them beforehand. Only after an accident and after consulting a fortune teller does the average citizen find out that a taboo has been broken, for example by accidentally stepping on a dog's grave or touching a corpse. The question why do people believe in taboos? is answered after considering these other questions: Who makes taboos? How can they be terminated? Taboo essentially combines the idea of pollution and punishment to be cured by purification. So where does the idea of corruption come from? Religions vary greatly in their interest in corruption. The cleaning laws respond to a collective concern

APLAUSOS BALEWA, ABUBAKAR

reconcile and reinstate or make an example of the profaner. A highly individualistic community, where any member can join or leave at any time, will have little interest in desecration or purification. The reason for believing in the dangers of taboo or corruption is the possession of important common values. For example, if something is considered vulnerable in religion, disrespectful speech is made a sin or taboo, and agreement on blasphemy makes it easier to mobilize to call for penance and punishment. When the indignant consensus gathers to protect the king, the indignant mood focuses on lese-majeste; when assembled against perjury, the sanctity of the oath and of the courts is protected. Taboo is not a difficult system to live by when there are many easy cleanses. The taboo is not static. As the common good loses control of the public conscience and old taboos are ridiculed, new ones arise to protect the new focus of concern. When strong communal control gives way to individually contested power control, communal taboos become a system of honor; a stain on family honor can become a curse for generations to come. As the hierarchy becomes an egalitarian community, the taboos that support stratification lose credibility and those that protect the frontier gain additional strength. The taboo is an understandable system. It changes with people's desire to protect the things that matter and it changes with changes in values. See also prophecy and oracle; Law; Philosophy and African Studies; religion and ritual.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Douglas, Maria. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Contamination and Taboo. London: Ark Paperbacks, 1984. Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400–c. 1580. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Le Goff, Jacques. The Birth of Purgatory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. McDannell, Colleen, and Bernard Lang. Heaven: a story. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1988. Steiner, Franz. Taboo. London: Cohen & West, 1956.

Walker, Daniel P. The Fall of Hell: Discussions of Perpetual Torment in the Seventeenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964. MARY DOUGLAS

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APPLAUSE

BALEWA,

ABUBAKAR

(1912-1966). Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa Balewa was born in the province of Bauchi, south of the Hausa Muslim regions in present-day central Nigeria, into a non-Fulani and non-royal family (unlike most of the early elite of the Northern Emirates de Hausa) and was educated at Katsina Higher college in the heart of the colony's Hausa area. He was appointed school teacher in 1933 and that same year married Hafsatu (Zainab), the daughter of a Fulani Islamic judge. After her death in childbirth, Abubakar would marry no less than six times. In 1934 his novel Shaihu Umar, The Romantic Journeys of a Hausa Master, was published as one of the winning entries in a creative writing competition in the Hausa language. Forty years later it was to be dramatized and filmed. However, neither teaching nor literature would become Balewa's career; it was in politics that he reached the pinnacle of fame and admiration. He co-founded the Bauchi General Improvement Union in 1943 and was nominated for the Northern Legislature in 1946. There he represented his reformist views against the authoritarianism of the Emirates. In 1949 he was promoted to the still largely European cadre of education officials and his career confirmed. Returned as a member of the Nigerian legislature for the province of Bauchi in regional (1951) and federal (1954) elections and elected vice president of the dominant Northern People's Congress, Abubakar received the portfolio of central labor minister in 1952 and 2019, with Transport in 1954. In 1957 he became prime minister of the Federation and was knighted in 1960. During the 1960s, Nigeria's final nationalist decade, Abubakar was known for his balanced judgment, the transparency of his honesty and humility, and the widespread respect his leadership in the changing and volatile federation earned him both internationally and domestically. But the responsibility of running a state as willful and fragile as Nigeria was in the early 1960s

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there is a risk of a constitutional standstill in the formation of a broad-based government after the partially boycotted parliamentary elections. His bold initiative allowed the Federation to survive for at least another twelve months. But the redemption was short-lived. On the eve of January 15, 1966, a bloody uprising broke out. Abubakar was kidnapped and killed; To this day it is unclear to what extent his assassination was part of the original plot. For generations to come, Abubakar lived on as a rare example of the post-colonial African statesman and the epitome of the honneˆte homme of Hausa culture. His place in Nigerian history as the first, last and greatest prime minister remains undisputed. See also Awolowo, Obafemi; Azikiwe, Benjamin Nnamdi; Nice Ahmadu. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Balewa, Alhaji Abubakar Tafawa. Prime Minister: A selection of speeches. Lagos, Nigeria: Federal Ministry of Information, 1964. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa (1912–1966) at an African Summit Conference, 1963. Tafawa Balewa, Prime Minister of Nigeria, was a trained teacher who promoted the establishment of the Organization of African Unity. In Bauchi, his birthplace, a university is named in his honor. ª BETTMANN/CORBIS

released his tension, leaving the conscientious Abubakar with constant worries. Nationally, every general election and census led to outcry for foul play. Holding together the sensitive regions of the federation, Abubakar had to contend not only with the personal antagonisms of southern nationalist leaders Benjamin Nnamdi Azikiwe and Obafemi Awolowo, but also with the authoritarianism of his own northern party leader Ahmadu Bello. International issues such as South Africa's place of apartheid in the British Commonwealth, France's nuclear test in the Sahara, the riots in the Congo, Rhodesia's unilateral declaration of independence and the cancellation of the Nigeria-Britain defense pact all tested Abubakar's qualities as a statesman, and his unwavering determination saved the country from the Disintegrated in the political crisis of 1964 when Abubakar, unperturbed by the President's lack of confidence in him, broke the prosecutor's office

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Clark, Trevor. A most honorable gentleman: Abubakar from Black Rock. Zaria: Hudahuda, 1991. Kirk-Greene, Anthony HM Mutumin Kirkii: The Good Man's Hausa Concept. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1974. Sklar, Richard L. Nigerian Political Parties: Power in Emerging African Nations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963. Whitaker, C.S. "Three Perspectives on Hierarchy: Political Thought and Leadership in Northern Nigeria." Journal of Commonwealth Political Studies 3 (1965): 1–19. ANTHONY KIRK GREENE

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The city of Tangier (Tanja in Arabic; Tangier in French) is one of Morocco's most important ports with a city population of 669,685 in 2004. A port city existed on the site since the Punic period, when it was already called Tingi. Due to the city's strategic location on the Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar, it has been contested and occupied by great powers throughout its history. In Roman times, Tangier was the capital of Mauritania's Tingitana, an imperial province. The city and its interior remained under Roman rule until the fall of

TANZANIA:

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY

to the Vandals in AD 429. It returned under Byzantine control from 534 to 682 and then passed to the Visigoths of Spain, who ruled it until the Muslim conquest in 702. From the 8th to the 13th century, Muslim naval power was at its peak in the region of the Strait and the port city prospered. , which serves for both commercial and naval expeditions. This era of the city's history culminated in the career of its best-known son, Ibn Battuta, the world-traveling scholar of the 14th century. The rise of powerful maritime states in Christian Europe put Tangier on the front lines of many wars. The Portuguese, who controlled Ceuta since 1415, took it in 1471. Both prisons passed to the Spanish when Portugal lost its sovereignty (1580-1640). In 1661 the Portuguese ceded Tangiers to the English Crown along with Mumbai in India. A resurgent Morocco commanded by Sultan Moulay Ismaq began a protracted blockade of the city. Tangier finally fell to the Moroccans in 1684, although the English destroyed both the city and the port before abandoning it. In 1923, after years of stalemate between European powers, Tangier was declared an "international city" under the joint administration of France, Spain, Great Britain and Italy, a status it retained until Moroccan independence in 1956. International Tangier gained a reputation as a haven for artists, libertines and Western spies, and the era is represented in the works of authors such as Paul Bowles, William Burroughs, Mohamed Choukri and Jean Genet. Since independence, Tangier has developed into an industrial city and broadcasting center. Its international port and airport are home to export processing and free trade industrial zones, an entirely new container port has been under construction at a location 21 miles to the east since 2007, and there are renewed discussions about building a railway tunnel underneath. from the straits to Spain. See also Morocco; Morocco, History (1000 to 1900); Muslim North Africa, History from (641 to 1500 AD). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Stuart, Graham H. The International City of Tangier, Second Edition. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1955. Vaidon, Lawdom. Tangier: something different. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1977. ERIC S. ROSS

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TANZANIA This entry contains the following articles: GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY SOCIETY AND CULTURE HISTORY AND POLITICS

G E O G R A PHY AND ECONOMY

Located on the east coast of Africa, south of the equator, Tanzania includes the islands of Zanzibar, Mafia and Pemba. The colonial occupations of Germany (Deutsch-Ostafrika, 1885–1917) and Great Britain (Tanganyika, 1919–1961) superimposed borders for about 120 different language groups. The modern territorial configuration is the result of a 1964 revolt against the Sultanate of Zanzibar, which led to the islands' unification with mainland Tanganyika (Tanzania, 1964–). With a total area of 587,258 square miles and a 2005 population of 36.8 million people, it is the largest and most populous country in East Africa. Tanzania has three basic physiographic regions, the coastal plain, the northern and southern highlands, and the interior plateau. Within this broad classification are notable geographical features such as Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest point at 19,340 feet, and the Great Rift Valley. Fault zones associated with the rift have flooded and have formed a number of large lakes including Tanganyika and Nyasa. The five main river systems Pangani, Wami, Rufiji, Ruvu and Ruvuma all drain into the Indian Ocean. Precipitation is highly variable in space and time due to topography and seasonal wind changes caused by the movement of the intratropical convergence zone. The northern part of the country experiences a bimodal rain regime with peaks from October to December and March to May, while the rest of the country experiences a unimodal rain regime with peaks from December to April. Average annual rainfall ranges from more than 59 inches in parts of the southern highlands to less than 20 inches in much of the interior plateau. Tanzania's population is unevenly distributed, with most settlements concentrated in three areas: the Indian Ocean coast, the Lake Region, and the northern and southern highlands, leaving much of the interior sparsely populated. Although most

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the population is rural, urbanization has accelerated since the late 20th century, flooding the country's largest cities such as Dar es Salaam, Arusha and Dodoma. The natural growth rate of the population is nearly 2 percent and life expectancy under age 50 is declining, in large part due to an estimated national HIV/AIDS infection rate of 11 percent. Colonialism diverted the Indian Ocean region's old trade and encouraged new agricultural exports such as sisal, tea, coffee, tobacco and cotton. The more complete integration of Tanzania into the world economy led to the establishment of an African peasant class and regional differentiation, two processes that continue to influence Tanzania's economic development to this day. in one

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In an effort to concentrate African labor force in agriculture, British colonial policy restricted African participation in the occupations and downplayed African education. At the time of independence, Tanzania had few college graduates, very uneven regional development, and an economy heavily dependent on the export of some agricultural products. The manufacturing industry was insignificant and limited to the processing of agricultural products. At the beginning of the 21st century, the economy was still dependent on agriculture, which employed 85% of the labor force and accounted for 75% of exports, mainly coffee, cotton, cashews, tea, sisal and tobacco.

TANZANIA:

SOCIETY AND CULTURES

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Tanzanian economy experienced a series of external shocks, most notably the oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 and the fall in world agricultural commodity prices. Internally, the one-party socialist state pursued a policy of self-sufficiency, announced in the 1967 Arusha Declaration. The general political drive discouraged private investment, encouraged industrialization through import substitution and state ownership of production, and established the state monopsony of agricultural commodities. The combined external and internal forces resulted in a contraction in the terms of trade, an increase in external debt and a decline in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In 1985, amid economic decline and mounting debt, Tanzania signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to implement the national stimulus plan. Since then, the state has engaged in a series of structural adjustment programs, abandoning socialist development policies and promoting privatization, foreign investment, currency devaluation and government spending cuts.

The East African nation of Tanzania, like most African countries, encompasses many different cultures and peoples. It developed as a unit from the colonial era. In the case of Tanzania, the process of political creation continued almost exclusively after the end of colonial rule. Mainland Tanzania became independent as Tanganyika in 1961, followed by the island state of Zanzibar in 1963. The two merged to form Tanzania in 1964 after a bloody revolution on the islands (Zanzibar and Pemba). Formal lines on the map created by Europeans in the late 19th century united pre-colonial peoples, cultures, languages and states into a new political entity. However, these components of the new colony had coherent social and economic elements that predated the declaration of colonial rule. The merging of previously separate colonies into nations reactivated old patterns of cultural and economic interaction between the coast and the interior, and increased the diversity already present in each of the two states.

The successes and failures of two decades of neoliberal economic development policies continue to be debated. On the one hand, the manufacturing industry grew by 6.3 percent per year between 1996 and 2004. Real GDP growth accelerated significantly and inflation was controlled. Foreign direct investment also increased, most of it in tourism and mining. As a result, tourism has become the second largest source of foreign exchange after agriculture, and mining has grown at 15.5 percent a year. On the other hand, with a GDP per capita of US$800, Tanzania remains one of the least developed countries in the world. Debt has risen sharply, far outpacing GDP growth. In 1999, the IMF deemed Tanzania's debt "unsustainable" and labeled it a "heavily indebted poor country," making it eligible for debt relief. However, the total external debt reached $7.9 billion in 2004, while it is estimated that between 40 and 50 percent of the population still live below the poverty line. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Dar es Salaam; debt and credit; Disease: HIV/AIDS, social and political aspects; ecosystems; IMF.

Beere, L., ed. Tanzania on Maps. London: University of London Press, 1971. Forster, Peter G. and Sam Maghimbi, eds. Agricultural Economics: State and Society in Contemporary Tanzania. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999. Iliffe, John. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Szirmai, Adam and Paul Lapperre, eds. The Industrial Experience of Tanzania. New York: Palgrave, 2001. RODERICK P. NEUMANN

SOCIETY AND CULTURES

The peoples of Tanzania have built their cultures and societies both on the way they made their living and on the historical movements of people, ideas and things in the landscape. Their diversity reflects long-term social and economic development processes in the respective landscapes of the region. Tanzanian languages come from Africa's four main indigenous language families, making the country one of the few areas in Africa with such diversity. Of the approximately 120 different languages spoken in Tanzania, most come from

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from the Bantu subbranch of the Niger-Congo language family. Small communities like Sandawe and Hadza still speak the oldest languages of the area, those of the Khoesan family. Speakers of the Cushitic languages, part of the large Afro-Asiatic family based in northern Ethiopia and beyond, such as the Iraqis and the Burunges, brought as early as 3000 B.C. B.C. cattle breeding and agriculture to the region. Around the year 1000 a. C. Bantu speakers entered the northwest corner of the region. It was there that Bantu speakers of the languages of Africa's fourth main group, Nilo-Saharan, met grain and developed a new synthesis of agriculture, livestock, and ironworking that enabled them to create daughter languages of the Bantu subfamily throughout the region and beyond out. At the beginning of the 21st century, the majority of Tanzanians come from communities whose indigenous language belongs to the Bantu family. Over the past 1,000 years, speakers of the Nilotic languages of the Nilo-Saharan group (Luo and the Maasai language Maa) have moved further into the area. Over the course of these millennia, the arriving local Bantu speakers settled with the older communities they encountered in the area, and all dug in and developed reasonably stable social strategies and cultural expressions, as well as connections to neighbors with complementary adaptations that the Development enabled political, economic and cultural interaction on a larger scale. These immigration processes and the languages of the immigrants have continued in recent times, with continuous adaptations by the former local communities. Indian language speakers, Arabs, Portuguese navigators, and German and English colonizers have all left their mark. Most of the peoples of Tanzania have practiced agriculture as their main livelihood and have developed very sophisticated and diverse species depending on the environments they use. At higher, better-watered elevations such as the Kagera region west of Lake Victoria Nyanza, Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru, the Usambaras, Pare and Uluguru Mountains, residents combine intensive permanent banana cultivation with livestock farming. and the production of modern cash crops such as coffee and tea. In the drier plains surrounding this northern highland and extending into the centre

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Tanzania, Sukuma, Nyamwezi and Gogo combined livestock farming with extensive cultivation of crops such as sorghum, millet and maize. In the southwestern Fipa Highlands of the country, the fertile land allows for the cultivation of a variety of crops. Along the Indian Ocean coast, the presence of tsetse flies, which transmit sleeping sickness, often prevented livestock raising, but farmers were able to grow rice and coconuts. Cushitic-speaking communities live in the plains and highlands of northern Tanzania and share their subsistence strategies with their Bantu-speaking neighbors. The Khoesan-speaking Sandawe and Hadza communities, along with the Maa-speaking Dorobo groups, are more reliant on foraging. Maa-speaking communities inhabit the low, arid plains of the southern Great Rift Valley from Kenya to central and eastern Tanzania. They focus their economic, and therefore social and political, strategies on animal husbandry; however, several Maa-speaking communities, including the Arusha of Mount Meru, have colonized higher and wetter lands and adopted sedentary agriculture. In the past, individuals often moved between communities and the life forms associated with them. Ethnicity as a biography remained fluid and situational in many contexts, and consequently communities included individuals from vastly different backgrounds who could bring diverse knowledge and experiences to others. Cultural conventions within these communities varied with languages and landscapes. Although patrilineal descent generally remained a common organizing principle for most communities, some considered kinship on the maternal side, such as the Luguru, Sagaru, and Kaguru. Most, however, considered primary kinship through the paternal line. In some cases, such as among the Luguru, communities determined access to land through clan membership, large groups of people claiming a more distant kind of descent from a distant ancestor, and that kind of loyalty acquired political connotations. Others organized themselves into more immediate kinship groups: lines descended from a known ancestor only a few generations away. For purposes beyond unilinear descent subdivisions, many turned to age groups. The Maasai practiced the most well-known form of age grouping, in which all males passed

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Stages of social identity from young warrior to older elder and women at similar if appropriately different stages. All individuals in each age cohort - together - progressed through each stage together. Many Bantu-speaking communities exchanged personnel with Maasai and eventually adopted their practices, so the Gogo and Chagga developed age groups that reflected Maasai practices. In almost all societies, some kind of coming-of-age ritual marked puberty and thus the transition to young adulthood for both men and women. Jando, the Swahili term for these rituals, usually involved the isolation and instruction of the boys by the elders, and often circumcision to show readiness for reproductive contributions to the community. For women, variations on Swahili Nyago rituals provided the same type of instruction (although female genital mutilation was less common). Marriage generally followed and represented the union not only of the two people involved but of the entire family behind. Although almost all Tanzanian societies practiced patriarchy, with community and political authority resting with the men, and also patrilocality, which removed young women from their own kinship groups to live with their husbands and male relatives, even those of descent traced and therefore belonged to the lineage. Through wives (matrilineal), married women could generally count on the continued support of their family and eventually their adult children. Women also participated in spirit possession and other ritual groups to build social support mechanisms in the communities where they were married. Most societies allowed men to form as many alliances as possible through multiple marriages (polygamy), but generally only this type of influence was reserved for wealthy, politically prominent, and often high-ranking men. Families raised children to regard all members of their parents' kin group, mother or father, often a large number of people, as responsible for them. Also in Swahili and many other Bantu languages, people expanded the terms brother, father, mother and sister to cover almost any relative of the appropriate generation and gender. Tanzanian societies developed a variety of political systems. Many mainly recognized

localized authority, where chiefs, as Europeans called them, led communities ranging in size from hundreds to tens of thousands. Leaders such as the Watemi of the Gogo and the Nyamwezi dominated the areas where they ritually controlled the precipitation, ruling as first among other great men rather than as a separate, unique, and arbitrary power. In other areas, clans coalesced into centralized authority over larger areas under a single group representative, a kind of king. The basis of the leader's sole authority lay both in the person's ability to organize military force and in the king's claims (like the Kilindi rulers of the Usambara mountains) to being able to heal the land and so rain, bountiful harvests and to bring fertile women to the region. In short, authority in most parts of Tanzania rested with those who had the ritual power to establish harmony between the human community and the spiritual environment in which they lived. Religious practices thus focused on maintaining this harmony against those who would disturb it: greedy or antisocial, disloyal individuals, often called witches in English; and to spread ancestral spirits that could bring favor within the domains of kinship groups. Islam reached the shores of the Indian Ocean via trade routes dating back many centuries, and in the 19th century Swahili traders brought Islam via ivory and slave-mining trade routes inland, the regions beyond Lake Tanganyika, the western frontier of the modern nation . In the 19th century, and particularly the 20th century, Christianity came with European missionaries who paved the way for colonial conquests and then helped consolidate early colonial rule. Both monotheistic religions found adherents in local converts who adapted the practice of these universal religions to local conditions and the communities formed around them. THE SWAHILI NATION: MODERNITY IN TANZANIA

Out of this historical social and cultural diversity was created during the 20th century by the people of the colony, then country, what could eventually be considered Tanzanian culture. The British, who took over the part of German East Africa that became Tanganyika after World War I, followed German manufacturing practice

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Swahili the language of government. They also introduced a version of their colonial indirect rule strategy that placed traditional local rulers in the role of administrators of government. These "native authorities" were sometimes people who sought to mediate between the state and the people and therefore demanded the loyalty of the population under their authority to the officials of the colonial district. Others were ambitious workers who were often shunned by local communities. Through these quasi-ethnic strategies, the rigidity of colonial rule in Tanganyika reified ethnic boundaries that had previously been porous collaborations across which individuals could move according to collective needs and individual possibilities. They also created a class of neo-traditional chiefs who had a vested interest in promoting these divisions. Unlike many other British colonies, however, in Tanganyika the use of Swahili fostered a solidarity at the colonial and then national levels beyond these local political institutions, which had the potential to overcome the divisive effects of this tribalism. The British required all schools to use the Swahili language as the language of instruction. The anti-colonial nationalist movement that developed in the colony in the 1950s built on this rather narrow base of shared culture by emphasizing not only Pan-Africanism but also Swahili as a unifying factor. When Julius Nyerere led Tanganyika to independence, his movement, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), and the Ujamaa na Kujitegemea government promoted socialism and self-reliance as keys to national integration and economic development. Zanzibar's independence came amidst a struggle between a landed Arab elite, who viewed the islands as an Arab nation, and an African majority, many descendants of slaves brought from communities in Tanganyika's hinterland, who viewed it as one nation. A bloody revolt against the rule of the Arab Sultan in 1964, almost immediately after the departure of the British, led to radical rule and amalgamation with the descendants of former relatives in Tanganyika to form the nation of Tanzania. Ujamaa managed to foster a sense of national unity, even if it proved unsuccessful as an economic policy. People from all over the country did not forget their origins but took part in one

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ongoing dialogue about the importance of nationality as an extension of these loyalties. The Swahili language serves as a glue for the entire project. While some have spoken of the founding of Tanzania as a Swahili nation, across the continent Swahili remains an almost pejorative term used to talk about outsiders, suggesting the dominance of coastal politicians. At the same time, Tanzanians are increasingly practicing culture in Swahili. Modern media, newspapers, radio and television reach the whole country in Swahili. Taarab, a coastal music style particularly associated with Zanzibar, has become almost the music style of the whole country. Meanwhile, popular forms of music like dansi and bongo flava (hip-hop in Swahili) are finding national audiences. Despite the creation of this common discourse of popular culture, there are deep social and cultural divisions in Tanzanian society at the beginning of the 21st century. Tanzania has formally committed to promoting gender equality in the national sphere. Women have equal access to education and many have risen to high positions in government and the private sector; however, patriarchal attitudes still permeate both local society and legal institutions. At the forefront of the contentious issues, at least for some on the islands, remains the question of the union between the mainland and Zanzibar. Religious divisions also remain potential sources of conflict. The population appears to be evenly divided between Christians and Muslims, and conflicts have sometimes arisen between opposing members of the two faiths. Due to the country's general poverty, social cohesion remains fragile. After forty years of national independence, however, the priorities that unite Tanzanians have proven stronger than those that divide them. See also Bantu, East, South and West, History of (1000 BC to 1500); Christendom; ethnicity; Islam; Monarchy; ancestry and ancestry; Languages; marital systems; Nyerere, Julius Kambarage; Production Strategies: Agriculture; Obsession; War; Witchcraft. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Wrong, Kelly. Representing the Nation: Swahili Music and Cultural Politics in Tanzania. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.

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United Republic of Tanzania Population:

39,384,223 (2007 est.)

Area:

945,087 square kilometers (364,900 sq mi)

Official languages:

Swahili, English

National Currency:

Tansania-Schilling

Main Religions:

Christian 45%, Muslim 45%, Indigenous 10%

Capital city:

Legislative capital: Dodoma (estimated population 324,427 in 2002); Executive capital: Dar es Salaam (estimated population 637,573 in 2002)

Other urban centers:

Arusha, Mwanza, Dodoma, Mbeya, Mtwara, Stonetown, Zanzibar

Annual rain:

508 to 1498 mm (20 to 59 in), varies by region

Main geographic accidents:

Economy: Main products and exports:

Government:

Heads of state since independence:

Mountains: Mount Kilimanjaro, Mount Meru, Mount Rugwe, Pare Range, Usambara Range, Livingstone Mountains, Kipengere Range, Poroto Range, Ufipa Highlands, Uluguru Mountains, Matengo Highlands Lakes: Victoria-Nyanza, Tanganyika, Rukwa, Eyasi, Manyara, Natron Rivers : Pangani, Wami, Mkondoa, Ruvu (Kingani), Rufiji, Ruaha, Kilombero, Mbaragendu, Matandu, Mbemkuru, Lewugu, Lukuledi, Ruvuma, Kagera, Mori, Mara, Malagarasi, Songwe, Ruhuhu Islands: Zanzibar, Pemba, Mafia Others: Great Rift Valley, Olduvai Gorge, Ngorongoro Crater GDP per capita: US$800 (2006) Agriculture: coffee, sisal, tea, cotton, pyrethrum (insecticide from chrysanthemums), cashews, tobacco, cloves, corn, wheat, cassava (tapioca) , bananas, fruits, vegetables, livestock, sheep, goats Production: agricultural processing (sugar, beer, cigarettes, sisal yarn), salt, soda; Cement, Oil Refining, Shoes, Clothing, Wood Products, Fertilizers Mining: Diamonds, Gold, Precious Stones, Iron Ore, Phosphate, Coal, Copper, Zinc, Cobalt, Lead, Salt Tourism, focused on the country's numerous game reserves, is important for the Business. In 1961, Tanganyika became independent from a United Kingdom-managed United Nations trust. Zanzibar gained independence from the UK in 1963. Tanganyika and Zanzibar united in 1964. Constitutions 1960, 1965, 1977. Constitution of Zanzibar, 1985. Multiparty democracy. President elected by popular vote for a 5-year term. Unicameral National Assembly with 274 members, 232 seats by direct election, part of the rest by appointment of the President and the rest allocated by law to designated officials. The President appoints the Prime Minister and elects the cabinet from among the members of the National Assembly. For local government purposes there are 26 regions headed by regional commissioners appointed from among the ranks of the National Assembly; 60 continental districts and 9 areas (in Zanzibar) governed by district or area councils; and villages managed by village development committees. 1961-1985: President Julius Nyerere (Prime Minister of Tanganyika until the proclamation of the republic in 1962) 1985-1995: President Ali Hassan Mwinyi 1995-2005: President Benjamin Mkapa 2005-: President Jakaya Kikwete

Armed Forces:

The President is the Commander-in-Chief. Conscription for 2 years. Army: 45,000 Navy: 1,000 Air Force: 3,600 Paramilitaries: 14,000 Reserves: 85,000

Transport:

Rail: 3569 km (2213 mi) Roads: 78,891 km (49,021 mi), 9% paved Ports: Bukoba, Dar es Salaam, Kigoma, Musoma, Mwanza, Tanga, Zanzibar National Airlines: Air Tanzania, Zanzibar Airways, Alliance Airports: International Facilities in Dar es Salaam, Kilimanjaro, Zanzibar. More than 100 small airports and runways.

Media:

3 Newspapers: Daily News, Uhuru, Kipanga. Publishers include Tanzania Publishing and a branch of the East African Literature Bureau. Radio services from Radio Tanzania and Voice of Tanzania Zanzibar. 23 radio stations, 3 TV stations.

Literacy and Education:

Overall literacy rate: 78.2% (2006). Education is free, universal and compulsory from 7 to 14 years of age. Post-secondary education offered by Dar es Salaam University and other institutions.

Celebrationman, Steven. Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990.

Geiger, Susan. Tanu Women: Gender and Culture in the Emergence of Tanganyikan Nationalism, 1955–1965. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1997.

That's right Laura. Hobbies and Politics: Culture, Community, and Identity in Urban Zanzibar after Abolition, 1890–1945. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001.

Giblin, James L. A History of the Excluded: Making the Family a Refuge from the State in Twentieth-Century Tanzania, with Blandina Kaduma Giblin. Oxford: James Currey;

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Dar es Salaam, Tanzania: Mkuki na Nyota; Athens: Ohio University Press, 2005. Hodgson, Dorothy L. Once Fearless Warriors: Gender, Ethnicity, and the Cultural Politics of Maasai Development. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Iliffe, John. A Modern History of Tanganyika. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979. Maddox, Gregory H., with Ernest M. Kongola. Historical Practice in Central Tanzania: Writing, Memory and Performance. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006. Maddox, Gregory and James L. Giblin, eds. In Search of a Nation: Tales of Authority and Dissent from Tanzania. Oxford and Athens, OH: James Currey and Ohio University Press, East African Studies Series, 2005. Spear, Thomas and Richard Waller, eds. Maasai are Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992. GREGORY H. MADDOX

HISTORY AND POLITICS

With an area of 364,900 square miles and a population of 39.4 million, Tanzania is located on the east coast of Africa. It is surrounded by the Indian Ocean to the east and borders Kenya and Uganda to the north. Rwanda, Burundi and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to the west; and Malawi, Zambia and Mozambique to the south. According to 2004 statistics, annual per capita income is estimated at $320 and gross domestic product (GDP) growth at 6.3 percent. The United Republic of Tanzania consists of mainland Tanzania and the islands of Zanzibar. The continent first became recognized territory in 1884 after the Berlin Conference, when it was ceded to Germany and became Deutsch Ouest Afrika, which then included Rwanda, Burundi and an area of northern Mozambique. It should be noted that German control over this area was fairly weak. Therefore, colonial authority was brutal, relying heavily on forced labor to produce colonial crops such as cotton. This policy was deeply detested by the people, leading to open rebellion in 1905. This rebellion, which lasted from 1905 to 1907, became known as the Maji Maji Rebellion. Beginning on the coast, the rebellion quickly spread across the southern part of the territory, uniting different ethnic groups in a common struggle against them

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foreign domain. This uprising is considered the strongest resistance to German rule in Africa. The resistance led to the general weakening of German imperial rule and its eventual collapse after World War I. This experience inspired the nationalist struggle against British rule after World War II. After World War I and the defeat of Germany, Tanganyika was placed under a League of Nations trusteeship to be administered by the United Kingdom. Zanzibar was then under the Sultanate of Oman and a protectorate of the United Kingdom. The nationalist struggles for independence in Tanganyika and Zanzibar were closely linked. The Tanganyika African National Union, led by Julius Kambarage Nyerere (1922–1999) in Tanganyika, and the Afro-Shiraz Party, led by Abeid Amani Karume (1905–1972) in Zanzibar, worked on strategies and tactics against the in the 1950s British rule. . . This largely prepared the ground for the future merger of Tanganyika and Zanzibar into the United Republic of Tanzania. Tanganyika became independent in 1961 under the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU) led by Julius Nyerere after an election in which he overwhelmingly defeated competing political parties. The losing parties were later banned when Tanganyika became a one-party constitutional state in 1965. Zanzibar merged with Tanganyika to form the United Republic of Tanzania in 1964 after the latter gained independence in 1963 and overthrew the sultanate in a revolution led by the Afro-Shiraz Party (ASP) under Abeid Amani Karume. The origins of the union remain controversial. The union and Zanzibar governments have claimed that the union was inscribed in the enduring spirit of pan-Africanism and African unity that had stimulated their cooperation in nationalist struggles. Skeptics have argued that the fledgling revolutionary ASP government in Zanzibar was seeking shelter from a Sultan-sponsored or backed counter-revolution in the islands. Alternatively, others have argued that the mainland (Tanganyika) sought to tame and control the revolution in its own interest. However, others have argued that Tanganyika cooperated with the United States.

TANZANIA:

HISTORY AND POLITICS

in its quest to prevent the establishment of another Cuba off the coast of East Africa. Whatever the reasons, the negotiations that led to the union culminated in the signing of the union's statutes in April 1964, two months after the revolution in Zanzibar. Since the founding of the Union, the two political parties have enjoyed a monopoly on political power following the proclamation of a one-party constitutional state. TANU monopolized mainland politics while ASP remained the only party in Zanzibar. In order to consolidate their power and turn the two-party anomaly into a one-party constitutional state, the two merged in 1976 to form the then dominant political party Chama cha Mapinduzi (CCM). Tanzania has gone through two main phases in its historical development. The first phase (1961-1985) was socialist-oriented, while the second (since 1985) is liberalist. During the first economic phase, the country pursued policies of socialism and self-reliance (popularly known as Ujamaa) until it reluctantly began economic liberalization in early 1982. Under the Ujamaa policy, the state was the main player in the economy, with an emphasis on communal production in agriculture and the establishment of state enterprises in industry and commerce. The result was mixed. Agricultural production was partially disrupted by the enforced village policy introduced in the early 1970s. State-owned enterprises faltered and in many cases became increasingly dependent on government subsidies, leading to deficit spending on public spending and fueling the economy. Attempts to correct this situation from internal resources were unsuccessful. Meanwhile, the economy has stalled with declines in agricultural and industrial production. The volume and value of exports fell, leading to a significant shortage of foreign income and a rise in foreign debt, forcing a devaluation of the Tanzanian shilling. The economy came under severe strain, forcing the government to seek help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank to address some of the structural problems in the economy. This eventually led to an agreement with the IMF and the launch of an economic stimulus program in 1985. This program implied, among other things, devaluation, uncontrollable prices, government sector reduction, equilibrium

budget and privatization. This effectively marked the end of the Ujamaa phase and ushered the country into the phase of liberalization that lasted into the early 21st century. Much of the pressure for economic reform came from the international financial institutions. The government under the Nyerere presidency initially resisted this pressure, particularly in the 1970s. During the difficult negotiations between Tanzania and the IMF in the late 1970s, for example, Tanzania stuck to the Ujamaa policy. When the IMF insisted on harsh terms of devaluation and austerity in public spending at the expense of welfare improvements such as education, health and clean water, Nyerere vehemently protested: “Who chose the IMF as the treasury of all countries? the world? In 1985, however, he had to resign as president and in 1990 he also resigned as party chairman. By the early 1990s, IMF and World Bank policies had produced more negative than positive results. On the plus side, output growth increased from 2 percent in 1980 to 4.4 percent in 1990. However, this recovery was focused on agriculture, although world market prices for traditional agricultural exports fell, likely due to increases in world production relative to saturated markets. Industrial production was declining with a shift in investment from manufacturing to trading. Social services had suffered a sudden decline. Inflation had risen to 30 percent, fueling corruption and embezzlement in government and parastatal organizations. The road network had collapsed. Corruption became widespread and endemic. It is widely recognized that under the Arusha Declaration, literacy rates and school enrollment have skyrocketed, schools and health facilities have expanded, and people's incomes and quality of life have improved. At independence in 1961, the British left the country with 85 percent illiteracy, two engineers and twelve doctors. By 1985, Tanzania had 99 percent literacy and thousands of engineers and doctors. In 1988, Tanzania's per capita income was US$280, but by 1998 it had fallen to US$140. School enrollment dropped to 63 percent, and health conditions and other services deteriorated. It is instructive to note that even though the

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CCM leads liberalization/privatization policy Socialism remains enshrined in the constitution. Politically, the country was under the constitutional rule of a single party during the Ujamaa period, dominated by TANU and ASP and later CCM. This changed in 1992 when the constitution was amended to restore multi-party democracy. Politically, Ujamaa policies helped cement national unity and patriotism, and boosted Tanzania's standing in the region as the main promoter of liberation movements in southern Africa. However, this was achieved by an authoritarian government that silenced all political dissent and impeded meaningful political participation, leading to political exclusion and a weakening of civil society. The 1980s not only ushered in the liberalization and privatization of the economy, but at the same time saw growing demands for political liberalization and organizational crystallization. These latter demands were largely national and emanated from various political groups, some critical of economic liberalization but almost all calling for more open political space in the form of a multi-party political system. Among those leading the call for political liberalization was Nyerere, who recognized that the democratization winds were a worldwide phenomenon and warned his party to lead the transition or be caught up in the democratization wave. At first, the ruling party and government vigorously resisted these demands, but President Mwinyi, who succeeded Nyerere as chairman in 1985 and as CCM chairman in 1990, eventually gave in to pressure. In 1990 the government set up a one or more party commission, headed by then Chief Justice Francis Nyalali. Within nine months, the commission produced a report that recommended, among other things, restoring a multiparty system, reducing the powers of the president, repealing repressive laws, and rewriting the constitution. Of all these recommendations, only the reintroduction of the multi-party system was accepted by the government. The others were ignored. The government responded by initiating a controlled transition, with the CCM controlling the actors, the process, the path and the pace. But the failure of

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The implementation of most of Nyalali's recommendations, and in particular the adoption of a new constitution, continues to lead to significant contradictions between the ruling party and the opposition. Tanzania must rise to the constitutional challenge of ensuring not only that there is ongoing dialogue between all political actors, but also that this dialogue creates an environment in which meaningful political competition is established. This is perhaps the greatest challenge Tanzania will face in the coming years as it emerges from decades of one-party rule and seeks to build a stable democracy. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; economic systems; IMF; Nyerere, Julius Kambarage; production strategies; socialism and post-socialisms; World Bank; Zanzibar. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baregu, Mwesiga. "The Rise and Fall of the One-Party State in Tanzania". In Economic Change and Political Liberalization in Sub-Saharan Africa, ed. Jennifer A Widner. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994. Coulson, Andrew. Tanzania: a political economy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1982. Nyerere, Julius. freedom and socialism. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Sivji, Issa. Law, State and Working Class in Tanzania. London: James Currey, 1984. MWESIGA BAREGU

TATTOO.

See body jewelry and

Clothing.

Norte

Taylor,

KARL

GAHNHAY

(1948-). Charles Taylor, President of Liberia from 1997 to 2003, was born on January 28, 1948 in Arthington, Liberia to Nelson (a lawyer and judge) and Zoe Taylor. He was educated in Monrovia and attended college in the United States, receiving a bachelor's degree in economic theory from Bentley College, Massachusetts in 1977. After graduating, he stayed in the United States and worked for the Liberian Union of Associations.

TAYLOR, CHARLES GAHNHAY

Liberian President Charles Taylor (1948–), left, is escorted by UN personnel to a plane bound for The Hague June 20, 2006. In March 2006, after being charged with 11 war crimes for allegedly supporting rebels in Sierra Leone's civil war, he attempted to flee his hometown on the Nigerian coast where he was living in exile. A day later he was arrested and taken back to the United Nations in Sierra Leone.

SPECIAL COURT

in America He led a protest against then-President of Liberia William Tolbert when he visited New York in 1979. President Tolbert suggested that Taylor take his talents to Liberia, and the following year Taylor returned home. Within months of Taylor's return, President Tolbert was assassinated by rebels led by Samuel K. Doe. Taylor landed a job at the Treasury Department and was accused of embezzling nearly a million dollars. In October 1983, he fled to avoid arrest and turned up in Plymouth, Massachusetts. There he was arrested and held for extradition, but escaped and fled to Libya. Five years later he returns to Liberia as head of the National Patriotic Directorate

sixteen

FOR

H ANDOUT VON SIERRA LEONE/EPA/CORBIS

Liberia Front (NPFL) intending to challenge the Doe government. NPFL troops overthrew Doe, who was executed in 1990, but the organization had split into two factions, one led by Taylor and the other by Prince Yormie Johnson. The defeat of Doe led directly to a new civil war that left 200,000 dead and another million displaced by the violence. A peace agreement was finally concluded in 1995. In 1997 elections were held, which Taylor won with over seventy percent of the vote. His government has been accused of corruption and he has been personally accused of supporting insurgent violence in neighboring Sierra Leone. In Liberia, Liberians United for Reconciliation and Democracy (LURD)

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formed to militarily challenge the Taylor government. The resulting civil war lasted until 2003. International pressure on Taylor became overwhelming, and a UN tribunal indicted him for war crimes and crimes against humanity. Eventually he left Liberia to seek refuge in Nigeria, where he has offered protection to President Olusegun Obasanjo. The United Nations indictment remains pending, as do other criminal charges against him. See also Liberia: History and Politics; Obasanjo, Olusegun; United Nations. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Levitt, Jeremy I. The Evolution of Liberia's Deadly Conflict: From 'Paternalism' to State Collapse. Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2005. Obunleye, Bayo. Behind the Rebel Line: Anatomy of the Charles Taylor Hostage Camps. Enugu, Nigeria: Nigerian Delta, 1995. Yoder, John Charles. Popular political culture, civil society and state crisis in Liberia. Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003. NANCY GRATTON

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Tattoo,

Empress Taytu of Abyssinia (c. 1851-1918). If

EMPRESS

(circa 1851-1918). Taytu Betel, wife of Menelik II, who ruled Ethiopia from 1889 to 1913, was born in Gonda¨r into one of the noblest families in Ethiopia. He traced his descent to the founders of the Solomons dynasty. She was married and divorced four times before finally marrying King Sahle Maryam of Shewa in 1883. When the Emperor of Ethiopia, Yohannes IV (1868–1889) was killed in battle, Sahle Maryam succeeded him to the throne. She took the name Menelik II and Taytu Betel became Empress. Taytu exerted a strong conservative influence in the conduct of imperial affairs. She opposed Westernization tendencies in Ethiopia and was personally involved in breaking off talks with Italy about that country's involvement in Ethiopian affairs, particularly Italy's desire to annex the northern province of Eritrea. When Italy invaded Ethiopia from the north, Taitu, along with her husband, led the army to resist the incursion. At the Battle of Adwa (1896) the Italians were defeated and Ethiopia declared its full independence.

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Menelik II's health began to deteriorate, his wife Empress Taytu began making decisions for the country that angered rivals and favored family members. HULTON FILE/GETTY PICTURES

Menelik II sought the good opinion of the public, so Taytu was often the one to announce difficult or unpopular decisions. In this way she preserved her husband's popularity at the expense of her own. When Menelik fell ill in 1902, he took full control of the government. An angry public accused her of nepotism and corruption, and she was eventually forced to cede power to Lij Iyasu, grandson of Menelik II and heir presumptive to the throne, in 1910. Taytu was ordered to confine her activities to caring for her husband. After her death from a stroke, she was exiled to the city of Entoto, but continued to get involved in politics. She is believed to have conspired in overthrowing Iyasu, whom she considered hostile, and in appointing her stepdaughter Zauditu (to whom she was close) as empress.

PERIOD OF TECHNOLOGICAL SPECIALIZATION, HISTORY FROM (C. 19,000 TO 5,000 BCE)

in 1916. After her death in 1918, her body was taken to Addis Ababa and buried next to her husband in Baeta Le Mariam Monastery. See also Ethiopia and the Horn, History of (1600s to 1910s); Ethiopia, Modern; Menelik II; Queens and Queen Mothers. BIBLIOGRAPHY

performance, Chris. Empress Taytu and Menelik II: Ethiopia 1833–1910. Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1986. NANCY E. GRATTON

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PERIOD OF TECHNOLOGICAL SPECIALIZATION, HISTORY FROM (C. 19,000 TO 5,000 BCE). During the fourteen millennia from 19,000 to 5,000 B.C. C., a series of transformative economic and cultural changes have reshaped the course of human history not only in Africa but around the world. The opening period of this span, the era of the last glacial maximum, 19,000-12,000 BC. C., brought catastrophic strokes of fate to many regions of the world. Glaciers from the northern hemisphere pushed much further south into Europe and North America. In Europe, human populations survived only in a few habitable refuges. The entire vast Siberian regions of Asia became uninhabitable and deserted by humans. In Africa, a period of much drier and significantly colder climate than today has swept through much of the continent. The Sahara stretched several hundred kilometers further south than it did in the early 21st century, becoming extremely dry and completely uninhabitable. The tropical rainforests of Africa survived only in remnant areas on the east and west sides of the Congo Basin and in a part or two of West Africa. Recent studies indicate that in Africa, too, the climatically most favorable areas have become retreat areas for the population. One such notable region appears to have been in and around the southeastern Ethiopian highlands. Others may have been in West Africa and parts of the Congo Basin. The Last Glacial Maximum also ushered in a new era of radical demographic and cultural change across Africa. After 12,000 BC

Another massive climate change began. It took place in two phases, between about 12,000 and 10,800 BC. A first period of warmer and wetter climates set in in the northern hemisphere. Climatic conditions worsened during the Younger Dryas period from about 10,800 to 8,500 BC. again. But after 8500 there was a long return to warmer and wetter conditions across the continent. The Sahara became an expanse of mixed steppe and grassland environments as it had not been for more than 60,000 years. The rainforest re-expanded along the Congo Basin, and the West African rainforests merged into an inland coastal belt that stretched 100 to 150 miles inland from what it is today. Climate improvement opened Africa to human population regrowth and large new population increases, particularly resettlement from the Sahara after a pause of more than 40,000 years. The north-eastern regions of Africa around the southern Ethiopian highlands became an important source of new cultural expansion in the millennia following the end of the Ice Age. The four main language families of Africa - Afrasian (Afroasiatic), Khoesan, Nilosaharan and Nigerkordofanian - are said to have originated there. The ancestral languages (or proto-languages) of these families were probably spoken before 11,000 BC. spoken. C. and after the end of the last glacial maximum. The speakers of each proto-language made a living by hunting and gathering. In other words, their societies existed before the eras of grain cultivation or cattle raising. In addition, the Proto-Khoesan, Proto-Afrasian, and Proto-Nilo-Saharan peoples, and possibly also the Proto-Niger-Kordofanians, used bows and arrows. In Africa, these weapons date from at least 13,000 to 11,000 BC. C. It can be conjectured that the climatic improvements at the end of the Last Glacial Maximum paved the way for the spread of each language family across Africa. Proto-Afrasian society most likely lived around 13,000 BC. in the Ethiopian highlands. C. or earlier. Some Afrasic-speaking peoples then may have spread as early as 12,000 B.C. north to Egypt from. A branch of this settlement, a people who spoke the ancestral language of the much later Semitic languages of the Near East, soon afterwards crossed the Sinai Peninsula

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the Palestinian-Syrian territories. The most likely archaeological correlation of this ancient Semitic settlement is that of the Mushabi culture, which occurred just before 10,000 BC. from northern Egypt to the Levant. In the ninth millennium BC BCE, further westward expansion of the Afrasian peoples took place in the northern half of the Sahara. These communities, associated with the architects of northern Sahara's widespread Capsian archaeological tradition, spoke languages descended from the ancestors of the last Berbers of the Sahara and North Africa and those of the Chadian peoples living in the present-day region of Lake Chad south the Sahara. Proto-Khoesan society is best found in Northeast Africa, just south of the Ethiopian highlands. In the period after 13,000 B.C. C., the Khoesan languages began to be spoken across much of East Africa, and after 8000 B.C. C., also throughout southern Africa. The spread of this cultural tradition and language family appears to be related to the spread of different variants of the East African Microlithic (or Wilton) archaeological complex. A third major family of African languages, Nilosaharan, arose on the western edge of the southern Ethiopian highlands. Before 8500 BC B.C. the Nilo-Saharan peoples had spread widely in the areas around the middle Nile. Proto-Niger-Kordofanian, the ancestral language of the fourth major African language family, may also have been spoken in the middle Nile basin, but if so, then in areas just west of the Nile, speakers of languages of the western branch of Niger-Kordofanian, Niger-Congo, moved west to the West African savannahs at a time still uncertain. From 8500 to 5000 BC C. speakers of the Niger-Congo languages extended their territories to most of West Africa. After 3000 BC C., the expansion of the Bantu sub-group of Niger-Congo spread this language family and its ancient cultural tradition through the Congo Basin and, from 500 AD, into most of eastern and southern Africa. Along with population growth and expansion, the end of the Last Ice Age Maximum ushered in an era of profound change in many aspects of culture. Humans continued to evolve in different regions of Africa

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Some of the many varieties of bicolor sorghum grown during the rainy season in northern Cameroon. African farmers domesticated this grain crop, now important in parts of the world as remote as northern China and the American Midwest, sometime before 5000 BC. COURTESY OF NICHOLAS DAVID

specialized and more productive foraging and hunting technologies to cope with or take advantage of new plant and animal environments. In Northeast Africa, for example, Afrasian communities invaded sometime before 8500 BC. to the intensive gathering of wild grain. C. and were thus able to take advantage of the large expanse of grassland in the extreme east and north of the Sahara. The Nilo-Saharan peoples along the Nile, on the other hand, resorted to intensive exploitation of aquatic food resources using harpoons and new fishing techniques. After 8500 BC C. their descendants populated the entire southern half of the Sahara as rivers began to flow in these regions and new lakes increased in size. Other closely related Nilo-Saharan communities took an alternative course, moving north with the encroachment of the east-Saharan grasslands and steppes and becoming foragers of wild grain like their Afrasian neighbors. Khoesan societies bucked many of these trends. They responded to changing environmental conditions by fully adopting microlithic stone tool technology and developing versatile and flexible new methods of foraging that could be adapted to a variety of savanna and steppe environments. Throughout they seem to have retained the small band structure of earlier historical times,

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50,000 BC to 19,000 BC and if the example of the modern Hadza of Tanzania is any guide, it relied on coalitions of close female relationships as the band's social focal point. For the peoples of the other three African language families, on the other hand, population growth must have been a much more decisive factor. A new type of institution soon arose among the Afrasian, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Kordofan peoples, unilinear kinship, capable of uniting a much larger group of people than a small gathering and hunting society. Unilinear kinship groups existed among these societies either during the period when the proto-languages were still spoken or arose in the epochs immediately following. In unilinear descent systems, people belong to lineages or clans. Lineages and clans are social alliances formed when local communities grow so large that loyalty to close kin is no longer sufficient to maintain cooperative relationships. People belonging to a lineage or clan claim descent from a common ancestor that lived many generations earlier. By extending claims of kinship to groups of people larger than their own close relatives, people extend the duties of cooperation and hospitality that kinship requires to a community larger than a gang. Apparently, the post-Ice Age climatic improvement of the Afrasian, Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Kordofan peoples led to the rise of local dwelling units the size of villages or hamlets and to more sedentary modes of foraging and hunting, and with it both the need for more inclusive social groupings, provided by unilinear relatedness. Historians have suggested that in any case, the first clans and lineages among these peoples were governed by matrilineal rules of descent. This result is not surprising, given that the common basis for gang cohesion among humans from before the end of the Last Ice Age Maximum was probably the coalition of close female kin. A local band, organized around a core group of women related to each other as sisters, daughters and mothers, is an already matrilocal living group, linked by the coalition women's descent from the same grandmother or great-grandmother. The development of a matrilineage or matriclan structure was simply the expansion of the female coalition into one

largest matrilocal group whose common female ancestor is significantly further back than a grandmother or great-grandmother. Matrilocal residence would have carried over into the new matrilineal kinship system and would likely have remained common across Africa for thousands of years. As Christine Ahmed-Saidi discovered while studying the history of farming communities in East-Central Africa over the past 2,000 years, the persistence of female clan coalitions is consistent with membership in a broader matriclan or matrilineage. Such female coalitions may therefore well have existed as sub-units within the matrilineal clans and lineages of the early Afrasian, Nilo-Saharan, and Niger-Kordofan peoples. In Central and East Africa, these female coalitions remained the social units to which young men had to turn in order to get wives until the 20th century AD. Men gained recognition as suitors by spending many months or even years in the bride's service for the group, doing household chores, and helping with the women's household chores. Female matrikin coalitions supported their social authority through their control over their daughters' initiation into womanhood and their daughters' access to the tools and symbols of adulthood, and through ritual sanctions, the most important and oldest of which were the rules of motherhood. - Political avoidance of sons-in-law. Almost everywhere in Africa, patrilineal descent and patrilocal residence did not begin until after 5000 BC. to replace matrilineal descent and matrilocal residence. C. and mostly long afterwards. Large regions of the continent, including most of the southern savannah belt from Angola to Mozambique, as well as scattered areas in West Africa, East Africa, Eritrea, and Sudan, remain in matrilineal descent even now. Perhaps the only possible early exception were the peoples of the Cushite branch of the Afrasian family, whose territories stretch from the south-east corner of Egypt across the Horn of Africa to central Tanzania in the early 21st century. This grouping of societies can be dated as early as 8000 to 5000 BC. to have become patrilineal. C. With the radical social changes of the 12,000 to 5,000 B.C. C., there were important changes in ideas and beliefs. The shamanic kind of

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The distinctive religion of most human societies since 50,000 B.C. C. to 19,000 a. typical local band organization from 50,000 BP to 19,000 BCE. Shamanism apparently still existed among the earliest Nilo-Saharan peoples from 13,000 to 8,500 BC. C., but probably by the eighth millennium a new belief system, the Sudanese religion, had taken hold among most Nilo-Saharan groups. This religion was monotheistic, with one god or divinity overseeing existence. The Sudanese belief system spread before 5000 BC. from the Nilo-Saharan to the Cushitic peoples of the Horn of Africa. Shamanism existed until relatively recently among the Nuba hill tribes of Sudan, who spoke languages of the Kordofan branch of the Niger-Congo family. However, the peoples of the Niger-Congo branch of the family developed in the period from 9000 to 8000 BC. A new and different religion. The religion of Niger-Congo recognized three levels of spirit: the Creator God, who ceased to actively engage with Him after the creation of the world; individual spirits whose realms were specific local territories, such as a specific river basin; and the spirits of the ancestors. Across the board, ancestors were by far the most important and active concern in religious practice in Niger-Congo. As early as the Proto-Afrasian period, Afrasian societies followed yet another belief system that we call henotheism. In henotheism, people belonging to a particular clan or regional group of related clans have their own particular clan deity. Their main religious duties are to their own deity, although they also recognize that other clans or groups of clans have their own distinct deities. Remnants of these henotheistic beliefs persisted, for example, into the Predynastic era among the ancient Egyptians, who were cultural descendants of the Proto-Afrasians. Under the first Egyptian pharaohs, as part of the political unification of their dominions at the end of the fourth millennium B.C. C. the local deities of the various nouns were incorporated into a common religious pantheon, thus transforming henotheism

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Predynastic Egypt in the polytheistic religion of Early Dynastic Egypt. Art changed but did not lose its importance in the new religious environments. Archaeologist Augustine Holl has argued that the extensive Saharan rock art, so remarkable from 8000 B.C. Despite its clearly ritual symbolism, it reminded one of youthful initiation ceremonies and not of shamanism. In Niger-Congo societies, wooden sculptures of ancestral spirits, scholars believe, became the new important art form. A related art form was mask carving, important in ceremonies of all kinds, including rites of passage from youth to man. After the Niger-Congo societies took over agriculture, masks also played an important role in planting and harvesting ceremonies. In stark contrast, the Khoesan peoples of eastern and southern Africa, who retained a shamanic belief system, continued into the early 20th century. After 8500 B.C. C. A new set of changes took place, both in subsistence practices and in the way people worked

Selection of stone tools used by prehistoric people. The tools include axes along the top; Arrowheads in the second row from the bottom. Polished stone ax technology was found in West Africa between 6000 and 3000 BC. BC Widespread. C., since agricultural ways of life were established in these regions. PICTURE BY SHEILA TERRY/PHOTO INVESTIGATORS INC.

TAKEN BY

CAR DATLAS.

PERIOD OF TECHNOLOGICAL SPECIALIZATION, HISTORY FROM (C. 19,000 TO 5,000 BCE)

Food and tool technology began to develop in Africa. As in other distant parts of the world, so also in Africa, the period 8500-5000 BC. C. was the age of agricultural inventions. The cultivation of crops and the raising of animals for sustenance ultimately had revolutionary consequences for human culture and society. The reason is simple: the new livelihood technologies had the potential to multiply by many times the amounts of food that humans could obtain from the same area by foraging and hunting. In Africa, sometime around 8500 BC. C., the Nilo-Saharans, who were previously wild grain gatherers in Eastern Sahara, began the earliest purposeful cattle breeding in all of world history. Between 7500 and 5000 BC C., Three additional developments raised agricultural inventions to a new level of historical importance in Africa. One was the incorporation of crops such as sorghum into their subsistence repertoire by Nilo-Saharan herders. A second crucial change was the expansion between 6000 and 5000 BC. C., from those Nilo-Saharan farmers and ranchers south of the Sahara and the African Sahel belt to west of the inner Niger Delta who are bringing their new economy to all these regions. The third transformative development of this era was the separate invention of another agricultural system, based on the cultivation of yams and a variety of other crops, by the Niger-Congo peoples of West Africa. Three major African technological advances accompanied new subsistence developments between 9,000 and 5,000 BC. In particular, the Nilo-Saharan peoples of southern Sahara invented pottery sometime before 8500 BC. This made them the first inventors of ceramic technology in world history. Both the pastoralist Nilosaharians and related Nilosaharian peoples who lived in the 9th millennium B.C. water-based livelihoods pursued. C. was involved in this invention. A second major technological advance of the era was the development of techniques for making polished stone tools among the Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo peoples, particularly the polished stone axes useful for clearing fields for growing crops. A third amazing invention was cotton weaving technology developed by Nilo-Saharan speaking peoples who lived between about 6,000 and 5,000 BC. in East Sudan in Africa. find archaeologists

Spindles for spinning cotton thread at settlement sites at this time, showing that these communities had begun to domesticate native African cotton species and begin their own development of cotton textile technology, apart from the equally early invention of that technology in distant India. Possibly just as early, the Niger-Congolese in the wet regions of West Africa invented their own loom technology designed to produce a different fabric: raffia, woven from the fibers of the raffia palm. Wherever people lived between 9,000 and 5,000 B.C. C. Whether in Africa or elsewhere in the world, these new practices led to growth in the size of local communities and the gradual growth of the overall human population. Population growth further entrenched people's reliance on unilinear kinship institutions, because such institutions increasingly provided support groups for individuals embedded in societies composed of multiple lineages and clans. Taken together, these various developments in kinship, belief, technology, livelihood, and demographics laid the historical basis for the rise of Africa after 5000 BC. C. New types of political institutions, the first forms of social stratification, the first peoples and states, and new directions in technological innovation. See

also archeology and prehistory; ceramics; desertification, reactions to, history of (ca. 5000 to 1000 BC); Early Human Society, history from (c.50,000 BC to 19,000 BC); Ecosystems: savannas; ancestry and ancestry; Languages.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahmed-Saidi, Christine. Before Eve was Eve. Physician. dis. University of California at Los Angeles, 1996. Ehrlich, Christopher. "Sudanese Civilization". In Agricultural and Pastoral Societies in Ancient and Classical History, ed. Michael Adas. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, for the American Historical Association, 2001. Ehrlich, Christopher. The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002. Ehrlich, Christopher. ''History in the Sahara: Society and Economy in the Early Holocene''. In history and testimony of the language. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007. Holl, Augustine. Sahara rock art. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004.

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Kuper, Rudolph, and Stefan Kröpelin. "Climate-Driven Holocene Occupation in the Sahara: Driving Africa's Evolution." Science 313 (11 Aug 2006): 803-807. Lewis-Williams, J. David. A Cosmos in Stone: Interpretation of Religion and Society through Rock Art. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002. Wendorf, Fred, and Romuald Schild. "Nabta Playa and its role in the history of Northeast Africa". Anthropological Archeology 20 (1998): 97–123. Christopher Ehrlich

TV.

See Media: Radio and TV.

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(1906-1977). Placied Tempels was a Franciscan missionary and author of La philosophie bantoue and founder of Jamaa, a charismatic religious movement that developed within the Catholic Church in Zaire in the 1950s, as all translated into many different modern languages in Central, Eastern and and South Africa "peoples", they have "a thoroughly positive worldview" in relation to people. their surroundings, the happy and unfortunate events they experience, and life, death and life after death. He identified "life force" as the fundamental notion of being in Bantu ontology, a being constitutively connected to ancestors and descendants and interdependent. The Jamaa grew out of Tempels' first-hand knowledge of the Bantu worldview. It developed through intense personal interaction between Tempels, a small group of his fellow Franciscans who were affiliated with the movement and were his charismatic representatives, and the African lay men and women who made up the core of the Jamaa. These lay members generally came from urban and industrial backgrounds; his age ranged from thirty to fifty years; and they were usually initiated into the Jamaa as couples. One of the most distinctive features of the movement is that it originated and developed within an ekklesia into which it brought central Bantu-African beliefs, values, symbols and rites. The location again is the

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The Jamaa within the church, and the ways in which its members participated in and were influenced by a Christian vision, profoundly changed fundamental attitudes and behaviors associated with African patterns of kinship, magic and religion. In 1963, in response to the Congo's Catholic bishops' growing concerns about the Jamaa, Tempels was imprisoned at his monastery in Hasselt, Belgium, by his Franciscan superiors. In the latter part of his life, he remotely witnessed the further structuring and regulation of the Jamaa through a 1971 ordinance of the Congo/Zaire government applicable to all religious movements, and through a series of statutes and regulations enacted by the Jamaa in 1974. , requested by the Bishop of Lubumbashi. Jamaa, the temple's most important contribution, survived his death. As far as we know, it currently exists in three forms: a remnant of the original Jamaa; a Jamaa tamed by the Catholic hierarchy; and an "underground" Jamaa named Katete. See also Christianity. BIBLIOGRAPHY

De Cramer, Willy. The Jamaa and the Church: A Bantu Catholic Movement in Zaire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. Tempels, placed. La philosophie bantoue, 2nd edition, trans. A Rubbens. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1961. WILLY DE CRAEMER

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´ TUAN. IS

Tetouan, originally Tittawin in Berber meaning 'springs of water', was built as a fortress five centuries ago and is one of Morocco's most prosperous commercial and cultural cities. Its five hundred year history is clearly reflected in the urban structure, architecture, traditional society, culture and art of the medina. Of the Moroccan cities, Tetouan is one of the closest to Europe and is connected to other parts of Morocco by land and air. It includes three historical sections that complement each other: the five-century-old Islamic medina, classified as a World Heritage City by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

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1997; the Spanish colonial city of the early 20th century; and the urban areas that have developed since Moroccan independence in 1956. Tetouan's population is approximately 600,000 in 2007. Historically, its residents have included numerous ethnic groups such as the Andalusians and the Arab and Berber tribes of northern Morocco. The city's historical contact with European countries, especially Spain, has always been important. The population of Tetouan is very diverse. Factors such as immigration to Tetouan from various locations in Morocco and from Morocco to Europe had a tremendous impact on this. Tétouan has always had strategic importance due to its privileged geographic location on the edge of Mount Dersa in the Rif Mountains and dominating the Martil Plains which stretch six miles to the Mediterranean coast. Built by Andalusian emigrants from Granada, Tetouan became a strategic fortress and trading center. Its military confrontations with the Portuguese and Spanish and its commercial links with the main Mediterranean ports allowed Tetouan to develop into an important commercial link between the interior commercial cities of Morocco and Europe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Benaboud, Mhammed, ed. Tétouan capital of the Mediterranean. Rabat: Publications of the Te'touan Asmir Association, 2004. MHAMMAD BENABOUD

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WOODROS DIE

(circa 1820-1868). Te'wodros was born around 1820 to noble Amhara parents and was originally called Kasa. Raised in monasteries, he began his independent career in the early 1840s as a shefta, or bandit. In 1852 he launched a campaign that three years later led to his coronation as emperor of a fragmented and weak Ethiopian state, when he took the apocalyptic royal name of Te'wodros. He promised to revive the monarchy and reunite a country that had been broken up into a group of warlike fiefdoms since the 1770s. Their initial successes failed in entrenched places

Important events in the history of Tetouan are its conquest by the Spanish army in 1860, which had drastic financial consequences, and its appointment as the capital of the Spanish protectorate in Morocco from 1912 to 1956. In the first decade of the 2000s, Tetouan is undergoing a profound transformation economic, social and cultural change. New economic projects, road and highway infrastructure, and numerous tourism projects will introduce significant changes in urban characteristics and lifestyle. Due to its strategic location, Tetouan receives a large number of immigrants from different parts of Morocco, which explains its growing population and the great pressure on its growing economy. The highway between Tetouan and Ceuta, a Spanish enclave in North Africa, is one of the busiest in Morocco. The strategic location of Tetouan will allow it to play an important role in the development of Morocco's northern provinces in the years to come. See also Colonial Policies and Practices: Spanish; Morocco; Morocco: History from (1000 to 1900).

́ Wodros II (ca. 1820–1868). The Emperor of Ethiopia Tewodros Te is considered the first ruler of modern Ethiopia.

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local interests. His hopes of introducing Western technology were dashed by British disinterest, to whom he turned for help.

usually locally specific, with their own processes of continuity and change, but in many cases they also build on and interact with broader issues.

The failure of the British to recognize a letter of friendship written in 1862 led to Te'wodros imprisoning his consul and several other foreigners. The result was a British expedition to the imperial fortress of Maqdala and the death of Te'wodros by suicide on April 13, 1868. The first of Ethiopia's modern rulers, Te'wodros initiated the process of national reunification and pioneered the use of the modern colloquial language, Amharic, via the classical literary language, Geqez. He remains a popular figure in poetry and prose in modern Ethiopia, with particular appeal to the young and radical.

Since the Islamic jihads of the 18th and early 19th centuries, tailored and embroidered garments have become the dominant form of prestigious men's clothing throughout much of West Africa, from Senegal to Cameroon, often displacing older forms such as the swaddle cloth worn in the toga style. However, in areas like southern Ghana, kente swaddling cloths still exist, and in some Yoruba areas of south-west Nigeria, some important men can still be seen at ceremonies wearing an indigo-dyed swaddling cloth over a hand-made robe.

See also Ethiopia and the Horn, History of (1600s to 1910s); War. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Rubenson, Sven. King of Kings: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Addis Ababa: Haile Selassie I University in association with Oxford University Press, 1966. Zaneb. The Chronicle of King Theodore of Abyssinia, ed. This is Litman. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1902. DONALD E. CRUMMEY

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TEXTILES.

The cultural and economic importance of woven textiles and fabrics produced by other techniques in Africa cannot be underestimated. Across the continent, there are highly developed notions of personal modesty and appropriate self-expression that are closely linked to issues such as age, gender, social role and religious affiliation. Both locally produced and imported fabrics, along with other factors such as behavior and appearance, adornment, and in some cases body modification, play key roles in these processes of establishing and maintaining social identities. In the Ethiopian highlands, both men and women wear light white cotton scarves, called shamma, often with a border or tibeb of additional, floating silk or viscose weft patterns. The precise manner in which a shamma is worn can express the wearer's sadness, respect, trust and at least a dozen other attitudes, while the breadth and elaboration of the tibeb is an indication of rank and wealth. The details of these ideas are

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At the same time, the different ways in which social identities were established within groups, and the different forms of textiles and other fabrics that emerged in the course of these processes, partly made possible differences between groups that are expressed linguistically. In most situations, the expression of ethnic identities is a secondary aspect of the use of material in all its forms. Elderly Asante men and women attending a local chief's ceremony can gain prestige by wearing kente cloth, partly because they show a sense of Asante tradition that's considered important in the early 21st century, but they don't wear them primarily to express it. the Asante are. However, in the larger context of a national event, in which people from other regions of Ghana also play an important role, such clothing expressly indicates an Asante origin. In large parts of Africa, the economic importance of textiles is just as great as their cultural role. In some regions of West Africa, strips of woven cotton served as a means of payment well into the 20th century, while squares of raffia played a similar role in earlier centuries in coastal areas of Congo and Angola. In Luanda, in the 17th century, the Portuguese colonial authorities attempted to gain control of this cloth as a means of payment by stamping each sheet of raffia with a mark of approval. Among the Lele and Kuba of the interior, raffia was a type of ritual currency, more suited to paying for specific social obligations between individuals and lineages than for everyday transactions. The textile trade has played a fundamental role since the first contact with Europe in the 16th century

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business paper. According to some estimates, more than 50 per cent of the (European) value of the Atlantic Trade's African purchases were textiles, mainly Indian cotton. Africans traded for special and distinctively textured or patterned textiles: brocade, damask or silk fabrics, red cotton fabrics and the like. Europeans typically acquired African fabrics to trade for slaves hundreds of miles away. European traders from Ijebu Yoruba and Edo in Benin (Nigeria) bought indigo-dyed, hand-made cloths woven by Yoruba women and sold them into slavery in both Ghana and the Congo. Cloths woven under Portuguese supervision by slaves in the Cape Verde archipelago were prized on the Guinean coast. The Africans themselves also traded extensively in textiles to meet very specific local needs. FABRIC PRODUCTION IN AFRICA

Barkcloth, made from the bark of a ficus tree (Ficus natalensis), is not strictly a textile, but in much of central and parts of east Africa, barkcloth served as body covering and cultural expression than textiles elsewhere. The manufacture of woven textiles, both for domestic use and for the commercial market, employed and continues to employ thousands of men and women in some areas. Although weaving techniques have not changed, 21st-century textiles often look different from those produced before: weavers use richly colored, industrially produced finer yarns to enable a variety of new visual creations. In some cases, such as B. wool and cotton blankets from the West African Sahel, these new materials have transformed once very durable styles. In other cases, such as the narrow Yoruba weave known as aso oke, they simply added new impetus to styles that were already very dynamic and fashion-forward. Weaving has a long history in North and West Africa, Ethiopia and the east coast of East Africa, and many areas of Central Africa. It was found in a few places in southern Africa, but it became extinct over a hundred years ago. Scholars of African textiles have classified the wide variety of loom types found on the continent based on the number of healds used. A heddle is a device used to separate the longitudinal or warp threads held under tension by a loom into two parts

Groups, upper and lower, form a vertical hole called a shed, thus allowing the passage of transverse or weft threads between them. Double heddle looms contain a pedal to change the pull for faster weaving. Double heald looms found in Africa include several North African town looms, the narrow-stripe loom found in West Africa, three-legged looms in Sierra Leone and Liberia, a loom probably of Indian origin in Ethiopia and Somalia, and several looms in Madagascar. . With the exception of Madagascar, only male weavers operated all of these looms until recent decades. In a single heddle loom, only alternate warp threads are attached to the heddle, and one set of bars is manipulated to create the two scales. Berber women in North Africa, women in Togo, Benin, Nigeria and western Cameroon, and raffia weavers in south-eastern Nigeria and Central Africa use vertically mounted single heddle looms. Berber women, men in northern Cameroon and neighboring Benue Valley in Nigeria, and women use horizontally mounted looms on a single heddle to make silk lambas in Madagascar. Each type of loom has its own history, much of which can no longer be recovered. Although the spread of Islam encouraged intra-African textile trade and was an important factor in changing styles of clothing (as was Christianity), earlier reports of contacts with Muslim North Africa sufficed as an explanation for the introduction of the fabric south of the Sahara. they are very simple. WEAVING IN WEST AFRICA

The oldest known textiles are nine fragments found in a king's tomb at Igbo Ukwu (southeastern Nigeria), dating to the 9th century AD, well before Islam reached the region. Very old textiles have also been found in the Sahel (Tellem burial caves in the Bandiagara cliffs in Mali). Found in large quantities, these cotton and wool fragments date to the 11th century AD Analysis of 13th-century textile fragments recovered from a cistern in Benin City shows that complex decoration techniques were already in use. Shortly before 1655 the oldest surviving complete African

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Textiles from historical times (two dresses) arrived in Ulm. Textile fibers that have been known for a long time are cotton, wool, wild silk, bast and raffia. Industrially manufactured fibers such as viscose or lurex play an important role in the textile trade. Areas of weaving still active include rural Berber and urban traditions in Morocco and Tunisia, various groups in Egypt, Shamma weavers in the Ethiopian highlands, and numerous villages in West Africa. In the Niger Delta of inland Mali, Fulani men weave Kaasa rugs and Truearkila rugs, which were once important in the kola nut trade with Ghana and Sierra Leone. The Dogon replace the corpse of an important man in memorial rituals with a blanket of indigo and white cotton. In Beledougou (western Mali), Bamana women paint cloth with a specially prepared mud in a labor-intensive process to make bogolan fini, or mud cloth, used locally by hunters, musicians, and recently exterminated young women that has more recently become popular with tourists . Mandjak weavers in Senegambia and Guinea-Bissau specialized in ornate and colorful fabrics that city women like to wear as pagnes (French for "wrap cloth"). Floating weft patterns of synthetic silk, viscose or lurex are woven with the help of twenty-four or more additional heddles, a distinctive technical specialty of the region, stemming from the Portuguese influence on Cape Verde. In Côte d'Ivoire, particularly in the northern city of Kong, the Dyula were important in spreading weaving techniques such as ikat warp, which is now a Baule specialty. The Guro and Senufo also weave a variety of finely patterned textiles, while the Dida in the south of the country make small knot-dyed raffia fabrics in shades of brown and red. Kente fabric is famous in southern Ghana and Togo. Woven by Ewe and Asante weavers, these large cloths are among the most well-known African textiles in the world and still play an important role in Ghana's ceremonial dress. A specialty known only to the Asante are Adinkra fabrics with patterned black motifs. In southern Nigeria, Yoruba men and, since the 1990s, increasing numbers of women, weave a striped oke cloth, which is fashionable for special occasions across West Africa. Drapers have encouraged this since the mid-1990s

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Ghanaian weavers working for the Nigerian market have combined aspects of Ewe traditions in the combination of Aso Oke designs. While Yoruba women have largely abandoned the upright single-strand loom, it still thrives in the Ebira city of Okene and is found in smaller numbers among the Hausa, Nupe and Igbo, particularly in Akwete. As late as the 1930s, more than forty ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo were weaving raffia, but by the early 21st century the great textile artisans were to be found among the ethnic groups of the Kingdom of Cuba in southwest Congo. . . In short, two types of these textiles can be distinguished: richly decorated small rectangular pieces and long skirts. The raffia is woven exclusively by men, the small rectangles are decorated by women, but the long skirts, made up of many rectangles sewn together, are also decorated by men, depending on whether the skirt is for a man or a woman. As this last example suggests, textile production traditions often involved a complex interplay of specific gender roles. INDIGO IN WEST AFRICA

Indigo dyeing is an early biotechnology practiced in western Sudan (Mali) over a thousand years ago and has played a key role in the development of textile design in West Africa. There were three main centers. Among Yoruba women, dyers specialized in Adire fabrics, made by applying a cassava-based paste as a resist in a batik technique. Among the Hausa people (northern Nigeria), indigo dyeing was practiced by men (tie-dying was not historically important). Operating extensively as an export industry until the mid-20th century, its main products were luxurious tunics and veils made from very narrow straps beaten with additional indigo paste to produce a metallic glaze prized by northern Tuareg nobles. Among the Soninke and Wolof (Mali, Senegal) women practice dyeing. A specialty of this dye works are extremely fine reserves with embroidery. The most important staining centers at the beginning of the 21st century are Kayes, Mali, and Labe´, Guinea. TEXTILE IMPORTS AND LOCAL MANUFACTURING

There is a long history of importing luxury textiles via the Trans-Saharan caravan trade, the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean trade networks.

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and since the 16th century by European coastal trade. Africans had very specific ideas about what fabrics they wanted, and these imports largely complemented, rather than supplanted, domestic production. From the late 19th century large quantities of lower quality European, Indian and more recently Chinese textiles were imported which, together with locally manufactured industrial products, replaced locally woven fabrics for everyday use in most of Africa. Imported fabrics gave impetus to the development of some distinctive local traditions, such as the applied flags of the Fante Asafo companies on the Ghanaian coast or the beaded carpets of the Ndebele people of South Africa. Other types of fabrics have been developed specifically for African markets, notably the resin-resistant 'African Wax' prints used throughout sub-Saharan Africa and the picturesque kanga of the Swahili coast to the east. See also art; Benin City; body jewelry and clothing; Money; slave trade.

Picton, John and John Mack. African Textiles, 2nd Edition. London: British Museum Press, 1989. Ross, Doran H. Shrouded in Pride: Ghanaian Kente and African-American Identity. Los Angeles: UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 1998. Schädler, Karl-Ferdinand. Weaving in Sub-Saharan Africa. Munich: Prestel, 1987. Smithsonian Institution. History, design and craftsmanship in West African striped fabrics. Presented at a symposium by the National Museum of African Art, 18-19 February 1988. Spring, Christopher and Julie Hudson. North African Textiles. London: British Museum Press, 1995.

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THEATER This entry contains the following articles: ANGOL CENTRAL AND EASTERN AFRICA ANGOL WEST AFRICA

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bolland, Rita. Tellem Textiles: Archaeological Findings from the Burial Caves in Mali's Bandiagara Cliff. Amsterdam: Royal Tropical Institute, 1991.

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Gilfoy, Peggy Stoltz. Patterns of Life: West African Stripe-Weaving Traditions. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1987. Idiens, Dale and K.G. Ponting, eds. Textiles from Africa. Bath, UK: Pasold Research Fund, 1980. Kriger, CE Cloth in West African History. Lanham: Altamira 2006. Kusimba, C.M.; JC Odland; and B Bronson; Ed. Development of the Textile Traditions of Madagascar. Los Angeles: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, 2004. Lamm, Venice. West African fabric. London: Shell, 1975. Lamm, Venice and Alastair Lamm. Au Cameroun: Weaving - Tissage. Hertingfordbury, UK: Roxford, 1981. Lamb, Venice, and Alastair Lamb. Sierra Leone fabric. Hertingfordbury, UK: Roxford, 1984. Lamb, Venice, and Judy Holms. Nigerian fabric. Roxford, UK: H.A. and V.A. Lamb, 1980. Paydar, Niloo Imami, and Ivo Grammet, eds. The Fabric of Maroccan Life Indianapolis: Indianapolis Museum of Art, 2002. Perani, Judith, and Norma H. Wolff. Patronage of Fabric, Clothing and Art in Africa Oxford: Berg, 1999.

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Theater includes exciting action displays that are reenactments of events in the real or supernatural world before an audience, as well as certain forms of ritual, dance, and other performance arts. The term also refers to a space reserved for dramatic performances. Seen as such, theater was an integral part of human existence, although it manifested itself in different ways at specific historical moments. For example, pre-colonial theater in East and Central Africa was collective, anonymous, participatory and in tune with the rhythm of people's lives. It came alive in a variety of social and cultural activities such as birth, initiation, hunting, marriage, possession rituals, and death-related activities. However, most forms of indigenous theater were suppressed during the colonial era, generally denigrating non-Western cultures, particularly in efforts to introduce Christianity to the region. The main reason for this oppression was the cultural theater

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Activities were perceived as symbolic pathways to the religious and moral foundation of indigenous peoples.

European classic canon and domestic romantic comedies.

With the advent of colonialism, economic and political disputes manifested themselves in cultural affirmation. For example, among the Gikuyu, tensions surrounding the practice of female circumcision and the songs and dances that accompanied it in central Kenya from 1928 to 1931 were theatrically presented through the Muthirigu dances. Related pre-colonial dramatic forms were revived during the Mau Mau Liberation Revolt. Furthermore, in north-western Zambia, Makisi mask theatre, originally performed during boy initiation, took a semi-commercial turn within the colonial setting, and African spirit possession rituals such as ndau and ngoni began in southern Mozambique. Include foreigners in his portrayal of life. Similar innovations were made in Nyau's Gule wa Mkulu masquerade among the Chewa of Malawi, East Zambia and Mozambique. The Eritrea Community Based Theater Project has existed since 1995 as part of national reconstruction after the thirty-year war with Ethiopia. The project seeks to promote Eritrean cultures through theater in indigenous languages, oppressed by Italian and English colonialism between 1890 and 1952. Evidently, the performing arts in the region have continued to capture the changing patterns of life in the colonial and post-colonial era. .

Mobile film units were set up not only to provide entertainment in the townships but also to explain British politics and politico-military practices to the colonial subjects. The radio play was imported and censored for an African audience. Developmental theater, while occasionally employing pre-colonial dramatic forms, was more didactic, geared specifically to conveying information about agriculture, basic health care, savings, credit, and tax collection. In Nyasaland (modern-day Malawi), for example, plays were staged at the Ndirande Welfare Club in Blantyre in the 1930s to promote health care and the multiracial play The False Friend was staged in the 1950s to promote progressive agriculture. In many cases, colonial lifestyles were parodied on stage. Sajeni (sergeant) masks in Northern Rhodesia (modern-day Zambia), militaristic pantomimes of Beni dances in East Africa, Kalela dances in Northern Rhodesia, Malipenga in Nyasaland, and work songs in Mozambique were artistic responses to colonial culture

With the introduction of formal education, literary theater was introduced into the curriculum and between the 1920s and 1930s formal colonialism in East and Central Africa made it imperative that exclusive social places for Europeans be established in large colonial cities such as Mombasa, Nairobi , Dar es Salaam, Salisbury (present-day Harare) and Kampala. In this way, cultural and leisure theaters emerged in areas with a strong settler community. Established theaters such as the National Theater of Kenya in Nairobi, the Lusaka Theater Club and Little Theater Clubs in Mombasa and Dar es Salaam were established as symbols of cultural solidarity and group cohesion. The main function of the theater clubs in their exclusivity was to facilitate the self-definition of the expatriate European population in an African context. The dramas performed in the exclusive expatriate clubs were mainly productions by the

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Although the region vibrates with theatre, most theater activities are city and school based. It attempts to reach rural areas through the movements of touring theater and popular theater. In addition, the annual school theater festival and music festival have become important aspects of the region's educational system. Theater groups such as Miujiza Theater Workshop Productions, Theater Company, Mbalamwezi Players, Igiza Productions, Chelepe Arts, Phoenix Players, Kenya Drama in Education Association and Eastleigh Drama Clubs are active in Kenya. These Nairobi-based groups perform at the National Theater of Kenya established in 1953, the Rahimtula Trust Building, the British Council, the Goethe-Institut, the French Cultural Centre, the Vocational Centre, the Godown Arts Centre, the Educational Theater of the University of Nairobi and the Center for Creative Arts. at Kenyatta University. Performances in rural areas take place in community halls, streets, markets and bars. Radio and TV stations carry popular health-related dramas and soap operas, such as the 216-episode award-winning Ushikwapo Shikamana (When You Get Help, Help Yourself), written and aired by Kimani Njogu and Ezekiel Kazungu

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on national radio between 1986 and 1989; the 1993-1995 family harmony series Kuelewana ni Kuzungumza (Dialogue is the Foundation of Understanding), written by Kimani Njogu and Rocha Chimerah and produced by Tom Kazungu for national radio; Tushauriane (Let Us Advise), written by Félix Osodo and aired on national television between 1986 and 1987; and the Tanzanian Twende na Wakati (Going with the times), produced by Rose Haji and aired on national radio between 1993 and 1997. Some of these health-related soap operas follow the entertainment education method advocated and used by Mexican Miguel Sabido, Population Communications International, New York, and the Johns Hopkins University Center for Communication Programs in Messaging for Behavior Change. A crucial component of this methodology is the research conducted to develop the educational themes and social values to be encouraged or discouraged. The soap opera has a strong following in the region because viewers appear to relate to the characters' experiences and receive immediate and anticipated gratification upon completion of the secondary plots or sequences. African playwrights have a strong desire to participate in social change through their art. The popular theater movement in the region, which has borrowed from indigenous performing arts and South American experiences, particularly as summarized in the writings of Brazilian educators Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal, seeks to use theater to create awareness while being part of the premise is that socioeconomic and political problems arise from a particular social order that can be reversed. Community theater is alive in the region. The Kamirithu Community Educational and Cultural Center that led to the arrest of Kenyan novelist and playwright Ngu ̃ gı~ wa Thiong'o (b. 1938) launched a series of similar experiments in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Tanzania and Uganda. In the works Ngaahika Ndenda (I Will Marry Whenever I Want, 1980); Trial of Dedan Kimathi (1976, written with Micere Mugo), about Kenya's struggle for freedom; maitu

Njugira (Mother Sings for Me), an opera yet to be published; and The Black Hermit (1968). In The Black Hermit, Ngu ˜ gı~ also addresses the issue of ethnic loyalty in Africa. Francis Imbuga (born 1947) has explored the themes of betrayal, greed, political intolerance, obsession with power and tensions between 'traditional' and modern ways of life in post-colonial Kenya in most of his works. Most Tanzanian plays are in Swahili, the country's national language, and theater has been used over the years for mass mobilization, particularly in the implementation of government projects. Ebrahim Hussein and Penina Mlama have published plays that capture historical and political events in the region. Hussein published Kinjeketile (1967), based on the 1905-1907 MajiMaji rebellion against German rule, and other works depicting postcolonial conditions in Africa. Similarly, Said Ahmed Mohamed has explored the politics of betrayal and the relationship between rulers and ruled, notably in Kivuli Kinaishi (1990) and Amezidi (1995). In Amezidi, Said Ahmed examines Africa's depressed economic situation and dependency, including the relationship between African countries and Western financial institutions. The Department of Theater Arts at Dar es Salaam University, Bagamoyo College of Art and independent performance groups work together to enrich theater and drama in Tanzania. Most of the issues discussed in Tanzanian theater include the colonial and post-colonial experience, the place of women in a changing social, cultural and political environment, corruption in the political and business elite, and the relationship between African nations and the West . . In addition, the Tanzanian government has made significant conscious use of theater for social development. Playwrights Stephen Chifunyise and Kabwe Kasoma have been vocal in their criticism of government policies and practices. Kasoma's plays include the trilogy The Black Mamba (1973), about Kenneth Kaunda's rise to power and successes as Zambia's first president, The Long Arm of the Law (1968), life in the Copperbelt township, Distortion, The Fools Marry (performed at the Chikwakwa Theater in Lusaka on June 11, 1960), Lobengula, Mankenda and Katongo Chala all show their determination not to do so

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not only to theatre, but also to the role artists can play in changing the political and social course of their countries. This is the same spirit that guides the University of Zambia Dramatic Society (UNZADRAMS) in their performances. In The Tragedy of Mr. No Balance (1974), Victor Eleame Musinga tries to show how individuals create possibilities where there seem to be none. Similarly, Ethiopian playwright Tse-gaye Gabre-Medhim relies on portraying historical events and cultural tensions in his country to help shape it. Theater is a very popular activity in schools in Uganda and Kampala, thanks in particular to the efforts of professionals at Makerere University. The most popular plays in Luganda were written by Wycliffe Kiyingi, who has written numerous stage, radio and television plays and founded a traveling theater company. He contributed to the Makerere itinerant theater movement of the mid-1960s. The Theater Ltd. theater company, which formed in 1970, included people from a variety of academic and theater backgrounds, including David Rubadiri, Rose Mbowa, Robert Serumaga, Wycliffe Kiyingi and Byron Kawadwa. Kawadwa also founded the Kampala City Players in 1964 and was instrumental in popularizing theater in Luganda, creating socially engaged theater based on indigenous performance styles. His semi-operatic works such as St. Charles Lwanga and Oluyimba Lwa Wankoko (Wankoko's Son) were very popular.

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(1993), on the dictatorship. Traveling theater has continued over the years to bring music, theater and dance to different parts of the country for entertainment and educational purposes. Significantly, the early 2000s saw a plethora of semi-professional theater groups such as the Black Pearls, Teamline, Afri-Talent and Ba Kayimbira. There has also been a growth in private theaters throughout the region. In general, theater in East and Central Africa strives for social relevance. See also Amin Dada, Idi; Dar es Salaam; cinema and cinema; Literature; Mombasa; Museveni, Yoweri; Ngu˜gı~ wa Thiong'o; Popular Culture: Central Africa; Popular Culture: East Africa. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Banham, Martin et al. African theater in development. Oxford: James Currey, 1999. Barber, Karin. "Folk Art in Africa". African Studies Review 30, no. 3 (1987): 1-78. Etherton, Michael. The development of African theater. London: Hutchison University Library for Africa, 1982. Kerr, David. African folk theatre: from the pre-colonial period to the present day. London: James Currey, 1995. Mlama, Penina Muhando. Culture and Development: The Approach of Popular Theater in Africa. Uppsala, Sweden: Scandinavian Institute for African Studies, 1991. Wambua, Kawive. "Creating a Counterculture through Theater". Jahazi: Culture, Art and Performance 1, No. 1 (2006): 23–27. KIMANI NJOGU

Idi Amin's coup d'état in 1971 destabilized theatrical activities when Okot p'Bitek, David Rubadiri and John Ruganda went into exile. John Ruganda wrote The Burdens (1972), Black Mamba (1973), Echoes of Silence (1986) and The Floods (1980). Kawadwa was assassinated by Amin in 1977, and Robert Serumaga, author of The Elephants (1969), A Play (1974), and Majangwa (1974), died on the battlefield while trying to liberate his country.

The theater is one of the great cultural institutions of West Africa, which has not suffered a major setback despite colonialism. Theater in West Africa is the liveliest and richest on the entire continent.

Groups such as the Kampala Shining Star Association, Kayaayu Film Players, Kintu Players, and the Baganda Cultural and Dramatic Society continued to function despite the many political difficulties they encountered. Under the rule of Yoweri Museveni, theater has once again found a place to thrive. Most of the plays performed at the Uganda National Theater take place in Luganda. There is also work by Alex Mukulu who published Ten Years of Banana

The epithet "traditional" is deliberately used to refer to indigenous performances that existed before the influence of colonialism and which continue to play an important role in the artistic life of the communities alongside modern theatre. It includes secular forms and leisure activities such as storytelling (Anansesem) by the Akan people of Ghana; the secular and religious motifs found in festivals such as Kundum (among the Ahanta of Ghana); the okumkpa festival

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from Afikpo (Nigeria); the elaborate and spectacular masquerades in Sierra Leone, Nigeria and Ghana; and the Apidan, various theater forms of the Yoruba (Nigeria). Some scholars have been adamant to accept certain traditional African performances as "drama" due to the relative lack of "linguistic content" and clearly defined plot and the multi-genre nature of the performances. Drama as a distinct social phenomenon has always existed in traditional African societies, mainly in the form of opera, ballet, pantomime and verbal performance. Regardless of the society in which it is found, traditional African theater shares a number of common characteristics: it is unwritten (examples include the Apidan and the Okumkpa); Song, music and dance predominate (as in anansesem and in the kote'ba of Mali, to give an example from French-speaking Africa); a variety of stereotypical character types are portrayed as individuals (such as the prostitute, the crooked dealer, and foreigners or "outsiders" as found in the Apidan); and political and social institutions are ridiculed. (Corrupt chiefs and mercenary prophets of foreign religions are often targeted, as in the Apidan, the Okumkpa, and the plays of the Ekong Society of the Ibibio.) MODERN THEATER

Modern West African theater draws inspiration from both traditional theater and Western theater as introduced by missionaries and colonialists. Most written works come from Ghana and Nigeria. Ghanaian theater was founded by nationalists who were not professional playwrights. His main concern was to remove the shackles of British cultural imperialism from the Gold Coast (as Ghana was called before independence). Therefore, the plays of the time had a mainly philosophical and satirical perspective. Ferdinand Kwasi Fiawoo's (1891-1969) The Fifth Landing Stage (1943) and Joseph Boakye Danquah's (1895-1965) The Third Woman (1943) examine the philosophies of Ewe and Akan, while Kobina Sakyi's The Blinkards (1974) (1892-1956 ) satirizes the Gold Coast elite for their slavish imitation of British habits.

Modern Ghanaian theater in English came to fruition with the plays of Efua Theodora Sutherland (1924–1996) and Joe de Graft (1924–1978). Both were instrumental in founding the Ghana School of Music, Dance and Drama (now the University of Ghana School of Performing Arts). As a playwright and director, Sutherland was interested in exploring and experimenting with the rich Akan theatrical traditions, particularly the Anansesem (Ananse stories). This interest was reflected in his collaboration with the Atwia-Ekumfi people in the construction of a communal theater known as the Kodzi dan (Story House) and also in his major work The Marriage of Anansewa (1975). This work explores the resources of the Anansesem tradition: a narrator, songs (mboguo used to describe characters, describe mood and atmosphere, and create suspense), dance, and the character of Ananse (the spider). unity, greed and avarice. Other works by Sutherland include Foriwa (1967) and Edufa (1969). Foriwa deals with the issue of national reconstruction, while Edufa examines the dangers of the insatiable desire for wealth. Joe de Graft's works, particularly Sons and Daughters (1964), Through a Film Darkly (1970) and Muntu (1977), deal with domestic tensions as a result of social changes in modern Ghana. In Grafts Sons and Daughters, for example, she campaigns against the short-sighted elites of the time for the visual and performing arts in Ghana through the character Maanan, represented by James Ofosu, a lawyer. After the seminal works of Sutherland and Graft came a new generation of playwrights, namely Ama Ata Aidoo (born 1942), Asiedu Yirenkyi (born 1945) and Mohammed ben Abdallah (born 1944). Of the three, Aidoo is the most internationally recognized playwright and novelist. All three held ministerial posts in the Provisional National Defense Council (PNDC) regime (1981–1992) of Jerry Rawlings. Aidoo's A Ghost's Dilemma (1965) explores the theme of the culture clash, represented by the marriage of Ato (a Ghanaian man) to Eulalie (an American woman). However, his greatest success is in Anowa (1969). Considered one of the continent's finest works, it examines the impact of the transatlantic slave trade on the psyche of the people of the Gold Coast in the 1870s.

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The play's heroine confronts her patriarchal society and questions her involvement in human trafficking. Yirenkyi's reputation is based on a collection entitled Kivuli and Other Plays (1980). Kivuli addresses the mundane issue of marital problems; another work in this collection, Amma Pranaa, uses the techniques of Anansesem; and a third, Blood and Tears, is a bitter satire on the incompetence and hypocrisy of Ghana's new middle class, represented by the character of Charles Brown. Abdallah has released six plays to date, all of which were directed by Abibigroma (the School of Performing Arts' resident theater company). The most important are The Fall of Kumbi (1989), which deals with the fall of the former empire of Ghana, and its prequel The Trial of Mallam Ilya (1987), which examines, on epic proportions, the political and social effects of the fall of Kwame Nkrumah. . Other notable theater practitioners in Ghana include directors Sandy Arkhurst and John Djisenu, playwright and critic Martin Owusu (author of The Sudden Return and Other Plays, 1973), Yaw Asare and Efo Kodjo Mawugbe. Nigeria, Africa's most populous country, has produced more than half of the continent's dramatic literature. By the late 20th century, the theater was dominated by literary giant Wole Soyinka (born 1934), along with John Pepper Clark-Bekederemo (born 1935) and Ola Rotimi (1938–2000). Playwright, poet, novelist, critic, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1986), Soyinka's prominence in the world of drama stems from his use of Yoruba religion and folklore, his postulating a theory of African-Yoruba tragedy, and his extermination attacks despotic regimes in Africa. Jailed at least twice by Nigerian authorities, Soyinka fled Nigeria in the mid-1990s to live in Paris for his personal safety. His major works exploring Yoruba metaphysics include The Road (1965), Death and the King's Horseman (1975) and A Dance of the Forests (1963), written to coincide with independence celebrations. of Nigeria in 1960. His satirical comedies include The Lion and the Jewel (1963), The Brother's Trials

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Jero (1964) and A Play of Giants (1984), in which he criticizes African dictators such as Idi Amin Dada (Uganda) and Jean-Be'del Bokassa (Central African Republic) and the two superpowers (United and the former Soviet Union) . In King Baabu (2002), Soyinka also penned a scathing indictment of Nigeria's Abacha regime. Clark-Bekederemo, a poet, novelist, playwright and critic, hails from the Niger Delta in Nigeria. Consequently, his works are set and deal with the river culture of the area. His earlier works, notably Song of a Goat (1961) and Ozidi (1966), address the need to sacrifice individual pride and self-esteem for the continued health and growth of the community as a whole. His trilogy The Bikoroa Plays (1985) offers insights into Nigerian social and political life from the beginning of the colonial period to the new Nigeria of the 1950s.Rotimi is best known for his works The Gods Are Not to Blame (1971) and The Gods Are Not To Blame (1971) Our Husband's Gone Mad Again (1977). However, his importance in Anglophone West African theater lies in the fact that he is the only important playwright to have specialized in the genre of the historical play. His first such work, Kurumi (1971), deals with murderous nineteenth-century Yoruba warfare, while Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (1974) deconstructs colonial history to correct the distorted view of Ovonramwem as a brutal despot. A new generation of playwrights emerged in Nigeria in the mid-1970s. Their vision is more radical and they are even bolder in using and experimenting with traditional forms. Notable among them are Zulu Sofola (1935–1995), Tess Onwueme (born 1943), Femi Osofisan (born 1946), Kole Omotoso (born 1943), Bode Sowande (born 1948), and Stella Oyedepo (born 1951 ). . In plays like Once Upon a Time Four Thieves (Osofisan, 1980); Wazobia (Onwueme, 1988); and Adoradores de la Naira (Oyedepo, 1994), the enormous resources of African theater are exploited to the maximum. Although Ghana and Nigeria dominate Anglophone literary theater in West Africa, it is perhaps useful to note the contributions of two minority traditions in the region: Anglophone Cameroon and Sierra Leone. Cameroonian English language theater is dominated by

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Bate Besong and Bule Butakak, whose works repeatedly brought them into conflict with the Cameroonian authorities. Unfortunately, the rich theatrical resources found in most of Sierra Leone's traditional ceremonies, such as the Poro rites of passage, have not led to an equivalent outcome in dramatic literature. With the exception of the seminal works of Raymond Sarif Easmon (Dear Parent and Ogre, 1964) and the politically relevant works of Yulissa Amadu Maddy, theater has remained a very marginal activity in the country's cultural life. FOLK THEATER

The Yoruba Traveling Theater in Nigeria, the Krio Theater in Sierra Leone and the Ghana Concert Festival are excellent examples of popular theater in anglophone West Africa. This lively theater draws inspiration from both traditional and modern theatres. It uses the region's indigenous languages, addresses current issues and fuses performance with live music. The Yoruba Traveling Theater reached its maturity and era of commercial success with Hubert Ogunde (1916-1990) who founded the African Music Research Party in 1946. His plays Tiger's Empire (1946) and Mr. Devil's Money were big hits. Ogunde was banned from performing in the western region for two years in 1964 for his famous play Yoruba Ronu (Yorubas Think!). Before his death, Ogunde played the role of Johnson's father-in-law in Joyce Cary's film version. Mister Johnson (1947) in 1990. Other traveling theater personalities include Duro Ladipo (1931–1978), Kola Ogunmola (1925–1973) and Moses Olaiya Adejumo (born 1936), popularly known as Baba Sala, who performed the bold innovation has to use films and videos as part of their repertoire. The Ghana Concert Festival tradition was started in 1918 by Mr. Yalley, the director of Sekondi. Yalley's performances utilized jokes, song and dance. He also wore costumes, wigs, fake mustaches, and the white makeup of a minstrel. His shows were performed in English and catered to the urban elite of the time. However, the concert party as it functions now, performing in Akan, using guitar music and touring around the country was the trademark of E.K. Nyame, who formed the Akan Trio in

1952. During the 1990s, two important but contradictory phenomena occurred. While the Ghanaian government has sought to bridge the gap between African theater and its diaspora counterparts by launching the biannual Pan-African Arts Festival (Panafest), they have expanded the concert celebrations, in part to attract a wider Ghanaian audience domestically. and abroad, have done so using the latest technology, recording some of their performances on DVD, inadvertently breaking the intimacy between audience and performer, a hallmark of the tradition. Sierra Leone's Krio theater is not as developed or eclectic as its counterparts in Ghana and Nigeria. Krio theaters are primarily concentrated in and around Freetown. The main practitioners are Charlie Haffner, Yulisa Amadu Maddy and Dele Charley. The uniqueness of Krio Theater lies in its dance drama performed in a non-verbal manner. See

also Aidoo, Ama Ata; Bokassa, Jean-Bedel; Literature: Oral; Nkrumah, Francis Latte; Ogunde, Hubert Adedeji; Popular Culture: West Africa; Rawlings, Jerry; Soyinka, Wole.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anyidoho, Kofi and James Gibbs, eds. FonTomFrom: Contemporary Ghanaian Literature, Theater and Film. Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 2000. Bame, Kwabena N. Come Laugh: Traditional African Theater in Ghana. New York: Lilian Barber, 1985. Banham, Martin, eds. A History of Theater in Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Banham, Martin; Cerro Errol; and George Woodyard; Ed. The Cambridge Guide to African and Caribbean Theatre. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Barber, Karin; JohnCollins; and Alan Ricardo. West African folk theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997. Cole, Catherine M. Ghana's Concert Party Theatre. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Conteh-Morgan, John and Tejumola Olaniyan, eds. African Theater and Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Dunton, Chris. Make Man Talk True: Nigerian Drama in English Since 1970. New York: Hans Zell, 1992. Etherton, Michael. The development of African theater. London: Hutchinson, 1982.

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Gotrick, shit. Apidan Theater and Modern Drama: A Study in a Traditional Yoruba Theater and Its Influence on Modern Drama by Yoruba Playwrights. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1984. ALEX O. BOATENG

F RA NC OP HO N E A FR IC A AFRICAN CULTURE AND THEATRICAL EXPRESSION

Society dictates the nature of local artistic productions. Pre-colonial Sub-Saharan African society never had a generic term for dramatic representation and never created a space for it. Actors were often anonymous, and productions consisted of all forms of dramatic expression (such as pantomime, dance, music, poetry, and masked dancing). But although Africans did not name their theater, they lived it as an essential cultural expression. His productions ranged from ritualistic ceremonies to spontaneous collective rejoicings, aimed at broad rural audiences. Rites refer to the various religious ceremonies used in a community. These ceremonies are regulated, that is, their words and gestures (which have sacred and symbolic meaning) follow the prescriptions laid down by those participating in the ritual. In traditional Africa, the rites have their roots in religion; People use the ritual to get in touch with their spiritual roots and to make connections that go unnoticed in everyday life. Every aspect of a ritual has a symbolic meaning that is part of a specific language that can be transformed into a theatrical performance. The performance of this language creates a symbolic or mythical space. It is a place where people meet, as acting teachers and as participants. It is also the meeting point of the human and the divine through prayer. Andre´ Schaeffner (1895-1980) shows in his study Rituel et pre´-the´aˆtre (1965) that prayer is more than a sentimental act. It shows that it is necessary to establish contact with the divine. In the ritual, each participant has the opportunity to specialize in a role. In Côte d'Ivoire, the team around We're'we're' Liking (b. 1950) from Cameroon and Marie-Jose' Hourantier from France attached great importance to the reappropriation of the ritual through modern theater in Africa. In the same way, Wole Soyinka used the Yoruba ritual in his work.

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Hourantier's production of We're We're Likes La puissance de Um (1970) was an attempt to restore the effectiveness of the ritual. It was an attempt to control performance by reproducing Bassa's initiation scheme with a five-pointed star. In recent years, inspired by West African tradition, We're'we're'Liking have created an epic pan-African Sogolon, also based on Mandingue rituals. THE MEANING OF DANCE

In Africa, dance is the most important form of artistic expression. Music, whether instrumental or vocal, is always associated with a recitation or choreography. Dance reinforces religious rituals. The hunter tribes used figurative dance to ask forgiveness from the spirit of the animal whose physical form they wanted to kill. Dance is often part of a theatrical performance. It is stylized in such a way that its beauty is (more or less) independent of its meaning. In some cases, the dancers add dialogue to the music, turning the dance into a real dramatic performance. Through dance, people can discover their bodies and enter into a physical community with freedom. The dance incorporates the themes of life and human emotion. African dance is more than uncontrolled spontaneity. It is a harmonious combination of lines and movements imperceptibly linked to technique and is therefore a fundamental form of theatrical expression. Although African dance is the art of movement, it does not leave the ground. Feet together are used to continuously touch the ground. There are several types of dance steps: e'chappe (dodging), relevé (high steps) and ensemble (steps where the feet come together). The Bugereb, a Dyula dance practiced in Senegal, is an example of a gathering. The feet step alternately and then together on the floor. Masques (ceremonies involving masks) reinforce the role of myths in everyday life. They enliven nature and society at the same time in a meaningful way. The masks are shaped to absorb spirits. Sometimes they show human and animal traits. In this way, the mask transforms the dancer's body, which nevertheless retains its individuality and functions as a living medium that embodies the other that is currently represented.

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Occasionally, masks in ritual ceremonies incorporate comic and satirical elements. During these ceremonies, the masquerades are presented as true shows, expressing the richness of African choreography and music. Expressive movement, gesture and even possession are linked to music and rhythm. The dance is of course accompanied by music; It is the music that allows the dancer to find his steps. Of all the arts, music touches us most directly. It is therefore not surprising that music accompanies most rituals. Music is linked to dance and supports direct emotional involvement. You can release tension by calming down; a crisis can dissolve in dance. The tom-tom is the most common instrument. As a frenetic and rhythmic instrument, it easily integrates into a variety of instrumental ensembles. Music and dance come together to create an emotional state that leads to obsession and trance. They also play an essential role in the exorcism ceremony called Nde¨p by the Wolof of Senegal. African black dramaturgy is a synthesis that integrates the expressive possibilities of the body and the word and does not exclude any. In this universe, theater involves words, gestures, and music, each closely contributing to dramatic expression. lay expression

In addition to religious ceremonies, Africans developed a repertoire of collective celebrations, the object of which was the implementation of customs. These shows are lyrical, musical and dramatic. Representing ordinary people on stage, they attract a large rural audience where the shows have their roots. Narratives exist throughout African oral literature. It has a variety of dramatic properties. It is based on an oral narrative that is primarily a theatrical performance. In this narrative theater the narrator is an actor. The narrator uses all dramatic means and alone represents a variety of roles, both human and animal. Several specialists in African theater have examined the narrative. A good example is Bernard Zadi Zaourou (born 1938) of the Didiga company (the Groupe de Recherches des Traditions Orales) in Abidjan. L'os de Mor Lam (1977) by Birago Diop (1906–1989) initiated this investigation.

The koteba (giant snail) is a traditional performance in Mali that consists of two parts. The first uses song, rhythm and dance. There is a kind of rhythmic prelude that combines song, movement and pantomime. The audience, in turn, spontaneously becomes actors, dancers and a live stage. The second part consists of short plays and improvised sketches by the Kotedenw (sons of the snail). These form a comedy of manners that pokes fun at common characters like the blind man, the miser, the leper, and others. Mali's official theater company is called National Koteba; This organization strives to preserve the techniques of traditional Koteba. There are many such traditional ceremonies, such as the Senegalese simb (playing with fake lions) and the xaxar, a reception for a Wolof man's second, third or fourth wife. Actors at secular festivals must be masters of their craft. They must be able to dance, sing and mime. For example, among the Wolof there are professionals like mband-katt and taaxuraan-katt, who are itinerant artists, much like the jugglers of medieval Europe. They operate in the market, on the street or in specially designated areas. They are all specialists working with instruments like tom-tom and kora. Suleyman Coly has a central place for the Griot in Waramba (a play co-produced with the Renaud Barrault Theater in September 1991). Niangora Porquet in Abidjan created the griotique inspired by African griot techniques. Origin and development of modern theater

Modern African theater was born in the colonial school system. The students, who were usually interns, put on short plays at end-of-year parties. Even the missionaries, hostile to pagan ceremonies, organized celebrations at Christmas and Easter. These early performances were inspired by European theater. It was not until the founding of the École Normale des Instituteurs in Saint-Louis, Senegal in 1903 and the arrival of George Hardy in 1913 that real theater began, and it was not until the 1930s that a form of theater explicitly recognized as African emerged. It was called indigenous theater and started at E'cole Normale William Ponty in Senegal.

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At William Ponty, director George Hardy, followed by Jean-Louis Monod and Albert Charton, understood the educational value of theater and encouraged creativity. At the end of the 1932-1933 school year, a play written by Dahomey students, Bayol et Behanzin, was performed along with a farce by Molie're. This is the first known example of Francophone African theatre. ´ Cole Primaire Supe´rieure Charles Be´art de la E in Bingerville, Ivory Coast was also a driving force in the creation of indigenous theatre. With Be'art's arrival as a teacher at the Ponty School in 1935, theater reached new heights. The teachers asked their students to find themes for plays in their own traditional culture. The costumes, taken from personal closets at the time of the performance, consisted of real-life loincloths and boubou shirts. The plays began and ended with songs and dances. In 1935, the elite of Dakar (about 1,000 spectators) attended an event to elect the king (the Dahomeer) at the Chamber of Commerce. Ponty school theater reached its peak in the 1936-1937 school year. Students from Ivory Coast presented Assemien, roi de Sanvi, and students from Guinea Conakry performed Le Capitaine Peroz et Samory a` Bissandougou. The Compagnie Ponty was invited to the international exhibition in Paris in 1937 and gave two performances at the Tea´aˆaftre des Champs Elyse´es. After 1949, which marked the end of ponty theatre, African theater found a new direction. New supporters, such as Guinean Fodeba Keita, a schoolteacher from Ponty, denounced the colonial policy. This new theater met with opposition from the colonial authorities, but Africans who went to France for higher education demonstrated the vitality of this theater in Paris. After 1960 most African nations gained independence. Theater developed differently in each country. Senegal had the special privilege of owning the National Theater Daniel Sorano. Many actors from the national conservatory joined this theater, which had one of the best acting troupes in the world. After Senegal, Ivory Coast was famous for its dramatic art. The National Institute of the Arts contained an important theater laboratory. All over Africa the reorientation

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from the theater to the appreciation of traditional culture secured the loyalty and support of the audience. Dramatic lyrics

The works of the African repertoire can be divided into three categories. First are the historical works, by far the most important. These are recreations of the lives of important figures in African history with the aim of rehabilitating them through modern day myths. Among the best known are La mort de Chaka by Seydou Badian (born 1928; 1962), Une saison au Congo by Aime' Ce'saire and L'exil d'Albouri by Cheik Aliou Ndao (1972). The second category are those works that satirize the current political rulers, such as Le pre'sident by Maxime Ndebeka or Le destin glorieux du Mare'chal Nnikon Nniku, prince qu'on sort (1979) by Tchicaya U Tam'si (1931 – 1988). Finally, there are works dealing with social situations, such as Trois pretendants, un mari (1964) by Guillaume Oyono-Mbia and Monsieur Thogoˆ Gnini (1965) by Bernard Dadie´ (born 1916). The means of expression of this essentially political and social theater show that traditional ceremonies survived colonization. In language, these works use oral discourse (maxims, symbols, proverbs, and repetitions), pauses indicating stage directions, interjections, and apostrophes. The images are indicative of the local environment. Ndao uses the bestiary of the savannah: the lion (symbol of greatness); the hyena (contempt); and the boa and the owl (wild animals). The works constantly use couplets and refrains of local songs within the French text. The alternation between spoken and sung passages is reminiscent of sung fables in local oral literature. African political theater focuses on major historical figures such as Albouri, Christophe, Shaka Zulu, Patrice Lumumba and Lat Dyor Diop. These characters are often tragic figures, torn between their vision of the world and the reality of their situations. In addition, there are the secondary characters derived from traditional ideas, such as the griot and the ritual officiant. His role in the play derives from social status. The griot is the most eloquent. He is the life of the work, giving it music, pantomime and dance. The presence of the ritual officer allows for the display of fetishes such as animal horns, masks, and skulls.

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Rituals and enchantments immerse the viewer in the magical universe as a participant in simulations of ritual ceremonies. The works use social concepts and the traditional family to establish relationships between these characters and dramatic situations. The works address the clash of cultures. The stagecraft, procedures and effects used to perform the drama on stage most clearly reflect the show's traditional character. The atmosphere of religious and relaxing ceremonies is reproduced through emotions, mysticism and humor in a universe where tragedy coexists with laughter and where pantomime and dance are in solidarity. It is a harmonious fairytale image that almost floods the stage. In the works of Fodeba Keita, the language of the choreography reinforces the text. Few works neglect rhythm, song and dance. The rhythm becomes the link between the stage and the audience. The music that emerges from the cultural tradition is well known to the public. In Europe, theater borrowed the idea of incidental music from film. In Africa, background music is an essential part of the production. EUROPEAN CULTURE AND AFRICAN THEATER

Most African playwrights were European-influenced, as were educated African audiences. It is therefore not surprising that modern African theater borrows the best from European theatre. The administration of the African theaters is structured in a similar way to the administration of the European theatres. The Sorano Theater in Dakar is a state theater. The state administers it through a director general. The company has a workforce that includes a manager, a reading committee, a director, a stage manager and a set designer. In European theatres, two worlds face each other: on the one hand a hall full of spectators and on the other the stage with a backdrop on which the actors perform. This structure reinforces both the text and the plot. Improves readability and facilitates understanding. The classic organization of African works is very clear. There is exposure; tension that increases through the third or fourth act; and a result of the crisis or catastrophe that has arisen in recent acts. The framework, the closed universe, is never entirely absent. Destiny appears as an overwhelming force. But not the African theatre

he appropriated all the tendencies of modern European theater literature: for example the innovations of Eugene Ionesco's (1909-1994) theater of the absurd or Samuel Beckett's (1906-1989) avant-garde theater. As one of the best-known leaders of the African avant-garde movement, the Congolese playwright Sony Labou Tansi has set new trends with his theater group Rocado Zulu (founded in Brazzaville in 1979). For example, in La parenthe`se de sang (1978) he shows the absurdity of murder and death. There are two dominant trends in contemporary stage design. One is a tendency towards abstraction and symbolism, the other a tendency towards realism. The two tendencies are directly opposite. African stage design often oscillates between naturalism and symbolism, with the stage design always having to be adapted to African realities. African stage design has always been influenced by realism. The setting must appear real to support the fiction, and it must also help the actor identify with the character through the actor's interaction with the atmosphere and objects associated with the character. Historical works require a detailed reconstruction of royal paraphernalia down to the smallest detail, names of historical figures and authentic songs, dances and rites. Used objects and used costumes, which are often considered objects of mystical power, help the actor not only materially. They help the actor spiritually and help the actor to be the character. There is a community between the stage and the play, the actor and the audience. Africa adopted a European-style theater building, associated with the culture of the European bourgeoisie and characterized by the separation between stage and audience, the hierarchization of spectators by ticket prices, the separation of roles between playwright and actor, the administrative system, etc. In. Because of its architecture and urban location, African theater reflects bourgeois culture. The Daniel Sorano Theater in Dakar, for example, is one of the most luxurious halls in all of Africa, although the proscenium is unsuitable for historical plays and sometimes needs to be adjusted to keep the audience engaged. There are several schools of thought about the acting trade. Direct identification theory is based on the actor's identification with their role and sincere expression of emotions. Alienation theory sees identification as a way of

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Hallucination that cannot be trusted and attempts to produce intellect controlled art. Finally, there is a theory based on the actor's gestures. Gestural theater in the tradition of Antonin Artaud (1896-1948) is revered in Africa. The actor's body becomes the source and instrument of the language of gestures. In Africa, physical expression, particularly through dance, plays a crucial role in theatrical arts. The African actor must always identify with his role in order to get to the bottom of the ritual, but especially in historical tragedies where the actor is playing a character of mythic proportions. Douta Seck, an actor who played the role of Christophe with great success, saw himself as a horse of genius, that is, a kind of priest of tradition opposed to sacred and supernatural forces.

According to Prosper Compaore in The´aˆtre africain (1990), true practitioners of African theater know that African cultures do not recognize the artificial dichotomy between art and society. Therefore, Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) has no followers in Africa, although some of his plays were staged or adapted in Africa. The Exception and the Rule and The Threepenny Opera were produced in 1984 and 1985 by Gaoussou Diawara of the National Institute of the Arts in Bamako, Mali. In African theatre, the audience does not consist of passive observers. The audience participates in the metamorphosis of the actor's character. Therefore, one must include the viewer in the contemplation of African theater. The audience loses its individuality and becomes a massive figure in a continuous dialectic between stage and house. The incessant rhythm, the songs and the dance unite the actors and the audience. See also Ce'saire, Aime'; dakar Dance; Keita, Fodeba; Literature: Oral; Lumumba, Patrice; masks and masquerades; Music; religion and ritual; Saint-Louis; Shaka Zulu; Sony Labou Tansi; Obsession. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Proceedings of the Mohammedia Colloquium. Casablanca, Morocco: Wallada, 1990.

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Proceedings of the symposium on black African theatre. Paris: African Presence, 1971. Carpentier, Peter. "Theaters in East and West Africa." Drama (Spring 1963): 30–32. Kitchen, David. "The theater goes to the people." Transition 25 (1966): 23–33. Cornevin, Robert. Black Theater in Africa and Madagascar. Paris: The African Book, 1970. Diop, Alioune Oumy. Traditional theater in Senegal. Dakar, Senegal: Nouvelles Editions africaines du Se ́ne ́gal, 1990. Fiangor, Rogo Koffi M. The Francophone African Theater: Analysis of Writing, Evolution and Cross-Cultural Contributions. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002. Hourantier, Marie-Jose ́. From ritual to ritual theater. Paris; L'Harmattan Publishing House, 1984. Jukpor, Bernard K'Anene. A Study of Satire in French-Language West African Theater. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1995. Laude, Jean. The Arts of Black Africa, trans. John Decock. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971.

AFRICAN AESTHETICS AND THEATER

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Meissaloux, Claude. "A Village Farce in the City: The Kote ba of Bamako." African Presence 52 (1954): 27-5 Ngandu, Pius Nkashama. Theater and performance scenes: Studies in dramaturgy and gestures. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1993. Rouget, Gilbert. music and trance. Paris: Gallimard, 1980. Schipperr, Mineke. Theater and Society in Africa. Dakar, Senegal: np, 1984. African theatre, African theatre?: Proceedings of the Colloquium on African Theatre. Higher Normal School, Bamako, 14th-18th November 1988. Paris: Silex-Verlag, 1990.

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North African theater exists in a border area between East and West. It is a fusion of western theatrical traditions and Arabic theatrical traditions. The hybrid character of such theater is evident in the way popular performance behaviors such as al-halqa (a storytelling circle) have been carried over from public squares and markets such as Marrakech's Djemaa el-Fna or Ataba in Cairo into modern theater buildings. . Al-halqa has a managed environment that is strictly opposed to the Eurocentric institution of the closed theatre. Your audience is invited to "deduce" spontaneously.

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Interpretation of Al-fil wasarawil (Elephants and Pants) by Tayeb Saddiki. The work was conceived in the tradition of lbsat and al-halqa and performed by Masrah al-karma. lbsat is a traditional performance that occurred in Marrakesh, Morocco in the 18th century. PHOTOGRAPHY

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in an arch that encloses the performance from all sides. The space required by the hlayqi (the creator of the show) is not a specific space, and the time of the performance is anytime. A fourth wall with hypnotic fields is not erected between the stage and the auditorium because such a binary opposition does not exist in al-halqa. All the doors of the market or the medina can be turned into a stage; and the whole circle is a playground, as open as its repertoire of storytelling and dancing.

Arabic theater (a trend that is part of political pan-Arabism). The reality, however, is that these so-called indigenous traditions of interpretation are cultural constructions that are ever-changing, transforming according to the internal dynamics of adaptable, fluid, and changing folk traditions. Although these performances were of great artistic delight as society dramas, they did not become a theatrical activity akin to Western theatre.

In order to regain this scenic tradition, theater in North Africa has become increasingly improvised and self-reflective, even if such a retrieval is still negotiated in the paradoxical parameters of appropriating and dispossessing Western models. These efforts began with the call for an original/indigenous Egyptian/Arab theater by Youssef Idriss (1927-1991). His writings on theatre, published mainly in al-katib magazine in the mid-1960s, form a set of theatrical manifestos for a new theater company. His masterpiece entitled Al-Farafir: The Flipflaps (1964) is still regarded throughout North Africa as an exceptional reference work with a strong aura of authority. That fame, in turn, has led some to "ancestor worship" and a relentless pursuit of purity in the name of "authentic."

However, the Moroccan Tayeb Saddiki established a hybrid theater tradition not only in Morocco but throughout North Africa. His work, entitled Diwan sidi abderrahman al-majdub (The Collection of Master Abderrahman al-majdub, 1967), is a work conceived in a public space that is also hybrid in that it is a mirror of representation itself in almost the same. . Like the Comedia dell'arte. The structure of the work is circular rather than linear. It is located in Djemaa el-Fna, an open space for rhetoric that is also a space for hybridity. The opening scenes of the al-majdub production are designed to draw the audience's attention to the formation of al-halqa and its circular architecture. The actors on stage transcribe the circular form of al-halqa through a series of comical acrobatic plays.

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and mimetic body language. They serve each other as audiences while the narrator (the narrator) gives space to his little halqa. The Halqa of Almajdub depicts the Moroccan folk poet as a Shakespearean fool giving a voice to wisdom in a corrupt society. The ramifications of such an absurd situation are comical but redemptive, leading to collective catharsis. Saddiki's Maqamat Badia Ezzamane ElHamadani's play marks another turning point in Moroccan theater as it recreates the performative qualities of Maqamat's narrative on the Moroccan and Arab stage. The play takes place in a public square. From the very beginning, Saddiki's narrator announces that it could be any of the famous Arabic squares: it could be Al-Halfaouin in Tunis, or Harun Arrachid Square in Baghdad, or the Green Ataba in Cairo, or even our magical Jemaa el-Fnaa in Marrakech. Then the two prominent bsat personalities playfully attract the attention of their audience. Other actors also play the audience as they prepare to adapt one of the roles. Like most halqa in the bsat tradition, the performance lacks an organic thematic unity, being fragmented into small furjas (performances) or halqas, which share only one aspect in common: the master narrator. In the first forge, Issa Bnou Hicham tells the story of his friend, the poet Abdoul Fath Al-Iskandari, whom he unexpectedly meets in one of Baghdad's halqas. Aboul Fath justifies his current situation as an interpreter and condemns the decadent spirit of his society. The second furja consists of five maqamas (long narrative poems) in which the two friends Issa Bnou Hicham and Aboul Fath Al Iskandari have further stories interpreted in the Halqa of the Bsat. All of these stories come from the maqamas but are dramatized as small fragmented performances. Saddiki's strategy of fragmentation is rooted in the dynamism of the halqa and its fluidity in relation to the subject's unity. A recent Bsat performance in Morocco is a play entitled Lbsaytiya (The Bsat People) performed at the National Theater Festival in July 2006 by one of Marrakesh's leading theater companies, Warchat Ibdae Drama. However, Lbsaytiya reproduces the same spirit of a fragmented forge. The entire performance is inspired by the magical enchantment of Jemaa el-Fna as Ibsaytiya agrees to present her various bsat performances in Jemaa el-Fna square.

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Algerian Abdelkader Alloula (1929-1994), who represented some of his works in Morocco, remains the most important North African artist to use al-halqa, along with Saddiki. Alloula devoted all her creative energies during the last decade of her life to developing a theatrical methodology modeled after the Algerian halqa called al-Quwal. Alloula's theater thus emerges through the condensation of social gesture (a Brechtian resource consisting in drawing attention to the characters' social status), which reflects people's viewpoints through the expression of physics, intonation, and other kinetic characteristics. Occasionally the gesture manifestations are extremely complicated and contradictory, since the verbal word alone does not help to emphasize all these complications. For this reason, the Aloulian actor must give his role the necessary concentration so that he does not stop transmitting the image in all its dimensions. By alienating theatrical semiosis and its displacement from conventional dramatic constructions, Alloula's goal is not only to renew the spectator's perception of what is presented on the Halqa stage, but also to transcend the cognitive value to reveal a latent , but strong desire to introduce the present to reconstruct reality. In this sense, Alloula's theatrical techniques are highly politicized. Alloula's theater has its roots in situations marked by tension and stemming from critical historical moments. It sheds light on the contradictions between individual and collective preferences in post-colonial Algeria. Alloula has experimented with al-halqa techniques in his last five works: Al-goual (1980), Al-Ajouad (1985), Al-litham (1989), At-tufahu (1992) and Arlukan khadimu as-sayyedayni (1993). ). . ). Alloulas Al-Ajouad, a play performed at the Moroccan Amateur Theater Festival in 1987, is an example of artistic exchange between the Maghreb countries. Each scene in Al-Ajouad relates to a main character, portrayed through epic storytelling on the one hand and dramatic acting on the other. The aesthetic interweaving of narrative and dramatic lines becomes a distinctive feature of the Alloulian theater company. Alloula relies on the narrator-actor (a total actor) "with his cane and his elaborate clothing" to narrate the events, sing the praises of the characters rooted in the folk consciousness, and embody some scenes through the interpretation of roles. Most of Al-Ajouad's characters have humble jobs and suffer from marginalization and poverty. However, she

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Portrayal of Lalla Jmila by Tangerine playwright Zobeir Ben Bouchta. The play was performed by the Ibn Khaldoun Theater Company in Tangier during the 2004 theater season. Lalla Jmila is the main character of the play. The project was funded by the Ministry of Culture and selected in the official competition of the national festival in Mekunes. PHOTOGRAPH BY KHALID AMIN

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They are unique in their self-esteem and determined desire to strive for a better future. In short, the hybrid nature of North African theater arose as a result of cultural negotiations between self and other, East and West, tradition and modernity. It is a post-colonial theater that sits at the crossroads and a continuum of crossroads, encounters and negotiations. The result is a complex palimpsest that emphasizes the importance of cultural exchange and hybridization rather than the essentialist search for the pure and primal. See also Art, Regional Styles: North Africa; Cairo; Marrakech; Media: Cinema; Tunisia. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Aziza, Mohammed. Al-Islam wa-lmasrah [Islam and Theater] Riyadh: Uyoun al-Maqalat, 1987. Berrchid, Abdelkarim. Al-masrah al-ihtifaliy [Festive Theater] Tripoli: Adar al-Jamahiria, 1990. Carlson, Marvin, ed. The Arabic Oedipus. New York: Theater Center Publications by Martin E. Segal, 2005. Hamdan, Mas'd. Poetics, Politics and Protest in Arab Theater. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2006. Kolk, Mieke, eds. The Representation of the Comic in Arab Theatre. Belgium: Documenta, 2005. Mniai, Hassan. Abhat fi al-masrah al-maghrebiy [Moroccan Theater Studies]. Meknes: Voice of Meknes, 1974. Mniai, Hassan. Huna al-masrah al-'arabiy-huna ba'du ttajaliyatihi [Here is the Arabic theater, here are some of its characteristics]. Meknes: Saphir, 1990. 'Orsan, Ali Okla. Adawahir al-masrahiya inda al-arab [Arab theatrical phenomena]. Damascus: The Union of Arab Writers, 1985. Saddiki, Tayeb. Ezzamane El-Hamadani - Best of Ezzamane El-Hamadani Kenitra: Book Publications, 1998. KHALID AMINE

THE SOUTH IS NAFRICA

Any description of pre-colonial performance is bound to be limited and depends heavily on the survivals of such forms of performance in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Early theater studies around the world focused almost exclusively on institutionalized theater systems and the canon of literary drama, ignoring indigenous customs in most countries and not showing much interest in interactive and community forms. The result is a historical record in

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This indigenous cultural expression in southern Africa is overshadowed by imported European works and conventions that had become the cultural norm by the late 19th century. Performance practice was similarly affected, as early missionaries and colonizers with Christian values and morals frowned upon all indigenous pagan practices and performance. Inseparable from this was that the European, and particularly British, way of life, transmitted through missionary schools and churches, often with the use of dramatized Bible sketches and religious sermons, ironically reflected and perhaps substituted for the didactic role played by much of the missionaries' despised indigenous achievement . It was only in the mid-20th century that both academics and theater practitioners in Namibia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Swaziland, Lesotho, Mozambique, Botswana and South Africa gradually began to question this one-sided view and to value and use indigenous forms for development programs - artistically, socially, politically and economically on the subcontinent. PRE-COLONIAL THEATER AND PERFORMANCE

Before European settlement in the 17th century, Africans practiced a variety of forms of theatrical performance, including dramatized songs and staged ritual narratives. The oldest forms are found in the nomadic communities that roamed the semi-desert areas of much of Botswana, Namibia and the Cape Province for thousands of years. The ceremonial and ritual dramas and dances of the Khoesan, for example, have a long history, dated by anthropologists at over six thousand years. The various Bantu peoples have similar forms of performance, such as the Xhosa Intsomi and the Zulu Inganekwane, storytelling practices that are still performed today. The same is true of its extensive dance and music traditions. From early linguists and anthropologists to 20th-century musical anthropologists and the oral literature movement, there have always been conscious efforts to document, preserve, and where possible revive these ancient traditions. Some forms have survived into the 21st century in adapted or hybrid styles. Several artists, such as the storyteller Gcina Mhlope (born 1959), consciously try to revive such traditions in performance, teaching the form and even transforming it into one

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dominant art form. In particular, the role of the praise poet was revived during the period of cultural and armed resistance from 1970-1990 with the so-called combat poets and singers. These artists received significant international recognition during Nelson Mandela's inauguration as President. Elements of indigenous forms were sometimes adapted to the immediate circumstances and frequently appeared in hybrid contemporary plays, dance and music that became a dominant feature of post-1970 theater from the late 1940s onwards. COLONIAL THEATER IN SOUTH AFRICA

In addition to a number of earlier contacts and smaller settlements, the first formal European colonization of the Cape occurred in 1652, when Dutch settlers arrived and introduced the first of a series of new cultural norms and traditions that would come to dominate the region for more than three years, centuries. Under the Dutch (1652 to 1799) there were few records of formal theater, but they brought powerful educational traditions from Holland, most notably the so-called Rederykerskamers, a system of social clubs aimed at cultural, moral and educational uplift and spread across the whole Time also continued much of the British colonial period (1799-1910). Indirectly, this became the basis for the dominant Afrikaans-language theater which was itself crucial to the development of a state-supported theater system that spawned a vast canon of new plays throughout the 20th century. However, formally institutionalized theater only came with the British annexation of the region. As in all of their colonies, British administrators encouraged amateur theater in the garrisons and among civilians, and encouraged visiting professional troupes, a tradition that provided important role models for local theater makers, who were both descendants of European immigrants and aspiring native African actors. The plays produced were in the colonial languages (English, Dutch, Portuguese and German), performed by local amateurs (often assisted by men from the local garrisons) and supplemented by visiting professional troops from the home countries. At first they did very little locally written work, as most of the material was standard European texts, including a large amount of Shakespeare, both in the original language and in translation. What was original was usually short

thematic prologue or epilogue or any type of piece of music. One of the best-known examples is the bilingual play Kaatje Kekkelbek, or Life Among the Hottentots, developed in Grahamstown around 1844 by Andrew Geddes Bain (1797–1864) and Frederick Rex. The first substantial collection of Indigenous plays was produced in the second half of the 19th century as a direct result of the British presence, their expansionist tactics and the resulting Anglo-Boer War (also known as the South African War). These works were mostly written in Dutch and later in Cooking Dutch (or Afrikaans), not only by the descendants of the original white settlers, but also by Dutch-speaking slaves from the Dutch East Indies and descendants of mixed races from different peoples in the stratum. A slave named Majiet, for example, wrote protest pieces for performance in the slave hut, while Dutch and French writers such as Suasso de Lima, Boniface and Melt Brink (1842-1925) produced short one-act farces and satires for interpretation by amateurs and schools. Later, more serious writers concerned with the identity of the Dutch/Afrikaans speaking population began to write heavy nationalist works about the history and struggles of the subcontinent's African peoples. This tradition of theatrical writing would thrive and bear significant fruit in the 20th century, particularly under the apartheid regime as such play was seen as essential to the development of an African identity. EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Although by the early 20th century many plays had been written in Afrikaans, and from 1925 more plays were being written to tour rural areas, few plays were produced in English written by aboriginal people until the 19th century . However, a few English playwrights emerged in the early 20th century, the most successful being Stephen Black, who wrote popular farces such as Helena's Hope (1906) which satirized Cape Town's multiracial society. A truly local tradition of English writing only became established in the 1960s, when the political situation offered an increasing rationalization for serious theater focused on local socio-political issues. This cultural boycott deprived the country of access to the best European and American theaters and opened up a market for local labor.

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Among the indigenous black population, theatrical performance was initially limited to traditional forms of performance: dance, song, and storytelling. Gradually, under the guidance of missionary schools and other European organizations, a hybrid mixture of indigenous and European forms emerged, giving impetus to local dramaturgy. In Malawi, for example, there were sporadic attempts to establish such a dramaturgy tradition in the 1950s, and little of substance happened until the University of Malawi sponsored the Chancellor's College Traveling Theater, which presented Chichewa-language plays enhanced by participatory Research and performance emerged, began to supplant English-language works. With this development, the potential of theater in adult education began to be recognized; By the mid-1990s there was an active theater industry in education. In South Africa, Anglo-American influence on playwriting in black communities was evident from the start, in works such as the first published Xhosa drama (Guybon Sinxos Debeza's Baboons, 1927) and Herbert Dhlomo's The Girl Who Killed to Save (1907-1956). ): Nonqause the Liberator (1936), the first play by a black man to be published in English. Based on a Xhosa legend, it's in the style of sentimental comedy and English melodrama. While bourgeois black theater prior to the 1960s reflected a taste for European dramatic literature, a popular form of theater emerged among working-class blacks. Esau Mtetwa founded the first professional black troupe called Lucky Stars in Natal in 1926 and toured the country presenting popular skits and plays in the local language based on Zulu legends and customs. This trend accelerated when the combination of economic depression and drought in the 1930s and 1940s forced black and white rural farmers to seek their livelihoods in fast-growing mining towns. Due to the rapid growth of economically weak mixed-use areas and an increasing number of urban slums, many ethnic groups, particularly among Africans, have been eroding. This led to an increasing synthesis of ethnic performance traditions with working-class theater and performance models from the West, particularly the United States. Eventually this led to successful combinations of ethnic and jazz music with ethnic and international dance. for example in

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In 1959, the musical King Kong, about the rise and fall of a heavyweight boxer, was first produced in Johannesburg and attracted the attention of African musicians and actors in theaters there, as well as in London and New York; He was also a role model for many aspiring actors and directors, who saw in him the commercial and artistic possibilities of a musical work that blended native and imported conventions. THE RISE OF THE THEATER OF RESISTANCE AND THE THEATER OF DEVELOPMENT

Zimbabwe resisted colonial imposition of European traditions for many years, but in the 1970s a flourishing art of anti-settler resistance provided perhaps the most important appeal to black artists. In the years since political liberation, radio and television have provided platforms for the work of writers such as Stephen Chifunyise and Thompson Tsodzo (born 1952). But perhaps the most important and original drama has been produced by the community theater movement organized by the Zimbabwe Production Education Foundation. This organization produced work that is best represented today through community-based organizations and the University of Zimbabwe's acting courses. The former British protectorates of Lesotho and Botswana are linked in many ways to South Africa's political economy, and not surprisingly their cultural development runs parallel in many respects. The playwrights' thematic concerns range from the obvious theme of oppression by colonial settlers to longstanding concerns about marriage and polygamy, superstition and modernization, and include contemporary themes arising from the effects of apartheid. The first play written and published in Setswana (Botswana's main indigenous language) was Letile Raditladis Motsasele (1910-1971) in 1937. But the most celebrated achievement in Botswana's theatrical history (though not without critics) was theater - for the development of Projekt Laedza batanani (The Sun is Up, Go Out and Work, 1974), in which theater became the medium of a massive educational project. The first work written and published in Lesotho was Sek'ona sa joala (A Beer Gourd) by

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Twenty Mofokeng men in 1939; In the period 1980-2000, Zakes Mda (b. 1948) was and is the best-known playwright from Basotho, whose works have been translated into many languages. His award-winning work The Hill (1979) dealt with the impact of apartheid migrant workers on rural societies, and many of his later works astutely commented on the uncomfortable coexistence of First and Third World societies on the subcontinent. His short prophetic work Cantaremos por la Patria is an excellent example of this theme. In the 1970s, the National University of Lesotho established a thriving development theater industry, with theater groups touring rural areas and assisting in adult education, including literacy. Zakes Mda became one of the most important theorists of this movement and published his doctoral thesis in this field. Theater in Swaziland is best known through the work of a woman who is neither Swazi nor a playwright. A Witch in My Heart (1970) by the anthropologist Hilda Kuper (1911–1992) presents a view of the role of women in Swazi society unmatched by any Swazi writer. There are many types of indigenous performances in Swaziland, which take the form of ceremonies and rituals, but by the mid-1990s there was no developed theatrical tradition. In Namibia, theater was important for development in the early 1970s, although the South African state-funded Performing Arts Council imported South African plays. He also produced and toured a large amount of classic and European food in Afrikaans, English and German. After independence, this group became the National Theater of Namibia, which is still active today. The influence of the War of Liberation was strongly felt in Mozambique, and songs and poems from the war years have been widely disseminated in the work of professionals involved in theatrical creation through participatory research and performance, with some of the first theaters building on the vaudeville tradition based. In 1971 a Portuguese director, Norberto Barroca, directed a play by Lindo Lhongo entitled Los Recently Married; o Dramatic Bride Price Inquiry, which explored the transition from tribal mores to a contemporary urban and political context, using traditional forms of performance to explore themes of change and continuity. In general, however

Theater has not been developed in Mozambique to a degree comparable to some other countries in the region. This may be due to the extent of repressive colonial rule there and the devastation caused by decades of war. Although developmental theater was increasingly becoming the defining form of African theatre, such projects did not have the same importance in South Africa. For pedagogical purposes, however, interactive theater methods were sometimes used there. For example, in the late 1970s, educational play (creative drama) and educational theater were introduced as a means of raising youth consciousness, and in workers' union theater in the 1980s, it became an important tool for promoting union solidarity and development of political consciousness among black workers. Much of the latter work was linked to Brechtian theories and Boal's notions of forum theatre, all crucial elements of later political theatre. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a form of developmental theater began to emerge under the new dispensation, focusing on social issues such as the AIDS pandemic, violent crime, rape, nation building, and voter education for the previously disenfranchised masses. – and a lot of government funds and private sponsors have been expended on it. COMMERCIAL AND GOVERNMENT FUNDED MID-CENTURY THEATER

White Afrikaans theater was privileged from the start as not only was it a political tool at the service of the Afrikaans language and the African nation, but the performers had captivated audiences as they worked for a while in a heritage-dominated local language. Population formed to appreciate European cultural forms. This was aided by direct subsidies to theater from the Nationalist government, first through the state-funded National Bilingual (Afrikaans and English) Theater Organization (1947-1962), then through four provincial-level bilingual performing arts councils that grew out of it ( 1963-1962). 1993). These institutions produced a flood of plays by local theater makers, including some outspoken critics of apartheid such as Andre' P. Brink (born 1935), Bartho Smit (1924–1986) and Adam Small. Works such as Smit's Christine (1971) and Small's Kanna hy koˆ Huistoe (Kanna Comes Home) are questioned

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the country's racist value systems, thereby violating censorship laws. In the 1970s, a more overt form of resistance developed among Afrikaans-speaking youth, notably through a powerful Afrikaans cabaret movement started by Hennie Aucamp (b. 1934), which incorporated the growing rock music movement. In the 1980s and 1990s his drive was mainly anarchic and political, expressing hatred and opposition to the regime, culminating in 1989's Piekniek de Dingaan (Picnic with Dingane). As a form, cabaret still exists, but it has lost its advantage as the specter of apartheid has faded, reverting to a more nostalgic mix of musical performance and stand-up theatre. Several white English theater directors also found employment in this subsidized theater in the early years, including renowned lighting designer and theater director Mannie Manim, who later co-founded the Market Theatre, and authors Guy Butler (1918–2001) and James Ambrose Brown. The new work focused solely on South African issues and attempted to develop a distinctively South African language. But few writers matched the continued success of the leading Afrikaans playwrights until the 1990s, and none matched the international acclaim of Athol Fugard (b. 1932). In addition to the state-funded system, the country had a strong commercial theater industry, including touring companies, which represented the Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These included large conglomerates such as the African Consolidated Theaters, which sponsored theaters and productions across the Union, many smaller city-owned companies representing European and American food (such as Leonard Rayne and Brian Brooke), and local touring groups made up mostly of speaking actors and Actors passed managers. Afrikaans. especially the charismatic and bilingual Andre´ Huguenet (d. 1961). This continued to thrive with impresarios like Taubie Kushlick and Pieter Toerien (b. 1945) producing mostly American and British hits that managed to evade the international playwright's boycott in the 1970s and 1980s, when the country opened up to finally international To welcome stage hits from Broadway, the West End and European capitals, particularly major musicals such as Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera and

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ironically The Lion King. Since then they have become a staple of upscale commercial theaters run by Pieter Toerien and others. By the 1950s some of these entrepreneurs felt compelled to do more politically relevant work: anti-racist works from Europe and America, as well as indigenous anti-apartheid works such as Basil Warner's Try for White (1958) and Lewis Sowden (1903-1974). ) Kimberley Train (1959). However, the stricter censorship and racial laws of the 1960s soon virtually ended this latest trend. A special category has long been the African musical, a viable export product. In addition to the influential but hybrid King Kong, it was the so-called tribal musicals that brought in real money. Although criticized for being inauthentic and for exploiting indigenous culture for commercial gain, these productions created employment and training opportunities for many artists excluded from the state system. One of them, Gibson Kente (1932-2004), developed his own theatrical style based on the King Kong format and became the country's most successful impresario. Not only did he turn black citizens into theatergoers, but he made his township musical so popular that it was adopted and adapted by political movements of the 1970s and 1980s. Other notable African musicals included Ipi-Tombi, a co-production by Bertha Egnos (born 1913), and Welcome Msomis Umabatha, a Zulu adaptation of Macbeth, which received critical acclaim in London's 1972 World Theater Season. In the 1980s, David Kramer (b. 1951) and Taliep Petersen (1950–2006) worked together for years on the successful musical Colored District Six – The Musical (1987) and the spectacular musicals by Mbongeni Ngema (b. 1955). ) dominated the 1990s with Sarafina!, Magic at 4:00 A.M. and The Zulu. Another international success is African Footprint (2004) by Richard Loring (1917-2005). This entire mid-century period of growth was largely aided by government investment in the establishment of various theater training schools at the various universities. With two exceptions, however, these were initially restricted to white students and it was not until the 1980s that free access became possible for everyone, so that alternative training methods had to be found.

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THEATER AND RESISTANCE

By the late 1950s, theater makers and artists had grown frustrated with politics and the arts system, across linguistic and cultural differences. A search began for ways to coordinate and support black and multiracial work, and to provide training for new performers and artists, as well as alternative venues and ways of performing theatre. A key early example was Union Artists, which not only supported and advised many artists but was also responsible for the influential King Kong project. In the 1970s, a radical rise in national and international resistance to apartheid and the burgeoning Black Consciousness movement led to sweeping shifts in Black Resistance politics, emphasizing cultural liberation through an alternative Black South African aesthetic. Militant political theater and performance events emerged from groups such as the Peoples' Experimental Theater and the Natal Theater Council. Both groups were charged and tried under the Anti-Terrorism Act in 1974-1975 for their involvement in the distribution of subversive plays and literature. This in turn led to a radical turn to political theater and what came to be known as black theater by writers such as Fatima Dike (b. 1948), Maishe Maponya (b. 1951) and Matsemela Manaka (b. 1956), as evidenced in Fatima Dike's The First South African and The Hungry Land of Maponya (1981). At the same time, a number of younger black and white activist theaters began to work together, and significant multicultural fringe groups emerged. Even within the state system of performing arts councils, Ken Leach, Pieter Fourie (born 1940), Francois Swart and others attempted to do subversive work in experimental locations. The most important factor, however, was the establishment of several independent venues in the 1970s, the most influential of which were the Space Theater in Cape Town (1972) and the Market Theater in Johannesburg (1976). These venues focused on developing theater projects that explored the cultural contradictions of South African life and found ways to circumvent racial laws. Among the new works to be produced was the steady stream of Athol Fugard's biting work, beginning with Blood Knot and including his masterpieces (Boesman and Lena, Master Harold and the Boys, The Road to Mecca). His simple but compelling neo-naturalism became the model for something substantial

A line of young theater makers who gave their voice to the call for change in the 1980s. Paul Slabolepszy, Anthony Akerman, Pieter-Dirk Uys (born 1945), Deon Opperman, Reza de Wet and others began producing significant new work, led by Slabolepszy's Saturday Night at the Palace and leading to the award-winning Gothic dramas by De Wet. about the psyche of Africans. Another phenomenon was the rise of the satirist and comedian as a political activist. Notable examples include the immensely effective Pieter-Dirk Uys and his alter ego Evita Bezuidenhout, with constantly updated shows like Hell is for Whites Only and Adapt or Dye. Another important factor was the clear shift towards a new style of improvised political theater in which previously neglected African traditions dominate. Inspired by the first improv piece from Theater Workshop '71 (The Women of Crossroads), John Kani (b.1943), Winston Ntshona (b.1941), Athol Fugard (The Island, Sizwe Bansi is Dead) and the innovative improv piece by Barney Simon the works tended to incorporate aspects of pre-colonial African genres into their more formal structures, fusing them with their audience's new urban cultural experiences. Barney Simon, Mbongeni Ngema and Percy Mtwa's groundbreaking Woza Albert (1981) and Ngema's Asinamali (1985) and Junction Avenue Theater's Sophiatown (1986) embody this best. By the late 1990s and into the first decade of the 21st century, a variety of producers had transformed the hybrid game into a distinctively South African form. These later works include such haunting works as William Kentridge (born 1955) and the Handspring Puppet Company's unique adaptations of world classics (Woyzeck on the Highfeld, 1992 and Faustus in Africa, 1995), Mark Fleishman, the Magnet Theater Company and Jazzart's sensitive collaborations based on Khoesan performance traditions (Rain in a Dead Man's Footsteps, 2003), David Kramer and Taliep Petersen's anthropological journey into Khoesan and slave history (Ghoema, 2005), and Brett Bailey and the pastiche of colonial prejudices Third World Bunfight Company over Africa (Ipi Zombie, 1996, iMumbo Jumbo, 1997 and Big Dada, 2003). THE FESTIVAL TRACK

From a structural point of view, the most important facet of the post-1994 period has been the increase

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of the festive culture in southern Africa. The oldest and best known is the annual National Festival of the Arts in Grahamstown, established in 1974 to support contrasting English language and culture. Long the only national festival, it soon expanded beyond its municipal boundaries to encompass all of the country's cultures and provide an indication of emerging trends across the subcontinent. Over thirty years later it is a twelve day international festival with fifty thousand visitors watching over five hundred theatrical performances. In the 1990s, the fall of the apartheid regime opened the door to previously excluded artists and closed state-funded companies, putting pressure on artists to create their own work. At the same time, previously protected cultures had to ensure their own survival and development. This led to the establishment of a series of arts festivals, beginning with the annual Oudtshoorn Festival dedicated to the now contradictory Afrikaans language and culture. Within a few years it was beginning to rival the Grahamstown Festival in size, and it was being expanded to include more festivals catering to a variety of cultures, languages, economic situations and cultural preferences. The exponentially growing year of 2004 saw more than 150 local festivals in the country and at least forty major arts and culture festivals aggressively promoted across the country. These include a government-sponsored Mayibuye Festival of African Arts in Bloemfontein. Festivals have become the core of the industry and in many ways constitute the annual theater season. It is clear from the works shown here that the old formulas of both the European style and the aggressive agit-prop style of anti-apartheid theater were being adapted and even discredited, and that theatrical producers were looking for new forms, methods and themes expressed the new African psyche and context. Hence since 1994 there has been an increasing focus on the struggle for identity and nationality, the search for peace and the exploration of notions of memory and forgiveness, themes symbolized primarily by the Truth Commission and Reconciliation and endemic works such as Ubu and the Truth Commission (1997) by Jane Taylor, William Kentridge and the Handspring Puppet Company, The Jogger (1997) by Andre´ P. Brink and Die Toneelstuk (The Play 2001).

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Breyten Breytenbach (born 1939). Also of note are the many works focused on healing the wounds of the past by My Children! by Athol Fugard. My Africa! (1989) and Valley Song (1995) to festival works like Peace Shall Prevail; Now is the time of reconciliation; people like us; and Unity, and John Kani's thought-provoking Nothing but the Truth (2002). From a pre-colonial drama history followed by colonial subjugation in which indigenous practices were repressed or marginalized, to their resurgence in the form of politically motivated drama and theatre, practitioners of drama and theater in southern Africa have finally found liberation from some of the more restrictive practices. European models and the declamatory struggle-time political style, and eventually began to utilize a variety of hybridization processes to cement a distinctive and nuanced regional cultural identity. See also apartheid; Cape Town; colonial policies and practices; education, school; festivals and carnivals; Fugard, Athol; Literature; Mandela, Nelson; Music; Popular Culture: Southern Africa. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Coplan, David B. In Township Tonight: South Africa's Black City Music and Theatre. Johannesburg, South Africa: Ravan Press, 1985. Davis, Geoffrey and Anne Fuchs, eds. Theater and Change in South Africa. Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1996. Gunner, Liz, eds. Politics and Performance: Theatre, Poetry and Song in Southern Africa. Johannesburg, South Africa: Witwatersrand University Press, 1994. Hauptfleisch, Temple. Theater and Society in South Africa. Reflections in a broken mirror. Pretoria, South Africa: J. L. van Schaik Academic, 1997. Hauptfleisch, Temple and Ian Steadman, eds. South African Theatre: Four Plays and an Introduction. Pretoria, South Africa: HAUM Educational Publishers, 1984. International Relief and Defense Fund for Southern Africa. Black Theater in South Africa. London: International Defense and Relief Fund, 1976. Kamlongera, Christopher. "Theater for Development: the case of Malawi". Theater Research International 7, No. 2 (1982): 207-222. Kavanagh, Robert Mshengu, eds. Popular Works from South Africa: Ons phola hi. London: Heinemann, 1982. Kavanagh, Robert Mshengu, eds. Theater and Kulturkampf in South Africa. London: Zed Books, 1985.

THEOLOGY

Krueger, Loren. The South African Drama. Plays, Parades and Audiences since 1910. London: Routledge, 1999. Mda, Zakes. "Current Trends in Developmental Theater in South Africa". In Writing South Africa, ed. Derrick Attridge and Rosemary Jolly. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press 1998. Orkin, Martin. Drama and the South African State. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1991. People's Theater Committee, Institute for Adult Education, University College of Botswana. Laedza Batanani: Organizing the People's Theater: The Experience of Laedza Batanani, 1974–1977. Gaborone, Botswana: np, 1978. Solberg, Rolf, eds. Alternative Theater in South Africa: Conversations with Major Movers Since the 1970s. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: Hadeda Books, 1999. Solberg, Rolf, ed. South African theater in the melting pot. Trends and developments around the turn of the millennium. Grahamstown, South Africa: Institute for the Study of English in Africa, 2003. Von Kotze, Astrid. Organizing and Acting: The Natal Workers' Theater Movement, 1983–1987. Durban, South Africa: Culture and Working Life, 1988. TEMPLE MAIN MEAT EDWIN HEES

THEOLOGY.

See Christianity; Islam; Judaism in Africa; Philosophy; religion and ritual.

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HURRY HARRY

(1895-1970). Kenyan nationalist leader and first President of the East African Association, Harry Thuku was born into a poor family in Mbari ya-Gathirimu in northern Kenya and left home at the age of twelve to attend a Gospel Mission Society high school, where he learned to read. and writes. At sixteen he left school and went to Nairobi; There he found employment with the Standard Bank of South Africa as a courier before being convicted of fraud and jailed. He was released in 1913 and worked as a clerk counting cottages before joining the Leader of British East Africa newspaper as a typesetter and being exposed to the world of politics. Thuku had a particular problem with the forced labor system in Africa. Back then it was commonplace for Africans to be dependent on an economy

dominated by the colonial powers to submit to a system in which they were forced to do whatever physical labor the Europeans imposed on them. Sharing low wages and being forced to pay taxes to the colonial government for the "privilege" of getting work, Africans were unable to control their circumstances and had no way of accessing the empire of power and production access. This system was institutionalized in 1919 when every African job-seeker was required to carry a kipande, a container containing registration documents of the work availability of the person carrying the documents. By decree of the colonial government, taxes on African workers were increased while wages were reduced. Dissatisfaction grew and Kenyans formed their first political organization, the Kikuyu Youth Association, after a meeting in 1921 in a suburb of Nairobi where objections to the labor system were discussed. The organization soon became the East African Association (EAA), which established branches in Kenya. With Thuku as the organization's first president, they sent letters of protest to the Colonial Secretary in London while organizing meetings in Kenya to protest the allocation of most of Kenya's fertile land to Europeans. In 1922, Thuku was arrested for his involvement in the EAA. To protest his arrest, the EEA organized demonstrations in Kenya and twenty people were killed by colonial troops at the Nairobi meeting. Fearing further uprisings, authorities deported Thuku to Mombasa, then to the island of Kismayu, and later to Marsabit in the far north. He spent nearly nine years in prison there, using his time to learn about farming. He returned home in 1930 and immediately began work on his own farm, which became one of the richest in Kenya at the time. Later in life, Thuku was the first African director of the Kenya Coffee Growers Union (KPCU). He saw Kenya's independence in 1963 and died on June 14, 1970. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Kenya; Work: Conscripts and forced labourers. BIBLIOGRAPHY

King, Kenneth, ed. Harry Thuku: an autobiography. Nairobi, Kenya: Oxford University Press, 1971. SARAH VALDEZ

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TIJANI, AHMAD

(1737-1815). Ahmad Tijani was a Muslim mystic and founder of a Sufi order, the Tijaniyya. Tijani was born in 'Ayn Madi in south-west Algeria and studied the Islamic Mystical Way in Fes (Morocco). During a lengthy visit to Egypt and Arabia between 1772 and 1778, mainly for pilgrimage purposes, he obtained permission to spread the Khalwatiyya Sufi order. But upon his return to Algeria, in 1782 or 1783, Tijani announced that he had received a waking vision from the Prophet Muhammad, who had authorized him to begin an independent mission of spiritual guidance and to transmit special litanys of prayer. In 1789 he moved to Fes, perhaps effectively exiled by the Ottoman authorities in Algeria, and remained there until his death. Although Tijani found favor with the Moroccan court, there was considerable opposition from academic circles to his claims of direct prophetic leadership. Indeed, although his teachings were widely disseminated in North and West Africa, there has always been strong opposition to his claims that he is the highest-ranking saint of all time (qutb al-aqtab) and that he deserves more merit for reciting certain Tijani litanies. (especially the Salat al-Fatih) than to recite the Korpan. His claim to the sole authority of Prophet Muhammad led him to forbid his followers to resort to saints of a different order; This has led to friction between Tijanis and other Sufis and occasional violence. He left no manual of his teachings, but a disciple, 'Ali Harazim ibn Barada, compiled an account of his life and teachings which he claimed Jawahir al-Ma'ani, although this has been shown at least in part to be a plagiarism from a earlier source.

See also Fez; Islam; Prophetic Movements.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abu Nasr, Jamil. The Tijaniyya: a Sufi order in the modern world. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965. Paden, John N. Religion and Political Culture in Kano. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. Triaud, Jean-Louis and David Robinson, eds. The Tijaˆniyya: A Muslim Brotherhood for the Conquest of Africa. Paris: January 2000. JOHN HUNWICK

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TIMBUKTU.

Timbuktu (Tombouctou in French) is a historic city in Mali, located six miles north of the Niger River at the southern tip of the Sahara. Timbuktu, most likely a Berber place name, was founded in the 11th or 12th century as a trading center where a camel caravan route across the Sahara connected to the Niger River trade network. The city rose to prominence in the 14th century when it was one of the capitals of the Mali Empire and its main 'port' in the Sahara. At this time the market town was beginning to develop a reputation for Islamic scholarship, exemplified by its Sankora Mosque University. In 1468 Timbuktu fell to the Songhay Empire. The city's intellectual and commercial elite had strained relations with the Songhay rulers, and some sought refuge in Walata, a city across the empire's western border. In 1591 the Moroccan army occupied Timbuktu and many of its clergy and scholars, such as Ahmad Baba, were exiled to Marrakesh. Thereafter, civil authority reverted to the Arma, a group descended from Moroccan officers married to Songhay women and allied to regional Tuareq tribal leaders. The Arma regime lasted until the end of the 18th century. During this period, the Trans-Saharan trade routes responsible for the city's wealth declined irretrievably, but the city continued to produce scholars such as qAbd al-Rahman al-Saqdi (d. 1655) and Mahmud AlKaqti (d. 1664). Cultural and intellectual activities continued in the first half of the 19th century under the Kunta Sheikhs who established the Qadiriyya Sufi order there. The Kunta administered Timbuktu's relations with the Masina dina (1818–1862) and then the Tukulor Tijaˆnıˆ Empire until it was occupied by the French in 1894. At the beginning of the 21st century, the city (32,000 inhabitants in 1998) is a regional administration city. Center and one of the main tourist destinations in Mali, famous for its adobe architecture and the thousands of manuscripts in Arabic that testify to the intellectual achievements of the past. In 1988, Timbuktu and its libraries were declared a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

See also Mansa Moises; Marrakech; Niger River; slave trade; Sunni qAli; Walata.

TIME CALCULATION AND CALENDAR

Minaret of the Sankore Mosque. Sankore is one of Timbuktu's three historic Friday Mosques. The mosque is probably as old as the city itself. In the 15th and 16th centuries it functioned as a university and its scholars were highly respected. Like much of the historic city, this minaret is built of adobe and has a very pointed pyramidal shape, characteristic of Sudanese architectural style. PHOTO BY JOHN A. SHOUP, AL AKHAWAYN UNIVERSITY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abitbol, Michel. Timbuktu and the Gun [Timbuktu and the Gun]. Paris: G.-P. Maisonneuve & Larose, 1979. Cissoko, Se'ke'ne' Mody. Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire: The Flowering of Sudanese Niger in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries. Dakar: New African Editions, 1975. Saad, Elias N. Timbuktu Social History: The Role of Muslim Scholars and Notables, 1400–1900. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983. ERIC S. ROSS

people in modern industrial societies are reasonably familiar with simple technologies, but in other respects they differ strikingly. This paper examines the traditional methods of counting time in African societies and discusses how the concepts of time involved differ from modern concepts of time. Indigenous weather calculation systems in Africa have often gone unnoticed and have largely been superseded by Western and Islamic forms in the 21st century, leaving information on traditional systems sparse. TIME DIVISIONS OF THE DAY

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CALCULATION OF TIME AND CALENDAR. The way people in small African illiterate communities keep time

The day usually begins at sunrise or sunset and is divided according to the position of the sun and the main social activities. Those of the Konso of Ethiopia are as in Table 1.

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based on seasonal activities. Konso provides a standard example of a farming village calendar in Table 2.

Subdivisions of a typical Konso day Dawn Dawn until the sun rises high Period around mid-morning From then until early afternoon Midday meal Early until late afternoon Late afternoon When cattle return home after dusk Sunset Evening (including dusk and sunset) When it quiet becomes dark supper night

the characters are not cut, (large, whole day) when the light is dark the light is dark shishiipa (and sunset) dumateta all the shishipa'akuta etowa halketa

Tabla 1.

These divisions of time, which partially overlap, are sufficient to coordinate ordinary social activities: the Western fixed-hour clock is necessary only for the highly organized social world of schools and offices, and for calculating the time employees work in the factory or shop . Timekeeping systems that include the hours of darkness only appeared where regular astronomical observations were made at night, as in ancient Egypt where the idea of a 24-hour day was first developed. Although in some sub-Saharan African societies some males are able to make observations of the night sky, this did not lead their society to adopt official systems for calculating night time. Paul Bohannan's observations about the Tiv of Nigeria are general: the Tiv are much less specific about nighttime weather. The time between nightfall and around 10 a.m. is called “sitting together” (teman imoˆngo). Then follows 'middle of the night' (helatoˆ tugh), which overlaps with 'the hour of the first sleep' (icin i mnya moˆm); “The time of the second sleep” (acin a mnya ahar) is around 3:00 a.m. or a little later. The morning breeze (kiishi) gives its name to the time just before dawn. (317).

Days are counted in relation to weeks and even months, but only in the rarest of cases are counted the number of days in the year.

This type of named month system is not typically found among hunter-gatherers, whose only way of calculating time is usually by foraging sequences throughout the year. But while it's often assumed that a named-month calendar is essential for farming and planning your seasonal work, this is not true. For the practical purposes of agriculture, people know very well what to do during the agricultural year and can easily list these activities in chronological order upon request, as in the case of the Konso calendar. In particular, the planting must be coordinated with the weather, which of course varies from year to year, while natural signs such as the Pleiades, associated with the arrival of the rains, and the sun's rising positions on the horizon all year round.

The Konso Seasons Calendar

Sweet

main activities

Buena

Ene/Feb Oypa

xayshima: land preparation, specifically uprooting old sorghum stalks and burning debris. Some crops.

Katana/Sorora

Feb/March ayla: cultivation of crops. The rain begins. Sakanokama

Katana/Sorora

March/April Murano

Saasaha Weapon: First Weeding. The rain continues.

Katana/Sorora

April/Mai Pillelo

armafaya: main weeding. The rain continues.

Katana/Sorora

May/June day

olapa: last weeding. epalta: scarecrow. The harvest begins to ripen.

Experts |

June/July Tola

The harvest continues to ripen.

Experts |

July/August Orxolasha

fera: the harvest begins. Cooler and cloudier.

Experts |

August/September Sessaysha

fera: the harvest goes on.

Similar

September/October Partupota

xayshima: land preparation. Mending* of cut sorghum roots. Small rains begin.

Similar

Wallet October/November

Weapon: Weed.

Similar

Nov/Dic Ointela

fera: Harvest of suckling plants*. Small rains end.

Buena

Dic/Ene Porinka

fera: cotton harvest. Soil preparation and uprooting of sorghum stems.

(* sapling is a second shoot of a crop such as sorghum)

ANNUAL CALENDAR

However, the most important system of timekeeping is the annual calendar, and in Africa this

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Tabla 2.

TIME CALCULATION AND CALENDAR

Auspicious and Unfavorable Months of the Year Konso Month Nothing beats a smile on your face

Dates January/February February/March March/April April/May May/June June/July July/August August/September September/October October/November November/December December/January

Good/Bad ⫹ ⫹ ⫺ ⫹ ⫺ ⫹ ⫹ ⫺ ⫹ ⫺ ⫹ ⫺

Tabla 3.

Therefore, the practical importance of calendars can easily be overestimated. Even where people like the Konso have mentioned months; Unlike people in Western societies, they don't constantly think about what it is, and when asked the name of the current month, they may not know it and need to think about it or ask someone else. The main use of the months mentioned is actually to coordinate social events and to serve as a guide as to when religious ceremonies should be performed, but since religious ceremonies are primarily about good harvests and the health and fertility of people and animals, there is a need for these calendars to be permanently linked to the seasons and agricultural activities. As a result, some months can be considered propitious for religious ceremonies while others are not (see Table 3). Thus, calendars are a very important part of the general system of classification and people's sense of cosmic order, and the neighboring societies of the Eastern Cushitic language group have a pattern of auspicious and inauspicious months somewhat resembling that of the Konso. THE PROBLEM OF THE MOON

There is a fundamental problem in matching the lunar months to the solar year: the lunar year is about 11¼ days shorter than the solar year, since each lunation (period from one new moon to the next) lasts 29½ days, so a sequence of 12 lunar months is only 354 days, not 365¼. This means that after 3 solar years a lunar calendar will be advanced by about 1 month in relation to a

fixed solar calendar. The ancient Egyptians solved this by more or less ignoring the moon entirely and adopting a purely solar calendar of 12 months of 30 days each with an additional 5 days at the end of the year, making 365 days. This advanced by 1 day every 4 years compared to the current solar year because the ¼ day was omitted, but was still quite stable in the short term. But the Konso calendars, widespread in Africa, are called luni-solar because they try to coordinate the months with the solar year, and this means that, unlike the Egyptian calendar, they have to be corrected about every three years. . The Borana of East Africa have a very sophisticated way of solving the lunar problem by using the stars in conjunction with the phases of the moon, but this is unique to Africa and a much more common way is to repeat one of the months. if necessary, which is in the case of Konso Oypa: the rain is said to start at Sakanokama, but if it doesn't, Sakanokama is still treated as Oypa. Since all konso can observe the delay of the rain themselves, there is no problem as to who orders the repetition of oypa or how the consensus is reached. The Konso weather pattern, where December and January are regularly dry and the rains, if any, come in April, makes this type of calendar correction possible. For example, consider state A, where rainfall is punctual for all or even most consecutive years. This would mean that Oypa does not repeat itself often enough to correct the calendar, roughly every three years. By then it would have been brought forward to January and since this month, like December, is regularly a very dry month, Oypa would have to be repeated and the calendar corrected. Second, we consider state B, where Oypa returns too frequently after a series of very dry years. In this case, the end of Oypa would be postponed until March or even April, when there would be regular heavy rains again, and therefore it would not be repeated until it fell again in its right place. The end of Oypa will therefore vary within the solar year between January and March, but usually ends sometime in February just before the big rains, keeping the calendar in a fairly stable approximation to the solar year.

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The Konso, like most other illiterate people, had no idea that there is a 365-day solar year and a 354-day lunar cycle, with one cycle moving faster than the other. They did not count the number of days in the year at all, and although they now know that the Amharic calendar has 365 days, they do not consider it better than their own, only a difference in customs. Its only interest is to more or less adjust the standard months to the seasons. Another very common method is to have a thirteen month calendar and skip the thirteenth month until necessary; This essentially does the same thing as repeating a month. Here, too, the Nupe of Nigeria begin their year with the month that marks the beginning of the rainy season: “From the beginning of the rainy season, people count twelve, thirteen, or sometimes fourteen months until the new rains begin. The last month of the previous year (ie the 13th or 14th month) is then identified with the first month of the new year” (Needle, 409). Although in many societies it is often assumed that the year starts with an important event like the rain, people can also agree on when the year should start. or there may be agricultural, legal, and ritual years beginning in different months. It's also possible that people have an idea of a year that includes the seasons and a sequence of months, but aren't sure how many months it has. Although it is generally believed that there are 30 days between each new moon, practical observation of the new moon is difficult; The math tends to get uncertain at the end of each month, so when the new moon appears on the 29th, people will say he must have miscounted. Within the month, the waxing and waning phases of the moon are extremely important, so the months are usually divided into halves before and after each full moon, with the day count occurring within each half. (The waxing and waning times of the moon are also often magically significant.)

moon and was adopted by Judaism and eventually Christianity and Islam, which spread the idea throughout Africa. But there were Indigenous African weeks, particularly in East and West Africa, where they were based on local cycles of four or five markets organized in such a way that people could walk to at least one of them during the week. The four-day market cycle of some of the eastern Cusita peoples and the five-day cycle of the Yoruba are examples. Market cycles are examples of how social structure, rather than the natural world, can provide the basis for chronology, and social chronology allows people to conceive sequences of events that span many years. In kingdoms, people can use sequences of kings and the events of their reigns. Among the Baganda: the periods were marked by the reigns of the kings, called mirembe of each king; Mirembe means the period of peace enjoyed during the king's reign, after the anarchy and riots that abounded during the interregnum between the death of a king and the appointment of his successor. The events that fell in a particular king's reign were chronologically established by the wars in which he was involved or, if there was no war, by the hill on which the king lived at the time before his capital was raised was moved to another hill . This method of time marking allowed people to determine when an event occurred or when a person was born in a matter of weeks. (Roscoe, 37)

Societies with formal systems of age groups might use them as guides to the sequence of past events, especially when the groups are based on successive generations. The Konso did this on the basis of an 18-year cycle, as shown in Table 4. Calculation of time by age groups Orxasha Kayala Onayla Qadasha Qawasha Qasha Arapala Fulasi ensembles

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AND TIME ACCOUNTING

Several African societies also make arbitrary divisions of the month into weeks. The seven-day week originated in Babylon as the closest full-day equivalent of the four phases of the week

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Dates before 1845 1845-1863 1863-1881 1881-1899 1899-1917 1917-1935 1935-1953 1953-1971

Tabla 4.

TIME CALCULATION AND CALENDAR

Battles and other significant events could be associated with this set sequence, and they also tracked age-related ceremonies using a series of stones in a sacred grove, so they knew the system had begun in 1593 (in our chronology). The related Borana had an even more remarkable age system, with an eight-generation cycle of 280 years, which provided scholars with the framework within which historical events were ordered. But other societies might use age determination systems in very different ways to create an arbitrary and fully closed schema of the past, and an extreme case is that of the East African Pokot:[P]or the Pokot the past, which the present and future become not only for encompasses the individual, but the nation as a whole, of eight ages whose names repeat themselves in the same cyclic order over time. No point in the cycle, no age-related name can be used to mark the beginning. . . Within this cycle, and only by using age-related names, no event can be dated more than three generations. It may not come as a surprise, then, that the repetition of age-specific cycle names amounts to a recapitulation of tribal history. Each age group is associated with a series of events, events whose form is repeated when the name of that age group is repeated. The history of the pokot (man, I am tempted to say, the history of his actions since assuming his final human form) is included in the cycle of the eight ages. Only the appearance of the gods and their acts of creation are outside of this cycle. Divine history (at least before the creation of man) is indefinite, social history is cyclical. (Peristiany, 183)

Just as age groups could form closed systems of chronology, so could kinship structures emerge: [T]he Nuer lineage system can be viewed as a fixed system, with a constant number of steps between living humans and the founder of his clan, and the lines holding a constant position have to each other. No matter how many generations follow, the depth and reach of the lineages do not increase. . .. How superficial the Nuer period is can be gauged by the fact that a few years ago the tree under which mankind was born still stood in western Nuerland! (Evans-Pritchard, 107-108)

THE ISLAMIC CALENDAR

Absolute dating systems based on a specific historical event are completely absent from traditional sub-Saharan Africa, and where they do exist they are the result of Christian or Islamic influences. the islamic

The era is calculated from the migration, Hidjra, of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in AD 622 and officially established in AD 638. Official and important events in Muslim history have been dated later on this basis, but the years of the AH (Anno Hegirae) chronology are actually lunar, not solar. In AD 632 (10 AH), Muhammad decreed that Muslim religious life should be based on a purely lunar calendar, deliberately unrelated to the actual seasons with which pagan festivals were closely associated. Each month begins with the local sighting of the new moon, but the last day of the month cannot be predicted; The only exception is that the month of Ramadan cannot last longer than 30 days even if the new moon has not been seen. The result, of course, is that the lunar months have an ever-changing relationship with the seasons and take a 32.5-year cycle to complete. However, the needs of agriculture, taxation and astronomy continued to be met through the use of local solar or lunar-solar calendars, and the seven-day week remained an integral part of the Muslim calendar, eventually becoming standard in North Africa and other regions of the continent , such as northern Nigeria and Somalia, to which Islam also spread. In the absence of such an absolute dating system, it is particularly difficult for individuals to accurately count their age, even in societies with fixed age systems, so physical and social maturity rather than actual age are the relevant criteria. of personal age in traditional African societies. THINK ABOUT TIME

The calculation of time in Africa, whether related to natural or social processes, is based on sequences of real events: these can be cyclic, like the seasons, the phases of the moon, the daily movements of the sun, the human life cycle... from birth until death and the succession of generations; or linear, like the events in the life of the individual and his society. This dependency on sequences of events has important consequences for African conceptions of time. First, it means that the calculation of time is qualitative, not quantitative. That is, certain events are related to other events, such as "this town hadn't moved when my youngest son was born" or

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"The government came after I was circumcised but before I got married." to different logical series there are few attempts to correlate the different types of timing. The Tiv do not attempt to relate the moons to markets or farming activities or seasons. If you ask how many moons there are in a year, the answer will vary between ten and eighteen; If you ask how many markets are in a moon, the answer will range from three to eighteen, and the number of days in a moon will range from ten to fifty. (Bohanna, 257)

Standard sequences of events, then, do not form quantifiable series like hours on a 24-hour clock: you cannot say that three twilights correspond to one morning, or that the same time elapses from first light to excursion as from the cattle's return to Dinner. The same is true of the subdivisions of the year, even when expressed in named months: [The Nuer] have very limited ability to calculate the relative lengths of the periods that lie between events, being few and not well defined or systematized. , units of time. . .. It is true that the year is divided into twelve units, but the Nuer do not count them as fractions of a unit. They might be able to tell what month it happened, but they find it very difficult to count relationships between events in abstract number symbols. They think much more easily in terms of activities and in sequences of activities and in social structures and structural differences than in pure units of time. (Evans Pritchard, 103-104)

Since time is represented in different, non-quantifiable processes and social structures such as generations or age groups, time is not understood as a universal and everywhere the same standard, as a chronology, but divided into different sequences of local events. Without a set of objectively defined, quantifiable and comparable units, these qualitative sequences of events may have intervals where time is no longer counted, they may proceed at different rates in different places, so there is no reason to believe that it will someday far is the same here as a day elsewhere, and time can speed up or slow down. Therefore it is not uniform, continuous or homogeneous.

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Homogeneous time is common to the entire universe and is not localized or subjective; in continuous time, the present is just a moment in a single process in which there are no intervals, while uniform time flows at the same rate. Second, speed as such is irrelevant, since this notion of time is tied to sequences of events; one cannot compare the speeds of different sequences relative to a common time standard – chronologically – and only the order in which events occur and their position relative to one another count, so they are like static reference points on a journey or road. The string ABCDEFGHIJ could well represent a path of milestones or a sequence of events, and things like order (A before D before H) are important; inclusion (B between A and C); and proximity (H next to I and G, but not J or F). So J and A are far from E while C and G are close, but there is no way to measure how close or far they are independently of the series itself, since distance or duration is only in terms of count of the intermediate intervals can be specified . items in a sequence. This type of space is called "topological" space and also provides a very good model for African notions of time. The concepts of time in Tanzanian Iraq, for example, are basically topological. They have words for years, months, and days, but they only use them sequentially, not chronologically: they do not use these measures comparatively to create a general concept of a unified time, that is, a chronology by which all events can conform be compared. be compared. Years, months, days, and hours are subdivisions of the flow of time, and as we use the term here, they are topological. Creating a unified space (e.g., Euclidean) or a unified standard of time (e.g., a chronology) requires a logical act that Iraqis don't perform. (Thornton, 171)

This spatialized conception of time is very widespread, as among the Lugbara of Uganda, where "a man, his family, and his lineage stand at the center of a field of social relations that span both space and time" (Middleton, 230). . Greater temporal distance is comparable to greater geographic distance, and distance in both cases correlates with strangeness, either from pre-human culture heroes or from alien monsters, as shown in Figure 1. Based without an absolute chronology like the common era of modern western culture

TIME CALCULATION AND CALENDAR

The creation

the first Europeans

the coming of the heroes

The first district commissioner

The children of the heroes The ancestors in genealogies

newer Europeans

neighboring relatives

Area of direct social relations magician

Inverted beings beyond the horizon

Beyond social relationships

then with ci

Be inverted Be inverted

und cial Tests so h ttribu al s ng

genealogies

be singing

Mito

Lugbara categories of social space and time

FUENTE: Middleton,

John. Lugbar religion. London: International African Institute, 1960. Courtesy of the International African Institute.

Illustration 1.

in solar years and divided into equally stable months, days, hours, minutes and seconds, and without the experience of clocks and without comparing processes running at different speeds, it is impossible to abstract beyond a static "topological time" the measurement of the temporal sequence from the details of certain sequences of event processes and the representation of time as homogeneous, continuous and unitary. THE MEANING OF THE PAST

Events, especially human activities, can also be viewed in terms of whether they are complete, ongoing, or not yet started. In this sense, events or activities that are completed or "perfect" are more real than those that have not yet completed and much more real than those that have not yet begun. Therefore, in traditional societies with simple technologies, where temporal interests are focused on social activities, the past will have much greater normative importance than the future, since the past provided the basic social institutions and relationships in which social networks were established the past. In oral cultures, therefore, people look to the past rather than to what is to come. For them history

it does not yet aspire to a goal in the future, but points to the roots of its existence as the origin of the world, the creation of mankind, the formation of its history and traditions, and the birth of its society. Therefore, the future is unreal not only because it contains no events, but also because it has no religious or normative meaning. Of course it is possible to project a succession of markets, seasons, ages or generations into the future and discuss what will happen in many of these entities from now on, but generally when Africans talk about the future it is in terms of the Realization of already started events. They are primarily literate civilizations that contemplate overall cosmic processes, such as cycles of growth and destruction, or a linear process leading from the creation of the world to a final judgment and grand finale of history. Also, in traditional African thought, there is no conception of an indefinite process of evolutionary change leading to a perfect mode of social organization, or an ideal state of society set in the future to be addressed. See also Anthropology and African Studies; king lists and chronologies; Philosophy. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bohanan, Paul. "Concepts of Time Among the Nigerian Tiv". Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 9, no. 3 (1953): 251-262. Booth, N. S. "Time and Change in Traditional African Thought." Journal of Religion in Africa 7, no. 2 (1975): 81-91. Dux, G. Time in History. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1992. Eickelman, Dale F. "Time in a Complex Society: A Moroccan Example." Ethnology 16 (1977): 39-55. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. The Nuer: A Description of the Ways of Life and Political Institutions of a Nilotic People. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1940. Hallpike, C.R. The Konso of Ethiopia: A Study of the Values of a Cushitic People. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972. Hallpike, C.R. The Foundations of Primitive Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. Legesse, Asmarom. Gada: three approaches to the study of African society. New York: Free Press, 1973. Mbiti, John S. African Religion and Philosophy, 2nd Edition. London: Heineman, 1969.

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Middleton, John. religion lugbara. London: International African Institute, 1960. Nadel, S.F. A Black Byzantium: The Kingdom of Nupe in Nigeria. London: International African Institute, 1942. Nilsson, Martin P. Primitive chronology. Lund, Sweden: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1920. Peristiany, J. G. "The ideal and the real: the role of the prophets in the Pokot political system." In Studies in Social Anthropology, ed. J.H.M. Beattie and R.G. Lienhardt. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biobaku, Saburi Olade. The Egga and its neighbors, 1842–1872. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1957. Smith, Robert Sydney. The Consulate of Lagos, 1851–1861. Berkeley, University of California Press, 1979. Yemitán, Oladipo. Madame Tinubu, merchant and kingmaker. Ibadan, Nigeria: University Press, 1987. TOYIN FALOLA

Roscoe, John. die Baganda. London: Macmillan, 1911. Nr.

Thornton, Robert J. Space, time, and culture among Tanzanian Iraqis. New York: Academic Press, 1980. CR HALLPIKE

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TINUBU, DAME

(1805-1887). Madame Tinubu thrived as a merchant and politician in Abeokuta, Badagri and Lagos, three 19th-century southwestern Nigerian cities that took advantage of their proximity to the sea and traded with Europeans. Tinubu was born in Abeokuta and moved to Badagri around 1832 when he married Adele, Prince and later King of Lagos. As a trader, Tinubu supplied local goods in exchange for a variety of European imports. As a politician, she was deeply involved in the dynastic struggles of Lagos. She grew rich and powerful, but was bitterly resented by her rivals. Tinubu faced a crisis in Lagos in the 1850s due to his prominent position in both commerce and politics. The British, who had established an initial presence along the coast, had begun to interfere in local politics in a way that threatened Tinubu and many others. For the British, she was a terror that encouraged the slave trade, which they were keen to end. Expelled from Lagos in 1856, she returned to Abeokuta, where she reestablished her trade and became involved in local politics and warfare. For her distinguished service, she was bestowed the title of Female Leader, iyalode. Tinubu has become a legend in modern times. In Abeokuta, his tomb is a tourist attraction and a place is named after him. In Lagos, the names of an important street and square keep your memory alive. See also Abeokuta; slave trade; Women: Women and Trade.

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TIP TIP

(1837-1905). Tippu Tip was the popular name of Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi, the best known of the many 19th-century Arab and Swahili traders in the Great Lakes and upper Congo region of central Africa. The Sultanate of Zanzibar, particularly under Sultan Barghash ibn Saqid (reigned 1870-1888), had taken over the centuries-old Swahili trade with the hinterland, bringing ivory and slaves to the coast and returning inland with cloth and beads. One inland trade route for this trade was from Kilwa, where then mainly slaves were traded with the Réunion French, to Lake Mweru and beyond, and another route, mainly trading in ivory, from Bagamoyo and Zanzibar to Lake Tanganyika. The area served by this latter route was divided into two main spheres of influence: chief Nywamwezi Mirambo in later central Tanganyika and Tippu Tip in the region across the lake in the upper Congo-Maniema region. , opened later. These two men became effectively independent rulers or warlords, although they remained economically dependent on Zanzibar, which supplied them not only with goods but also with arms and ammunition to assert their positions. Mirambo then lost the support of Sultan Barghash. The Sultan had placed his trust in Tippu Tip, a fellow Arab, to control the distant hinterland on his behalf against the predatory agents of King Leopold's International African Union, represented there by Henry Morton Stanley. The latter planned to export the region's ivory west down the Congo, while Barghash appointed Tippu Tip to retain the East Coast monopoly over Zanzibar. Tippu Tip built a vast satrapy in the upper Congo that stretched as far as Stanley

AND:

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY

Control over a large area and depended on a temporary monopoly on arms. Some were not indigenous Africans and therefore had no ties to local groups and chiefs; They depended on the support of uprooted and uprooted Africans such as the Ruga Ruga and other 19th-century refugees in modern-day Tanzania. Most of these rulers were little more than petty warlords, but some, such as Tippu Tip and Mirambo, achieved a degree of political stability and brought some sort of order to areas devastated by the slave trade and other brutal forms of exploitation. Their empires were short-lived, and were taken over by more powerful European colonizers, who subjugated or destroyed them in the 1890s and 1900s, when ruler power stood in the way of imperial consolidation. See also Barghash ibn Saqid; Ivory; mirambo; Slave Trade: Atlantic, Central Africa; Stanley, Henry Morton. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brode, Heinrich. Tippoo Tib: The Story of His Career in Central Africa. Trans. H. Havelock. London: Arnold, 1907. Farrant, Leda. Tippu Tip and the East African Slave Trade. New York: St Martin's Press, 1975. Tippu Tipp (1837–1905). The slave owner and trader Tippu Tip helped many western explorers, including Henry Morton Stanley, on their travels through Africa. CORBIS

Falls (now Boyoma Falls), where he was in direct contact with Stanley and other Europeans working for Le'opold. He was appointed official Zanzibar governor (wali) of Upper Congo and Manyema and administered a modus vivendi between the Belgians and Zanzibar for some years. Tippu Tip's authority, although ultimately dependent on his military strength, was far-reaching: he exercised a sort of personal justice - he appointed his own officers and deputy governors from among the many Arab merchants who lived in the region - and he established a sort of des Peace between the many local groups and their bosses vying for a piece of the lucrative trade. Tippu Tip returned to Zanzibar in 1891 and died there in 1905. Tippu Tip was an example of a stock figure in 19th-century African history, the aspiring businessman turned politician

Renault, Francois. Tippo Tipp: an Arab potentate in central Africa in the 19th century. Paris: French Society for Overseas History, 1987. Tippoo Tip. Maisha ya Hamed bin Muhammed el Murjebi yaani Tippu Tipp. Trans. Wilfried Howell Whiteley. Kampala, Nairobi, 1966. JOHN MIDDLETON

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TOGO This entry contains the following articles: GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY SOCIETY AND CULTURES HISTORY AND POLITICS

G E O G R A PHY AND ECONOMY

As a small country in West Africa, Togo occupies a unique place in the ecological sub-region. Togo's coastline lies at the only break in the forested strip stretching in from southern Senegal

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in the west to northern Angola in the southwest. However, the relationship between their geographic and ecological positions is entirely coincidental. Its international borders and economic activities derive from its complicated colonial history.

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY

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The United Nations estimates Togo's current population at 5.7 million and growing at about 3.5 percent annually, although the last government census dates from 1981. A fifth of the population lives in the capital. Kara, the second largest city, has about 200,000 inhabitants. Population density reached approximately 173 people per square mile in 1991, with 75 percent in rural villages.

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The climate is mostly tropical and humid, although the dry desert winds from the Harmattan blow south from December to early February, bringing cooler weather and low humidity. Annual temperatures range from 75 to 98 degrees Fahrenheit in the south and 65 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the north. The 30 Togolese ethnic groups can be found in all parts of the country, especially in the capital Lomé (estimated population in 2000: 1 million), which lies on the border with Ghana.

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ATA K O R A

Togo consists of six geographic regions. The coastal region is low-lying, with a sandy beach surrounded by the Tokoin Plateau, swamp and the lagoon of Lake Togo. The Tokoin (Watchi) Plateau extends northeast about twenty miles inland at an elevation of 200 to 300 feet, with a higher plateau drained by the Mono, Haho, Sio and tributary rivers. The Atakora Massif stretches diagonally across Togo from the city of Kpalime to the northeast, in various places it is known as the Danyi and Akposso Plateau, Fetish Massif, Fazao Mountain, Tchaoudjo Massif and Kabye. The highest point is the Pic d'Agou at 3,937 feet. North of the range is the Oti Plateau, a savannah land drained by the river of the same name. A higher semi-arid region extends to the northern border.

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With a total area (land and inland waters) of 21,925 square miles, Togo extends 365 miles inland, forty miles wide on the Atlantic coast and ninety miles wide at its widest point. It borders Ghana to the west, Burkina Faso to the north and Benin to the east.

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Gulf of Guinea

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SOCIETY AND CULTURES

BUSINESS

Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy and employs about four fifths of the working population. Farmers grow food for subsistence and for sale. In Togo, private ownership coexists with traditional community management, and land is bought and sold in both systems. Private land ownership began during the German period when small plots were acquired for trade and missions. The French continued this policy of moderate expansion, but in the post-independence period this pattern was complicated by the president's illegal seizure and redistribution of plantations belonging to his opponents. As a result, much of the country in the south, and particularly the capital Lomé, continues to be the scene of intense litigation taking place in civil courts. Warnings are often written in red on the walls of packages to discourage sale or fraud. Agricultural and processed products are sold both retail and wholesale in shops and markets. The informal economy is important and can be found in all town and village markets, including the ´Assigame´ (Grand Marche´) in Lome´. Most state-owned industries were privatized in the 1990s. Monopoly phosphate production remains Togo's largest industry; Power generation is a distant second. The once popular banking sector is in decline and tourism is negligible. Togo has a small oil refinery, animal husbandry, telecommunications and information technology are growth industries. Togo has a very high usage of internet and email services per capita. Togo's sluggish and underdeveloped economy, which suffered from an aid boycott in 2007, is heavily dependent on agricultural exports. In the mid-1990s, four primary products: coffee, cocoa, cotton and phosphates accounted for more than 50 percent of Togo's exports. Until the ports of Cotonou and Lagos were rebuilt, Lomé was one of the busiest on the coast. However, road and rail infrastructure is in rapid decline despite the introduction of the free trade zone in 1989. France is by far Togo's largest trading partner. Fifty percent of French imports are consumer goods, a small portion of which is re-exported to Burkina Faso and Niger. Forty-two percent of imports

they are equipment, construction and agricultural supplies. Togo imports all the oil it needs. Traditional division of labor is not yet universally maintained in Togo, although men do most of the heavy construction work. Women do most of the remaining manual labor in towns and villages, although less machine work, and they control the small market trade. Child labor is ubiquitous and numerous incidents of child slavery have been uncovered since 1996. In large parts of Togo, girls tend to work rather than go to school. People with a post-secondary education often hold professional positions. Successful entrepreneurs may or may not have formal training, but they often have family, friends, or well-wishers who have helped fund their establishments. See also agriculture; children and childhood; Climate; Education: University and College; Slavery and Subservient Institutions. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dude, Michele. Trade and conviviality: traders from the Sahel in the Zongo de Lomé (Togo). Paris: Orstom Publishing House, 1983. Comhaire-Sylvain, Suzanne. Femmes de Lome ́ [The Women of Lome ́] St. Augustine: Steyler Verlag, 1982. Decalo, Samuel. Historical Dictionary of Togo, 3rd edition. Baltimore, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996. Marguerite, Yves. [Population, Migration and Urbanization in Togo and Africa: Articles and Documents (1981–1993)]. Lome: Benin University Press, 1994. Piot, Charles. Remotely Global: Village Modernism in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. BENJAMIN LAWRANCE

SOCIETY AND CULTURES

Togo was colonized first by Germany in 1884, then by Britain and France under an international agreement. The United Nations (UN) administered the region and designated Togoland as a trust territory in 1946. On April 27, 1960, French Togoland became the independent Republic of Togo. During the interwar period, various organizations including the Cercles des Amitie's Franc¸aises,

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the Duawo and the Bund der Deutschen Togoländer organized and fought publicly and privately against French rule. The circles became the Committee for the Unity of the Togolese Party (CUT) under the leadership of Sylvanus Epiphanio Olympio. In a UN-backed election, the CUT gained control of the legislature, and Olympio became the country's first president on April 27, 1960. In the early years of Togo's independence, the southern Ewe peoples dominated the government. But the Kabye' and other northern groups dominated the army. In 1963, a group of Northern Army officers assassinated Olympio. Until the dictatorship of Gnassingbe Eyadema, southern Ewe culture dominated all walks of life, surpassed only by the influence of France. But after 1967, Eyadema deigned to correct Southern biases in cultural, political, and social life, and to that end created authenticity modeled on the program of Zaire's dictator Mobutu Sese Seko. This move attempted to highlight Togo's many diverse cultures, but resulted in narrowing them down to just two, the northern and the southern. Since the 1990s, the idea of the Togolese nation has been superseded by that of the Kabye ethnic group. Ethnic tensions are minimal, despite persistent gossip from some politicians. The political struggle came to a head in 1991-1994, leading to South-North violence. Despite the accompanying refugees and resettlement, Togo's thirty ethnic groups continue to mix and intermarry across the country.

SOCIETY AND CULTURES

Togolese, the standard French three or four course meal, is always served at events. In Togo, private ownership coexists with traditional community management, and land is bought and sold in both systems. Much of the country in the south, and particularly the capital Lomé, remains the scene of intense civil court litigation. Warnings are often written in red on the walls of packages to discourage sale or fraud. Agricultural and processed products are sold both retail and wholesale in shops and markets. The informal economy is important and can be found in all town and village markets, including the ´assigame´ (Grand Marche´) in Lome´. Traditional division of labor still does not apply in Togo, although men do most of the heavy construction work. Women do most of the remaining manual labor in towns and villages, although less machine work, and they control trade in small markets. Child labor is ubiquitous and several incidents of child slavery were uncovered in 1996 and 1998. In large parts of Togo, girls tend to work rather than go to school. Professional positions are often filled by people who have completed post-secondary education. Successful entrepreneurs may or may not have formal training, but they often have family, friends, or well-wishers who helped fund their start-up. SOCIAL STRATIFICATION

FOOD AND CUSTOMS

Togolese typically eat two or three meals a day, each consisting primarily of a starchy product such as cassava, sorghum, corn, millet, yams or plantains. A hot and tangy sauce is served for lunch or dinner, made from a protein such as fish, goat, bean or beef, and often rich in (red) palm oil or peanut paste. Fruits and vegetables, although readily available, are consumed more by the bourgeoisie. Food and drink such as beer, gin and soft drinks are important ceremonial items. Throughout the North, food, beer and sacrificed animals are offered to the spirits and consumed by the participants. In the South alcohol is often the main ingredient. Among the affluent middle class

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Togolese society is divided along traditional and non-traditional lines. The traditional elite includes "kings" and overlords and voodoo priests. The modern elite includes government officials, businessmen and educated people. Poor rural families often send their children to school or to work with relatives who live in the cities. During the colonial period, everything but the simplest dress was considered a prominent social factor in the villages, while in the cities, brick houses and cars were the hallmarks of social standing. By the mid to late 20th century, wealthy villagers could afford tin roofs and some even telephones, while in cities big houses, cable television, Western clothing, and dining out are hallmarks of success.

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SOCIETY AND CULTURES

FAMILY, PARENTS AND SOCIALIZATION

Although women have achieved legal equality, they remain unequal in all areas of life. Women and men are kept separate at most social gatherings. Females usually eat after males but before children. Discrimination against women in the workplace is a common and widespread practice. Women have little place in political life and less in government programs, although there is a ministry for women and family affairs. Only female descendants of ruling families, successful businesswomen or the few female politicians enjoy privileges equal to those of men, more deserved than granted. An interesting exception is Mama/Nana Benz, named for her wealth amassed in the capital's markets and fondness for Mercedes-Benz automobiles. Traditional systems of social organization play an important role in the daily life of the Togolese. Kinship systems provide networks of support and are visible during all major life cycle ceremonies. Marriage practices vary across Togo by ethnic group, although organized religions and the state have transformed ceremonies even in the most remote villages. Societal rejection of ethnic exogamy is declining, although the government unofficially advises against it. Marriage law follows French laws and requires an appearance before a magistrate for all state apparatuses to operate. Moral marriages without state sanction are still widespread. Payment of the dowry remains important throughout Togo. Polygamy is on the decline, although unofficial relationships retain their role. The basic family structure is extensive, although nuclear family units are becoming more common in urban areas. In most cases, the man is the head of the household. In the husband's absence, the wife's elder brother takes precedence. The extended family has a redistributive economic basis. In the case of a legal marriage, inheritance law is based on French legal norms. Customary law of inheritance applies only in the case of a customary marriage. Most ethnic groups in Togo have traditionally become patrilineal or as a result of colonization. Kinship is largely patrilineal throughout Togo and remains strong even among the westernized urban population. Village and neighborhood leaders remain an integral part of local dispute resolution.

The babies are cared for by the mother and the women of the household, including the servants. In some ethnic groups, babies are not exposed to their fathers until eight days after birth. Children stay at home until the age of five. Initiation ceremonies are given from this age and throughout adolescence. From the age of five, all children can start school, provided the family can pay the school fees. On average, boys are three times more likely to complete primary school than girls. Secondary education is more common in the south and many public and private schools offer the French Baccalaureate system. Children are often sent abroad during strikes. RELIGION

French law has protected freedom of religion since the beginning of colonialism. The French interpreted this to encompass polytheistic African religions, and this may partially explain the popularity of traditional vodou cults and rituals. Many different forms of Christianity and Islam are practiced throughout the country. Roman Catholicism is the most widespread Christian denomination. Islam is practically native in the north. Since the 1990s, various American Baptist sects, the Assemblies of God, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Eckankar have made inroads. Religious officials, whether Catholic priests or voodoo sofos, are held in the highest regard in both rural and urban settings. You are always invited to bless traditional ceremonies as well as construction projects or new initiatives. Traditional healers are also held in high esteem and are gaining popularity in the wake of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. A Togolese funeral is the most important event in a person's life. Wildly extravagant by Western standards, funeral services are commonplace. Brass bands, choirs, football tournaments, banquets and stately church services are just as central as an artistically decorated coffin. Funerals often last a month or more. However, if the person dies in an accident or other sudden tragedy (such as AIDS), it is considered a "hot death" and the burial will be completed more quickly. See also Christianity; colonial policies and practices; Eyadema, Gnassingbe (E'tienne); Islam; kinship and affinity; ancestry and ancestry; Marriage

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HISTORY AND POLITICS

Togolese Republic (Republic of Togo) Population:

5,701,579 (2007 est.)

Area:

56,785 square kilometers (21,925 sq mi)

Official language:

French

Languages:

French, Ewe, Kabre, Cotocoli, Hausa

National Currency:

Franken CFA

Main Religions:

Animist 33%, Christian 47%, Muslim 14%, other 6%

Capital city:

Lomé (estimated population 850,000 in 2006)

Other urban centers:

Sokode, Palime, Atakpame, Bassari, Tsevie, Anecho, Sansanne-Mango, Bafilo, Taligbo

Annual rain:

ranges from 1020 mm (40 in) north to 1780 mm (70 in) south

Main geographic accidents:

Business:

Mountains: Togo Range, Mount Agou Lakes: Togo Lake (an inland lagoon) Rivers: Oti, Kara, Mo, Anie, Ogou, Mono, Haho, Zio, Alabo, Aka GDP per capita: US$1,700 (2006)

Main products and exports:

Government:

Heads of state since independence:

Agriculture: coffee, cocoa, cotton, yams, cassava (tapioca), corn, beans, rice, millet, sorghum, cattle, fish Manufacturing: agricultural processing, cement, handicrafts, textiles, beverages Mining: phosphates, limestone, marble, iron ore, Bauxite, some uranium, gold, diamonds The territory currently occupied by Togo was originally part of the land claimed by Germany and was partitioned between the British and French in 1914. Modern Togo is the part administered by France under a League of Nations mandate (later a UN Trust). Independence, 1960. Constitutions adopted 1961 and 1963, suspended 1967. New constitution adopted 1979, replaced 1992. Republic. President elected for a 5-year term by universal suffrage. Unicameral National Assembly with 81 seats elected by universal suffrage. The President appoints the Prime Minister. The President and Prime Minister appoint the Council of Ministers. For local government purposes, there are 30 prefectures. 1960-1963: President Sylvanus Olympio 1963-1967: President Nicolas Grunitzky 1967-2005: President General Gnassingbe Eyadema 2005-: President Faure Gnassingbe

Armed Forces:

The President is the Commander-in-Chief. Army: 6,500 Navy: 200 Air Force: 250 Paramilitaries: 1,000

Transport:

Rail: 568 km (353 miles), maintained by Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Togolais Roads: 7,547 km (4,679 miles), 24% paved Ports: Lome, Kpémé National Airline: Air Togo has domestic flights and connections to Lagos. Togo has a 7% stake in Air Afrique. Airports: International facilities in Lomé. Smaller airports in Sokode, Sansome-Mango and Niamtougou. 5 other smaller airports.

Media:

Main newspapers: La Nouvelle Marche, Togo-Presse, Courrier du Golfe, Forum Hebdo, La Parole, Kpakpa Désenchanté, La Tribune des Démocrates. The main publishers are the state Etablissements des Éditions du Togo, Radiodiffusion du Togo and Radio Lomé provide the radio service. Togolese television provides television services.

Literacy and Education:

Overall literacy rate: males: 75%; female: 47% (2006). Post-secondary education is provided by the University of Benin in Lomé; National Institute for Educational Sciences; University Institute of Technology, Health and Life Sciences; National Administrative School; Togolese Institute for Human Sciences; Technical University; and through scholarships at French universities.

systems; Mobutu Sese Seko; Olympius, Sylvanus Epiphanius; postcolonialism; production strategies; Women: Women and the Law.

Rosenthal, Judy. Possession, Ecstasy and the Law in Ewe Voodoo. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998. BENJAMIN LAWRANCE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lawrance, Benjamin N. Locality, Mobility, and 'Nation': Peri-Urban Colonialism in Togo's Eweland, 1900–1960. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2007. Piot, Charles. Remotely Global: Village Modernism in West Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

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HISTORY AND POLITICS

The German Reich annexed Togo in 1884 as a protectorate. Around 1900, German colonial rule extended far beyond the country.

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HISTORY AND POLITICS

Modern Togo and the German colonial capital had moved to Lome' from Ze'be'. While the expansion of colonial rule was a brutal military process with fierce resistance from the Kotokoli, Kabye, and Konkomba, once the occupation ended, a road and railway system built with German money and forced labor facilitated the economic exploitation of the territory. British, French and African troops invaded and conquered German Togoland in 1914. During the war, British forces controlled much of the Ewe region and also reunited the Konkomba kingdoms. The mandates of the League of Nations officially began in 1922, with one-third under British and two-thirds under French administration. The Ewe subgroups continued to split across the border, while Konkomba reunited under its capital, Yendi. Many smaller groups like the Akposso were cut off from their farmland. During the Mandate, the French forced large numbers of Kabye to settle in the center and south, officially to reduce overpopulation but in reality to provide reserves of cheap labor for plantations and industrialization. During the same period, the capital grew rapidly and all of Togo's ethnic groups and religions established themselves in the historic Ewe region. Major administrative developments of this period included increased centralization, the improvement and invention of traditional chiefs' authorities, and the entrenchment of political authority in the Ewe-speaking elite. The anti-colonial movement began in earnest in the 1930s. Two popular protests, the uprising of the market women in 1933 and the suppression of the pro-German interest group Bund der Deutschen Togoländer, are considered to be formative moments of anti-colonial sentiment. After these incidents, the French ordered the Togolese elite to form a Cercle des Amitie's Francaises to counter grumblings from the resistance. Sylvanus Epiphanio Olympio, the organization's first vice-president, eventually transformed the group into an independence party, the Comite 'de l'Unite' Togolaise (CUT), in 1945. The CUT fell out with a rival conservative group led by the future president. Nicolas Grunitzky, but ultimately prevailed. After a United Nations-sponsored referendum resulted in British Togoland joining the Republic of Ghana upon independence in 1957, French Togoland followed with elections for the Republic of Ghana

Union of France in 1958 paved the way for the independent Togolaise Republic in 1960. With independence, the Ewe subgroups, led by President Olympio, sought to quickly replace the French administrative cadre. Olympio's initial pan-African and pluralistic concerns gave way to authoritarianism and arbitrariness. With increasing literacy and economic resources, including a monopoly on the sale of cocoa, cotton and coffee, the Ewe elite was over-represented in government and administration. But even during the French occupation, northern groups like the Kabye and Kotokoli made up more than eighty percent of the armed forces. This ethnically biased distribution of political and military capital paved the way for the first coup in sub-Saharan Africa. Olympio was assassinated in 1963 while attempting to scale the wall of the US Embassy. A second coup in 1967 ended southern rule, and Colonel Kabye' Gnassingbe (E'tienne) Eyadema (1937–2005) became President. Eyadema was overseeing a program of economic resource redistribution when large numbers of Northerners entered the political and administrative arena, and in turn diverted a sizable percentage north. The creation of a one-party state under the government of the Rassemblement du Peuple Togolais (RPT) provided Eyadema with the classic tool of post-colonial prebendalism. In the late 1970s, under the leadership of Mobutu, the former dictator of Zaire, Eyadema launched an "authenticity program" that made ethnic identities essential but further exacerbated the North-South divide. Inflated primary export prices combined with a tourism boom meant that Togo briefly had a very buoyant economy. In the late 1980s, however, economic stagnation caused by enormous international debt foreshadowed the current social and political turmoil in Togo. North-South ethnic tensions occasionally erupted in violence during the 1990s, although official and unofficial political propaganda and the professed platform of political parties greatly exaggerate existing divisions. In 1991–1992, a democratic revolution modeled on the 1991 constitutional convention that deposed Benin's Matthieu Ke're'kou resulted in Eyadema's brief loss of the presidency and ended the RPT-led one-party dictatorship. Hundreds of thousands of Kabye fled the political violence north

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South, and at the same time the Southerners fled to the neighboring countries of Ghana and Benin. Western embassies have been closed and expatriates and donors have been evacuated. Eyade'ma, with the help of French military equipment and political support, soon regained control in a bloody carnage. Southerners, almost exclusively Ewe speakers, continued to face brutality and harassment, but rule in the north was also secured through violence and intimidation. Eyadema managed to regain limited political legitimacy in Western eyes through the ballot box in 1993, but the fraud and violence of the 1998 presidential election sealed his status as an African outcast. Rigged general elections in 2002 gave the RPT a supermajority, and the party subsequently amended the constitution to allow the president to run for a third consecutive term in 2003. With those restrictions lifted, Eyadema was able to, and did, run again. and won the June 1 election with 57.2 percent of the vote. Another change lowered the minimum presidential age from 45 to 35. Since Eyadema's son, Faure Gnassingbe', was then 35 years old, many believed that he was paving the way for a dynastic succession. In the early 21st century, both Amnesty International and the United Nations Commission on Human Rights have conducted investigations into alleged human rights abuses. Repeated attempts to call general elections have failed, and Western donors have made their return conditional on building a peaceful and democratic civil society. On February 5, 2005, Eyadema died of a massive heart attack. At the time of his death, he was the longest-serving ruler and dictator in Africa. His son Faure Gnassingbe' immediately seized power with the help of the military, just as the next in line (the President of the National Assembly) was visiting neighboring Benin. Gnassingbe' promoted rapid constitutional change, a measure denounced by the populace and the international community as a military coup. Under intense pressure from ECOWAS and the international community, Faure resigned on February 25 and was replaced by Bonfoh Abbass, Deputy Speaker of Parliament until the April 24, 2005 presidential election. The elections were marred by violence and fraud. Most observers estimate at least 800 people were killed

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police and military. At least 40,000 people continue to live as refugees in Ghana and Benin. When the President of the National Electoral Commission announced the result that Faure Gnassingbe had received 60 percent of the vote, she immediately fled the country. By most accounts, Gnassingbe' is continuing his late father's politically repressive policies. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); Eya'tienne); Olympio, Sylvanus dema, Gnassingbe (E Epiphanio. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bouraima, Nouridin and Yves Marguerat. The population of Togo in 1981: first observations of the preliminary results of the November 1981 census. Lomé´: Republic of Togo, Ministry of Planning, Industry and Administrative Reform, Directorate of Statistics, 1983. Cornevin, Robert. History of Togo, 3rd edition. Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1969. Decalo, Samuel, Historical Dictionary of Togo, 3rd Edition. Baltimore, MD: Scarecrow Press, 1996. Lawrance, Benjamin N. Locality, Mobility, and Nation: Peri-urban Urban Colonialism in Togo's Eweland, 1900–1960. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 2007. Marguerat, Yves. Population, Migrations, Urbanization in Togo and Sub-Saharan Africa: Articles and Documents (1981–1993). Lomé´: Presses de l'Université´ du Benin, 1994. Piot, Charles. Remotely Global: Village Modernism in West Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1999. BENJAMIN LAWRANCE

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TOMBALBAYE, FRANK - OIS-NGARTA (1918-1975). Franc ̧ois-Ngarta Tombalbaye was born in Bessada in southern Chad (Moyen-Chari) and raised by Protestant missionaries. He found employment as a secondary school teacher at Fort-Archambault (now Sarh) and Fort Lamy (now N'Djamena). In 1946 he helped found the Parti Progressiste Tchadien (PPT), the Chadian branch of the pan-French-African Rassemblement De ´mocratique Africain (RDA), and later became its president

TOMBALBAYE, FRANK – OIS-GARTA

the first Chadian union, the Union des Syndicats Autonomes du Tchad (USAT). In 1952 he was elected deputy for Chad in the French National Assembly; Re-elected in 1957, he was then vice-president of the Grand Conseil de l'Afrique E'quatoriale Francaise. After serving as Prime Minister of Chad in 1958 under the Loi-Cadre that framed the transition of the French colonies in Africa towards independence, he was elected President of the Republic on the eve of independence on August 11, 1960. The interests of the Christian South – and particularly that of his own home group, the Saras - at the expense of his country's Muslim north, such as neighboring Sudan (and also Nigeria), which is politically divided, reflect their position on either side of the Saharan rim. By ruthlessly eliminating his northern opponents, he sowed the seeds of the rebellion that broke out there in 1965 and eventually led to his downfall. France's military engagement on behalf of his regime proved utterly ineffective against the guerrilla tactics of the Front for the Liberation of Chad (FROLINAT), which was backed by its Islamic neighbor to the north, Libya. Even the Tombalbaye Cultural Revolution modeled on Mobutu Sese Seko's doctrine of authenticity failed to restore national unity. The revival of the Yondo ceremony - a long-abandoned rite of passage and not always pleasant, as Tombalbaye's deep scars on his face attest - had the opposite effect, leading to mass defections in his party's rank and file, the Mouvement National pour la Re'. volution Culturelle et Sociale (MNRCS), which emerged from the PPT. It faced an impasse in the north and rising political tensions in the south; Dissatisfaction also extended to the military. On April 13, 1975, a group of soldiers and gendarmes led by Captain Wadal Abdelkader Kamougue (born 1939) surrounded Tombalbaye's residence and demanded that he surrender. Tombalbaye resisted arrest and was shot dead in his living room. He was later buried in the north, hundreds of kilometers from the capital. Nineteen years later, on April 13, 1994, at the request of the Chadian National Conference, Tombalbaye's remains were transferred to Bessada, his southern hometown, and given to members of his family in the United States

Chadian President and Prime Minister Francois-Ngarta Tombalbaye (1918–1975) at a press conference June 18, 1963. Tombalbaye's face bears ceremonial tribal scars when he visited Paris after attending the African Heads of State Conference in Addis Ababa. ª BETTMANN/CORBIS

during a ceremony attended by Chadian President Idriss De'by. See also Chad; Christianity: Overview. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buijtenhuijs, Robert. The Frolinat and the popular uprisings in Chad, 1965-1976. The Hague: Mouton Publishers, 1978. Lanne, Bernard. "Pele for Tombalbaye". The Month in Africa, Nos. 249–250, 251–252 (1986). Magnant, Jean Pierre. Chad: state crisis or government crisis? In Black African States: Formations, Mechanisms and Crises, ed. Jean-Francois Medard. Paris: Karthala, 1991. RE'NE LEMARCHAND

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TIMBUKTU.

See Timbuktu.

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(1948-). Amadou Toumani Toure´ was born in Mapti, Mali. He attended primary school in his hometown and secondary school in Bamako, the capital of Mali. Toure´ enlisted in the army and joined the Parachute Corps. Trained in the Soviet Union and France, he became a corps commander in 1984. After the troops of Malian military dictator Moussa Traore' (b. 1936) killed more than a hundred pro-democracy protesters in 1991, Toure' led a coup that ousted Traore'. As interim head of state, Touré led a transition to democracy that included the adoption of a constitution that created a multi-party political system. In 1992 he resigned after the election of a new president. After leaving office, Toure participated in several humanitarian missions to improve health care in Mali and promote peace in the region, often in partnership with former US President Jimmy Carter's Carter Center. In 2002, Touré ran for the presidency of Mali. He was non-party but supported by a coalition of opposition parties. He led the first round with 28 percent of the vote and then won the second round with 64 percent of the vote. His five-year term as President began in June 2002.

' (1948–). Mali's President Amadou Toumani Toure arrives for the opening ceremony of the 10th Francophonie Summit in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, November 2004. Despite having no party affiliation, Toure was elected president in June 2002.

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As president, Touré improved Mali's relations with the United States and worked towards a market economy. But he also proposed hard against US subsidies to American cotton farmers, which he said were eroding cotton exports from Mali, the largest cotton producer in sub-Saharan Africa. Building roads, providing all Malians with drinking water and eradicating diseases were Touré's main goals. In the spring of 2006, his army put down a brief rebellion over economic aid from nomadic Tuareg tribes in the desert of northern Mali. See also Mali: History and Politics; War: Internal Revolts.

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Bingen, R. James; David Robinson; and John M. Staatz; Ed. Democracy and Development in Mali. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2000. Toure´, Amadou Toumani and Blaise Compaore´. "Your farm subsidies are strangling us." New York Times, July 11, 2003. MICHAEL LEVINE

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, SAMORI (1830–1900). Samori TOURE Toure´ was born on the upper Milo River, one of the headwaters of the Niger, at a time of great economic, political and cultural change

́ , SAMORI-TURM

the African savannas of the extreme west. By 1867 he had established his great state construction company to remodel the southern parts of these grassy woods. Although the transatlantic slave trade was ending, its legacy of the militarization of African societies, increased trade, and rapid social and cultural change had disrupted the upper Milo Valley. The upper valleys of Milo and Niger had been important long-distance trade routes, linking the Atlantic ports of Guinea's coast with the vast expanses of interior Sudan. Slaves, gold, salt from the desert, dried fish and fabrics from the interior passed through these routes. These were sold for firearms, cloth and paraphernalia imported from the coast and kola nuts from the forest. Increasing trade through this region encouraged smaller communities (Malinke: kafu) to fight for greater territorial control. Military activities led to more conflict and captives, and fueled the slave trade both on the coast and inland, where the demand for labor was great to increase production of goods for regional and long-distance trade. African traders traveling these routes often settled at strategic points, forming a trade diaspora. Many were Malinke and called Dyula. Of Muslim origin, the Dyula often developed mutually beneficial relationships with the dominant political groups under which they settled. In some cases, these agreements resulted in their renunciation of Islam. So it was with the de Touré family. The rise of Islamic militancy near Futa Jallon in Konya (in the border region between modern-day Guinea and Ivory Coast) and wider Sudan in the late 18th and early 19th centuries emboldened the Upper Guinea dyula towards greater political and military activity as Muslims. Touré's fortune was directly linked to these trends. In the 1850s, Touré took part in the military adventures of two competing kafu. After learning the arts of war, he allied himself with his maternal relatives, who were also involved in state building. He became a military leader (keletigi) and transformed the local warriors into disciplined cavalry and infantry units, using imported horses and firearms acquired through his trade connections in Dyula. Touré is tactical and organizational

The innovations contributed to his growing political strength. Around 1874 he moved to Bisandugu with his followers and proclaimed himself Faama (king). Realizing that his new military power rested on sustained trade relations, Touré expanded his state to include the goldfields of Bure and the commercial center of Kankan. Organizing the vast territorial empire that his state had become required more than military power. In 1886–1887 Toure embraced Islam, changed his title to Almami, and declared a theocracy. He demanded the conversion of all his subjects to Islam. In April 1887 a decisive campaign against the kingdom of Kenedugu began. His armies besieged the capital Sikasso. The siege lasted until August 1888, when Touré was forced to abandon his efforts and face a new enemy, the French, who were advancing militarily inland from Senegal, and unrest in his empire. Since 1881, the French military commander, Lieutenant Colonel Gustave Borgnis-Desbordes, had built a series of forts stretching from Kayes on upper Senegal to Bamako on the Niger. The French expanded along a corridor that ran through the Umar Empire to the north, the Muslim state of Futa Jallon to the south, and the state of Toure to the southeast. French forces clashed with Toure's army in February 1882 in the town of Kenyaran in upper Niger. Touré's warriors forced the French to retreat. The two sides remained separate until late 1882 when the French began building a fort at Bamako. In April 1883, Touré's forces fought the French near Weyanko. Touré's forces won the first encounter; but ten days later they were defeated by the French. The battle reassured both Touré, who now appreciated crucial French firepower, and the French, who recognized their vulnerability on the edge of an uncertain supply route. The two forces did not meet again until 1885, when Touré sought a decisive victory against the ever-increasing French presence in the Bure goldfields. He forced the French to retreat, but his superior firepower prevented their defeat. Touré reluctantly signed a peace and trade treaty with the French on March 28, 1886; he sent his son Karamogo to France; and turned his attention to Sikasso. On March 26, 1887, he signed an amendment to the 1886 peace treaty that ceded the left bank of the Niger to the French and established an ill-defined protectorate.

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The failed siege of Sikasso was the turning point in Touré's fortunes. Achieving a successful war gave African warring states such cohesion. Failure to proceed with confiscation of the loot prompted a rapid dissolution of the uneasy cooperation of the war leaders who made up the state. The long siege of Sikasso marked the beginning of an acute crisis. The heart of Touré's empire rebelled against his imposition of Islam, theocracy, and lack of booty. In addition, the French, under the command of Colonel Joseph Simon Gallieni (1886–1888) and Major Louis Archinard (1888–1891), resumed aggressive territorial expansion. In early 1888, Touré reorganized his army, procured modern bolt-action rifles, and instituted a form of bureaucratic centralism over tactics and supplies. He actively recruited from among the Africans who had served the French or British and could train their armies in European warfare. He organized workshops in which his smiths copied imported rifles. Despite his political and military consolidations, increasing French incursions into his territories threatened his power and resources. In 1892 Touré decided to attack in the east. To stop future French incursions, he ordered everyone in his kingdom to destroy their villages, take their food, and follow his army. Between 1893 and 1898, Toure' conquered a vast territory between the Sassandra and Volta rivers, stretching from Seguela in the west to Wa in the east. In the process, his state changed from a system of government that arose from local and regional conditions into an empire of conquest. Touré hoped to move to a region where neither the French nor the British were active. Instead of finding refuge, he and his warriors found themselves caught between the French and British armies in Nigeria, between the African populations who constantly rebelled against him. Touré's campaigns in the Eastern Empire unleashed the last massive waves of slavery in that region. When the French stormed Sikasso in May 1898, Touré decided to return home. He ordered his twelve thousand soldiers and one hundred thousand civilians to return to Guinea. Hunger and desertion devastated his forces. When the French finally captured him on September 29, 1898, he was leading only a battered and starving band of warriors and civilians. Toure´ was deported to Ndjole´, Gabon, where he died of pneumonia on June 2, 1900.

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See also colonialism and imperialism; Islam; military organizations; slave trade. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Camera, Ke'moko. El Almamy Samory Toure´: Great captain and manager. Conakry, Guinea: Secretary of State for Scientific Research, Institute of Popular Traditions, 1970. Fofana, Khalil I. The Almami Samori Toure´ Emperor: Historical Account. Paris: African Presence, 1998. Freestone, Basil. The Riders from Beyond. London: D. Dobson, 1981. Person, Yves. Samori: A Dyula Revolution. 3 flights. Nimes, France, 1969-1971. Person, Yves. "Guinea Samori". Trans. Juan Blanca. In West African Resistance: The Military Response to Colonial Occupation, ed. Michael Crowder. London: Hutchinson, 1978. RICHARD ROBERTS

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(1922-1984). Long after the nations of modern Africa gained independence, Se'kou Toure' continues to provoke violent reactions. For some he was an opponent of French colonization, a supporter of Pan-Africanism and a leader of the Guinean independence movement; for others, however, he was a Marxist ideologue and ruthless dictator. Born into a humble family in Faranah, Upper Guinea, he had little education. However, he was soon recognized for his leadership qualities and oratory skills. He acquired some business skills and attended Georges Poiret School in Conakry for a year. He practiced many trades before deciding to trade. He got a job in the post office and soon became a trade unionist and politician. In 1947 he co-founded the Rassemblement De'mocratique Africain (GDR) and was a member of the local section of this party, the Parti De'mocratique de Guine'e, of which he became Secretary General in 1952. In 1956 he founded the Confe 'de'ration Nationale des Travailleurs Africains', a union which retained its autonomy from the French trade union federation, the Confe'de'ration Ge'ne'rale des Travailleurs. He later founded other Grad Unions in French West Africa. Toure' mobilized the Guinean population with anti-colonial rhetoric, denunciations of the administrators appointed by the French rulers

´ , SE ´ KOU TOUR

expectation of independence. In the 1958 referendum calling for the creation of a French community of African quasi-colonies, he famously advocated immediate independence with the statement: "We prefer poverty in liberty to opulence in slavery." He won around 95 percent of the vote Guinea became the first French colony in sub-Saharan Africa to gain full independence. Touré became the first president of the new republic and remained president until his death twenty-six years later.

'kou Touré' (1922–1984). Between 1965 and 1975, Touré, President of the Republic of Guinea, severed all ties between them

The harshness of France's response to Guinean independence forced Touré to radicalize his anti-imperialist rhetoric and turn to the Eastern Bloc for economic aid and technical assistance. As a result, the republic became a one-party state with the abolition of civil liberties, the nationalization of industry and commerce, and the collectivization of agriculture. Touré trapped Guinea in a cycle of increasingly radical Marxist theories that led to growing opposition, which in turn led to further repression and overwhelming misery. External threats, real (as in 1970, when Portuguese mercenaries and Guinean opposition forces invaded) or imagined, were used to justify constant police surveillance and the use of informants. There were between 10,000 and 30,000 victims of the police state, and large numbers of Guineans went into exile: more than 1 million, or about a fifth of the population.

Guinea and France, its former colonial power. CORBIS

colony and appeals to those who are on the fringes of society (such as slaves, youth and women). In order to consolidate his party and assert himself against the colonial authorities' electoral fraud, he used authoritarian means to eliminate his opponents. Several stages marked his political ascent, linked both to his personal strategy and to the French reforms. He organized his first strike in 1945 and was briefly imprisoned in 1947. In 1953 he led his first successful general strike and was elected to the Guinean Territorial Assembly that same year. He was elected Mayor of Conakry in 1955 and served as a Member of the French National Assembly in 1956. In 1957 he became Vice-President of the Governing Council when the French were establishing institutions in Conakry

The resumption of diplomatic relations with France in 1975 (which had been severed in 1964) was followed by economic liberalization in 1978 as a result of women's demonstrations, a weak economy, rural resistance and external pressures. The continued liberalization of the economy was stepped up after Toure's death in 1984, perhaps ironically, at a hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. It was an odd place to die for an opponent of capitalism and imperialism. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Labour: unions and associations; political systems.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adamolecum, Lapido. Se'kou Tourés Guinea: an experiment in nation building. London: Methuen, 1976. Diallo, Amadou. The death of Diallo Telli. Paris: Karthala, 1983.

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Jean-Jean, Mauricio. Se'kou Toure': An African Totalitarianism. Paris: Harmattan, 2004. Kake´, Ibrahim Baba. Se'kou Toure'. The hero and the tyrant. Paris: Groupe Jeune Afrique, 1987. ´ Editions Suret-Canale, Jean. The Republic of Guinea. Paris: E socials, 1970. ODILE GOERG n

TOURISM. The word "tourism" in the African context refers to visiting cities and places in Africa for recreation, to observe or hunt animals, or to broaden the experience of cities and places that are culturally different, foreign, or exotic. There have been three main historical periods in African tourism where the majority of tourists came from countries outside of Africa. It was an aspect of colonialism and globalization, a form of trade and exploitation and the exchange of the beauty and interests of African countries and peoples for non-African money.

Transportation took its place, travel became cheaper, and mass package tours, lasting just a week or two instead of the previous months, became possible and popular. Tourism has become the world's fastest growing business, coupled with the provision of hotels, quick and easy local transport facilities and the growth of guided tours. Most tourists were less affluent and socially exclusive than in earlier times, and animal killing is less common, often even banned by host country governments. The fact that most tourists come from countries with strong currencies has resulted in the tourism business being heavily supported by independent African governments: several African countries (including Gambia, Kenya, Mauritius, Réunion, Seychelles and until recently Zimbabwe) generate a significant part of their income from tourism. Trophies often include photographs and artifacts made specifically for sale to tourists rather than local use. CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF TOURISM

HISTORICAL PERIODS OF TOURISM

The first period was that of the voyages of Europeans in the late 19th century, principally to Egypt and the Nile, an extension of the 18th-century Grand Tour. They also traveled to South Africa, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, the Atlantic Islands, and other places that were then considered cultural extensions of Europe but possessed a certain exoticism to distinguish them from the more dangerous explorations that tapped into the "unknown". in Africa to European knowledge. The second period between the two world wars included, to a greater extent than before, big game hunting: the shooting of rare animals for trophies in the form of animal heads, horns and pelts, a long-standing pattern in game hunting in Europe and America. India. Other trophies were photographs and art objects made by African artists for local use and not sold specifically to visitors, many of which were stolen from shrines and royal palaces. Most tourists during this period were wealthy Europeans and North Americans who could afford the high cost and time involved in the trip. The word tourism was rarely used, the preferred word being 'journey' or local terms like 'safari'. The third period since World War II was the period of mass tourism. As passenger shipping between Europe and Africa, air traffic also declined

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Tourism has had different histories, goals and consequences in different parts of the continent. The most visited countries in recent years have been South Africa (with six million tourists), Tunisia, Egypt, Morocco, Zimbabwe (until 2006), Kenya (with a quarter of all European tourists arriving in Africa), Tanzania and the West Indian Ocean islands - and Central Africa are far behind. These countries are the most popular countries for mass tourism for the British and contain areas with climates similar to those of Europe. English or French are widely spoken and may be the official languages; The main tourism companies are British, American or French companies or have close business relationships with them. Most countries have had, or until recently had, easy availability of wildlife for shooting or photographing. They also count on the provision of hotels geared towards tourists rather than locals, the existence of safe beaches and tourist camps, and carefully maintained personal security. Many have world famous sites like Great Zimbabwe or the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Tourists visiting Africa to experience wildlife, particularly big game, probably make up the largest category. Much remains similar to the classic big game safari, only that the old connection to the upper class is gone and the animals can be photographed almost anywhere with the camera alone

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Photographs that take the place as trophies of the ancient heads and skins of sacrificed animals. An important form of tourism for island and coastal regions is maritime cruise tourism. The ships are floating hotels, tourist activities are essentially short visits to the larger ports and their neighborhoods. In most of these countries, their colonial past is emphasized to encourage tourists to see themselves as connected to that past and not just as modern misfits: time travel can be considered as important and interesting as space travel. . Many modern tourists see themselves not as explorers of little-known lands, but as visitors to former colonies, where they can see themselves as quasi-rightful owners and even imaginary reincarnations of former rulers and upper-class colonial settlers, thus continuing the previous widely held view by Africans as culturally and socially inferior peoples. In addition to the mythification of history and time, there is the redesign of the historical and politically current space. The maps of these countries are tourist-redrawn, so to speak, centered around carefully demarcated game reserves, safe beaches, exotic and ancient cities, and stunning areas like East Africa's Great Rift Valley. The contemporary urban, industrial and agricultural cores inhabited by the citizens of these countries are largely left out in favor of scenic areas inhabited by wild animals and by meticulously defined romanticized figures of traditional Africans who (or supposedly) live outside of modern cities . , and therefore viewed as purely traditional native peoples uncontaminated by the modern world. The best-known examples are probably the Maasai in Kenya and the Zulu in South Africa. Tourism companies are rewriting colonial history to portray these groups as central to the area, and economically important urban and industrial residents are excluded from the tourist view and experience. THE TWO SIDES OF THE TOURISM COIN

The tourism industry has many local economic and cultural impacts. This includes the exploitation of the local population, who generate only a small part of the tourism revenues, almost all of which go to African businessmen and governments. There is also the offending nature of many tourists, which is due to the tourists' ignorance of local and local knowledge.

traditional values and cultures and the continuation of old colonialist attitudes by many non-African tourists who see themselves as members of a global elite and enjoy their perceived economic and cultural superiority over Africans. Non-African tourism companies no longer have a monopoly in this industry. African involvement is becoming increasingly important and economically viable, although African businessmen have fewer opportunities to control companies associated with hotel ownership and air travel and can only get involved at the lowest levels of the industry, e.g. B. using tourists as a source of at least some wealth and status in exchange for personal, orientation, sexual and other services. Tourism is often informally associated with occasional prostitution, and many host areas are well known as places where marriages can take place between tourists and their hosts: the former mostly female visitors and the latter mostly male seeking wives who could take them back to the countries. , a recognized form of emigration. Other areas are notorious for hosting sex tours, where tourists openly seek out prostitutes, be they women, men or children. Not surprisingly, the exploitation of the local by the global is often disguised as uneconomic. A widespread form of tourism is the so-called ecotourism, where tourists claim not to harm the environment. By building game parks and the like, these countries' governments can claim to be at the forefront of the green eco movement - the gains can be disguised as ecological purity (there are also many private game parks in South Africa that claim the same). There is also social or humanitarian tourism, where tourists claim not to be looking for the primitive African (which generally means a poor and socially and culturally inferior African), but show a morally correct and non-exploitative face. But they are easily exploited by tour operators, African or non-African, local dance groups, artists and the like, all perfectly capable of assisting the many African and non-African game experts, art historians and world savers. the primitive found across the continent. One factor that gets little consideration from travel agencies, who build much of the ideology of tourism, is the desire to undertake something akin to a religious pilgrimage by building a landscape of tourists

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Fantasy occupied by noble animals and common people, visiting an innocent world that lies outside of the daily dealings and class and racial antagonism of the developed world. Many tourists identify with an idealized colonial past (hardly the historical reality): it is no coincidence that Africa's most-visited countries are those with a past of colonial white populations, whose histories are invented and perpetuated by a vast novel industry. , travel books, films, photographs and the like, all designed to shape the present as a continuation of an idealized or mythologized past. In short, African tourism is both a form of the outside world's exploitation of Africa and a means by which the inhabitants of an impoverished continent seek to unite and benefit from the presence of wealthy visitors from that world, as part of the dream of of the tourists of the moral and eternal innocence of a world believed to be beyond their own.

Karanga men to Johannesburg to be recorded by Columbia, London in 1929, creating the first recording of indigenous music from Southern Rhodesia. In the years that followed, he developed his diverse skills as an engineer, researcher, writer, editor, lecturer and broadcaster. Encouraged to further investigate, collect, and classify aspects of his work, he received financial support from a Carnegie grant that enabled him to record more than 600 articles on aluminum plates from June 1932 to July 1933. For twelve years (1936-1947) Tracey dedicated himself to the radio profession. In 1940 he began extensive research on Chopi's xylophone orchestras in Mozambique. He founded the African Music Society in 1948 and began publishing their newsletter. He then founded the International African Music Library and its annual African Music Magazine.

See also prostitution; Transport; Travel and Explore; wildlife; Zimbabwe cool. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Brunerr, E.M. "The Maasai and the Lion King: Authenticity, Nationalism, and Globalization in African Tourism." American Ethnologist 28, no. 4 (2001): 881-908. Gamble, W. P. Tourism and Development in Africa. London: Murray, 1989. Middleton, John. "Aspects of Tourism in Kenya". Southern African Anthropology 27, Nos. 3 and 4 (2004). Popovic, Vojislav. Tourism in East Africa. Munich: Publisher of the World Forum, 1972. Sumich, Jason. “In Search of the Other”: Tourism, Power and Identity in Zanzibar.” Anthropology Southern Africa 23, Nos. 1 and 2 (2002): 39–45. JOHN MIDDLETON

PUEBLOS.

See urbanism and urbanization.

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(1903-1977). English-born Hugh Tracey was sent to Southern Rhodesia in 1920 to work on his brother's farm, where his fascination with the music and folklore of the Karanga farmhands led him to form a group of musicians

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Hugh Tracey (1903–1977) plays the kalimba. Tracey was the founder of the International Library of African Music. The kalimba is one of many instruments from the diverse cultures of sub-Saharan Africa that he has documented during his four-decade career as a pioneering explorer of African music. COURTESY OF INTERNATIONAL

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in 1954. Drawing on recordings made on nineteen excursions in sub-Saharan Africa, he produced the acclaimed Music of Africa (25 LP) and Sound of Africa (218) series. Notable publications include Chopi Musicians (1948) and Dances of the Wiswatersrand Gold Mines (1952). See also Popular Culture: Southern Africa. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tracy, Hugo. Sound of Africa series catalogue. Volume 1. Roodeport: International Library of African Music, 1973. DIANE THRAM

of slaves Great Britain, France, Spain and Holland transported the rest. The slave trade had three legs. The first tranche was the export of goods (cowrie shells as money, pearls, salt, sugar, liquor, horses and weapons) from Europe to Africa. The second phase witnessed the transport of slaves from Africa to America. The third stage was the return to Europe with the products of slave labor (cotton, sugar, tobacco and rum). Until the 19th century, the difference in per capita income between countries was marginal and only began to widen with the Industrial Revolution. The income growth rate for the slave trade period was close to zero. COLONIAL TRADE

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TRADE, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS. Since most of the African continent has so far been spared economic prosperity, the role of international trade in African development has been at the forefront of public debates among policymakers, analysts and researchers since the 1990s and 1950s, based on empirical evidence observed over many centuries While greater openness to trade and greater integration into world markets are associated with greater income growth, the degree of openness and integration or marginalization of African economies remains a matter of debate. . Due to their dualistic economic structures, significant parts of the African economies have always been linked through trade with the rest of the world, while other parts have been stuck in self-sufficiency and self-sufficiency. Although Africa's trade with the rest of the world did not peak until the 15th to 19th centuries due to the increasing global demand for slaves, there is ample evidence that Africa has traded with the rest of the world since the earliest times. . SLAVE TRADE

During the transatlantic slave trade, which lasted about four centuries and resulted in the transportation of about 20 million Africans from Africa to the Americas, Portugal transported an estimated 40 percent of slaves a hundred years in export thanks to its initial monopoly of two slaves

In the early years of the colonial period, the colonies' coastal areas were strategic supply centers and defensive ports, at a time when control of the high seas was essential to military superiority and dominance. The coastal areas of Africa and gradually also its hinterland were later used as sources of raw materials for agriculture and mining and as markets for colonial expansion. Trade within each colonial area was tightly controlled, with widespread prohibitions and colonial monopoly markets. POSTCOLONIAL TRADE

During the post-colonial period and after most African countries gained independence in the 1950s and 1960s, the colonial trade system that prevailed in the colonial era continued unabated. Trade was characterized by the production of basic products and goods in the colonies and the production of industrial goods in Europe. Colonial companies from England, France, Portugal and Spain shaped trade, investment, consumption patterns and labor markets in African countries. Dependency theorists (including Paul Baran, Andre Gunder Frank, T. Dos Santos, and Samir Amin) argue that the chronic underdevelopment and poverty of Third World countries may be largely explained by the dynamics of the international trading system, which is characterized by "unequal exchange." , exploitation of colonies, heavy intrusion of foreign capital into minerals, plantations, light industry and consumption patterns influenced by developed countries.

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TRADE POLICY POST-INDEPENDENCE

Due to the weaknesses of newly independent African state institutions and limited domestic capacities at the time of independence and in the midst of the Cold War, the newly independent states emphasized an inward-looking import-substitution industrialization based on widespread use of tariffs and non-tariff barriers to reduce trade external competition faced by large state-owned companies. This inward trade policy resulted in slower growth, delayed investment, fiscal and trade deficits, chronic poverty and persistent inequalities. These problems were exacerbated by the 1973 and 1979 oil crises, which increased debt, political instability and reliance on foreign aid. In response to the deteriorating situation, structural reforms in three phases began in the early 1980s. The first phase focused on macroeconomic stabilization. The second phase focused on supply-side policies. The third phase focused on poverty reduction, including targeted social programs and safety nets. Trade and trade policy issues were the focus of all three phases. Recognizing the role of trade in growth, greater importance is attached to trade facilitation at borders, export diversification and global competitiveness. AFRICA IN THE WORLD ECONOMY IN THE EARLY XXI CENTURY

Although trade represents a significant part of each African country's gross domestic product (an average of 54.7% in 2004), sub-Saharan Africa's share of world trade and investment gradually declined to negligible levels towards the end of the 20th century. Because the typical African country is significantly linked to the rest of the world through foreign trade, trade policy can have a significant impact on development prospects in sub-Saharan countries. Based on the diagnosis of the causes of African stagnation in the early 1980s, which blamed much of the blame for Africa's poor economic performance in the 1970s on misguided trade policies; Trade reforms have figured prominently in many policy reforms undertaken by African countries since the early 1980s.

There are currently two conflicting views with different policy implications on the state of Africa's integration into global markets.

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The first view. Consistent with this view, a look at the evolution of simple indicators of integration (e.g. the decline in Africa's share of world exports) supports the widely held impression that Africa is dissolving or increasingly marginalized from trade [trade marginalization hypothesis], and he simply missed the opportunities offered by globalization. This is evidenced by the dramatic decline in Africa's share of world exports and imports: SSA's share of world exports fell from 2.5 percent in 1980 to 0.9 percent in 1999, while SSA's share of world imports also fell from 2.1 percent to 1 percent in 1999. Similarly, Africa's share of trade in goods fell from about 8 percent in 1980 to just 4.4 percent in 2000. This dismal performance was achieved despite tariff preferences afforded to rich countries granted under various preference systems. This first view holds that Africa's economic marginalization and dismal economic performance are the result of its relatively isolated politics and closed economies, as well as geographic factors such as access to the sea (for no fewer than fourteen economies, representing a third of Africa's population) and the tropical climate. . Unlike other parts of the world, and Asia in particular, Africa's exports (by volume) grew less rapidly than GDP while the African continent did not participate in the greater foreign direct investment opportunities available in world markets during the post-World War II golden age . fastest economic growth ever (1950-1973). Although the SSA countries had an interest in regional integration to accelerate their industrialization and growth during the last four decades of the 20th century, as evidenced by the largest number of regional integration organizations in the world, only 10 percent of African exports were intra-regional (traded with other African countries). countries), while 68 percent of exports from Western European countries were exported to other Western European countries, and also 40 percent of North American exports were exported to other Western European countries. All too often the only tangible result of regional arrangements (RIs) in Africa has been the creation of bloated bureaucracies, and most African IRs have failed to make any meaningful contribution in any substantial way to the rapid and sustained growth of economies. In the absence of full trade liberalization on the

TRADE, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL SYSTEMS

Given the slow progress in multilateral trade negotiations around the world, it is estimated that intra-SSA trade liberalization alone could increase intra-SSA trade by 54 percent. This increase could account for more than 36 percent of the welfare gains that SSA can realize as a result of global trade liberalization. Therefore, the question is not whether or not Africa should be integrated into the world economy, but how its integration should be done most effectively. It is argued that with better policies, Africa could trade more, attract more capital flows and benefit immensely from full integration into the global economy, as exports and income are known to be closely linked and trade openness offers new opportunities that expanding markets, acquiring new and more efficient production methods and technologies, new ideas and increasing factor productivity. The political implications of this view call for an emphasis on policies to expand trade opportunities. The second sight. The first view (trade marginalization hypothesis) has been challenged in recent scholarly research by a second view showing that overall Africa has not been left behind. This view holds that Africa trades not very little, and that the continent trades as much as can be expected given the underlying key determinants of trade (income, country size, and geography according to gravity econometric models). According to this second view, ASS is not poor because of lack of market access, and foreign protectionism is not to blame for ASS's poor economic and trade performance. Instead, the region is poor due to a number of factors, including a lack of democracy, political instability, a lack of efficient institutions (rule of law, strong property rights, less corruption and better governance), and poor policies that are an obstacle to markets thriving . . Of the actions needed to unlock Africa's vast economic potential and accelerate poverty reduction, trade policy is crucial as sub-Saharan Africa remains one of the most protectionist regions in the world. According to the latest data analysis, while rich countries reduced their applied tariffs by 84 percent between 1983 and 2003 as part of the Uruguay Round, SSA countries only reduced their tariffs by 20 percent. While it is well known that countries with greater trade freedom tend to grow faster than countries that restrict trade, non-tariff protection exists in poorer countries

SSA countries are still four times higher than non-tariff protection in rich countries. While average trade tariffs in SSA fell significantly in the 1990s, they are still among the highest in the world, and SSA remains one of the most protectionist regions in the world, despite calls from African leaders to end protectionist and subsidy policies in the developed world. This relatively high level of African protectionism goes a long way to explaining why intra-African trade remains relatively low. The policy implications of this second perspective require considering possible causalities between growth and other determinants. Therefore, the claim that Africa has been disintegrated by world trade is challenged through the use of new econometric techniques. There is evidence that the countries of Anglophone Africa (Eastern and Southern Africa) are reversing the trend of disintegration in Africa, particularly in their trade with advanced countries. However, the hypothesis of African trade marginalization seems to apply only to the West and Central African group of countries (French-speaking Africa). The latest research suggests that francophone countries are currently under-utilizing their trade opportunities and have experienced a disintegration over time, particularly in their trade with technologically advanced countries. This relatively poor performance of francophone Africa (West and Central Africa) compared to anglophone Africa (East and South Africa) could be explained by higher trade-related transaction costs, greater inefficiencies in key infrastructure services and trade agreements (the 1994 devaluation of the CFA currency). ) that penalize exports. DIPLOMA

Historically, no other part of the world has achieved rapid and sustained economic growth while decoupled from the global economy. Economists therefore tend to agree that increasing Africa's integration into global markets to reap the benefits of globalization is a sine qua non for accelerating Africa's wealth creation. With the continuous improvement of the macroeconomic environment, an essential prerequisite for sustainable growth, other important complementary policy elements include the stability and integrity of legal systems, better governance, less regulation for private sector development, better infrastructure,

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greater regional integration and greater trade facilitation. See also Cold War; colonial policies and practices; debt and credit; economic systems; Globalization; postcolonialism; slave trade. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kline, William. Trade Policy and Global Poverty. Washington, DC: Institute for International Economics, 2004. Coe, David and Alexander Hoffmaister. "North-South Trade: Is Africa Unusual?" Journal of African Economies 8, no. 2 (July 1999): 228-256. Assistant, Elhanan. The secret of economic growth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. Lewis, Peter, eds. Africa: Dilemmas of Development and Change. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998. Maddison, Angus. The world economy: a thousand-year perspective. Paris: Development Center of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, 2006. Subramanian, Arvind and Natalia T. Tamirisa. “Is Africa Integrated into the World Economy?” IMF Staff Papers 50, no. 3 (2003). Oyejide, T. Ademola. "Trade Liberalization, Regional Integration and African Development in the Context of Structural Adjustment". In African Voices on Structural Adjustment, ed. Thankdika Mkandiwire and Charles C. Soludo. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2003. World Bank. Can Africa reclaim the 21st century? Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000. SALOMON SAMEN

UNIONS.

See Labor: Unions

and associations.

TRADITION, ORAL.

See Literature: Oral.

Norte

TRANSPORT This entry contains the following items: OVERVIEW AIR CARAVAN RAILROAD RIVER SEA AND PORTS

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SUMMARY

When discussing transport in Africa in the 21st century, it is appropriate to focus on issues and initiatives. There is a plan to advance the goals and interventions that were part of the two-decade-long transportation improvement programs implemented under the auspices of the United Nations in the 1980s and 1990s. Foreign multinational organizations are working closely with African partners to to achieve better results than before from transport projects and closer alignment with broader development goals. Africa's transport heritage is not particularly promising. Key challenges have been familiar to commentators for many decades and appear timeless and resistant to resolution. The main problems are the cost of transportation (double that of some Asian developing countries) and the geographic inequality of quality transportation service. In rural areas with little traffic, access to public transport is often very limited: more than 66 percent of Africans live more than a mile from a road all year round. Statistics on curb wait times for delayed or postponed scheduled bus services are not available. In many places, public transport is slow, crowded and infrequent. Dangerous road transport is caused by driver pay plans that encourage overloading and speeding on rough and unmarked roads. As with land, weak regulation, poor law enforcement and unfavorable operating conditions create dangerous air and river transport. Everywhere too little is invested in all means of transport used by poor people. Long queues of vehicles form at underserved public transport terminals as well as at border crossings and customs offices. The inequalities in mobility are staggering: in the capitals of Africa, the latest generation of shiny imported cars cross pedestrians whose long, arduous journeys consume time and energy that could be used more productively. Donkey carts and handcarts clog urban streets where traffic is segregated. Transportation, made vulnerable by underinvestment and war, is particularly vulnerable to damage from extreme weather events. Messy, makeshift modes of transportation caricature Africa, and with good reason. Thousands are the worst

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of Africans die (between 62,000 and 82,000 in 2000) or are injured each year on narrow, poorly marked and poorly lit roads: embarrassed by the highest per capita road fatality rate in the world (28 per 100,000 people) affecting Africa accounts for twice as many (10%) of world road fatalities as its share (less than 5%) of all vehicles registered worldwide. The daunting challenge of reversing Africa's transport problems is the task of a new coalition of diverse development agencies and lenders working under the umbrella of the Transport Policy Program for Sub-Saharan Africa. Here, foreign multilateral financial, technical, and managerial assistance continues to replace the corporate and nationalist transportation programs of the past. The effort is to learn from a fragmented and disappointing record of transport aid and investment. So far, post-colonial investment in transportation in Africa has brought brief, piecemeal improvements in only a few places for the privileged few. Previous transport interventions in Africa have tended to focus on technological improvements that connect more places, move more people and goods, and speed up transportation. Some prestigious infrastructure projects had a more symbolic purpose. Adapting these interventions to Africa's geographic and cultural diversity proved difficult, particularly in the face of declining public funds and regional rivalry. Incoherent country and mode-specific planning and delivery contributed to inefficiency. The dominance of public monopolies in transport ownership and management hides subsidies and other inefficiencies. Current transport interventions in Africa focus on making transport more efficient and affordable. The aim is to help African economies become more globally competitive and to help Africans overcome their poverty. The goal is also to facilitate the improvement of mobility to levels that are financially and environmentally sustainable: reckless road building can exacerbate poverty by affecting agricultural self-sufficiency and ecological integrity. The provision of physical transport is carefully balanced with other steps. Improving transport while creating jobs is an obvious example of proper transport planning and investment: in the rural road sector, for example, the awarding of construction and maintenance contracts

Local worker groups generate wages, create a sense of ownership and responsibility, can restore dignity to the unemployed and empower women (who carry two-thirds of the rural transport burden). Using local materials and simple hand tools in road design, construction and maintenance is cost-effective and environmentally sound to enable affordable and sustainable non-motorised mass transit in Africa's impoverished rural areas. For several years there have been efforts in Africa to commercialize public transport. Facilitating private sector investment in transport is one way to encourage entrepreneurial and efficient management of transport resources: concessions to specialized road builders and managers and specialized railway builders and operators have yet to yield results. As expected, Africa's airports and 80 major seaports (which handle over 90% of the continent's foreign trade) will be locked out of the private sector. A notable advance in 21st century transport programming in Africa is alignment with non-transport goals. In particular, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) has politically supported the use of transport as a means of integrating African economies to expand domestic markets and achieve economies of scale in manufacturing and transport. The key to this is the project of creating transit corridors without borders and barriers that will slow down trade and increase the cost of trade. Harmonizing trade and transport practices on the highways and waterways that connect sea states with the continent's fifteen landlocked countries would improve Africa's competitive access to continental and global markets and boost economic growth. Concentrating transport investment on selected regional transport hubs aims to achieve better returns than redistributing investment: superior services and facilities at a few sea, rail and air hubs can speed up transport operations and eliminate oversupply and unnecessary competition. Transport is also being used as a lever to help achieve the United Nations Millennium Development Goals in Africa. Improving transportation can clearly help eliminate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal completion of primary education and gender equality, reduce infant and maternal mortality, reduce

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the spread of communicable diseases and improving access to employment opportunities for the poorest. For example, better and more affordable transportation will allow more Africans to access education and healthcare, the delivery of medical services, and the distribution of food and emergency humanitarian medical supplies. Upskilling transport workers will reduce HIV/AIDS transmission at transit and hub points and transport construction sites, and halt the consequent loss of social capital in the transport sector and along the continent's major transport corridors. The institutional and organizational reform underpinning the new thinking about transport interventions in Africa includes the gesture of holding public consultations in Africa, the establishment of multilingual local secretariats and the simplification of the bewildering proliferation of more or less opaque transport agencies and sub-agencies of recent years. twentieth century. At management level, steps are being taken to operationalize and standardize data collection to monitor transportation conditions and transportation improvements across the continent. Training Africans to conduct transportation services and projects is an important long-term exercise. There is also a shift towards a participatory style of transport planning that creates opportunities for civil society to get involved in solving public transport problems, particularly women's transport needs. Current efforts to rehabilitate and restructure African transport are ambitious. Their intentional integration with other poverty and growth initiatives gives them a better chance of success than some of their less coherent predecessors. In fact, African transport may be on the cusp of a new era. The implementation, enforcement and momentum of the plan will be critical if the grand intentions are to touch and improve the lives of millions of African farmers, entrepreneurs, travellers, mothers and school children who face inaccessible, unaffordable, unreliable and unsafe modes of transport are. See also Help and Development; Work; United Nations; urbanism and urbanization. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bryceson, D.F., et al. "Livelihoods, Daily Mobility and Poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa". Transport ratings 23, no. 2 (2003): 177-196.

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Goldstein, A. "Infrastructure Development and Regulatory Reform in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Case of Air Transport." World Economy 24, No. 2 (2001): 221–248. Gysels, M., et al. "Truck Drivers, Brokers, and Commercial Sex Workers: AIDS and the Mediation of Sex in Southwestern Uganda". AIDS Care 13, No. 3 (2001): 373-385. Howe, J. '''Filling the Middle': Uganda's Appropriate Transport Services.'' Transport Reviews 23, no. 2 (2003): 161–176. Jones, Jim A. Industrial Labor in the Colonial World: Laborers on the Chemin de Fer Dakar-Niger, 1881–1963. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002. Koster, JH and M de Langen. Low-Cost Mobility in African Cities. Proceedings of the Velomondial-World Bank Expert Group Meeting, Delft, The Netherlands, 12-23. June 2000. UNESCO-IHE, 2001. Martinez, A.J.T. “Road Maintenance Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa: Unsolved Problems and Acting Strategies.” Transport Policy 8 (2001): 257–265. Mashiri, P. "Managing 'Face' in Public Transport: Strategies for Polite Requests in Harare Commuter Collective Discourse." Zambezia 28, no. 1 (2001): 85-95. Monson, J. Freedom Railway to the Ordinary Train: A Rural History of TAZARA. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2006. Mutambirwa, C. and B.J. Turton. "Air Transport Operations and Policy in Zimbabwe, 1980–1998". Journal of Transport Geography 8, no. 1 (2000): 67-76. Njoh, AJ "Transportation Infrastructure and Economic Development in Sub-Saharan Africa." Public Works Policy and Management 4, No. 4 (2000): 286–296. Porter, G. "Living in a Changing World: Issues of Rural Mobility and Social Justice in Sub-Saharan Africa." World Development 30 (2002): 285–300. Wilkie, D.S., et al. "Roads, Development and Conservation in the Congo Basin". Conservation Biology 14 (2000): 1614–1622. GORDON PIRIE

AIRE

Much of Africa's aviation remains isolated from the transformation of the global airline industry through competition, privatization and deregulation. Little achieved were the plans for a liberalized African aviation policy, set out in the 1988 Yamoussoukro Declaration, reaffirmed in 1994 and followed by the 1999 Yamoussoukro Decision, which are (in principle, if not already a reality) workable and executable. In the year 2005

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The African Union was again unable to agree on the implementation date, largely over concerns about the impact of competition on national airlines. Because of this protectionism, the expansion of air services between African countries remains restricted. Although there are notable exceptions, such as Airlines such as Kenya Airlines, many African airlines remain wholly or partially state-owned, with privatization moves constrained by financial losses and debt. The historical development of air transport in Africa, coupled with widespread poverty and war, ensures that many of the factors affecting demand for and supply of air transport services lie outside the continent. Africa's air transport networks developed greatly during colonialism, while independence led to the establishment of a multitude of small, state-owned national airlines. The remainder of aviation demand is still outside the continent, although regional and domestic traffic typically accounts for between 30 and 50 percent of the market. Although demand for air transport is growing faster than the world average, Africa accounts for less than 5 percent of global flight activity and only 3 percent of aircraft departures. While almost every country in Africa supports a national airline, most have limited networks and resources, contributing to their lack of a global footprint. According to an August 2006 issue of Airline Business, only South African Airways (SAA) (34), Egyptair (69) and Royal Air Maroc (RAM) (85) were listed among the world's 100 largest airlines (by revenue) in 2005. Such scale problems are exacerbated by a lack of cooperation between the various state airlines. Air Afrique, originally established in 1961 by the 11 Yaoundé Treaty States, collapsed in 2001. However, there are encouraging signs of foreign investment in African airlines. RAM is the majority shareholder of Air Senegal International, Virgin Atlantic owns 49 percent of Virgin Nigeria Airways, while Kenya Airlines owns 26 percent of KLM. Comair in South Africa is a British Airways franchise. However, only Kenya Airlines and SAA are members of global airline alliances (2006). Trade with Europe, tourism and VFR traffic are the main drivers of air travel to Africa (IATA, 2006). The Republic of South Africa is

the dominant business objective, and SAA has reconfigured its network in the post-apartheid era to reflect the country's increasingly prominent role on the continent. Nigeria also generates significant commercial traffic, mostly due to oil. According to the World Trade Organization, 31 million tourists arrived by plane in 2004, virtually all from the North, East and South Africa. Political fragmentation and failure to develop cooperation have produced a plethora of international airports, some supporting only a few relatively low-frequency scheduled services to Europe or the Middle East, where Paris, Brussels, London and Dubai are the main hubs... more often. cities served. Africa's top international airports include Addis Ababa, Cairo, Nairobi, Dakar and Casablanca, but only Johannesburg (83), the dominant intercontinental hub in southern Africa, ranked among the world's top 100 airports (by passengers carried) in 2005, according to a Report from June 2006 issue of Airline Business. The limited charter market is almost entirely controlled by European companies. While most air freight is transported as cargo on passenger aircraft, few African airlines operate dedicated freighters and international cargo services, which mainly carry perishable goods such as food and flowers, are often operated by European-based airlines. International services within Africa also tend to be limited in scope and frequency. Five separate regional concentrations can be identified: North Africa centered on Casablanca, Algiers, Tripoli and Cairo; a dispersed network in West Africa; South Africa with a focus on Johannesburg and Cape Town; East Africa, converging on Addis Ababa and Nairobi; and the islands of the Indian Ocean. Although these regional complexes remain poorly connected, with east-west connections particularly limited in both absolute number and frequency, both Ethiopian Airlines and Kenya Airways are expanding their intra-African networks. Domestic passenger services are also constrained as their provision reflects factors such as fluctuations in tourism, the distribution of urban centers, commercial demand and levels of disposable income. The largest networks exist in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria and the Maghreb countries. Numerous third-party providers offer non-scheduled services for the tourism industry and aid organizations.

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See also Addis Ababa; Cairo; White House; dakar Johannesburg; Nairobi; Tourism; Tripoli; urbanism and urbanization. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abeyratne, R. "Impact of Yamoussoukro Decision on African Aviation." Air and Space Law 28 (2003): 280–293. airline business. "Airports" Airline Business 22, no. 6 (2006): 50-60. airline business. "The World Airline Rankings". Airline Business 22, No. 8 (2006): 58-86. Doganis, R. The Airline Business in the 21st Century. London: Routledge, 2001. IATA. Passenger and Cargo Forecast, 2005-2009. Montreal: IATA, 2006. Pirie, G. "Passenger Traffic in the 1930s on British Imperial Air Routes: Refinement and Revision". Journal of Transport History 25 (2004): 66–84. Pirie, G. “Africanization” of South Africa's International Air Services, 1994–2003.” Journal of Transport Geography 14 (2006): 3–14. World Tourism Organization. Tourism Market Trends 2004 – Africa. Madrid: World Tourism Organization, 2005. BRIAN GRAHAM

CARAVAN

One institution, the caravan, dominated land transport in Africa before the 20th century. The caravans took different forms depending on the prevailing socio-economic and ecological conditions. In most regions, caravans consisted of human porters, although pack animals such as camels and donkeys were used in the Sahara, the Sahel, and some other savannah and mountainous areas, such as Ethiopia and Maasai. Portership was ubiquitous across much of western, central, eastern, and southern Africa, and caravans were often the primary employers of free and slave labor outside of agriculture. High transport costs have always hampered economic development in Africa. In the 12th century, for the east coast of Africa, the Arab geographer Idrisi noted that since there were no beasts of burden among these people, these people had to carry objects to the cities where they bought and sold. This would have been the case up until the early colonial period. The use of draft and pack animals was practically impossible due to the presence

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Trypanosome-carrying tsetse fly in vast forest swaths stretching across the savannas of West, Central, and East Africa. Domestic animals with low immunity to the parasite, such as donkeys, donkeys, horses, and oxen, died of sleeping sickness within days of infection. For this very reason, wheeled transport was also not possible, another obstacle was the lack of good roads, except in densely populated areas like Asante and Buganda. The solution was the mobilization of human labor, particularly where complex local and regional trade systems emerged relatively early, such as in Hausaland, the Akan region, and south-central Africa. Human transport is inefficient compared to modern mechanical transport. The economics of cargo shipping tended to work against the trade in bulky goods such as grain due to the relatively light weights that even professional shippers could handle. High ration costs and wages were also obstacles. However, given African realities, wearing it was economically rational. In times of famine, porters sometimes carried grain as far as 120 miles to regions of shortage. In normal times, caravans carried high-value goods on a small scale, such as cloth, hardware, weapons, kola nuts, tobacco, and ivory. Slaves and cattle went to market alone. In most cases, the pioneer caravans were inland peoples: the Soninke, Hausa, and Mande in West Africa, the Bisa, Yao, Kamba, Sumbwa, and Nyamwezi in East Africa, and the Chokwe, Chikunda, and Kololo further south. These cities are strategically located through exchange systems, such as between ranchers and iron producers. The long-distance caravan systems of the 18th and 19th centuries were the result of local and regional trading models. In the early stages, the role of women in local trade and small-scale caravan operations was particularly important, for example in the N'yanja of Malawi, the Kamba and the Lake Eyasi salt caravans of Sukuma in Tanzania. International trade was a driving force behind the rise of specialized caravan systems as regional trading systems merged to create vast networks that stretched across the continent. For example, the Nyamwezi and Sumbwa in what is now Tanzania, spurred on by news of US demand for ivory

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CARAVAN

Coast he crossed Lake Malawi to reach the Luangwa Valley in Zambia to exploit the large herds of elephants. In the second half of the 18th century they organized caravans to coastal towns such as Kilwa Kivinje, Mbwa Maji, Pangani and then Bagamoyo. Over time they created a vast trade and labor diaspora stretching from Zanzibar to the Nyangwe on the Congo River and from Katanga (Shaba) to Bunyoro. They dominated the trade routes of East and Central Africa and organized their own large caravans, departing from trading strongholds such as Unyanyembe (modern-day Tabora) and the capitals of Mirambo. As porters and traders par excellence, the Nyamwezi also worked for the African-Arab caravan drivers on the Swahili coast. The latter have never been able to surpass their competitors, despite the fame of large coastal traders and caravan operators such as Tippu Tip, Rumaliza, Said Habib and others. The men from the coast were generally funded by, and often indebted to, Indian financiers based in Zanzibar and Bagamoyo. Rapidly increasing ivory exports due to expanding middle-class consumption in Europe and North America, as well as African demand for mass-produced fabrics and weapons, drove the caravan system. The increasingly favorable balance of trade drove an expanding elephant frontier into the center of the continent, and large caravans of up to 3,000 members made increasingly longer journeys between sources of supply and markets. On the opposite coast of the Portuguese sphere, the Pombeiros of Benguela and other cities portrayed in Angolan writer Pepetela's book Yeke fulfilled a role similar to that of the African Arabs. Skilled caravan workers are increasingly becoming enlisted as migrant or migrant workers, sometimes signing up for a new voyage at the end of a safari. On the Gold Coast and Yorubaland, as well as in East Africa, caravans were manned by professional porters, guards, guides, and chiefs. Most porters remained attached to their rural homeland, but on safari they were a mobile workforce with their own widely accepted customs, ethics and codes of honour. On their journey they were almost a proletariat, completely cut off from their communities of origin and their agricultural existence. They depended on their wages, which were usually paid in fixed units of cloth, and rations were supplied

Kind or more common in the small currency of the region. Porters invested their wages, and perhaps profits from petty trade, in agriculture, cattle, slaves, and bride prices. As the caravan workforce became more specialized, the caravan business followed suit. Specialized personnel agencies and caravan providers emerged. In East Africa, the best known was the Sewa Haji run by Khoja, who invested part of his profits in hospitals for sick porters. More often, large merchants or business bosses took care of recruitment, either through networks of sponsor clients or through direct recruitment in the towns and villages of the commercialized regions. An alternative was to hire caciques to supply their own porter crews. The caravan system was a major force in changing the infrastructure of trade and urbanization. Port cities, trading cities and caravanserai rose and fell according to the dynamics of the caravan system. Routes changed depending on food availability, political conditions, and economic calculations. A feature of the routes was the rise of merchant and caravan diasporas, particularly the Mande, Soninke, and Hausa speakers in West Africa and the Nyamwezi and Swahili people in the east. New urban centers like Ujiji (on Lake Tanganyika), Tabora and Bagamoyo were creatures of caravans. In Yoruba cities like Ife and Ibadan and in the Akan region, special quarters were reserved for Hausa cloth and kola nut traders. In some regions, the infrastructure of the caravans was shaped by the Hajj. Muslim pilgrims from many parts of West Africa and the Horn of Africa often associated with trading companies, West Africans crossed Darfur, a crossroads for caravans, into the Nile Valley, while pilgrims from the Muslim outskirts of Ethiopia and Somalia traveled to Red Sea ports via Harar. and other Muslim peoples. Porters carried loads on their heads or on their shoulders. Cargoes were specially packed (in Zanzibar this was in itself a job for experienced packers) to a standard weight and size. Elephant tusks, which were often heavy, were the prerogative of elite porters, and in East Africa Herculean porters could carry a 120-pound tusk over 600 miles on land. Wages, paid monthly or by trip, were usually paid in fixed units of cloth or other currency. The standard in East Africa

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The unit was the doti merikani—a four-meter-long plain American calico—although wages were calculated in Maria Theresa thalers. Professional slave traders in the kingdom of Imerina in Madagascar often went on strike for higher wages, as did the Islamized slave and freed slave Waungwana from the east coast of Africa. Resistance to poor wages and working conditions mostly took the form of mass or piecemeal emigration. The threat of defection by professional porters served to discipline naïve caravan leaders, since the balance of power often rested with their men. Nyamwezi's porters, when deserting, often left their burdens behind, minus the wages owed. Stealing was a shame. In fact, the oldest colonial labor laws in Kenya and Zanzibar contained customary provisions derived from the norms of East African caravan culture, guaranteeing standard loads, penalties for misdemeanors, rest periods, and rations. At the same time, the caravans were mobile peoples. Women and children often traveled with their husbands. In East Africa and Sudan, so-called caravan marriages replaced more formal relationships. Women fleeing slavery or unwanted marriages often found a new calling and relative freedom in the caravans, something strongly criticized by 19th-century missionaries. Many caravan operators found that the presence of women increased their porters' productivity and reduced sickness rates. Females typically carried food and camp equipment while their partners handled the standard loads of between 60 and 75 pounds. In some cases, such as among the Manyema, the women themselves carried heavy loads on their backs. Caravans were not just a means of transportation. Also significantly, they were the main drivers of new forms of culture and socio-economic organization in remote regions. With the caravans went Islam and Christianity, as well as some aspects of older African cosmologies. Indeed, as hundreds of journals and magazines attest, early European missionaries and explorers were forced to adapt to the realities of caravan travel. New forms of Expressionist culture, particularly music, dance, clothing, and personal adornments, traveled the caravan routes, not only from the inland coasts, but from the interior to the port cities.

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and even beyond into the maritime world of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the professional long-distance caravan bearers had much in common with the merchant seafarers of the sailing world. The safari experience inspired stories, songs and poems, which were retold over and over again to enthusiastic audiences at caravan stops and markets. Ritual joke relationships (utani in Kiswahili) pervaded the savannas of East Africa and the Senegambia/Mali region in the west. An institution born of kinship and clan ties, the Utani united peoples of diverse backgrounds in relationships of hospitality and mutual aid. Along the central caravan route between Ujiji and Bagamoyo, the Nyamwezi were pranksters of no fewer than thirty-one different ethnic groups. Utani promoted relationships between porters of different origins and between caravan personnel and host communities. Utani lent itself perfectly as a readily available cultural concept to adapt to the borderline situations that caravan bearers regularly encounter. Finally, specialized caravan dealers and porters brought the world of the market to previously unknown regions. Among the Soninke of Mauritania and Mali, the coastal peoples of the Gold Coast (Ghana), and the Nyamwezi, ideas of entrepreneurship, profit, and hired labor were an integral part of the caravan trade. Wherever they went, these peoples stimulated innovative ideas and cultural changes, introduced new commodities (like firearms, mass-produced textiles) and crops (white rice and tobacco), and helped create intersocial cultures. See also Congo River; Disease: viral and contagious; Ivory; Work; livestock: domestication; marital systems; Pilgrimages: Islamic; The Sahara Desert; Textiles; Tippoo Point; trade, national and international systems; urbanism and urbanization. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Campbell, Gwyn. "Labor and the Transportation Problem in Imperial Madagascar, 1810–1895." Journal of African History 21 (1980): 341–356. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine, and Paul E. Lovejoy, eds. African Trade Workers. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1985. Isaacman, Allen, and Barbara Isaacman. Slavery and Beyond: The Formation of Chikunda Males and Ethnic Identities in the Unstable World of South-Central Africa, 1750–1920. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2004.

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Lovejoy, Paul E. Karawanen von Kola: Der Hausa-Kola-Handel 1700–1900. Zaria, Nigeria: Ahmadu Bello University Press Ltd., 1980.

her thoughts. This was due to the increasing rivalry between the European powers, especially after the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.

Manchelle, François. Willing Migrants: Soninke Labor Diasporas, 1848–1960. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997.

To register their presence in the acquired territories and to ensure that key export commodities (agricultural crops and minerals) were not diverted by rival European powers and traders, each European state began building competing railway lines across the continent. Thus began the phenomenon of railroad imperialism in Africa. However, this imperialism was not without cost to the continent.

Nordup, David. Beyond the Bend of the River: African Laborers in East Zaire, 1865–1940. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988. Ogunremi, Gabriel Ogundeji. New York: NOK Publishers International, 1982. Rockel, Stephen J. Bearers of Culture: Labor on the Streets in Nineteenth-Century East Africa. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2006. STEVEN ROCKEL

RAILROAD

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, rail transport was generally considered one of the decisive factors in the economic development of tropical Africa. For example, a leading colonialist declared that the development of the African continent was impossible without railways and awaited their arrival. When the railroads finally arrived and took over the continent, they brought about revolutionary economic, political, and social changes. Before the colonization of Africa and the construction of railways in the region, modes of transportation included pack animals, waterways and water transport, and passenger transport. They met the needs of pre-colonial African political economy. However, with the rapid development and modernization of the economy from the 19th century to colonization, traditional modes of transportation proved expensive, slow and inefficient for the volume of goods and the number of people carried. This applied in particular to the means of transport for passenger transport. Against this background of poor traffic, private business interests in railway development in Africa began to stir in the first half of the 19th century. But nothing happened in railroad construction until the end of the century, when major European powers, in the past reluctant to get involved in the formal colonization of Africa and the resulting railroad construction, changed.

Although the construction of railroads brought many benefits such as It also brought with it many problems, such as increased transportation efficiency, urbanization, increased agricultural and mineral production, reduced transportation costs, and the provision of a real alternative to the degrading human transportation. These included new relations of production (capitalism), underdevelopment, regional inequality, destruction of rural agriculture, huge debts through guaranteed loans for railway construction, economic dependency, promotion of wage labor, marginalization of African farmers, rural poverty, manual labour. Migration and the creation of cheap labor pools. RAILWAY DEVELOPMENT

The first railway line was built from the Cape in South Africa in 1859. This humble beginning was later followed by massive railroad developments in the region, following the discovery of diamonds in the Kimberley in 1870. This pattern of railroad construction, which depended on the discovery of mineral resources, was subsequently practiced in sub-Saharan Africa from the late 19th century through the 1800s repeated in the second half of the 20th century. Such railways were built in Belgian Congo (modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo or Democratic Republic of the Congo), Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), Bechuanaland (Botswana), Mozambique, Angola, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Uganda. However, the railroads were not only built for the extraction of mineral resources. Some were built primarily for military, administrative, strategic, and political reasons. For others, they were built to speed up the production and transportation of agricultural products. For this reason, the Sierra Leone Railway was built

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Oil palm cultivation areas. Similarly, the Kumasito-Accra Line was built to connect the cocoa areas. In Nigeria, the Kano-Lagos railway would boost cotton production and later serve as a catalyst for cocoa and peanut-growing regions. In addition, some railways were built to serve as important transport links to some of the navigable and prominent African rivers such as the Senegal, Niger, Benue, Congo and Zambezi. An important point is that non-mineral railroads could not afford their way in most cases. In addition, most railroads were single lines; Built on tight budgets, they were mostly straight lines with lightweight steel rails. Physical obstacles along their paths were avoided as much as possible. Therefore, the vast majority of railways in Africa, apart from South Africa and North Africa, which had well-integrated railways comparable to those in Europe and America, are characterized by sharp turns, steep grades, and indirect routes. As such, train speeds were generally limited and limited in the capacities of freight and passengers they could carry. Another important feature of railway construction in Africa, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, was the widespread use of forced labor throughout most of the continent, as Mason and Ousmene clearly demonstrated in their work on the subject. By the 1930s the main structure of the African railway network had been developed. Few railroad extensions were built over the next two decades, but no major structures. Meanwhile, during this last period, rail transport began to face stiff competition from road transport from passenger transport and the less bulky short-distance freight transport. For long-distance freight, however, rail was unrivaled because it could move bulk goods (agricultural produce and mineral resources, the backbone of Africa's economy) over longer distances and at a lower cost than road. Thus, it benefited greatly from this particular freight traffic from the mid-1940s to the early 1960s. The construction of new railway lines in many colonial areas from the second half of the 1950s to the 1970s also contributed to these achievements. Among the countries and areas where new railways were built built include Nigeria, Gabon, Kenya, Angola, Mozambique, Ghana, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania and Uganda.

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RAILWAY DEVELOPMENTS AFTER INDEPENDENCE

In addition, from the 1970s, more and more railways were built for the extraction of mineral resources. These railroad developments continued colonial patterns of vertical construction designed to transport minerals and agricultural products from the interior to the coast. There were few collateral lines, although some existed in Ghana, Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The longest of these was the 404-mile railway from Nouadhibour to F'Derik and Tazadit in Mauritania, opened in 1963. Also in 1963, another iron line was opened in Liberia to connect the city of Buchanan to the iron mines of Mount Nimba. However, the most important railway development at the time was the 1,156-mile Kapiri Mposhi (Zambia) to Dar es Salaam (Tanzania): the Tanzam Railway. First conceived during the colonial period, it was not built before the 1970s for lack of justifiable economic reasons. However, when the regime of Ian Smith (born 1919) in Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe) imposed a blockade on the movement of goods to and from inland Zambia that would pass through Rhodesian ports, both Zambia and Tanzania drew closer to China. which not only provided a $400 million loan for the project, but also built the international rail line that opened in 1975. This African railway modernization program of the 1960s and 1970s could have continued over the next decade and beyond, except for two reasons. First, according to the United Nations, the United Nations Transport and Communications Decade for Africa, the World Bank and the United Nations advised African nations to halt further modernization programs and focus on road transport modernization. Nations have been told to preserve only existing rail infrastructure. Second, starting in the late 1970s, Africa experienced severe economic crises that left the continent with enormous foreign debt. To bail African nations out of their economic quagmire, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) recommended that African leaders adopt the Structural Adjustment Program (SAP), which required African nations to implement certain economic reforms, including liberalization of the economy, abolition of tariffs and controls, devaluation of the national value

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Foreign exchange and the privatization of state institutions and corporations, such as railway operators. The consequences of these reforms were, on the one hand, that the financing of the railway administrations by the various governments, until then their main financiers, was reduced. Second, importing machinery, spare parts, locomotives, rolling stock, steel rails, and communications equipment (in the case of the railroad industry) became expensive due to the devaluation of foreign currencies. So many railways in Africa fell into disrepair. Adding to an already dire situation, some of the aging railway lines have been destroyed by the many conflicts that have plagued the continent since independence in the early 1960s.GLOBALIZATION AND RAILROAD DEVELOPMENT

Against this backdrop of the bleak future of rail travel in Africa, some observers began to herald a complete end to rail travel in Africa. With the increasing impact of economic globalization on the continent and the resulting prospect of foreign investment, the privatization of African railways, which began imperceptibly in the mid-1990s, has accelerated rapidly since the turn of the millennium. The impetus for these developments is the great interest in investing in the rail sector on the part of Western multinationals as well as the governments and institutions of China, Korea, Japan, Taiwan and South Africa. These investors have already started negotiations and in 2007 were on the verge of completing many deals to replace and modernize ailing rail infrastructure. For example, the South African railway company Spoornet has invested capital in some railways in East and Southern Africa. In addition, it has numerous railway management contracts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Tanzania. In addition to Spoornet, a group of Canadian investors, the East African Railway Development Corporation, has secured many concessions to operate railways in Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia. Meanwhile, in late 2006, Nigeria embarked on a twenty-five-year modernization and reorganization program in West Africa for its near-dead railway industry. As a first step, in November 2006,

The country has begun the first phase of the project: construction of the 628-mile, double-track, standard-gauge railway line from Lagos to Kano. The cost of this first phase is $8.3 billion and will be covered by loans from the Chinese government and other foreign investors. Therefore, the future of rail transport in Africa in the 21st century seems brighter and more promising than in the last decades of the 20th century. However, the success of any railway modernization in Africa will depend on many factors which, if not managed properly, could still thwart progress. Above all, this includes political and economic stability on the continent. Failure to do so over a long period of time may discourage foreign investors from investing in the industry. Second, the African economy must continue to grow by leaps and bounds in order to be able to produce the necessary volume of freight and the sufficient number of passengers required for an economically viable railway industry. See also Accra; Agriculture; colonial policies and practices; Dar es Salaam; economic history; Globalization; IMF; cano; kumasi; Work: Conscripts and forced labourers; lakes; metals and minerals; United Nations; urbanism and urbanization; World Bank. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnold, guy. A guide to the political and economic development of Africa. London: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2001. Christopher, AJ Colonial Africa. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1984. Davis Clarence and Kenneth E. Wilburn, eds. Railroad Imperialism. New York: Greenwood Press, 1991. Hilling, David. transportation and developing countries. London: Routledge, 1996. Konczacki, Z. A. and J. M. Konczacki, eds. An Economic History of Tropical Africa, Vol II. London: Frank Cass, 1977. Mason, M. "Working on the Railway: Forced Labor in Northern Nigeria, 1907–1912. " In African Labor History, ed. Gutkind, P.W., R. Cohen, and J. Copans. London: Sage Publications, 1978. O'Connor, Anthony. Railways and Development in Uganda. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. O'Connor, Anthony. ''Construction of New Railways and Patterns of Economic Development in Uganda''.

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Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 36 (1965): 21–30. Ousmane, S. Pieces of God's Wood. London: Heinemann, 1995. Pedersen, Poul O. The changing transport pattern under trade liberalization and globalization and its impact on African development. Copenhagen, Denmark: Center for Development Research, 2000. Pirie, Gordon. "The Decivilizing Rails: Railways and Underdevelopment in Southern Africa". Tidschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie 73, No. 4 (1982): 221-228. Simon, David. Transport and Development in the Third World. London: Routledge, 1996. Udo, Reuben K. The Human Geography of Tropical Africa. Exeter, UK: Heinemann Educational Books, 1982. United Nations, United Nations Decade of Transport and Communications for Africa 1978–88, vol. 1: Global Strategy and Plan of Action, First Phase, 1980–83. Addis Ababa, Ethiopia: United Nations Economic and Social Council, May 1979. TOKUNBO AYOOLA

RÍO

Unlike the great rivers of other continents, the majestic rivers of Africa were not historical ocean-to-inland waterways. Near the mouths of all of Africa's great rivers except the Senegal and Gambia, upstream navigable passage was blocked by a series of cataracts over which broad, calm rivers tumbled from the African plateau into a narrow coastal plain. These natural obstacles beyond the mouths of African rivers prevented Portuguese and later British and French navigators from entering the interior of Africa by ship in the 16th century and prevented much of Africa from being discovered until the 19th century and then by arduous journeys on foot swamps, savannahs and tropical jungles were crossed. The world's longest river (4,238 miles) and the only major river flowing south to north is blocked by six cataracts, the first at Aswan, 800 miles from the Mediterranean Sea. Navigation on the Niger (2,604 miles) is interrupted by the Bussa Rapids above its confluence with the Benue River, and on the Congo (Zaire, 2,718 miles) it tumbles through a series of cataracts cut into deep gorges a small coastal plain and the Atlantic. Ocean in the small town of Muanda. After crossing the coastal plain from the Indian

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Ocean (1,600 miles), the Cabora Bassa rapids prevent the Zambezi from becoming an inland waterway. All of these waterfalls have been made more permanent by hydroelectric power plants: the Aswan Dam on the Nile, the Kainji Dam at Bussa on the Niger, and the Cabora Bassa Dam on the Zambezi. Above the falls, the Nile, Niger and Congo rivers are wide and navigable for over a thousand miles, but the Zambezi has never been a major artery, limited to relatively short stretches between Cabora Bassa Rapids, Batoka Gorge and Victoria Falls. Historically, Africans have always used rivers for transportation. The dynastic Egyptians developed a well-organized system whereby their ships sailed upstream in the constant north Asian wind and returned downstream in the current. Between its upper delta and the Bussa Rapids, the Niger is navigable for more than a thousand miles and has historically been the main artery for trade, passengers and warfare in traditional pirogues. From its vast delta known as the Oil Rivers, the Niger is navigable to its confluence with the Benue (Be'noue) and then for a further 500 miles to its main tributary, and is an important artery of trade and passengers for the fleets of canoes, barges and steamships. Similarly, the Congo flows uninterruptedly downstream from Stanley Falls in Kisangani 1,000 miles to Kinshasa. This stretch of the Congo was an important waterway for transportation in the past, fed by a vast network spanning 9,000 miles of navigable tributaries in Central Africa. Although not major rivers, Senegal (1020 miles) and Gambia are navigable 300 miles and 302 miles respectively. Gambia (700 miles) is the best of all African rivers. It is the only easily accessible African waterway for navigation and the main artery of traffic in the Republic of The Gambia. See also Congo River; Kinshasa; Kisangani; Niger River; The nil; Travel and Explore. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bovill, Edward W. The Niger explored. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Collins, Robert O. The Nile. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. Coppinger, Mike and Jumbo Williams. The Zambezi: River of Africa. London: New Holland, 1991.

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please peter The Congo River: the discovery, exploration and exploitation of the world's most spectacular river. New York: Harper and Row, 1977. ROBERT COLLINS

SHIPS AND PORTS

Around 90 percent of Africa's foreign trade is handled through ports and transported by liner shipping, in line with global trends. Freight makes up the majority of freight and passengers make up a tiny fraction of total traffic. Ports are therefore vital to the foreign trade and domestic economy of individual countries, including landlocked ones. African ports have the following general characteristics. First, they are on a long stretch of coastline that is generally free of natural indentations. Therefore, there are only a few natural harbors. Second, the ports differ in size and economic importance. Third, in addition to the few natural harbors, several artificial harbors were also created for economic and strategic interests. Fourth, ports are multifunctional urban centers with significant populations. Fifth, they are aimed at land transport networks, particularly railway lines. Sixth, although some ports were created as outlets for commodities such as crude and refined oil, iron ore, phosphate, or timber, most African ports handle various imports and exports. Seventh, the important inland ports along the major rivers and lakes carry some of the traffic from inside Africa. Finally, at great expense, various colonial and post-independence governments developed modern ports. THE DEVELOPMENT OF AFRICAN PORTS

Four main phases in the development of African ports can be identified since before European colonial rule in the 19th century. An exception, however, is the Republic of South Africa, where Dutch settlers established a colony on the Cape in the mid-17th century. The first stage before formal European colonial rule were rudimentary trading or fishing ports with poor transport links to the interior. Such ports were mainly undeveloped trading posts, mainly along lagoons and estuaries. The second phase was transitional in that the European presence was just beginning

founded by commerce and informal political government. Connections to Europe were encouraged and the ports began to act as potential urban centers and increasingly important centers of trade. The third phase was the climax of colonial rule, when rail and road links between the ports and the interior were fully established. The ports also served as capitals for the nascent colonial administration. Finally, in the post-independence period, new ports were developed and old ones expanded. Rural dwellers moved to the thriving port cities, which also became centers of commercial activity and import-substitution industrialization. The ports process increasing export volumes such as tin and iron ore, diamonds, gold, timber, phosphates, crude oil and forest products, as well as a variety of foreign imports. Since the 19th century, enormous amounts of capital and engineering have been invested in the development of old and new ports. Even in natural ports like Dakar, Freetown, Lobito, and Durban, such compromises were necessary to make the ports accessible to shipping. This was mandatory in ports protected from the sea by lagoons and shallow estuaries. Hundreds of thousands of tons of stone were transported by the Pierre Perdue method from Abeokuta, some sixty miles north, for port work in Lagos, Nigeria. The development of the port there consisted of building levees, dredging the access channels, lengthening the quays and removing the bar at the mouth of the port known as the bogeyman of the bay. Taken together, port construction at Lagos and Port Harcourt, an artificial port in eastern Nigeria, between 1892 and 1939 increased the depth of the port entrance and created extensive berthing facilities for ocean-going vessels. However, the projects strained the Nigerian colony's finances with enormous debt from loans taken out in metropolitan Britain. Nigeria's example has been repeated in other African countries, notably Durban in South Africa, Tema and Takoradi in Ghana and Mombasa in Kenya. However, investment in port development did not always justify spending in terms of traffic and financial profitability. A striking feature of port development in Africa from the late 19th to late 20th centuries was the coordination of port works

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with rail and road expansion. In fact, the railway connections together with the developed inland determined the destiny of the African ports. Cape Town and Durban in South Africa, Dakar in Senegal, Mombasa in Kenya, Dar es Salaam in Tanzania, Lagos and Port Harcourt in Nigeria and Douala in Cameroon became known in their respective countries primarily for their railway connections with their zones of influence. Rail transport gave ports access to major urban centers and sources of transport, reduced transport costs, and gave a distinct advantage over potential or actual competitors in terms of access to a larger share of a contested hinterland's traffic. Lagos gained such an advantage over the Niger Delta ports in competing for northern Nigerian traffic after direct rail links were established between it and Kano in 1912. The latter subsequently declined or even died out. In such competition between ports within or across national borders, ports with superior transport links or access to a rich hinterland have replaced their competitors. This represented the advantage Durban had over other South African ports and allowed Lagos to be overwhelmingly superior to other Nigerian ports. In the 20th century, government policies, technological development, and global economic trends were critical to the pattern and scale of port development. The oscillation between concentration and diffusion was the general pattern of African port development from the 19th century onwards. Ports thrived and shrank with the growth or decline of the national and world economy. During an economic boom, African countries with multiple port exits maintained a large number of such exits, while an economic downturn with a concomitant decline in port throughput led to a concentration of foreign trade in just a few ports. While the proliferation of ports was a feature of peacetime trade, in wartime concentration was a must, as seen in the world wars of the 20th century. BROADCAST

The shipping business developed inconsistently in Africa. Although the maritime countries of North and East Africa have recorded several centuries of indigenous navigation through the Mediterranean and Indian Oceans, only West Africans participated

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in local maritime activities, despite the extensive fishing activities of the Izon (Ijaw) and Ilaje in Nigeria and the Ewe and Fante in Togo and Ghana, respectively. In general, dhows and small fishing boats were used on the rivers, lakes and sea routes of Africa and often over long distances. However, with the arrival of Europeans from the 15th century, sailing ships and later steamships facilitated the transatlantic slave trade and from the late 19th century the trade in forest products. Since this last date, European shipping companies have established regular connections between Africa and the rest of the world, mainly Europe. In due course they formed shipping conferences or rings which kept out African and foreign competitors and fixed freight rates. These fares tend to be high compared to other routes. In the first half of the 20th century the British Elder Dempster, the German Woemann Line, the French Chargeurs Reunis and the Dutch West African Line were the dominant shipping companies. The American Bull Line played a minor role in the interwar years. However, the two world wars eliminated German shipping and consolidated commercial control of British and Allied shipping. During the second half of the 20th century, African national shipping companies competed unsuccessfully with established foreign shipping companies, which continued to carry the bulk of Africa's maritime trade. Not even the intervention of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), which created a Code of Shipping Lines in the 1970s that gave indigenous shipping companies favorable shares of African maritime trade, could tip the balance in favor of African shipping companies. The lack of capacity, which government-supported fleet development was intended to remedy, remained the bane of domestic shipping in Africa. In the early 21st century, Aboriginal involvement in African shipping was negligible, although national governments have played a key role in the development of the fleet. Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast, among others, founded national shipping companies in the 20th century with varying degrees of success. These were the products of maritime nationalism in the wake of the countries' independence from European rule in the mid-1950s but late 1990s

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State-run shipping companies had been shut down due to mismanagement and corruption by the authorities. Despite the favorable environment created by the UNCTAD Shipping Code, African national shipping companies have failed to control a significant part of their foreign trade. Although the Code gave national shipping companies a legal monopoly on their coastal shipping and a legal share in foreign trade, the cargo ships failed to establish a monopoly on the former or to carry a significant share of the latter as their fleet development projects failed. Funds for fleet development were simply diverted to other uses. Africa's shipping business is characterized by a predominance of foreign ownership, failed government involvement in fleet development, mismanagement of the shipping industry and a low share of coastal and passenger traffic. Most of African shipping is centered on long-distance maritime trade with Europe, America and Asia. Passenger shipping is severely restricted, as is coastal traffic. However, passenger shipping, particularly pleasure cruises, is a significant, but by no means significant, portion of South Africa's shipping industry. In addition, short-distance ferry cabotage takes place in Senegal between the Casamance region and the capital Dakar, one of which had a fatal accident in 2002. The fate of shipping in Africa varied depending on local and global economic conditions, cargo availability, official policies, and conditions of land transportation and port facilities. As the draft at the entrance to ports and the availability of berthing and navigation facilities determine the capacity and number of ships that can enter the port, port investments have sought to improve facilities. Port dues also determine the number and frequency of ship calls, and ports like Lagos are notorious for their exorbitant charges. The introduction of containerization and the resulting changes in shipbuilding and cargo handling have shaped the fortunes of African ports since the late 20th century. The unification of freight and the creation of inland container depots in seaports were facilitated by road, rail and water transport. However, most African ports do not meet international standards in cargo handling,

Security and Customs Administration affecting delivery time and overall efficiency of port operations. EFFECTS OF MARITIME AND PORTS

Ports and shipping have significant social, economic and political implications for African economies. Port cities are the connecting points between land and sea transport, and their urban life and culture differ in many ways from their inland counterparts. African port cities have served as capitals and administrative centers, and are the major industrial and commercial centers of the countries in which they exist. The large volume of port traffic and the settlement of commercial companies and industries in the immediate vicinity make port cities poles of growth on a local and broad scale. As centers of trade and industry, port cities represent a large group of producers and consumers. In fact, many African port cities have large retail sectors where women dominate the local economy. In contrast, the maritime labor market is dominated by men due to work on board ships and in port. Dock and offshore workers are recruited from communities near and far. Until the mid-20th century, the Kru of Liberia were the specialized seafarers in Africa. They were the dominant group of African sailors serving aboard the ships of the European ocean liners that connected Africa to the rest of the world. Consequently, they had a significant social and cultural impact on their host communities along the West African coast. Given their multiple functions, African port cities are melting pots of cultures and civilizations where people from diverse cultural and social backgrounds interact across racial, ethnic and religious lines. Many African ports have a handful of mixed-race children from interracial relationships, and cities also witness criminal activity, often committed by visiting ship crews. Prostitution, sexually transmitted diseases, youth deviance and avant-garde culture have also been associated with port cities. African port cities are centers of political and social struggle, where political parties, unions, newspapers and various interest groups express the views of different groups and communities. lakes,

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maritime transport and ports. Thousands of railway and dock workers from the government company Transnet demonstrate in Durban, South Africa February 1, 2006 after talks to restructure Transnet collapsed. Nearly 100,000 workers were left without tools, costing the government nearly $30 million in losses in three days. The Port of Durban is the busiest port in Africa. STR/AFP/GETTY PICTURES

Durban, Dakar and Mombasa, among other African port cities, illustrate the problems of population explosion, including unregulated urban and suburban development, rising crime, ethnic and communal unrest and strikes. Since the early 20th century, maritime and railway workers' unions in the major ports have been at the forefront of union activism, often with labor actions to press for better working conditions or to articulate broader political and social issues.

economic integration, further diminishing their role as global economic actors. Worse, many of these states are landlocked, and the cost of transporting them from coastal terminals hundreds of miles inland has severely strained their foreign trade and limited the rate of their economic growth. Added to this was the nature of their products, which in most cases were bulky, mostly raw and of little value.

Ports have had a significant impact on the foreign trade and domestic economies of African states since colonial times, when African nation-states were formally integrated into the world economy as appendages of imperial countries. Essentially small and highly dependent on their exports of primary products, colonial economies were consequently centered on seaports, which were the terminals for the rail, river, and road transportation systems established during this period. At the time of independence, African nation-states accounted for a negligible share of world trade, but pursued nationalistic economic policies, as opposed to regional economic policies.

The lack of direct access to seaports, the limited capacity of coastal terminals and the inefficiency of port operators have continued to constrain the growth of most African countries' foreign trade and domestic economies. A striking example is Burkina Faso, a landlocked country whose mouth into the sea at Abidjan is almost 746 miles away. The long distance and associated transportation costs, as well as the ongoing political turmoil in the port of Côte d'Ivoire, have limited Burkina Faso's foreign trade and internal economic growth. Unsafe and inefficient port operations typified by corruption, slow response times, poor throughput and red

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Tape, also impede the completion of trade (particularly by landlocked countries) through offshore outlets. These restrictions apply to varying degrees to countries such as Mali, Niger, Central African Republic, Rwanda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Zambia and Chad, which rely on their respective regions' major coastal drains in Dakar, Abidjan, Lagos, Douala, Mombasa, and Maputo Durban. See also Abeokuta; Abidjan; Accra; bamako; Cape Town; dakar Dar es Salaam; debt and credit; Djibouti, Republic; duala; economic history; free town; geography and study of Africa; African history; cano; lakes; Libreville; Lome'; Maputo; Mombasa; Nairobi; Nationalism; Harcourt Harbour; Porto Novo; slave trade; Timbuktu; urbanism and urbanization.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Davies, Peter N. The Trade Makers: Elder Dempster in West Africa, 1852–1972, 1973–1989, St. John's, Newfoundland: International Association for Maritime Economic History, 2000. Hoyle, Brian S. “Cityport Industrialization and Regional Development in Less Developed Countries: The Tropical African Experience. Brian S. Hoyle and D.A. Pinder, eds. Oxford: Pergamon, 1981. Hoyle, Brian S. and D. Hilling, eds. Seaports and Development in Tropical Africa, London: Macmillan, 1970. Iheduru, Okechukwu. C. The political economy of international shipping in developing countries. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996. Lumby, Anthony B. "The South African Economy and the Development of the Port of Durban During the Interwar Years". The Great Circle: Journal of the Australian Association for Maritime History 13, no. 1 (1991): 21-34. Olukoju, Ayodeji. The "Liverpool" of West Africa: Dynamics and Effects of Maritime Trade in Lagos, 1900-1950. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2004. AYODEJI OLUKOJU

TRANSVAAL.

See Cape Colony and Hinterland, History of (1600s to 1910s); South Africa, Republic.

Norte

TRAVEL AND EXPLORE This entry contains the following articles: EUROPEAN CHINESE ARAB (BEFORE 1500) EUROPEAN (FROM 1500 TO 1800) EUROPEAN (SINCE 1800)

ARAB

Muslims, Arabs, Berbers, Persians, Indians and Chinese all traveled to what they called the land of the blacks in the eight centuries before the oceans were explored. These voyages can be divided into two main categories: the trans-Saharan land routes between North and West Africa, and the sea routes across the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, stretching to East Africa, India and beyond. The first Muslim travelers to the tropical regions of Africa were undoubtedly traders and merchants. Such was the case with the Ibadi Berbers of North Africa, who pioneered the Trans-Saharan caravan routes into western Sudan in the 9th century AD. coast, also in the 9th century. With the exception of al-Masqudi (d. 956), author of Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems, who visited the east coast of Africa in 916, none of the early travelers left first-hand written accounts of their voyages, and most of them remain anonymous . However, the information they provided about trade routes, cities, and the nature and value of the goods traded was fully described in the literary genres of the 10th-century roads and kingdoms: AlMasqudi, al-Maqdisi (a.c. 945) and Ibn Hawqal. (died after 977). Traveling was not a one-way street either. After Islam gained a foothold in the sub-Saharan regions, African pilgrims began traveling to North Africa, Egypt and Arabia. These pilgrims provided important sources of geographical, historical, and ethnographic information, some of which can be found in the works of leading Arab geographers and historians such as al-Bakri (1014–1094), al-Idrisi (1100–c. 1165), and Ibn Khaldun. Malian Emperor Mansa Wali (d. c. 1270), son of Sundiata (c. 1217-1255), was the first monarch to perform Hajj in Mecca sometime in the 1260s

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Caravan of pilgrims to Mecca and ship across the Persian Gulf. Al-Hariri of Basra (1054-1122) is the author of a book called Al-Maqamat (The Assemblies), part of the adab (rhyming prose and poetry) genre intended to entertain an educated and discerning audience. In the 13th century the work was completed by a series of now-famous illustrations by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasti, including the two shown here.

XIII by Mansa Sakura (d. c. 1300), who was assassinated on the return journey, and then by Mansa Kankan Musa in 1324. The Kankan Musa pilgrimage had a particularly lasting impact on knowledge of Africa in the Middle East and Europe. Mali's emperor and his entourage temporarily resided in Cairo, where they maintained high-level relations with the Mamluk court and where they lavishly shelled gold in the foreign exchange market. This visit was narrated by al-qUmari (1300-1384) who narrated the two Atlantic exploration expeditions of Mansa Abu Bakr, Musa's predecessor. Kankan Musa's fame as a supplier of incredible amounts of gold also reached Europe. This emperor is depicted along with the Abyssinian negus (king) on the 1375 map of Catalonia, and this helped guide Portugal's Atlantic expeditions of the following century. The 14th and 15th centuries mark the peak of Muslim scholarly travels in West Africa. Unlike the merchants, the names, itineraries, and sometimes even the travel accounts of these scholars, jurists, and mystics are known. The most famous traveling scholar of that time was Ibn Battuta, the Moroccan jurist who traveled throughout the Muslim world. 1330-1331 after making his first pilgrimage

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After Mecca, Ibn Battuta visited the Red Sea and Indian Ocean ports of Suwakin, Zaila, Mogadishu, Mombasa and Kilwa. Twenty years later he made his last trip to Mali, visiting most of the cities in western Sudan (including Walata, Niani or Malli, the capital of Mali, Timbuktu, Gao and Takedda). It is the first complete eyewitness account of these regions. Another Moroccan jurist, al-Maghili (c. 1440–1505), was influential in Islamic politics and society in western Sudan. Following his persecution of the Touat Jews in the Sahara, al-Maghili pursued a career as a legal advisor in the Hausa city-states of Katsina and Kano before entering the court of Askia Muhammad Ture´ (r. 1493–1538) in Gao in 1495. His Judgments or fatwas have survived and form an important primary source for the study of the Songhay Empire. A contemporary Egyptian jurist, al-Suyuti (c. 1445-1505), also influenced Islamic practice there. Askia Muhammad met al-Suyuti in Cairo during his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1497. A long correspondence on matters of faith and government ensued, and al-Suyuti, who may or may not have traveled to the Sudan, is credited with introducing innovative architectural works including at the Songhay court.

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as far south as Malindi and possibly further south. The account of his voyages was written in Chinese as Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean. The possibility that Zheng He or other Arab or Indian navigators circumnavigated the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Atlantic Ocean before Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) made his historic voyage of 1498 is still debated. The truth is that after da Gama entered the Indian Ocean, this Portuguese navigator relied on the knowledge and expertise of Muslim navigators. At Malindi, Vasco da Gama engaged the services of Ahmad ibn Majid (b.c. 1432) to steer his ship to Calicut, India. Ibn Majid, born in Oman, was arguably the most famous navigator of his time, author of an important work on navigation entitled The Book of Useful Information on the Principles and Rules of Navigation (or Kitab alFawa'id), written in 1490. He It is also reported that Vasco da Gama used the nautical chart of a certain Malem Cana, a Moor of Gujarat, during his return voyage.

An Arabic astrolabe, c. 1450. HULTON ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

This fertile period of the Trans-Saharan journey ends with the enigmatic figure of Leo Africanus. Born Hasan bin Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Ziati alGharnati, he was a Muslim refugee from Grenada who grew up in Fes, Morocco. A merchant and sometimes a diplomat, he traveled to Timbuktu between 1509 and 1510 on behalf of the Moroccan Sultan. Although the details of his travels in West Africa are unclear, it is believed that he visited other cities in the region in the years that followed. Many years later, converted to Catholicism and in the service of the Pope in Rome, he wrote his description of Africa in Italian. The book was soon translated into French and Latin and became an important source of knowledge about Africa in Europe. Meanwhile, geographical knowledge of the east coast of Africa was further developed by a Chinese Muslim admiral, Zheng He (1371-1427). A member of the Hui, or Muslim, ethnic group in China and the descendant of a succession of scholars and officials from Yunan province, Zheng He was placed in charge of the Ming Empire's treasure fleets. From 1417 this fleet sailed to Mogadishu and at least so

From the 16th century, European maritime expansion eclipsed the ancient trade routes of the Indian Ocean and the Sahara. Nonetheless, merchants and scholars continued to roam and leave written records until the eve of colonial conquest. For example, Ahmad Baba (1556-1627) was a leading scholar in Timbuktu. After the Moroccan conquest of the city, he went into exile in Marrakech, where he continued to write and teach. Much later he was Aby Serur Mardochee (1826–1886), a rabbi and merchant from southern Morocco. Between 1858 and 1872 he and his younger brother ran the family business in Timbuktu. Later, in retirement in French Algeria, Mardochee wrote about this experience. See also Baba, Ahmad; mapping; Fez; Gama, Vasco da; Gao; Ibn Battuta, Muhammad ibn Abdullah; Ibn Khaldun, Abd al-Rahman; Judaism in Africa; cano; African lion; maghili; Muhammad ibn qAbd al-Karim al-; Metals and Minerals: Gold and Silver; Mogadishu; Mombasa; Moors in African History; Niani; Islamic pilgrimages; Timbuktu; Walata.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blum, Charlotte and Humphrey John Fisher. Love for the Three Oranges, or Askiya's Dilemma: Askiya, al-Maghili and Timbuktu, c. 1500 A.D." Journal of African History 34, no. 1 (1993): 65-91.

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Brett, Michael. "Islam and Commerce in Bilad al-Sudan, 10th-11th Century CE." Journal of African History 24, no. 4 (1983): 431-400. Dreyer, Edward L. Zheng He: China and the Oceans in the Early Ming, 1405–1433. New York: Pearson Longman, 2007. Dunn, Ross E. The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Fourteenth-Century Muslim Traveler. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Hamdun, Said and Noel King, trans. Ibn Battuta in Black Africa. London: Collings, 1975. Hopkins, John Francis Price and Nehemia Levtzion, eds. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History, Markus Wiener Publishers First Edition. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2000. Hunwick, John O., ed. and trans. Sharia in Songhay: al-Maghili's Answers to Askia al-Hajj Muhammad's Questions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. Masonen, Pekka, and Humphrey John Fisher. "Not Quite Venus of the Waves: The Almoravid Conquest of Ghana in Modern West African Historiography". History in Africa 23 (1996): 197–232. ERIC S ROSS

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Chinese contacts with Africa must be understood in the context of the Indian Ocean trading system in ancient and later times, and two types of evidence, historical and archaeological, shape the picture. The presence of African sorghum in India and also in western China as early as the end of the first millennium BC C. Witnessed at least one indirect contact by land rather than direct contact by any sea route. The 1st century AD C. historical source Periplus Maris Erythraei indicates contacts between Roman Egypt, East Africa and India; It is inconceivable that China, which had close ties with India, was not unfamiliar with Africa's east coast and the Horn of Africa. Han Dynasty records (206 BC Chi is an interpretation of the Aksumite ethonym Agaz). Huang-chi exports included tortoiseshell and ivory (known Aksumite exports at the time), and there is a story that a rhinoceros horn was brought as a gift to the court of the usurper Wang Mang (AD 1-6).

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of the ruler. A certain Gan Ying, a Chinese envoy to Rome, is said to have visited a place known as Dou-Le in the late first century AD. C. and returned to China from there with a delegation. This may be indicative of the Aksumite port of Adulis, but neither account is fully convincing of an African identification. In 2001, scholar Wolbert Smidt drew the reader's attention to a later 8th-century source of Du Huan whose travelogues (Jingxingji) relate a visit to a land in Africa called Moling-guo, which Smidt called the lowlands of Eritrea identified and Somalia; to the south is a country called Laobosa, which he says may be a corruption of the Arabic term al Habasha. There is little archaeological evidence of Sino-Aksumite contacts; The Chinese material at Aksum may possibly be represented by a small piece of wrought iron and silver from Chamber D in the Tomb of the Brick Arches (3rd century AD). Stronger Chinese accounts of Africa appear during the T'ang Dynasty (AD 618-907), and two place-names deserve special attention. According to Paul Wheatley (1975), Muaˆ-li˘en appears in five different sources from the 9th and 10th centuries and has been variously identified as Mauretania (highly doubtful) or more generally as Malindi (Kenya coast) but Russian The scholar Vegus has suggested that a better identification considering the misspelled ethonyms should be Meroe¨ in Sudan. Another place name, PoPa-Li, suggests a corruption of Persian Barbarig, hence Berbera, the north coast of Somalia, but this region is not mentioned after the 12th century. These accounts clearly imply second-hand knowledge of Africa, likely acquired by Arab travelers. There is currently no evidence of direct contact between Africa and China. From the late 8th to the 12th century, the Baghdad author al-Masudi commented that gold and ivory (the Chinese valued African ivory more than its Indian counterpart) were transported from Sofala (Mozambique) to Oman and from there to India and China . It is also known that African zanj slaves, mangrove poles, ambergris and frankincense were in great demand in China. The Southern Sung period (1127-1279) saw a concerted expansion of foreign trade and there are now many references to Africa, particularly in the reliable Chu-Fan-Chi (Gazetteer of

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Foreigners) compiled by Chao Ju-Kua around 1225 AD, but again his accounts of the peoples of the Horn and the East African coasts probably derive from his contacts with Arab and Persian traders whom he met in China.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Archaeological evidence from sites along the East African coasts shows that Chinese imports (pottery and coins) increased in importance during this period, particularly in Kilwa (southern Tanzania), Manda and Shanga (northern Kenya). , where the last location has Chinese earthenware present throughout the sequence. Chinese maritime trade and exploration peaked during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644); Between 1405 and 1433, seven Chinese expeditions under the command of the eunuch Cheng-Ho (1371-1433) sailed to the "Western Ocean". In 1415, during the fourth voyage, parts of the fleet actually reached the east coast of Africa; A Kilwa delegation returned to China with the fleet, bringing a giraffe as a gift, and one of Cheng-Ho's captains, Fsei Hin, visited Mogadishu. The ships of the fifth voyage (1417-1419) and sixth voyage (1421-1422) maintained lucrative trade contacts with Africa. Important historical sources from this period are Fsei Hin's detailed notes on the topography, people and climate of Africa - Hsing'ch'a Shenglan (Triumphant Vision of the Crashed Raft, 1436) - and Mao Yu¨'s Wu-Pei-Chih a-i. (Notes on preparation for war, 17th century).

Hermann, A. "An ancient maritime traffic between Abyssinia and southern China up to the beginning of our era." Journal of the Geographical Society10 (1913): 553–561.

The oldest Chinese map of Africa, Chu Ssu˘-pen's Yu ¨ t'u, apparently based on information from Arabic sources, dates from the early 14th century and places Zanzibar (Sang-Ku-Pa) on the west coast. . Nautical charts from this period also show a strong Arabic influence. Chinese contacts with Central and South Africa from the 13th to the 16th centuries are also evidenced archaeologically by celadon finds at the Mapungubwe, Great Zimbabwe and Dholo-Dhlo sites, among others, but it is clear that they were never directly visited by Chinese traders . or voyagers, since by then Chinese maritime dominance of the Indian Ocean had been effectively challenged by the Portuguese. See also Adulis; Aksum; mapping; Ivory; Metals and Minerals: Gold and Silver; Mogadishu; slave trade; trade, national and international systems; Zimbabwe cool.

Duyvendak, Jan. China's Discovery of Africa. London: Arthur Probsthain, 1949. Fiaccadori, Gianfranco. "Indian Theophilus Pt 11". Classical and Oriental Studies 34 (1984): 271–308.

Schmidt, Wolbert. "A Chinese in the Kingdoms of Nubia and Abyssinia (8th Century)." Chroniques Yemenites 9 (2001). Available at http://cy.revues.org/document33.html. Wheatley, Paul. "Analecta Sino-African Recensa." In East Africa and the Orient: Cultural Synthesises in Pre-Colonial Times, ed. H. Neville Chittick and Robert I. Rotberg. New York and London: Africana Publishing Company, 1975. NIALL FINNERAN

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Africa was recognized by ancient and medieval geographers as one of the three continents that make up the human universe. However, direct contact and knowledge was historically limited to North Africa. The broad belt north of the Sahara was an integral part of the political, diplomatic and economic life of the Mediterranean world. Although levels of integration varied, North Africa was accessible to Europeans in ancient and medieval times through direct interaction, descriptive accounts, and oral geography. In the second half of the first millennium AD, the fall of the Roman Empire, Muslim conquests, and the decline of cities and market economies in north-west and central Europe weakened contacts between largely Muslim North Africa and increasingly Christian Europe. However, the revival of intercontinental trade in the 12th and 13th centuries led to European traders returning to the shores of North Africa. Mamluk Egypt's key role in the Crusades and its mediation in Indian Ocean trade further strengthened trade contact between the two shores of the Mediterranean. The success of the reconquest and the subsequent aggressive policies of several Christian states, especially Aragon and Genoa, led to an increase in diplomatic activities that created an additional need for travel. European merchants in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries

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and diplomats traveled to all the important centers of North Africa, from Agadir and Safi in Morocco, Tlemcen in present-day Algeria, and Alexandria and Cairo in Egypt. The reach of Jewish traders, often acting as intermediaries for Christian partners, extended along the main routes across the Sahara. Consequently, much commercial and political information about North Africa and Saharan trade in the Christian Mediterranean was readily available, although direct contact most often stopped at the northern edge of the desert. Knowledge of other parts of Africa was much more limited. While West Africa was known as a source of gold and slaves arriving in the Mediterranean no later than the 8th century, and a few individual Europeans are said to have visited the great trading cities of western Sudan, southern Africa west of the Niger Bend lay beyond the range of direct knowledge of the late medieval Europe. There were no contacts or information between Europe and Central Africa and South Africa. The East African coast, on the other hand, has been entrenched in European consciousness since ancient times, most notably in relation to the tale of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and the continued involvement of East African cities in Indian Ocean trade. . Their importance was so ingrained in European geographical consciousness that they were included in the supposed itineraries of both the Infante Dom Pedro of Portugal (1420s) and Pero de Covilha˜, dispatched at the turn of the century to promote trade in the western Exploring the Indian Ocean XV. One of the most isolated regions on the continent to date, the Atlantic coast of Africa was the focus of European exploration in the 15th century. Members of the Portuguese royal family, notably the Infante Dom Henrique (Henry the Navigator) and his grandnephew, King Dom Joa˜o II, sponsored a series of voyages between 1434 and 1488, exploring the vast coastline from Cape Boujdour to the Cape of Good Hope . , revealing the previously unknown extent and shape of the African continent. In contrast to the ill-fated voyage of the Vivaldi brothers in 1291, 15th-century European explorers laid the groundwork for sustained contact with Atlantic Africa, driven by the prospect of gain and rewards on their return. A series of expeditions led by Portuguese captains and Italian merchants in the 1440s and 1450s

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evolved into what is now Guinea-Bissau. Exploration of the Windward Coast (the Corn Coast to Sierra Leone) was completed in the 1460s and advanced rapidly along the Gulf of Guinea in the 1470s. In the early 1480s, Diogo Ca˜o made contact with the Kongo kingdom and explored the long stretch of coast of future Angola and northern Namibia. In 1487, Bartolomeu Dias not only reached the southern tip of Africa, but proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the Atlantic and Indian Oceans were connected, paving the way for Vasco da Gama's arrival in India in 1498. While the Portuguese largely focused on the coast They tried to gather as much information about the interior as possible, as evidenced by travelogues and contemporary accounts (e.g. Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis by Duarte Pacheco Pereira and the Compilation of Written Accounts and Documents by Valentim Fernandes). oral reports). They also made sustained efforts to establish diplomatic relations with the West African rulers. While much of this diplomatic activity involved states within about 62 miles of the Atlantic coast, King Dom Joa˜o II's missions to western Sudan in the 1480s reflected the Portuguese keen interest in the traditional heart of West Africa. Hopes that the Zaire River would provide a shortcut to the Indian Ocean, coupled with the conversion of the ruling Kongo family to Christianity, prompted a wave of exploration into the interior of west-central Africa in the late 1480s and 1490s, circumnavigating the voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-1499) southern Africa and reached the rich trading cities of East Africa, from Sofala to Mombasa and Melindi. However, the first goal of the Portuguese explorations, to find an alternative route into the country of Prester John (Ethiopia), was not realized until the beginning of the 16th century. See also cartography; Gama, Vasco da; Judaism in Africa; Metals and Minerals: Gold and Silver; Mombasa; queens and queen mothers; The Sahara Desert; slave trade.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Elbl, Ivana, "Cross-Cultural Trade and Diplomacy, Portuguese Relations with West Africa, 1441-1521." Journal of World History 3 (1992): 165-204.

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Fernandez, Valentin. The manuscript "Valentim Fernandes", ed. Anthony Baia ̃o. Lisbon: Portuguese Academy of History, 1940. Ferna´ndez-Armesto, Felipe. Before Columbus: Exploration and Settlement from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1987. Pereira, Duarte Pacheco. Emerald of Situ Orbis, ed. and trans. G.H.T. Kimble. London: Hakluyt Society, 1937. Phillips, J.R.S. The Medieval Expansion of Europe. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. Thomas, Louis Philip. "Portugal and Africa in the twentieth century: the beginnings of expansion". Archives of the Portuguese Cultural Center 26 (1989): 161–256. IVANA ELBL

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European exploration of the African coast was essentially complete by 1514, but exploration of the interior did not begin until the 1790s. Meanwhile, knowledge of sub-Saharan Africa grew sporadically, but was mostly confined to a few economically important coastal locations. The account of Leo Africanus (1550), who visited western Sudan twice between 1509 and 1513, remained the basis of knowledge of this inner region well into the 19th century. Subsequent exploration was mainly limited to Senegambia. In Gambia, following the example of the Portuguese, English traders reached Barracunda Falls in 1651, and in 1689 Cornelius Hodges traveled overland from there to Bambuk. By this time, the French were familiar with Senegal as far back as the Kingdom of Galam, and in 1700 established a fort near the furthest navigable point of the river. The only part of inland North Africa that attracted explorers was Egypt, where scholar-tourists (mainly French) ventured up the Nile, visiting Sennar in 1699 and producing two books on Upper Egypt in the 1780s. Some Europeans visited the Berber states in the 1700s diplomatic or commercial purposes, but most information about the North African hinterland came from the British and French consuls in Tripoli. In central Africa, Leo Africanus' contemporary, António Fernandes, explored the interior of Sofala (present-day southern Mozambique).

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he visited gold mines in the lands of Mutapa (Monomatapa) from 1511 to 1514. A century later (1616) Gaspar Bocarro traveled from Quı'loa to Tete via the Zambezi. In both cases exploration was followed by the establishment of Portuguese bases on the Zambezi, first at Sena, then at Tete. Almost two centuries followed, during which no centrally directed exploration took place, but control and knowledge of the Zambezi Valley was consolidated. In 1798 Francisco José de Lacerda led a reconnaissance expedition from Tete to the Kazembe court on Lake Mweru. Five years earlier, Alexandre da Silva Teixeira had come to the country of Luvale from the opposite coast (Angola). Eyewitness accounts from Ethiopia were provided by Francisco Alvarez, a member of the Portuguese Embassy from 1520-1526; by Jesuit travelers in the period 1603-1633; by the French Charles Poncet, who visited the court of Gonda¨r in 1699–1700; and by James Bruce, whose Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile (1790), describing the experiences of 1769–1772, was a milestone in the history of travel writing. The interior of the Cape of Good Hope was explored by trekkers in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, but printed accounts of this exploration did not appear until the 1780s. Among the authors were two Swedes, Andreas Sparrman (1783) and Carl Thunberg (1788-1793), and one French, Francois Levaillant (1790). The appearance of books like these reflected growing public interest in Africa, particularly in London and Paris, during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. This in turn stimulated further exploration. With the support of the Association for the Promotion of the Discovery of the Inner Parts of Africa (African Association), founded in London in 1788, James Watt and Matthew Winterbottom explored Fuuta Jallon and the Nun ˜ez River (present-day Guinea) in 1794. ; and in 1796 Mungo Park traveled to Segu (in present-day Mali) on the Niger. However, travel wasn't necessarily the best way to increase knowledge. Some important travelers left no record, such as David van Nyendael, who visited the kingdom of Asante (modern-day Ghana) in 1702, and two Italian priests who are said to have arrived in Katsina (modern-day Nigeria) a few years ago.

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later. Others managed to report on West Sudan without setting foot there, for example the American John Ledyard, who died in Cairo in 1789 en route to West Africa Luis del Mármol (General Description of Africa, 1573, 1599), Richard Hakluyt (The Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation, 1589), Olfert Dapper (Naukeurige beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche wersen, 1668) and Hiob Ludolf (Historia aethiopica, 1681). These authors took advantage of the written and oral information available in Europe, and their compilations created a popular genre of travel literature. See also cartography; geography and study of Africa; African lion; Niger River; The nil; Tripoli; Zambezi River. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alpern, Stanley B. A Guide to Original Sources for Pre-Colonial West Africa: An Updated and Expanded Supplement to Fage (1994). Madison: University of Wisconsin, African Studies Program, 2006. Ferna'ndez-Armesto, Felipe, ed. The Times Atlas of World Exploration. New York: Times Books, 1991. Hallett, Robin. The Penetration of Africa: European Enterprise and Exploration Primarily in North and West Africa to 1830. Vol. 1. New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965. Masonen, Pekka. The Negroland Revisited: Discovery and Invention of the Sudanese Middle Ages. Helsinki: Finnish Academy of Sciences and Literature, 2000. ADAM JONES

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Exploration of Africa gained considerable momentum during the 19th century, reflecting (and reflecting) increased public interest and better technical possibilities. The type of information travelers sought varied widely, depending on the institutions that sponsored them as well as their personal inclinations. While exotic flora and fauna dominated much of writing about Africa before 1800, information about geography and African societies became more important thereafter. However, as Mary Louise Pratt and others have argued, such "discoveries" were often not so much about discovering

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brand new as in "Transforming local knowledge into European knowledge". The early 1860s shed more light on this region. The detailed scientific work of French scholars in Egypt after Napoleon's invasion in 1798 and in Algeria in the period from 1844 to 1867 was less spectacular, but of considerable importance as a contribution to knowledge. West Africa dominated the interest of European discoverers in the first half of the 19th century. Mungo Park led his last expedition to West Africa in 1805, where he died in the middle of Niger. 1821-1822 Dixon Denham, Hugh Clapperton and Walter Oudney crossed the Sahara to Lake Chad. Clapperton's servant Richard Lander returned to Africa three years later with his brother John and explored the lower reaches of the Niger. The most learned explorer, covering a large area of West Africa, was Heinrich Barth in 1850–1855. In 1869 Gustav Nachtigal headed an embassy on Bornou and explored Togoland and Cameroon in the 1880s. The botanist William Burchell traveled to South Africa in 1811–1812; Many later travelers were big game hunters such as William Cornwallis Harris, who traveled to Matabele country in the 1830s, and Roualeyn Gordon Cumming. David Livingstone was a key figure in the exploration of subequatorial Africa during this period, driven by an unrelenting belief that his course was directed by God. From 1841 to 1853 he served in South Africa under the London Missionary Society. He then embarked, accompanied by a party from Makololo, on a three-year reconnaissance voyage that included the European discovery of the Victoria Falls and a west-east traverse of Africa (on the latter he was preceded by the Hungarian Ladislau Magyar). . Virtually all of these explorers wrote of their voyages, or books were posthumously compiled from their journals, but Livingstone's Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa (1857), which saw nine editions, had a unique effect in drawing attention to the continent. Belief in the Zambezi as a route inland

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for "Christianity and Commerce" Livingstone returned to Africa in 1858. In East Africa in the 1840s, missionaries Johannes Rebmann, Johann Ludwig Krapf (a noted linguist), and J.J. Erhardt brought back accounts of the mountains of Kilimanjaro and Kenya, with tales of a great inland lake. The Royal Geographical Society sent out an expedition in 1856 to determine whether these were really the legendary "Mountains of the Moon" and to discover the origin of the Nile. Their leader was Richard Francis Burton, who had already visited Mecca disguised as a Muslim. It was his companion, John Hanning Speke, who found the source of the Nile at Lake Victoria; Burton denied this, but the Royal Geographical Society asked Speke to join a new expedition to confirm his discovery. He did this in the company of James Augustus Grant in 1860-1863. Burton denied his claim, but before the two could engage in public debate, Speke was killed in a shooting accident in 1864 through which the White Nile flowed. Doubts still remained about the origin of the Nile, and to resolve them Livingstone undertook his final expedition in 1866. Illness and geographical uncertainty thwarted this expedition and ended in his death in 1873, but his 'discovery' of British-born American journalist Henry M. Stanley in 1871, the transfer of his body ashore by a group of African followers and the skillful editing of his Horace Waller's Last Journals (1874) contributed to the construction of a legend. Verney Lovett Cameron, a naval officer dispatched to relieve Livingstone in 1873, continued to travel through Africa after learning of his death, completing the first east-west crossing. From 1874 to 1877 Stanley also traversed Africa following the course of the Congo (partly explored from its mouth by James Tuckey in 1815) and later served as the first administrator of what later became the Congo Free State. In this capacity he became a rival to the Italian-born French explorer, Count Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza, who had explored the Oguwe River in Gabon and was the founder of the French Congo.

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Other explorers in East Africa were Charles New, missionary and traveler who died in 1875 after visiting the Chagga area; Joseph Thomson, the Scottish geologist who traveled to Lake Rukwa without the usual casualties and later explored the Maasai Territory; Harry Hamilton Johnston, later administrator but first in Africa as a naturalist in the Kilimanjaro area; Karl Peters, whose "Emin Pasha Aid Expedition" was a cover for German imperialism; the Hungarian Count Samuel Teleki and the naval officer Ludwig von Hohnel, discoverers of Lake Rudolf and Lake Stefanie; and the American May French Sheldon, traveling in a wicker sedan chair in 1891. In the 19th century was Mary Kingsley, whose Travels in West Africa (1897) describes trips there in 1893 and 1894-1895. An outspoken critic of both missionary politics and government, she sided with the merchants who traded in the area. The sheer output of travellers' first-hand accounts of Africa, be it Baker's robust adventures of Albert N'Yanza (1866), the precision and sharp style of Burton's The Lake Regions of Central Africa (1860), or Livingstone's enormously popular missionary voyages , there have been far-reaching implications for popular images of Africa. See also Barth-Heinrich; Gordon, Charles George; Livingston, David; The nil; The Sahara Desert; Stanley, Henry Morton; Zambezi River. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Delpar, Helena, eds. The Explorers: An Encyclopedia of Explorers and Exploration. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980. Fabian, Johannes. Out of Our Minds: Reason and Folly in Exploring Central Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Fernández-Armesto, Felipe, ed. The Times Atlas of World Exploration. New York: Times Books/HarperCollins, 1991. Lloyd, Christopher C. The Search for Niger. London: Collins, 1973. Severin, Timothy. The African Adventure: Four Hundred Years of Exploration. New York: Dutton, 1973.

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Simpson, Donald H. Dark Companions: The African Contribution to European Exploration of East Africa. London: Paul Elek, 1975. DONALD H. SIMPSON REVISED BY ADAM JONES

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TRIBE AND TRIBALISM. In the 21st century, few people describe Africa and its peoples as "primitive" or "backward"; But many still hold that Africans live in "tribes" and refer to their marriages, gods, or arts as "tribal," implicitly defining the word as essentially "not like us," living in small groups. isolated communities without global technologies, as "native" and relatively unaffected by the world outside Africa, and as barbaric, exotic, or romantically "noble". In the African context, the word "tribe" derives from the colonial era, denoting local territorial and cultural groups under the control of colonial administrations. It was borrowed from Indian usage, where it was used for peoples who were neither Hindu nor Muslim and were therefore considered inferior. In Africa, administrators tried to bring order to the myriad small groups they subjugated. Many of them were under the control of powerful African kingdoms, but most were autonomous, ranging in number from several million to a few hundred people. They were generally groups of people who claimed common origins and cultures, spoke their own languages or dialects, and generally intermarried within their own borders and with their own religious beliefs and practices. By categorizing them as individual "tribes" and ignoring their internal differences and complex interconnections among themselves, and by pooling the small ones and dividing the large ones to make them all roughly the same size, their colonizers were able to treat them as equally subject to the norm and that Common law. When differences were recognized, they were usually those that were useful for administration: some groups were seen as better suited than others for military service, or for industrial or degrading jobs, or were defined simply as pastoralists or farmers. Historians have often claimed that colonial administrators "invented" the "tribes."

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This is an oversimplification: rather, for their own administrative convenience, they gave existing groups and associations new names, names that in time came to be used by the people themselves. The term also had an oddly ambivalent meaning: "tribal peoples" not only needed to be under colonial control, but also needed protection from the outside world, and providing that protection was often seen as one of the duties of the colonizers. Christian missionaries set out to convert them, to "save" them from the moral evils that were believed to surround them. Indigenous peoples were thought to be originally innocent, usually in remote areas far from colonial towns, without industry (but used as urban migrant workers), although their innocence was generally thought to be warlike and dangerous, and they preserved their own 'customs' as much as possible . There was little reason to go to great lengths to develop or "modernize" them, and as long as they paid their taxes and kept the peace, they had peace of mind. In general, administrations sought to preserve local identities even as 'indigenous' organizations and patterns of behavior changed, and local groups themselves often attempted to maintain their 'traditional' identities rather than abandon or change them to maintain a sense of identity. cultural autonomy. The same process can be observed in the early 21st century, as local groups try to remain proud of their cultural identity in the face of external modernization and nationalism, so their “traditional” ethnic or tribal names often expose them to criminal charges. of old-fashioned "tribalism". While new governments might try to "detribalize" their subjects, the latter might try to "retribalize" themselves. At the same time, tribal identity was not and is not permanent for any group: it can be changed, abandoned, or adopted as a means of asserting social identity and economic and political rights. Groups can split or merge with others, both processes often requiring the adoption of new "tribal" identities and names. Many South African groups of mixed European and non-European descent have long been known as "Cape Coloreds", and similar identities exist among many mixed Khoe and Bushman groups, who today often claim primary land rights in Namibia and Botswana. In Kenya, the many formerly distinct "tribes" of the Kavirondo area are known as a single group called the Luhya.

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and beyond the Kenyan coast, the nine formerly distinct 'tribes' are now known as a single group known as the Mijikenda ('nine peoples'). Both claim new rights and more power in the nation of Kenya than before. The word tribe was also once used by many anthropologists to isolate and define a particular type or level of political and organizational system. Much has been made of what appears to be a tripartite classification of African societies, encompassing gangs, tribes, and kingdoms, an implicitly evolutionary series in which each type was distinguished by its productive economy and degree of political and communal authority. In this scheme, tribes comprised the vast majority of African societies, essentially those in the middle, and much effort has been expended in analyzing their immensely varied structures and organizations. A consequence of this was that anthropologists became associated with the study of these mostly middle-class societies, so that new independent post-colonial governments often associated them with "tribalists" who were thought to oppose the powerful new "nationalists": this associated very well with the then-fashionable vision of the discipline of anthropology as closely linked to colonialism. Furthermore, studies of modern African cities often referred to their immigrants as "tribesmen" as opposed to the "commoners" who were their more permanent residents. This simplistic view has long been refuted in the face of research showing that the distinction is essentially between the life stages of men and women as they move between rural and urban residence, rather than in a timeless pattern of settlement and culture. In the 21st century, the use of the terms tribe and tribalism to describe or define the people of Africa has all but ended, although local politicians still frequently use them to refer to their supporters or enemies. See also Social Anthropology and African Studies; colonial policies and practices; ethnicity; historical linguistics; Linguistics and African Studies; Nationalism.

Barth, Friedrich, ed. Ethnic Groups and Boundaries: The Social Organization of Cultural Difference. Boston: Little Brown, 1969. Epstein, AL Politics in an Urban African Community. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1958. Vail, Leroy, eds. The Emergence of Tribalism in Southern Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 1989. JOHN MIDDLETON

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TRIPOLI. Tripoli (Arabic: Tarabulus) is the capital and largest city of the socialist Libyan Arab People's Republic of Jamahiriya with an estimated population of 1.3 to 1.7 million in 2006. Founded by Phoenician traders c. Tripoli was ruled by the Romans for 600 years and was in turn controlled by Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Sicilian Normans, Spanish, Hospitallers, Ottomans, Italians and British before becoming a joint capital with Benghazi an independent Libya from December 1951 (and Tripoli became the sole capital in 1970). Historically, the city was an important seaport and trading center for Trans-Saharan trade, particularly slaves and luxuries such as ivory, gold, and ostrich feathers. Privateering pirates brought much wealth to Tripoli until the city was bombed by American and British ships in the early 19th century. The city has traditionally been a mix of Berbers, Arabs, Jews, Maltese, Greeks, sub-Saharan Africans (formerly as slaves) and, in the 20th century, Italians. After the discovery of oil in 1959, Tripoli became a center of industrialization and trade with a growing number of foreign workers. At the turn of the 21st century, Tripoli is emerging from its rigid concrete dwellings and isolation as tourism spurs new hotels and foreign companies to open offices, despite huge Muammar Gaddafi billboards across the city pointing to the borders or remember the speed for which something changes in the city. See also Libya; Gaddafi, Muammar.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amselle, Jean-Loup, and E. M'bokolo, eds. At the Heart of Ethnicity: Ethnic Groups, Tribalism, and the State in Africa. Paris: The Discovery, 1985.

Elkabir, Yassin Ali. Migrants in Tripoli: a case study on assimilation. Pittsburgh: University Center for International Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1980.

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Rghei, Amer S. and Nelson, J. G. "The Preservation and Use of the Walled City of Tripoli." Geographical Journal 160, no. 2 (1994): 143-158. MICHAEL E. BONINE

TROPICAL AND MOIST FORESTS. See Ecosystems: Tropical and Moist Forests.

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TRUTH COMMISSIONS.

Since the mid-1970s, 20th century, and early 1970s, truth commissions have been set up in more than thirty countries to investigate a pattern of violations over a period of time and provide a final report and recommendations for reform. At the end of the 21st century, there was one remarkable increase in the number and type of commissions of this kind being created around the world. Since the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission began its work in 1995 and attracted worldwide attention, the idea of an out-of-court investigation into widespread human rights abuses has attracted the attention of new governments, victim groups and organizations in many countries, across a wide spectrum. variety of contexts. Many of these truth commissions were founded in Africa. The first modern truth commission was founded in Uganda in 1974 by Idi Amin Dada. She suffered from significant political constraints, but was able to produce an important report. Other truth commissions were set up in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Liberia, Morocco, Nigeria, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe (where the government refused to release its report). Mozambique briefly considered the idea of a truth commission in the early 1990s, but decided against such a program. Burundi agreed to a truth commission in its Arusha peace accords, although it is unclear when or if such a body will be created. The South African Truth Commission was unique in its ability to grant amnesty in exchange for the truth. This regulation only applied to crimes that were proven to be politically motivated and

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after the perpetrator has fully disclosed the relevant facts, including answering direct questions from the victims of his crimes. This led to many powerful television scenes of perpetrators admitting the details of their crimes. But despite the compelling nature of the South African experience, this amnesty-for-truth model is unlikely to be appropriate elsewhere, in part because it will only succeed where perpetrators fear prosecution if they do not confess and seek amnesty. . Most often, the national justice system of post-war or post-authoritarian states is weak and severely compromised. Truth commissions are generally set up for a relatively short period of time: two to three years on average. They typically employ hundreds of people as investigators, testimony bearers, and investigators, and receive extensive and detailed information from thousands of victims and other witnesses. Some have been granted subpoena powers or explicit rights of access to government documents. Others have had to rely on the voluntary cooperation of not only senior officials but direct perpetrators, sometimes in exchange for guarantees of confidentiality. Each truth commission is unique and must be rooted in the realities and possibilities of its particular environment. Truth commissions do not have the power to prosecute wrongdoers, but many have recommended prosecutions and some have shared their files with law enforcement officials. Some have also chosen to publicly identify the individuals they believe are the perpetrators of certain violations. When truth commissions have been proposed or established in contexts in which an international or hybrid tribunal operates, important procedural issues have been raised. In Sierra Leone, the issue of the relationship between the Truth Commission and the Special Court for Sierra Leone has been the subject of considerable debate and at times a source of tension and misunderstanding. In other cases, however, the interaction between non-judicial truth-seeking and prosecution in courts (whether in national, hybrid, or international courts) has been much more explicit and intentional, leading to the possibility of strengthening judicial accountability over time.

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The time sensitive nature of public hearings by some truth commissions, particularly those of South Africa, has prompted other commissions, including those of Ghana, Sierra Leone and Liberia, to include a public hearings component in their work. Recent experience has highlighted the importance of public hearings, where negotiations are often broadcast live on television and radio, bringing much more attention to human rights issues in the country. In Nigeria, for example, the public was occupied for a year watching the televised meetings of the Truth Commission. The increased global interest in truth commissions reflects in part increased public attention to the challenge of transitional justice following mass atrocities or abusive governments. Countries emerging from a period of widespread violations of rights are increasingly recognizing the importance of thinking broadly and holistically when designing justice policies. It is generally recognized that prosecutorial justice policies often leave many perpetrators untouched, many victims unheard, and many societal needs unmet. National capacity is unlikely to be sufficient to prosecute thousands of defendants in court. Policies that include judicial and non-judicial approaches to justice are more likely to meet the diverse needs and demands of a society grappling with the legacy of a brutal past.

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TSHOMBE,

MAY

if he likes it

(1917-1969). Moı¨se Kapenda Tshombe was born in Musumba, the historical capital of Lunda, in Lualaba District of Katanga (Shaba) Province and was connected to the Lunda royal family by marriage. As a Methodist, he completed his middle school education and was trained as a preacher and teacher. He became a merchant like his father and a member of the African middle class, a business interest group. In 1958 he co-founded the Confe'de'ration des Associations Tribales du Katanga (Conakat), an organization to defend ethnic interests in the province. The independence movement in the Belgian Congo focused on the distant colonial period

See also All Dad, So; Ghana; Liberia; Nigeria; Sierra Leone; South Africa, Republic. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boraine, Alex. A Country Unmasked: Inside the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Hayner, Priscilla B. Unspeakable Truths: Meeting the Challenge of Truth Commissions. New York and London: Routledge, 2001. PRISCILLA HAYNER Moı¨se Kapenda Tshombe (1917–1969) at a press conference in 1965. Tshombe's CONAKAT party was based on a platform to create an independent Congo. When his party gained control of Katanga, he and other leaders succeeded

TSETSE MOSCOW. Control.

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See Agriculture: Pests and Pests

The Congo became an independent republic. TERRENCE SPENCER/TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES

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Capital of Le'opoldville, Tshombe propelled himself to the political vanguard. In 1959 he became President of Conakat, espousing separatist views and unsuccessfully advocating a confederal system of government in which each province would have near-complete autonomy at the 1960 Brussels Round Table held to determine the political future of the Congo. Through procedural maneuvers and the repression of nationalist parties allied to the independent Democratic Republic of Congo's first prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, Tshombe was elected president of the provincial government of Katanga in 1960. On July 11, 1960, eleven days after the country was formally granted independence on June 30, 1960, Katanga's secession was proclaimed by the central Lumumbaled government. The secession sparked a series of events, including the assassination of Lumumba at Tshombe's headquarters by Tshombe's associates. At the end of secession in 1963, Tshombe was living in exile in Spain. In 1964, President Joseph Kasavubu appointed him to the Congolese central government and appointed him prime minister to stamp out the spreading Lumumbist popular uprising. Using European and South African mercenaries, he achieved this goal only to be fired by Kasavubu. The ensuing political turmoil led to the military coup of Joseph Mobutu (later President Mobutu Sese Seko) and Tshombe's second exile in Europe. Tshombe attempted to regain power by plotting a coup led by mercenaries, but was tricked by Mobutu's CIA intelligence agencies, kidnapped and taken to Algeria, where he died in prison. He was buried in Belgium.

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TUBMAN, WILLIAM VACANARAT SHADRACH (1895-1971). William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman is credited with being the man who ushered Liberia into the modern era as President of Liberia from 1944 to 1971. William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman was born on November 29, 1895 in Harper, Cape Palmas, southeastern Liberia. A descendant of American slaves who emigrated from Georgia in the 19th century, Tubman was born into the elite of the ruling class. He was educated at Cape Palmas Methodist Seminary and Cuttington College Divinity School, graduating in 1913. He studied law privately and was admitted to the bar in 1917. Ambitious and personable, Tubman joined the conservative and dominant True Whig Party, becoming the youngest Senator in Liberia's history in 1923. In 1937 he was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. In 1943, Tubman received the party's nomination for President and was elected to that position on January 3, 1944. Despite enforcing one-man rule, Tubman was generally a popular leader, best remembered for his thrift.

See also Colonial Policies and Practices: Belgian; Congo, Republic; Lumumba, Patrice; Mobutu Sese Seko.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Chome, Jules. Moı ̈se Tshombe and the Katanga Scam. Brussels: J. Jacquemotte Foundation Publishing House, 1966. Hoskyns, Catherine. The Congo since Independence: January 1960 to December 1961. London: Oxford University Press, 1965. Tshombe, Moı¨se. My Fifteen Months in Government, trans. Lewis Barnays. Plano, TX: University of Plano, 1967. S.N. SANGMPAM

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William Tubman (1895–1971) at his desk in Monrovia, 1956. Tubman was elected President of Liberia seven times. He was a descendant of former American slaves who returned to Africa through the Maryland State Colonization Society. AFP/GETTY PICTURES

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development of Liberia, the extension of civil rights to Africans inside the country and the right to vote for all Liberians. He was instrumental in formulating the principles of the Organization of African Unity in 1963. He died in office on July 23, 1971. See also Liberia: History and Politics. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Henries, A. Doris Banks. A Biography of President William V. S. Tubman. London: Macmillan, 1967. Tubman, William V.S. The Official Papers of William V.S. Tubman, President of the Republic of Liberia: Covering Addresses, Messages, Reds, and Statements 1960–1967, ed. E.Reginald Townsend. London: Longmans, 1968. Wreh, Tuan. The love of liberty: the government of President William V.S. Tubman in Liberia, 1944–1971. London: C Hurst, 1976. ROBERT UTTARO

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TUNISIA. The capital and largest city of Tunisia, to which it lends its name, Tunis sits on a narrow isthmus between a coastline

Lagoon (now connected to the Mediterranean Sea) and a shallow lake. The population of the metropolitan area was estimated at 2 million in 2006. In addition to serving as the political capital, Tunis is also the main financial, commercial, industrial, transport, cultural and media center of Tunisia. The Phoenicians built in the 8th century BC. a city on the site. C., but remained eclipsed by its powerful neighbor Carthage until the Arab conquest in AD 695. Already a center of trade and port, Tunis became the capital of a small emirate in 1054 and then in 1228 the capital of the powerful Hafsid dynasty of Andalusia. (the most famous of them was Ibn Khalduˆn). In the 16th century, Tunisia was at the forefront of wars between the Habsburgs and the Ottomans, finally falling to the latter in 1574. Under Ottoman rule, the city was a beylik (autonomous province). Thanks to the Barbarian pirates, it was an active center of privateering and attracted numerous European merchants. The French

Aerial view of the city of Tunis. Tunis is both the capital and the largest city of Tunisia. The city is the main financial, commercial, industrial, transport, cultural and media center of Tunisia. TIME MARCH/TIME LIFE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

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In 1881 he occupied Tunisia and made it the capital of his Tunisian protectorate. A new European city center was created between the old town and the port on the lagoon. Most of the institutions created since independence (1956) were established in the Hafsi and Ottoman era kasbah districts (now fully rebuilt) or in vast new suburban districts north of the Lagoon.

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY

Tunisia 0

Mediterranean Sea

50 miles

50 Kilometer

Bizarre Little N.P. Beja and R. came to me

See also Tunisia.

Ras el Abiadh

Nabeul

BIBLIOGRAPHY Zaghouan

El Kef

Micaud, Ellen C. "Urbanization, City Planning, and the Medina of Tunis." International Journal of Middle East Studies 9 (1978): 431–447. Santelli, Sergio. Tunisia: the city and the melting pot of the Mediterranean. Paris: Editions du demi-cercle/CNRS editions, 1995.

AGAIN

ALGERIA

This entry contains the following elements:

Hammamet Gulf

Susa Monastir

in Kairouan

Monte Chambi (1544 m) Kasserine

El Mahdi

Safx

Bou-Hedma-Gafsa-National Park

the island of Qerqenah. Gulf of Gabes

Tozeur

TUNISIA

a RS

Sidi Bouzid

DAVID CHIDESTER

Norte

Siliana

Ras el Tib

Gulf of

Ariana Tunisian Qulaybiyah Tunisian Ben Arous

Shott el Jerid

Jerba I.

NO L T E B AGREES

Zarzis

Qibili Messing

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY SOCIETY AND CULTURES

Scale

HISTORY AND POLITICS

Remo A Romane

GE O GR APY AND ECONOMY

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Jenaien

OD ABI L EL

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Tunisia is the northernmost country in Africa. It occupies the plains and plateaux at the eastern end of the North African complex. It has a long Mediterranean coastline (713 miles) which has opened it up to influences from across the Mediterranean. The land area of the country is 63,170 square miles. Some areas in the south are below sea level, with the highest point being Mount Chambi at 5,065 feet. The country is bisected by a low mountain range, the “dorsal,” or backbone, that runs southwest to northeast and also marks the division between the relatively well-watered north (over 15 inches of annual rainfall, usually enough to produce a wheat crop) and the dry south. Arable land makes up about 30 percent of the total area and covers about 1,544 square miles under irrigation. The main crops are cereals (wheat) and tree crops such as olives, dates and citrus fruits. There is an important animal husbandry, mainly sheep. Inshore fishing employs a number of people.

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Bordj

During the colonial period (1881–1956), French and other European farmers confiscated much of the best arable land, but recovered after independence when much of it was organized into agricultural cooperatives. Although Tunisia moved away

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SOCIETY AND CULTURES

Since socialism, market-oriented large companies with wage labor have continued to dominate. Since pre-colonial times, Tunisia has exported olive oil and wheat to Europe in good years, and agricultural exports remain important. Tunisia experimented with heavy industry in the early years of independence, but the main focus has shifted to light industry, often closely linked to European markets (textiles and clothing, diamond cutting). In the early 2000s, phosphates and chemicals are relatively important and consume Tunisian raw materials to a significant extent. There is some oil and gas production. Agriculture accounts for around 13 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) but employs up to around 50 percent of the labor force, while industry accounts for around 32 percent of GDP with 23 percent of the labor force, and services account for 55 percent of GDP with around a quarter of the labor force . GDP growth depends on the success of tourism and agriculture, the first being influenced by the international situation and the second by rainfall. In a good year it is around 5 percent. The National Confederation of Labor has played an important role in domestic politics since the days of the independence struggle. Tourism is an important service sector. It mainly caters to European vacationers looking for a seaside vacation, although tours of Roman and Islamic monuments are arranged. There is also an "informal" (non-tax) sector of indefinite size, made up of small retailers and artisans. Tunisia has a well-developed network of weekly and daily markets that connect the various ecological parts of the country. Many Tunisians work abroad, mainly in Europe, and some have settled there; there is a stream of remittances from these migrant workers. In 2007, the population of Tunisia was estimated at around 10 million. Most of the population and economic activity is concentrated in the coastal area from Bizerte through Tunis to Gabes in the south. The country has been relatively successful in using family planning education to stem its population growth, leaving the population growth rate at 1 percent and the fertility rate at 1.74, both lower than most comparable countries. The literacy rate is 74 percent (higher for men) and life expectancy is 75 years. Communication has improved with the introduction of cell phones.

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Mobile phones now outperforming landlines by a ratio of 3:1. Critical environmental issues for Tunisia are the scarcity of natural freshwater resources and waste disposal. With the growing population, Tunisia is well below the benchmark for water scarcity. Water conservation is an issue, and desalination may not be far behind. Raw sewage and other waste also degrades available water, and the government has invested in sewage treatment plants, particularly where pollution threatens tourism. Problems related to deforestation, desertification, overgrazing and soil erosion are also of concern. The oceans are also polluted, and waste from coastal phosphate processing plants has turned the Gulf of Gabes into a marine desert. Tunisia is characterized by a growing and increasingly affluent population in a rather fragile environment. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Communication; ecosystems; production strategies; floors; Textiles; Tourism; Tunisia; water and irrigation. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Murphy, Emma C. Economic and Political Change in Tunisia: From Bourguiba to Ben Ali. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999. Sethom, Hafedh. Urban and rural power in Tunisia: Whoever sows the wind reaps the storms. Tunisia: Cere`s Productions, 1992. Zartman, I. William, ed. Tunisia: The Political Economy of Reform. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner, 1991. NICHOLAS S. HOPKINS

SOCIETY AND CULTURES

More than 98 percent of Tunisia's 10 million residents identify as Arab Muslims of the Maliki rite, making Tunisia the most ethnically and religiously homogeneous country in the Muslim Arab world. The rest of the population is made up of a small number of Berbers, the country's indigenous people. They live predominantly on the island of Djerba or in towns and rural areas in the far south of the country. Among them are some speakers of the Berber language, although most also speak Arabic and French. Other groups are Algerians, Moroccans and Libyans living and working in Tunisia. There is a

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TUNISIA:

small European population, mostly expatriates working in the country. Finally, especially in Tunisia, there is a small but growing number of undocumented people from sub-Saharan Africa hoping to reach Europe. The country was not always characterized by such homogeneity. In 1946, ten years before the country's independence, the population of just over 3 million was made up of Arab Muslims (88%), Tunisian Jews (2%), French (4.5%) and Italians (2.6%). Many of the non-Muslims lived in Tunisia, and among the French were many born Italians, Christians or Jews, and Tunisian Jews who had been allowed to become naturalized French citizens. Tunisians are often quick to speak of their country as a historic crossroads, acknowledging the role that many peoples and cultures - including the Berbers, the Phoenicians, the Romans, the Arabs, the Italians and the French - played in giving birth to the gift -Day Tunis. Many defining features of Tunisian society today are direct consequences of the social, economic and political policies of Habib Bourguiba, Tunisia's first president, who served from 1956 to 1987, and Zine el-Abidine Bin Ali, who has been president ever since. . Both men were authoritarian leaders committed to a policy of modernization characterized by openness to the West while maintaining a sense of authenticity or rootedness in the Arab-Islamic heritage. Debates on many issues place Tunisians in this continuum, as they adopt positions considered favorable to further globalization (a few decades earlier such Tunisians favored modernity), with regard to Europe and France in particular, or a return to Past - Colonial period of Tunisia. past with a view to the Middle East and increasingly political Islam on the other side. As in many one-party states, where the government tightly controls many aspects of daily life and Tunisia remains effectively a one-party state, criticism of the government, if condoned, can be expressed indirectly at the level of politics and religion. In particular, expressions of religious devotion, whatever form they take, are popularly understood as criticism of the government and its policies, and public displays of devotion, such as wearing conservative Islamic dress, including the hijab for women and long beards for men. . , and eager

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Participation in public prayers – become immediately suspicious in the eyes of the government. Not surprisingly, many liberal critics of Tunisia's government policies argue that the country's lack of democracy or freedom encourages the extremism expressed in the politicization of Islam. Rather, proponents of such policies point to the country's stability and steady improvement in living standards and the overall quality of life for those willing to accept the status quo as a basis for justifying what critics call violations of human and civil rights . . Such discussions, however, take place sotto voce within the country or between expatriates or others outside its borders. Tunisia is often praised for its progress in many areas; This includes, above all, the rights of women. Shortly after independence, a Personal Status Act was introduced, giving civil, rather than religious, courts jurisdiction over matters relating to women and the family, including marriage, divorce and inheritance, while abolishing polygamy and giving women the right to filing for divorce. . Subsequent legislation has further strengthened the rights of women and children, and women's role in public life continues to increase. For example, more than a quarter of the country's judges are women. Not all Tunisians, including some women, were happy with these laws and the social changes they brought about. Critics generally yearn for a legal system based on a more traditional and conservative reading of Islamic law. Proponents of these changes see them as reflecting Islamic values in the modern world. Both sides see themselves as representing the true nature of their faith. Thus, as in many countries, including the United States, religion becomes the arena in which various political battles are fought. Also as a result of past policies, Tunisia has an increasingly urbanized and relatively educated population with a low birth rate; The median family size in 2004 was 4.1. There is also a growing middle class. At the same time, many educated young people cannot find work appropriate to their educational level, which encourages them to postpone marriage and makes them much less optimistic than previous generations of Tunisians.

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Republic of Tunisia Population:

10,276,158 (2007 est.)

Area:

163,610 square kilometers (63,170 sq mi)

Official language:

Arabica

Languages:

French, Arabic

National Currency:

Tunisian dinar

Main Religions:

Muslim 98%, Christian 1%, Jew 1%

Capital city:

Tunisia (estimated population 728,453 in 2004)

Other urban centers:

Aryanah, Safaqis, Susah, at-Tadaman Turn Hishar

Annual rain:

17 inches (432mm) north, 6 inches (152mm) south

Main geographic accidents:

Economy: Main products and exports:

Government:

Heads of state since independence:

Mountains: Atlas Mountains (range), Al-Qabail Mountains (range), Jebel ech Chambi Rivers: Medjerda Lakes: Chott el Djerid, Ichkeul, Tritonis, Tunisia GDP per capita: USD 8,800 (2006) Agriculture: Olives, olive oil, cereals, Tomatoes, citrus fruits, sugar beets, dates, almonds, beef, dairy products Manufacturing: textiles, shoes, agribusiness, beverages Mining: oil, phosphate, iron ore Tourism: Tourism based on the Mediterranean climate is important to the Tunisian economy. Independence from France, 1956. Constitution, 1959, revised 1988 and 2002. Republic. President elected for 5 years (unlimited term) by popular vote. The bicameral system consists of the Chamber of Deputies (189 members elected by popular vote for 5-year terms) and the Council Chamber (126 seats: 85 members elected by local councils, deputies, mayors, professional associations and trade unions and 41 appointed by the President; 6-year term) . Prime Minister appointed by the President. For local government purposes, there are 24 governorates. 1956-1987: President Habib Bourguiba 1987-: President Zine el Abidine Ben Ali

Armed Forces:

The Tunisian armed forces consist of an army, a navy and an air force. The President is the Commander-in-Chief. Compulsory service of 12 months.

Transport:

Rail: 2,153 km (1,338 mi) Ports: Bizerte, Gabes, La Goulette, Skhira Roads: 19,232 km (11,950 mi), 66% paved Domestic airline: Tunisair Airports: International facilities at Djerba, Gafsa, Monastir, Sfax, Tozeur and Tunisia. 24 other airports across the country.

Media:

Newspapers include Al Horria, Essahafa, La Presse, Le Renouveau. 27 radio stations, 26 TV stations.

Literacy and Education:

Overall literacy rate: 74.3% (2006). Schooling is compulsory between the ages of 6 and 16. Post-secondary education offered by 12 universities and various technical and pedagogical institutes.

Independent Tunisia not only invested in the education of its citizens, but also invested in an infrastructure that encouraged tourism, and tourism and remittances from workers living abroad in Europe or the Arabian Gulf are the country's main sources of foreign exchange. Given Tunisia's history and these facts, it is not surprising that Tunisians generally value multilingualism. Tunisians speak Tunisian Arabic as their first language; they learn Modern Standard Arabic at school, where they also start with French in elementary school and English a few years later. Many Tunisians have learned Italian through television; those, especially males, living in areas frequented by tourists often speak other languages. Tunisians even at school

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In 1980, French was used as the language of instruction for mathematics and science. Those educated before independence may have studied Modern Standard Arabic as a foreign language. Thus, Tunisians of different generations have different relationships with the languages they speak, and people of different generations have had different types of educational experiences. Older educated Tunisians may have been educated in colonial schools, French religious schools or colonial schools for the education of Tunisians, while younger Tunisians have attended Tunisian schools with rare exceptions. The growth of a nationalized education system, now available to almost all Tunisians, using a single curriculum with Arabic as the

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The language of instruction has helped to foster a particular brand of nationalism quite different from that of previous generations. See also Algeria; Bin Ali, Zine el-Abidin; Bourgeois; Habib bin qAli; Education, University and College: North Africa; Family; human rights; Immigration and immigrant groups: Europeans; Judaism in Africa; Languages; marital systems; Morocco; Nationalism; Women: Women and Law. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charrad, Mounira M. States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Geyer, Georgie Anne. Tunisia: a journey through a working country. London: Stacey International, 2003. Perkins, Kenneth. A History of Modern Tunisia. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Sebag, Paul. Histoire des Juifs de Tunisia: Des origines a' nos jours. Paris: L'Harmattan, 1991. KEITH WALTERS

HISTORY AND POLITICS

France established a protectorate over Tunisia in 1881 but retained the Husseini dynasty of local rulers known as "Beys". The protectorate was an extension of French involvement in neighboring Algeria and part of a complex balancing act involving the Ottoman Empire. , the nominal sovereigns since 1574, Great Britain and Italy. In practice, Tunisia was treated as a colony for seventy-five years, and French and other European settlers were encouraged to pursue farming and other occupations. A nationalist movement soon arose, first among intellectuals and then among the general population. The first organization was the Young Tunisians, followed by the Destour (Constitutional) Party in 1920. In 1934, some younger members of this party broke away and formed the “Ne'o-Destour” party, led by Habib bin qAli. Bourgeois. World War II had a significant impact on Tunisia. France was defeated and occupied in 1940 and control of Tunisia was relaxed. During the long winter of 1942-43, Tunisia was the scene of fighting between the Allies and the Axis powers. The uncertainty gave the incumbent Bey Moncef the opportunity to impose his own ideas on Tunisian nationalism. But when the Gaullist French re-established themselves

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Control in 1943, deposed Moncef and later left Bourguiba with freer hands. The Neo Destour party carried the flame of nationalism until Tunisia's independence on March 20, 1956. Bourguiba and other members of the party were jailed and exiled from time to time. There was some armed struggle in the last years before independence, but in general Tunisian independence was negotiated. In addition to gaining independence from France, Bourguiba also had to face a more radical opponent, Salah Ben Youssef, as well as what was left of the royal family. Ben Youssef was banished and removed, and sixteen months after independence, on July 25, 1957, the last bey was deposed and Tunisia was declared a republic. Numerous reforms were enacted in the early years of independence. A new civil status code was issued, religious courts were abolished and a first land reform began. Tunisia also played a supporting role in Algeria's struggle for independence and suffered cross-border attacks by the French. As a sequel, in 1961 the Tunisians attempted to drive the French out of their naval base at Bizerte, with significant loss of life. After negotiations, Tunisia took over the base two years later. In the 1960s, Tunisia experimented with socialism. He was moving toward widespread socialist reorganization through the cooperative movement when Bourguiba suddenly collapsed in 1969. The architect of socialist politics, Ahmed Ben Saleh, fell out of favor. Since the 1970s, Tunisia has essentially followed a free-market system, although there remains significant state involvement in the economy. The establishment's policy is to integrate the economy into the international system as much as possible, adapt Tunisia's light industry to European and international standards, encourage labor migration and respect World Bank advice. An Islamic movement emerged during this period, but was suppressed by the Bourguiba government in a context of great tension. Dissatisfaction with the way this challenge was handled contributed to Bourguiba's release on November 7, 1987, ostensibly on health grounds. He was succeeded by Zine el-Abidine Bin Ali. Bin Ali had risen through the police and security apparatus. He was a consolidator after the charismatic

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Bourguiba and has made a highly structured system routine. In 2002 a new constitution was passed. Considerable economic success was combined with political stability at the cost of suppressing religious and secular dissent. Multiparty elections are held regularly, but are subject to manipulation, particularly through the control of eligible candidates. Tunisia has historically had a strong labor movement, which also reflects links to the international labor movement. The union has occasionally presented itself as an alternative to the single party, but in the disputes the party and the government bureaucracy have won. At other times, the human rights movement emerged as an alternative model, but it too was blocked. Occasionally women have tried to organize alternatives to the party's women's movement, but they have not prevailed either, partly because Tunisian legislation on women's civil status, while progressive, does not support attitudes towards independent women's movements. Founded by Bourguiba in 1934, the party evolved into the only pro-independence party and, with some name changes, remains the dominant organized political force at the beginning of the 21st century. It is known as the "Rassemblement Constitutionnelle De'mocratique" (Democratic Constitutional Grouping). In the fifty years since independence, party and government have coexisted and are essentially two aspects of the same political establishment. The party allows for some types of debates that would be difficult in the bureaucratic context of government, while at the same time taking the lead from key government figures, particularly the President. Debates outside of this structure are restricted. Bourguiba's leadership from the 1930s to the 1980s was crucial to Tunisia's development. In his early years he was an advocate of modernization and rationalization, although he was not always as worldly as his reputation. He was an eloquent speaker and was considered a charismatic leader who initiated or facilitated many changes in Tunisian society. While the party and political establishment were initially pro-development, by the early 2000s the focus was on consolidation and security and improvement

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economic situation. Tunisia shares many of these trends with neighboring Arab and non-Arab countries: socialism in the 1960s, an Islamic political alternative from the 1980s, and the importance of the security apparatus. Bourguiba's mastery and longevity and the relative importance of the union give Tunisia its distinctive character. See also Bin Ali, Zine el-Abidine; Burguiba, Habib bin qAli; Nationalism; socialism and post-socialisms; Women: Women and the Law; World Bank; Second World War. BIBLIOGRAPHY

King, Stephen J. Liberalization vs. Democracy: The Local Politics of Economic Reform in Tunisia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003. Micaud, Charles A. Tunis: The Politics of Modernization. New York and London: Praeger, 1964. Perkins, Kenneth. A History of Modern Tunisia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004. NICHOLAS S. HOPKINS

Norte

TURABI, HASAN qABD ALLAH AL (1932–). The Sudanese Islamist leader and lawyer Hasan qAbd Allah al-Turabi comes from a prominent religious family in the Republic of Sudan and was educated in Khartoum and at the Sorbonne. After his return to Sudan in 1962, he managed to unite the various Islamist groups through his leadership in a campaign for an Islamic constitution for the country. He served for one term as Attorney General under President Jaafar al-Nimeiry (r. 1969-1985). He is credited with leading the coup that brought President Omar al-Beshir's Islamist regime to power in June 1989. Turabi aspires to play an international role as an Islamist leader, for example he attempts to mediate between Iraq and Kuwait just before the Gulf War, and the establishment of the Popular Islamic Arab Congress as a counterbalance to the organization of the Islamic Conference. His only formal position within the al-Bashir regime is that of President of the People's Assembly. See also Islam.

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Bachelor of Arts from the University of South Africa in 1958. After a serious illness and under the influence of Father Trevor Huddleston of the Anglican Resurrection Fellowship, Tutu studied for the priesthood at Saint Peter's College, Johannesburg. He was ordained a deacon in 1960 and a priest the following year. From 1962 to 1965 he studied at King's College, University of London, earning a Bachelor of Divinity and a Master of Divinity. From 1967 to 1969 he taught at the Federal Theological Seminary in Alice, Cape, and from 1970 to 1972 at the Universities of Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland (in Rome, Lesotho). From 1972 to 1975 he was Associate Director of the Theological Education Fund of the World Council of Churches, based in England.

Hasan al-Turabi addresses his supporters in Khartoum, May 7, 2000. The Sudanese religious and political leader protected Osama bin Laden when he established Al Qaeda's operations in Sudan from 1990 to 1996 at Turabi's request. While in Sudan, bin Laden agreed to help build roads and fight Christian separatists in South Sudan. SALAH OMAR/AFP/GETTY PICTURES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Affendi, Abdel-wahab El. The Turabi Revolution, Islam and Power in Sudan. London: Gray Seal, 1991. R.S. O'FAHEY

TUTSI.

Ver Burundi; Ruanda.

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(1931-). Born in Klerksdorp in the Transvaal, Desmond Mpilo Tutu became a secondary school teacher in 1955 after graduating from Pretoria Bantu College in 1953. Earned a bachelor's degree

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Desmond Tutu (1931–). Archbishop Tutu called for an economic boycott of South Africa after the riots in Soweto in 1976. In the early 2000s he began to work intensively to combat the global AIDS epidemic and was even honorary chairman of the Global AIDS Alliance. GIANLUIGI GUERCIA/AFP/GETTY PICTURES

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After being elected Anglican Dean of Johannesburg in 1975, he returned to South Africa. In 1976 he was ordained Bishop of Lesotho, but two years later he accepted appointment as General Secretary of the South African Council of Churches. During his tenure in that position, he became an international spokesman on the fight against apartheid and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1984. In the same year he was elected Bishop of Johannesburg and in 1986 Archbishop of Cape Town. He retired from this position in June 1996. In January 1996, President Nelson Mandela appointed him Chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Tutu, recipient of many honorary doctorates and other awards, was elected President of the All Africa Conference of Churches in 1987 and re-elected to that position in 1993. After the ban on liberation movements in South Africa was lifted in February 1990, Tutu played an important role in promoting peace, reconciliation and national reconstruction in South Africa. In recognition of this work he was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 1999. He has lent his reconciliation skills to the cause of the Palestinians, likening their treatment by Israel to a form of apartheid. In 2004 Tutu traveled to the UK to accept a visiting professorship in post-war societies at King's College London and in 2005 spoke out against the detention without trial of suspected terrorists in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Tutu is married to Leah Nomalizo Shenxane; The couple have four children. See also apartheid; Huddleston, Trevor; Mandela, Nelson.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Works Hope and Suffering: Sermons and Discourses. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984. Weeping in the Wilderness: The Struggle for Justice in South Africa, Introduction. and eds. John Webster. London: Mowbray, 1986. Apartheid and the Dignity of the Person. London: Center for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics, 1995.

Secondary Works Du Boulay, Shirley. Tutu: voice of the voiceless. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1988.

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Gisch, Steven. Desmond Tutu: a biography. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. The Universe of the Dead. Banging Swords into Ploughshares: Essays in Honor of Archbishop Mpilo Desmond Tutu. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986. JOHN W. DE GRUCHY

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(1920-1997). Nigerian writer Amos Tutuola was born in Abeokuta, Nigeria and received his education at various institutions (including The Salvation Army School in Abeokuta, Lagos High School and Anglican Central School in Abeokuta) before being forced to interrupt his studies in 1939. when his family couldn't pay the tuition after his father's death. In 1940 he moved to Lagos, where he trained as a blacksmith and eventually found employment as a courier with the colonial ministry of labour. While at the Labor Ministry, Tutuola began composing versions of the Yoruba fables he had heard growing up in Abeokuta. With the help of the United Society for Christian Literature, Tutuola secured the interest of Faber and Faber in his first manuscript, The Palm-Wine Drinkard and His Dead Palm-Wine Tapster in the Deads' Town (1952). A fabulous tale of magical adventures and mischievous wanderings that blends the general conventions of the novel and oral folklore, the text was an instant hit in Britain (it received a rave review from Dylan Thomas). Tutuola's second book, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, published in 1954, was well received in both the United Kingdom and the United States, where Tutuola is considered a founding figure in the Nigerian novel tradition. Nigerian opinion was initially less festive. Tutuola's disregard for the intricacies of grammar and his willingness to depict a world animated by the spirits of a Yoruba cosmology troubled some Nigerian readers eager to challenge depictions of Africa presented as primitive rather than literary primitivist could be viewed. After the publication of Simbi and the Satyr of the Dark Jungle in 1955, Tutuola moved to Ibadan where he took a job and worked at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation

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dramatic version of The Palm Wine Drinker. In the years that followed, Tutuola published several additional volumes (The Brave African Huntress in 1958, Feather Woman of the Jungle in 1962, and Ajaiyi and His Inherited Poverty in 1967). In 1962, the University of Ibadan Theater of Arts presented a Yoruba version of The PalmWine Drinkard. The performance was very well received in Nigeria and is credited by Harold R. Collins, one of the first academics to undertake a study of Tutuola's work, as safeguarding Tutuola's prestige in his home country. In 1981 Tutuola published another prankster tale, The Witch-Herbalist of the Remote Town, and five years later a volume entitled Yoruba Folktales, a work that attempts to document rather than embellish an oral storytelling tradition. In his two later books, Pauper, Brawler, and Slanderer (1987) and The Village Witch Doctor and Other Stories (1990),

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Tutuola regained his signature style as an epic storyteller of Yoruba storytelling. He died on June 8, 1997 in Ibadan, Nigeria. See also Literature; Theatre.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Collins, Harald Reeves. Amos tutuola. New York: Twayne, 1969. Gera, Anjali. Three great African writers: Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka and Amos Tutuola. New Delhi: Creative Books, 2001. Ikupasa, O'Mos. Aspects of Yoruba cosmology in Tutuola's novels. Kinshasa, Zaire: Center de Recherches Pedagogiques, 1990. Owomoyela, Oyekan. "Amos Tutuola". In African Writers, ed. C. Brian Cox. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1997. IAN BAUCOM

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DE UBANGUA.

See Colonial Policies and Practices: West Africa and French Equatorial.

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UGANDA This entry contains the following articles: GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY SOCIETY AND CULTURES HISTORY AND POLITICS

GE O GR APY AND ECONOMY

Located on the equator in East Africa, the Republic of Uganda borders Kenya to the east, Sudan to the north, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to the west, and Tanzania and Rwanda to the south. When Britain proclaimed the protectorate of Uganda in 1894, the term Uganda, meaning 'State of Ganda', included only the Kingdom of Buganda. Subsequently, the term was retained as protectorate rights were extended to adjacent territories, culminating in the formal ratification of the protectorate by the Uganda Order in Council in 1902. After the incorporation of the West Nile District into Uganda in 1914 and the transfer of the Province of Rudolf to Kenya in 1926, the modern borders of Uganda were established. GEOGRAPHY

Of Uganda's total area of 93,065 square miles, 16,988 square miles are open water and wetlands, including Lake Victoria, Lake Albert, Lake Edward and Lake Kyoga. Victoria Nile

it rises from Lake Victoria at Jinja and leaves Uganda northwards as the Albert Nile. Lake Kyoga in central Uganda is a rough boundary between the Bantu-speaking south and the central Nilotic and Sudanese speakers in the north. The estimated 2007 population was 30.2 million. Uganda's topography is dominated by the Central African Plateau, located between the eastern and western reaches of the Great Rift Valley. It falls from 3,937 feet on Lake Victoria to 2,985 feet on the border with Sudan. The eastern and western borders are mountainous; the Virunga (Mufumbira) mountains border Rwanda and the Ruwenzori range borders the Democratic Republic of the Congo (Mt. Stanley/Margherita PK., 16,763 ft), while a series of volcanic foothills dominated by Mount Elgon (14,178 ft) bordering Kenya. Uganda has a tropical environment modified by its continental location, elevation changes and the presence of bodies of water. Most of Uganda lies in the Central Zone of the Tropical Belt and has bimodal rainfall. The southern and central regions experience heavier rains from March through May and lighter rains (47 to 86 inches per year) from September through November. In the north, rainfall is less pronounced bimodal (31.5 to 51.5 inches per year), while the Northeast has an annual rainy season from March to April (less than 51 inches). Average annual temperatures range from 60 degrees Fahrenheit in the southwest highlands to 77 degrees Fahrenheit in the northwest. The natural vegetation is denser in the south (tropical savannah with remains of equatorial forests) and the fertile soils and

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of the African population, distribute cotton seeds and encourage farmers to plant cotton.

Uganda 0

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P. N. of Kidepo-Tals

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See Albert

Kaabong Kitgum Moroto Lake

Kwania Bisina Masindi River and Mt. Elgon WG Coffee R. . PN of Lake Hoima Mbale RU AN Kyoga Mt. Elgon Daisy Pk. Ruwenzori Tororo (14,178 m F Iganga N.P. (16,763 m F Mubende Owen Falls [4321 m]) [5109 m]) KENIA Lake George Masaka Ven I. Grand Edward Queen Elizabeth I. N.P. See Mburo Sese N Mbarara N.P. Es. Bwindi Impenetrable Forest National Park TANZANIA Lake Kabale Victoria

RWANDA

plentiful rainfall allows for extensive agriculture; mainly the banana coffee system. Vegetation is reduced to savannas (plantain-millet-cotton/tobacco system) in the north and acacia and cacti in the northeastern arid plains where pastoral economies are common. BUSINESS

The declaration of the Uganda Protectorate was primarily motivated by geopolitical factors, particularly gaining control of the headwaters of the Nile, but once this was achieved it was necessary to generate revenue for the protectorate to pay its expenses. Cotton, then sought by metropolitan interests for new sources of supply to avoid the high tariffs imposed by traditional British trading partners, would ease both demands and played a central role in shaping the protectorate's socio-economic space up to the Second World War. Within the broader system of indirect rule, the colonial administration established and then used the native authority, which consisted mainly of modified or invented political hierarchies, to enforce taxes

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By the late 1920s, policies of uneven development had made the southern and central regions the dominant cotton-growing regions and the north a labor pool. The extension of the Uganda railway from Mombasa to Kisumu (completed 1901) and later to Jinja (1928) allowed cotton to be transported to British textile mills without loss of volume. Cotton was bought, ginned, and exported in an environment of increasing regulation and monopoly. This limited the spatial and economic opportunities of the African population, a situation exacerbated by the dominance of Asian Ugandans in the trade and marketing sectors. Until the Colonial Development and Welfare Act of 1940, industrialization in Uganda was actively discouraged to minimize competition, preserve an idealized rural "tribal order" and protect the cotton sector. After the Second World War, however, the colonial administration initiated a state-led industrialization and modernization program. The Owen Falls Dam in Jinja was completed in 1954 and a variety of industries were established in partnership with the Uganda Development Corporation (established 1952). Textile mills, breweries, cement and paper industries and a plant processing copper ore mined at Kilembe in western Uganda (closed 1978). Much of the private industrial investment has been made by the Ugandan-Asian Madhvani and Mehta companies, whose capital has been amassed in the small but important sugar sector. After independence in 1962, there were several years of economic growth (average gross domestic product growth of 5.8% between 1963 and 1971), but the 1971 military coup led by Idi Amin Dada ushered in two decades of industrial collapse and a broader economy. The displacement of Asian people in 1972, the nationalization and looting of industries, broader economic mismanagement, and growing international isolation caused the deterioration of infrastructure, the collapse of crop marketing systems, rising inflation, and an increase in black size and distribution Market. economy (magendo). Growing coffee and food crops became more attractive to farmers as coffee prices rose and monopolists' payments to farmers for cotton increased.

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Marketing boards became unreliable. Despite some economic stabilization as a result of the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment program implemented in the early years of Milton Obote's second government (1980-1985), the escalation of the so-called bush war with the Army of The National Resistance led by Yoweri Museveni led to another economic collapse. The seizure of power by Museveni's National Resistance Movement (NRM) in 1986 ushered in a period of improved law and order, relative economic stability, and liberalization in the traditionally more prosperous southern and central regions, but continued instability and population displacements in the north, followed by paramilitary action. of the Lords Resistance Army. The Economic Recovery Program (ERP), agreed between the IMF and the NRM government in 1987, included currency devaluation, civil service reform, deregulation of price and marketing controls, and privatization. Although these measures have been plagued by delays and irregularities, they have helped stabilize the economy and created a safer investment environment. The continuing importance of the informal sector makes any accurate assessment of macroeconomic performance or real income problematic. The national economy remains vulnerable to fluctuations in international coffee prices and poverty remains chronic in many areas. Agriculture remains the largest industry, employing more than 80 percent of Uganda's population. The main exports of the primary sector are coffee, fish, tea, sugar, corn, cotton and tobacco, and the main industrial exports are textiles, beer, cement and steel products. See also Amin Dada, Idi; colonial policies and practices; IMF; Museveni, Yoweri; The nil; Obote, Milton; Transportation: Railways; World Bank.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bigsten, Arne, and Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa. Crisis, adjustment and growth in Uganda. London: Macmillan, 1999. Byerley, Andrew. Becoming Jinja: Space production and space construction in an African industrial city. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 2005. Hansen, Holger Bernt and Michael Twaddle, eds. Uganda now: Between decline and development. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1988.

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Hill, M.F. Permanent Way: The History of the Kenya and Uganda Railway. Nairobi: East African Railways and Ports, 1949. Van Zwanenburg, RMA, with Anne King. An economic history of Kenya and Uganda. 1800-1970. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1975. ANDREW BYERLEY

SOCIETY AND CULTURE

Uganda has a population of 30 million, of which only 13 percent live in urban areas. The national wealth is concentrated in the capital Kampala and its immediate surroundings. Uganda is one of the poorest nations, ranking 158th out of 174 nations according to the United Nations Development Program's Human Development Index. The backbone of the economy are small farmers who rely on subsistence farming and low income. Uganda is totally dependent on foreign aid and has used part of it to achieve positive growth rates of 5-10 percent and low annual inflation. Uganda has forgiven its international debt and seen economic growth reflected in booming land sales, home construction, traffic congestion, numerous markets and supermarkets and the establishment of the Kampala Stock Exchange. However, the sprawling slums of squatter settlements and widespread unemployment and petty trade show that the benefits of development are unequally distributed. The majority of the population, both in rural and urban areas, live in absolute poverty. Economic and political success goes to those with significant financial resources and connections. The recovery from the anarchy, violence and poverty of the turbulent years between 1971 and 1985 coincided with a new development paradigm, participatory development. Aid organizations insisted on funding self-help cooperatives. The result has been a proliferation of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) defining local problems or aligning themselves with internationally identified bankable problems ranging from war widows, orphans, human rights and people living with HIV/AIDS. However, grassroots civil society efforts struggle for sustainable development and are undermined by endemic corruption.

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Uganda's politics and development reflect the consequences of colonial politics. People living in the "Fertile Crescent" around Lake Victoria would grow cash crops using migrant labor provided by the people.

East Nilotic Aid

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Sr. Auch

Bantu speakers are located in the south and include Banyarwanda, Bakiga, Banyankole, Baganda, Banyoro, Basoga, Bagwere, Basamia, Banyole, Bagisu, Bamba and Bakonjo. The Western Nilotic include the Acholi, Jonam, Jopadhola, and Langi, who are believed to have converted from the Eastern Nilotic groups, which include the Ik, Karamojong, Labwor, Tapeth, Iteso, Pokot, Kakwa, and Sebei. and the Sudanese groups from Lugbara and Madi. The Iteso, Kakwa and Adhola are far from their linguistic category due to migration. An ethnic group not shown on the map are the Nubi, Muslim townspeople and descendants of South Sudanese soldiers deployed in Protectorate service to subjugate Muslims and King Ganda Mwanga. The official language of Uganda is English. Knowledge of Luganda is widespread. Swahili, previously used by the military and police and despised as the language of coastal Arab slave traders, became a language of survival in the 1970s when faced with violent, uneducated and sometimes rude soldiers.

Spread of Languages in Uganda

Sebei Friends Banyolo Bagisu a l ho Ad o tes His I Samia

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The raising of the British flag on Old Kampala Hill in 1893 by Captain Frederick Lugard initiated the British colonization of Uganda which was started in 1890 by the British Imperial East Africa Company. On April 12, 1894, the London Gazette declared Uganda a British protectorate, and on April 21, a cartoon in Punch, the English humor magazine, showed a startled John Bull discovering Uganda, an abandoned baby, on his doorstep. In other words, Lugard's actions had imposed colonial responsibilities on the British government. The geographic entity had already been created during the Scramble for Africa at the Berlin Conference of 1885. Many people found themselves torn between Uganda and today's neighboring countries of Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Burundi, Tanzania and Sudan. The diversity of peoples and political systems in 19th-century Uganda is illustrated using languages and political structures. There were 200 political entities composed of 62 different language groups, ranging in size from a few thousand (Ik, Tapeth and Pokot) to a million (Baganda). As of the early 2000s, only thirty-two languages are still spoken. The map in Figure 1 shows language areas composed of different ethnic groups.

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in the north and southwest. This geographical division of labor led to an unequal distribution of economic opportunities. The labor reserves were not production zones and also provided a reserve for police and army recruitment. This division of labor and opportunities are often ignored by those who blame postcolonial conflict solely on ethnicity. Since Uganda's founding, the dynamics of ethnicity and religion have had a major impact on political alliances and divisions. European missionaries representing various religious orders arrived in the early 1890s and brought religious antagonisms based on the historic struggles between Catholicism and Protestantism (French and British imports, respectively) and passed them on to their African converts. Coexistence was achieved when various missionaries established churches, schools and hospitals on different hills in the administrative capital of Kampala. When Uganda gained political independence from Britain in 1962, the Democratic Party, with a predominantly Catholic membership, was vilified as anti-monarchist by the Baganda nationalists of Kabaka Yekka (The King Only), who later allied themselves with the People's Congress Uganda, seen as the national representative .

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Republic of Uganda Population:

30,262,610 (2007 est.)

Area:

241,038 square kilometers (93,065 sq mi)

Official language:

English

Languages:

English, Luganda and Swahili, other Bantu and Nilotic languages

National Currency:

Ugandan shilling

Main Religions:

Christian 84% (Roman Catholic and Evangelical), Muslim 12%

Capital city:

Kampala (estimated population 1,200,000 in 2002)

Other urban centers:

There are more than 1000 stores in Jinja, Mbarara, Masaka, Entebbe, Gulu, Fort Portal, Soroti

Annual rain:

ranges from 2,250 mm (90 in) near Lake Victoria to 400 mm (15 in) in the Karamoja Plains

Main geographic accidents:

Business:

Mountains: Monte. Rwenzori, Berg. Elgon, Berg. Margaret, Berg. cook, assemble. Rivers: Victoria Nile (becomes Albert Nile), Katonga, Kafu, Aswa, Pager, Dopeth-Okok, Mpologa-Malaba GDP per capita: US$1900 (2006)

Main products and exports:

Government:

Heads of state since independence:

Agriculture: coffee, tea, cotton, tobacco, cassava (tapioca), potatoes, corn, millet, legumes, cut flowers, beef, goat meat, milk, poultry Manufacturing: sugar processing, brewing, tobacco, textiles cotton, cement, steel production Mining: copper, phosphates, limestone, gold Independence from the United Kingdom, 1962. Proclamation of the Republic, 1963. Constitution of Independence, 1961; discontinued 1966; replaced, 1967. New constitution adopted, 1995. Under the new constitution, the president is directly elected by universal suffrage for a 5-year term (first direct election of a president since independence). Uganda's 276-seat parliament serves five-year terms, with 214 members elected by universal suffrage and 62 by electoral colleges. The prime minister is the head of government. The President appoints the Cabinet. There are 56 districts for municipal purposes. 1962-1966: Prime Minister A. Milton Obote 1963: President Edward Mutesa II 1966-1971: President A. Milton Obote 1971-1979: President for Life Idi Amin 1979: President Yusuf Lule, Chairman of the National Consultative Council (NCC) 1979-1980 : Chairman Godfrey Binaisa, Chairman of the NCC 1980: Paulo Muwanga, Chairman of the National Front for the Liberation of Uganda Military Commission 1980–1985: Chairman A. Milton Obote 1985–1986: General Tito Okello, Chairman of the Military Council 1986–: President Yoweri Museveni

Armed Forces:

The President is the Commander-in-Chief. Voluntary admission. Total Forces (Army, Navy, Air Force): 50,000

Transport:

Rail: 1,241 km (769 miles) Roads: 70,764 km (43,970 miles), 23% paved Domestic airline: Uganda Airlines Airports: Main airport at Entebbe, second international facility at Arua. 29 smaller airports and runways across the country.

Media:

Newspapers like Financial Times, New Vision, The Star. Publishers include Longman Press, Uganda Publishing House. Radio Uganda is owned by the state. Uganda Television Service was founded in 1963. 40 radio stations, 9 TV stations.

Literacy and Education:

Overall literacy rate: 70% (2003). Primary education reform began in 1994. Post-secondary education is provided at Makerere University, Makerere Institute for Social Research, Mbarara University of Science and Technology, Uganda Martyrs University and Uganda Polytechnic.

diversity. But after the 1991 coup, Muslims who had been marginalized in politics and education moved to the center and Christians were persecuted. Despite opportunistic conversions to Islam, Catholics continued to make up around 50 percent of the population, followed by Protestants at 40 percent and Muslims at 10 percent. Both Christians and Muslims continue to seek help for the health of both

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Biomedicines and traditional healers, most of whom are mediums of traditional deities and spirits. Migration, urbanization, education and poverty have changed some cultural practices, others have resisted or changed only slowly. The Sebei, Bagisu and Muslims circumcise men and the ancients circumcise women. Increasingly, circumcision candidates are recruited through cities

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Obligation. Ugandans often have multiple names, conveying religious, ethnic, clan, gender, and sometimes marital identities. Ideologically, all Ugandan societies are patrilineal: descent is traced through men. Even though poverty has meant that most young men cannot afford dowry or family support, and young women voluntarily or involuntarily put up with single parenthood, societies still hold to the ideal of patrilineal belonging for children firmly. . Uganda is mired in religious and cultural fundamentalism. Poverty and the AIDS epidemic have left people desperate for comfort. Uganda is being inundated with foreign missionaries, the most prominent of whom are born-again Christians in the United States and Europe. Uganda has received $230 million from the US government's emergency plan. The Ugandan government has modified its HIV/AIDS prevention strategies to accommodate the US government's faith-based funding policy. Moral "social inoculations" of abstinence and fidelity (AB) are promoted over the seemingly less virtuous condoms (C). Abstinence is not an option for women, as their lower social status limits their ability to exercise sexual and reproductive choices. Although women do most of the productive work in the fields and on city streets, they lack economic power, making them vulnerable to HIV infection. Monogamous women are infected by their only partners, their husbands. You cannot ask for safer sexual practices or fidelity. Women need the strength to use ABC prevention methods individually or in combination in the way that best suits their circumstances. In the 1990s, Western donors praised Uganda for setting the standard in the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa, as infection rates had fallen from 18% in the 1980s to 6% in 2003. Since then, infection rates have increased to 7% for both men and women, and 9% for men. Women. Cultural fundamentalists, who emphasize men's rights rather than duties, and churches, which emphasize the honorability of a married woman, aggressively promote marriage. The implication is that regardless of sex history or promiscuous behavior, men view marriage as prophylactic, and women bear the brunt of the infection.

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There are many infections among women and girls due to a lack of political commitment to effective legislation and implementation of policies that promote economic progress or protection from sexual violence. In northern Uganda, the Acholi have missed a decade of development due to the activities of the Lord of Konyi Resistance Army, which is rumored to be fighting the national army but actually preys on small children, using girls as sex slaves and boys as soldiers. See also disease: HIV/AIDS; ethnicity; ancestry and ancestry; Work; Languages; Lugard, Frederick John Dealtry; marital systems; non-governmental organizations. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Action for Development (ACFODE). Finally visible: Contribution of NGOs to the recognition of women in Uganda. Kampala: ACFORDE, 1995. Jorgensen, Jan Jelmert. Uganda: A Modern History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981. Leggett, Ian L. Uganda. London: Oxfam, 2001. Thomas, Harold B. and Robert Scott. Uganda. New York: Oxford University Press, 1949. Trowell, Margaret, and Klaus P. Wachsman. Tribal crafts from Uganda. New York: Oxford University Press, 1953. CHRISTINE OBBO

HISTORY AND POLITICS

In order to understand the socio-political and historical developments in Uganda, it is important to determine the country's development path from the mid-19th century. Since Uganda was declared a British protectorate in 1894, there have been three major historical periods. These are the process of conquest and colonial rule, the founding years of colonialism (1900-1962) and post-colonial rule and beyond. The imposition of colonial rule was an event marked by resistance and cooperation through the formation of pre-1900 ethnic and religious alliances, effectively defining which ethnic group had access to resources and which did not. The effects of the various ethnic alliances formed during the struggle against colonialism (e.g. the Ganda formed an alliance with the colonial conquerors against the Banyoro resistance) have had a lasting economic and political impact on Ugandan history. The later Buganda from 1900

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The agreement between the King of Buganda (Kabaka) and the British colonizers put a deadlock on land ownership because it defined not only who could own the land, but also how and where the land belonged, which then spanned the political spectrum throughout Uganda influenced . Likewise, the period from 1900 to 1920 is an important part of historical developments in Uganda because it was during this period that the cultivation of cash crops was institutionalized, albeit not by peaceful means. The post-colonial period (after 1962) was characterized by militarism, dictatorships, political instability, human rights violations, corruption, economic stagnation, civil wars and the government's implementation of neoliberal policies such as the Adaptation Policy (PAE). determine to some extent the socio-economic and political history experienced by the country at the time. THE PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD

Many pre-colonial societies in Africa depended on individual communities organized into small fiefdoms or kingdoms. In Uganda these included the better known and more powerful kingdoms of Buganda, Bunyoro, Tooro, Ankole and Busoga. The relations of production of these communities depended on their socio-cultural and political systems. In addition, other small, non-centralized societies such as Bagishu and Bakiga, whose organization was based on clans and lineages, ensured that everyone in the community was well taken care of through networks of kinship or friendship. In all these communities the feudal mode of production existed, in which the rulers extorted tribute from the citizens through their appointed representatives or the heads of the clans. The political and military strength of the kingdoms prior to the arrival of colonists and explorers in the mid-19th century has been the subject of debate among scholars. The Bunyoro-Kitara Empire was the largest, spanning what is now western Kenya, northern Tanzania and eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. However, successive weak kings, lack of effective control, and numerous wars of resistance against colonial invaders reduced Bunyoro to the size of a district by the early 20th century. The arrival of the missionaries and their subsequent conversion of Ugandans to Christianity, particularly between 1888 and 1892, encouraged the formation of alliances, intrigues and inter-religious strife.

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These were between members of the Church Missionary Society (Protestants) and the Roman Catholic (Catholic) White Fathers against the traditionalists and a small number of Muslims and then against each other. Colonial conquest took place towards the end of the industrial revolution and many European countries needed raw materials. Hence, the colonial powers sought areas that would provide a cheap source of materials such as cotton, coffee, labor, and markets for their manufactured products. It is important to note that before colonial rule, women and men had a special relationship in terms of their gender roles. Women grew food while men cleared land for crops, built houses, and performed other tasks such as caring for domestic animals. Regional specializations occurred from time to time, for example the Batooro specialized in copperwork, the Banyoro developed ironwork, the Ganda specialized in barkcloth and carpentry, and the Basoga specialized in woodworking. However, this specialization did not remove people from their livelihoods, where men and boys worked, for example, in the salt mines and women and girls tended the gardens. The exchange of goods and services took various forms, from barter to cash transactions. This exchange of goods took place within and between states or kingdoms and was complementary rather than competitive. Significant trade with the outside world only began in the early 19th century, when growing demand for ivory on Africa's east coast forced Arab traders to venture inland. Since the Ganda settled along the long-distance route, they were able to control cross-regional trade through the acquisition of firearms. Most of the items exchanged were for personal use, such as jewelry, clothing (cotton), and weapons. The weapons were later used to assert regional control and dominance over neighboring communities, and few items made it into Uganda due to transportation restrictions. This made the cost of goods in Uganda expensive or even hard to come by. THE COLONIAL RULE

The period from 1900 to 1930 was a turning point in Uganda's political and economic history as during this period the colonial government changed its socio-political and economic structure from a cashless to a capitalist economy

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Introduction of cash crops, compulsory labor and taxes. The construction of roads and railways became an important aspect if the colonial powers were to exploit the hinterland, a vast area with many undeveloped resources that required the employment of unskilled African workers, especially on plantations. The period before World War I was important for the institutionalization of the plantation economy with crops such as coffee, tea, rubber, sugar and cotton, which spread quickly. Thus, the deployment of contested colonial economic policies not only defined what work people could and could not engage in, but also restricted people to certain subsistence patterns while participating in the money economy. POST-COLONIAL PERIOD

The economic configuration of the production system as defined by the colonial administrators did not disappear with independence on October 9, 1962, but remained the dominant way of life in many parts of Uganda. Although the colonial regime established an agricultural plantation system in Uganda, the African farmer continued to be restricted and exploited as a peripheral producer. Politics in Uganda increasingly focused on divisions based on ethnicity and religious beliefs, and the socio-economic and political sphere decayed and became desolate. Beginning with the post-independence government in 1962–1966, Uganda undertook development projects based on the European and North American planning models, with an emphasis on adopting a specific production system depending on the climate and location. The government crisis of 1966, in which the prime minister repealed the constitution and Uganda became a republic, and the period 1966–1971 had no serious impact on government service delivery. Central planning, overseen by the central government, continued to guide the development process. However, ethnic and religious divisions led to much discontent and distrust of the government, leading to the military coup of 1971. The coup led by dictator Idi Amin and the period from 1971 to 1979 when he was in command were turning points in Uganda's history. It renewed the overall socio-economic and political development that Uganda had achieved over the years. With the declaration of economic war in 1972, all Asian-origin Ugandans controlled a significant portion of the country's economy.

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Activities were undesirable at the time and were subsequently expelled. This caused Uganda's economic status to decline beyond the possibility of recovery. The period following the collapse of the Idi Amin regime (1979–1986) was marked by ongoing civil unrest, human rights abuses including the killing of innocent people, economic mismanagement and guerrilla warfare. Apollo Milton Obote's government could have run a recovery and rehabilitation program after the chaos of the 1970s, but instead it became a replica of what dictator Amin created when he controlled the country. The army, led by General Tito Okello (1914–1996), overthrew President Obote in 1985. This gave the rebels of Yoweri Museveni, a former guerrilla leader, an advantage when they took over Okello's government on September 26, 1986, however With a new government led by Museveni, Uganda began the path of reconstruction and rehabilitation with a new promise of security, peace and development. When Museveni came to power as a self-confessed Marxist, multilateral bodies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forced his government to switch to liberal economic policies. However, Museveni was overzealous when it came to liberalizing public assets and attracting foreign investors. Therefore, such guidelines have not led to serious development. Since Museveni came to power through guerrilla warfare, many other groups, including the Lords Resistance Army operating in northern Uganda, have wanted to emulate his example. This did not happen because Museveni entrenched himself in power by controlling the army and repressing opposition groups. Economically, during the period from the late 1980s to the 1990s, Uganda became what the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) regarded as a model country in implementing SAPs aimed at stabilizing and modernizing the economy. UGANDA AND THE POLICY OF STRUCTURAL ADJUSTMENT

Although Uganda had made great strides in improving the livelihoods of its citizens by the late 1960s, the 1970s and 1980s reversed much of the progress. Undemocratic governance aside, PAEs were introduced in the 1980s

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and its conditionalities. The different SAP regimes imposed by the World Bank and IMF on Uganda put the country in a subservient position on the world stage. Conditions included cuts in funding for social services, introduction of cost-sharing for education and health services, currency devaluation, elimination of subsidies to farmers, increased exports, reduced imports, and an obligation to pay international debts . Scholars argue that the language used in the SAP terms is reminiscent of colonial regimes. The unfortunate reality, however, is that Uganda has focused on organizing workshops and seminars on good governance and capacity building, with elite members of bureaucratic government institutions taking a large percentage of the funding and the rest going to foreign workers, rather than focusing on that use borrowed resources to really advance.

Jörgensen, Jan Jelmert. Uganda: a modern history. London: Helm, 1981.

Although SAPs are said to be beneficial to the implementing nation, the long-term impact on people's livelihoods is catastrophic. For example, the privatization introduced under the SAPs only helped elite government officials and politically connected individuals reap benefits. Rather than playing a regulatory role in privatization, both national and local government officials work with officials (whom they are supposed to regulate) to engage in corrupt practices. Unsurprisingly, government officials own most of the privatized companies. Therefore, instead of SAP policies benefiting the people, they primarily benefit corrupt officials and exacerbate poverty. Therefore, poverty and the feeling of powerlessness in terms of material wealth among the population seem to shape Uganda's socio-political and economic history.

Taylor, Thomas. "The Establishment of a European Plantation Sector in Uganda's Emerging Colonial Economy, 1902–1919." The International Journal of African Historical Studies 19, no. 1 (1986): 35-58.

See also Amin Dada, Idi; Christianity; colonial policies and practices; colonialism and imperialism; Government; human rights; IMF; Islam; Kagwa, Apollo; Place, Frederick John Dealtry; Museveni, Joel; Nyerere, Julius Camp; Obote, Milton; political systems; Stanley, Henry Morton; War: Internal Revolts; World Bank.

Kaberuka, Will. The Political Economy of Uganda 1890–1979, New York: Vantage Press, 1990. Kasozi, Abdu Basajjabaka Kawalya. The Social Origins of Violence in Uganda, 1964–1985. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994. Mamdani, Mohamood. Politics and Class Education in Uganda. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1976. Mkandwire, Thandika. "Globalization, Justice and Social Development". African Sociological Review 6, no. 1 (2002): 115-132. Muhumuza, William. "The Paradox of Finding Anti-Poverty Strategies in the Framework of Structural Adjustment Reforms in Uganda". The Journal of Social, Political, and Economic Studies 27, no. 3 (2002): 271-306. Taylor, Thomas. "The Struggle for Economic Control in Uganda, 1919–1922: Formulating Economic Policy." The International Journal of African Historical Studies 11, No. 1 (1978): 1-31.

fuck you michael Kakungulu and the Foundation of Uganda, 1868-1 London: James Currey, 1993. STATE BY ANDREW ELLIAS

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QUMAR IBN SAQID TAL (circa 1794-1864). qUmar ibn Saqid Tal had a profound influence on the spread of Islam and one of its brotherhoods, the Tiganiyya, throughout much of West Africa. Through his writings, charisma and military achievements, and through his descendants, he remains a leading figure for Muslims in Senegal, Guinea, Mali and other parts of West Africa.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

qUmar was born in the valley of the Senegal River in Halwar near the town of Podor (1794 and 1797 are the earliest dates of birth). His father was a local cleric and teacher in a Muslim society dominated by the Fulani (Fulbe), who played a leading role in spreading Islam to West Africa in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Fuller, Thomas. "African Labor and Education in Uganda's Colonial Economy". The International Journal of African Historical Studies 10, no. 1 (1977): 77-95.

Young qUmar showed a strong ability to learn as he continued his spiritual formation along the traditional itinerant pattern. Next to his

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DEVELOPMENT

After studying Islamic law, theology and literature, he accepted initiation into the Sufi brotherhood called the Tijaniyya, founded in Algeria and Morocco in the late 18th century. Qumar then made a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina; he fulfilled this obligation for three consecutive years (1828-1830). During this time his initiation into the Tijaniyya was reconfirmed and he was authorized to spread the Brotherhood in West Africa. Qumar spent much time during his studies and pilgrimages in most of the major Muslim centers in West Africa, particularly in the areas where the Fulani Muslims had seized power through jihad, or holy war, in previous decades: the Imamate of Fuuta Jallon, the Hamdullahi or Masina Caliphate and the Sokoto Caliphate. qUmar spent the 1840s in Fuuta Jallon building a loyal group of disciples. During this period he wrote his major work, Al-Rimah, an important resource for the Tiganiyya in the early 21st century. Between 1852 and his death in 1864, quUmar recruited his disciples and many other Muslims for a jihad against the predominantly non-Muslim kingdoms of upper Senegal and the middle Niger valleys. Most of their recruits were Fulani from the Fuuta Jallon, Fuuta Toro and Senegambia areas; Most of his opponents were Mandinka and Bambara, who lived in the western part of present-day Mali. In 1862 qUmar went beyond his mission to destroy the structures of paganism when he issued an ultimatum to the neighboring Islamic theocracy of Hamdullahi to cease supporting the Bambara regime of Segu, his sworn enemy. He defeated this Muslim Fulani regime, but its residents soon allied with an influential Timbuktu cleric, Ahmad al-Bakkay, overthrew the new QUmarian regime and put an end to QUmar's life in 1864. QUmar left its mark on Senegalese societies, Guinea and Mali. His works, especially Al-Rimah, are widely used in the Tiganiyya doctrine. Many of their descendants are well placed in the elite political and religious classes. In Senegal he is remembered as a hero of Islamic expansion and resistance against the French, while in Mali many see him as an invader who destroyed indigenous states and weakened their social fabric. See also Islam.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ly-Tall, Medina. A militant Islam in Afrique de l'Ouest au XIXe sie`cle. Paris: Harmattan, 1991. Robinson, David. Umar Tal's Holy War: Western Sudan in the mid-19th century. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. Willis, John Ralph. In the Path of Allah: The Passion of alHajj quUmar: An Essay on the Nature of Charisma in Islam London: F. Cass, 1989. DAVID ROBINSON

DEVELOPMENT.

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economic history.

UNEMPLOYMENT.

See work.

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UNITED NATIONS This entry contains the following articles: AFRICA IN THE UNITED NATIONS UNITED NATIONS IN AFRICA

AFRICA AT THE UNITED NATIONS

When the United Nations (UN) was formed after the end of World War II in 1945, much of sub-Saharan Africa was firmly in the grip of European colonialism. Liberia, Ethiopia and the Republic of South Africa enjoy the distinction of being the only three African states to be among the fifty original sovereign states that signed the UN Charter in San Francisco in June 1945. "With this charter," President Harry Truman reminded signers, "the world can begin to look forward to the time when all worthy people may live decently as free people" (Schlesinger, p. 293). This journey towards freedom for all peoples began in earnest for the United Nations, and within a decade the United Nations ushered in the birth of Ghana as the first African nation to emerge from European colonialism in 1957. Since then, Africa has remained a visible component of the United States' sixty-year effort

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Nations to fulfill the purposes enshrined in Article 1 of the Charter. This entry examines Africa's contributions to two aspects of UN activities and goals: (1) decolonization and socioeconomic justice; and (2) collective security. DECOLONIZATION AND SOCIO-ECONOMIC JUSTICE

Africa was the epicenter of the long and agonizing global struggle to end formal colonialism. Although the formal colonization of Africa was relatively brief between 1885 and the 1960s, its devastating effects have lasted longer here than anywhere else. The reason, according to some scholars, is the almost sui generis nature of the ingrained racism on which African colonization was based. Thus, in his study of the Congo, Martin Ewans observed that the great majority of European colonial administrators held Africans in such disdain as a race that he concluded, "This is a legitimate criticism of all colonial powers in Africa that none of them." serious progress towards self-government until it was too late to prevent a "flight from Africa" (2002, 242). Across Africa, self-government was largely peaceful, and the new states joined the United Nations, where they helped steer the world's attention to the issue of racism and decolonization away from war politics. Led by their nationalist elites like Kwame Nkrumah and Julius Nyerere, Africa's new states used the UN platform to mobilize international opinion and action against colonialism and white supremacist rule in southern Africa. As Nkrumah envisioned, no African state could be truly independent until the rest of the continent was free. The new states pursued this concern by building bridges and issue-based coalitions with other members of the United Nations, particularly with the newly independent states of Asia and the Middle East and the older states of South America and the Caribbean, whose sizes and demographics they had changed character of the General Assembly. In the General Assembly these groups formed a visible and predictable voting bloc and became the Group of 77 (G-77) in the 1970s when socioeconomic justice and fair prices for commodities led them to call for a new international economic order.

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The G-77's success in pushing through the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) the issue of socio-economic justice emboldened the group to call for further UN action to address the remnants of colonialism and white supremacist regimes in the South to wipe out Africa. By far the greatest challenge for the group was the Republic of South Africa, which deepened and expanded the application of apartheid, a separate developmental policy based on race and introduced in 1948, not only domestically but also in neighboring countries. Namibia. Ever since the Sharpeville massacre in 1960, which sparked events leading to the arrest, trial and imprisonment of Nelson Mandela and other leaders of the African National Congress, the strategy of African states at the United Nations has been to weaken support that Pretoria receives from western states. by UN agencies to get the international community to put maximum pressure on Pretoria to abandon its apartheid policies. The greatest power of the oil-exporting African countries, most notably Nigeria, Algeria and Libya from 1973, quickly became political capital within the G-77. Throughout the 1970s, the African group at the United Nations, supported by its allies, the G-77 and the Scandinavian countries, successfully lobbied for economic sanctions, mandatory arms and an oil embargo against South Africa in the General Assembly and Security Council. By 1975, South Africa's diplomatic isolation had been practically achieved through the de facto exclusion of Pretoria from "all United Nations organs" (United Nations 1994, 30). Two years later, in 1977, the Security Council imposed a mandatory arms embargo on South Africa. In 1980 Southern Rhodesia became independent as Zimbabwe, and for the next decade African states and their allies focused on building grassroots support in Western states for the divestiture of large South African companies. This approach paid off and the divestment movement was born. The movement's greatest prize came in 1985, when the US Congress overturned President Ronald Reagan's veto of the passage of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which made it illegal for US companies to do business in South Africa. Less than five years later, in February 1990, the South African government released Nelson Mandela, its most famous prisoner and a living symbol of the struggle against apartheid.

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That same year, Pretoria abandoned its vaunted South West African mandate, paving the way for Namibia's independence in March 1990. Finally, in April 1994, South Africans of all races buried apartheid when they went to the polls and overwhelmingly elected Nelson Mandela. Chairman of the African National Congress (ANC) as President of South Africa. This remarkably peaceful transition has allowed a united South Africa to take its place in the community of nations while struggling, not without difficulty, to meet the socio-economic aspirations of its diverse population. COLLECTIVE SECURITY

The fragility of African states at the time of independence was beyond question. Unprepared for self-government by the various ruling powers, Africa's post-colonial state elites recognized that they would become particularly vulnerable to even the most vulnerable forms of socio-political and/or economic turmoil. Their response to this threat has been to seek collective means to protect themselves against such shocks by rallying around international organizations and regimes such as the Organization of African Unity (OAU). This is the essence of Nkrumah's vision and tireless efforts to build solidarity among African, Arab, Caribbean, Asian and Latin American nations at the United Nations. For African elites, the real test of the promises and limits of defending collective security came very soon and unsurprisingly in Congo, which presented the worst example of tutelage and benevolent neglect ever displayed by an obligatory power. The Congo has been overfished and severely underdeveloped by Belgium, its mandatory power. According to the United Nations, “few Congolese went on to post-secondary education and at the time of independence there were 17 university graduates and no doctors, lawyers or engineers” (1990, 216). State capacity to act was therefore an issue from the start and affected all areas of society, especially in the vital area of national security. According to Ernest Lefever, the "Forces Públicas du Congo" in 1960 were a 25,000-strong national security force that combined the functions of an army and a police force. . . it was run entirely by 1,100 Europeans, mostly Belgians” (1965, 9). The rest, of course, were "largely illiterate Congolese troops". More importantly, Lefever snapped at the Congolese soldier

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"was loyal to neither the State nor the Nation" and that no significant changes in the Force's functions or command structure were planned or anticipated" (10). Within a week of independence on June 30, 1960, riots broke out in Congo when African soldiers from the Congolese army mutinied against their Belgian officers. In the weeks that followed, the rebellion spread fairly quickly throughout Congo, including the strategic and mineral-rich province of Katanga. Panicked, much of the Congo's European population fled to the relative safety of Leopoldville, where Belgian troops were still stationed. Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, whose "communist sympathies" had long been noted by Brussels and Washington, was unable and unwilling to comply with Brussels' call for decisive government action to stop the insurgency, losing public confidence Belgian authorities, working with the United States, sought regime change in Leopoldville. By July 10, Belgium had deployed more than 10,000 troops throughout the Congo, ostensibly to protect its citizens and maintain law and order, but in reality to carry out its regime-change policy (Lefever 1965, 11–14). In doing so, however, he embarked on a collision course with the nationalist government of Lumumba, which was determined to assert its power. The nationalist government's reaction to events was predictable, although detrimental to Congo's long-term stability. On July 9, the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Congolese Armed Forces, Joseph Kasavubu, together with Prime Minister Lumumba, announced the dismissal of General Janssens and other senior commanders of the European Force Publique. The move, aimed at Africanizing the army and pacifying mutinous native soldiers, resulted in the appointment of a native, Victor Lundula, as army commander and Joseph Mobutu as army chief of staff. The President and Prime Minister also changed the Army's official name from Force Publique to Arme'e Nationale Congolese (Congolese National Army). However, none of these changes were enough to prevent the Congo from sliding into total anarchy. In fact, Katanga Province's July 11 declaration of secession by Prime Minister Moise Tshombe triggered a political and constitutional crisis that accelerated the Congo's disappearance. The next day what was to be their last major political act together as Congo's constituted authority, President

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Kasavubu and Prime Minister Lumumba asked the United Nations for support to prevent a total breakdown of law and order in Congo. The request was granted by the Security Council through Resolution 143 and UN peacekeeping forces began arriving in Congo on July 15 under the umbrella of the United Nations Operation in Congo (ONUC). At its peak, ONUC comprised about 20,000 soldiers and several thousand civilian personnel, but it was utterly ineffective and utterly dysfunctional. Under his watch, Congo disintegrated into armed enclaves as ONUC leaders adhered to the principle of "neutrality" in which few believed. On September 14, Colonel Mobutu formally removed the fledgling but unstable Democratic government. The subsequent assassination of Prime Minister Lumumba and the rise of Mobutu to become Congo's military and political stooge - all with the tacit support of some Western powers and the much-vaunted Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) - brought to light the complexities of Congolese politics surrounding the Cold War. Africa. More importantly for the future, ONUC's failure had an uncomfortable effect on African elites, rooting in their consciousness a deep suspicion of UN peacekeeping operations in their states. This suspicion, which continued into the 1990s with the failure of high-profile UN operations in Somalia in 1992-1994, was tragically cemented by the 1994 genocide that took place in Rwanda under the watchful eye of the Rwandan United Nations Assistance Mission in Rwanda (UNAMIR). As pointed out by Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian-born UNAMIR commander whose valiant efforts to stop the genocide were thwarted by the politics and bureaucratic culture of the United Nations, this particular episode of genocide was marked by the fact that it it was, all the more sadly avoidable and stopable (Dallaire and Power 2004, Barnett 2002). Surprisingly, these failures occurred among Africans on the frontlines of the United Nations: UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali (Egypt) and Kofi Annan (Ghana), Head of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations (DPKO) and Secretary-General, 1996–2006. This fact has somewhat diluted the power of racism as an explanation for the failure of collective security in Africa since the Congo crisis.

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Faced with the threat of destabilization, African states have responded to this UN failure by focusing on internal mechanisms for collective security. For example, when conflicts erupted in Liberia and Sierra Leone in the 1990s, members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) assembled a regional peacekeeping force to contain the conflicts. In an eerily similar incident to ONUC, Samuel Doe, the embattled president at the heart of the conflict in Liberia, was kidnapped by rebel forces from ECOWAS peacekeeping headquarters in Monrovia and later tortured and killed. The similarities didn't end there. In both West and Southern Africa, the various attempts by ECOWAS and SADC to keep the peace in their regions proved no more successful than the efforts of the United Nations. Indeed, according to some scholars, these regional collective security efforts may have prolonged and exacerbated crises in their regions. In summary, the collective security failures of the United Nations, led by two Africans, Boutros-Ghali and Annan, and the apparent weaknesses of Africa's local collective security mechanisms have helped explain the appeal of racism as an explanation for the relative failure of to weaken the United Nations in Africa. This shift in emphasis has helped draw attention to creative partnerships between the United Nations, African regional organizations and non-governmental organizations whose resources and goodwill are essential to building a lasting peace. This realization, belated as it is because many innocent lives have been needlessly lost, is perhaps Africa's greatest contribution yet to the emergence of a United Nations that is efficient and responsive to the needs of all the peoples of the world. See also Annan, Kofi; Cold War; decolonization; Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); Lumumba, Patrice; Mandela, Nelson; Mobutu Sese Seko; Nkrumah, Francis Nwia Kofi; Nyerere, Julius Kambarage; Organization of African Unity; postcolonialism; Tshombe, Moï¨se Kapenda.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adibe, Clement E. "The Liberian Conflict and the ECOWASUN Association." Third World Quarterly 18, No. 3 (1997): 471–488.

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Baghwati, Jagdish, eds. The New International Economic Order: The North-South Debate. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977. Barnett, Michael. Eyewitness to Genocide: The United Nations and Rwanda. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002. Berman, Eric, and Katie Sams. Peacekeeping in Africa: Capabilities and Guilt. Geneva: United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, 2000. Dallaire, Romeo and Samantha Power. Handshake with the Devil: Humanity's Failures in Rwanda. New York: Carroll and Graff, 2004. Ewans, Martin. European atrocity, African catastrophe: Leopold II, the Congo Free State and its aftermath. London: Routledge Curzon, 2002. Lefever, Ernest. Crisis in the Congo: a United Nations force in action. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1965. United Nations. The Blue Helmets: A Review of United Nations Peacekeeping. New York: United Nations Public Information Department, 1990. United Nations. The United Nations and Apartheid, 1948-1994. New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1994. CLEMENT EME ADIBE

UNITED N ATIONS IN AFRICA

Anyone interested in how much the United Nations (UN) has changed in scope and function since its inception need only look at the organization's role in Africa. Three African countries were among the fifty-one countries that initially signed the United Nations Charter. At the beginning of the 21st century, African states easily account for a quarter of the total membership of the UN, and African affairs are a factor in virtually all UN bodies and associated organizations. Originally intended to resolve interstate conflicts, the UN has now become a major player in internal conflicts, particularly in Africa. About half of all current UN peacekeeping operations take place in Africa, and three quarters of all UN troops are stationed in Africa, making the continent a core area of the United Nations. Africa has been the scene of some of the UN's greatest failures, but also some great successes. In 1960, the UN Security Council approved a UN operation in Congo to help the newly independent government. The subsequent collapse of the government and Katanga's attempt at secession meant so

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the UN mission soon found itself in the midst of civil war. The Security Council's determination not to accept Katangan's secession and the UN operation's inability to stop the civil war created deep political divisions that nearly tore the organization apart. Subsequent failures in Somalia and Rwanda in the early 1990s are symbolic of the difficulties the UN encountered in realizing its post-Cold War potential. At the forefront of its renewed readiness to respond to humanitarian crises, the third UN mission to Somalia ultimately left the country a little better off than when it arrived. And in Rwanda, the UN's failure to respond to the genocide has left a lasting legacy of shame. In the context of the significant UN engagement with Bosnia and later Kosovo, Somalia and Rwanda also became symbols of concerns about double standards. Why was the West so willing and able to commit significant resources and political will to the Balkans but not to Africa? UN involvement in Namibia began when the territory was transferred from the League of Nations mandate system to the United Nations trusteeship system in 1946. Under the League of Nations system, South Africa was put in charge of administering the territory in 1920. His refusal to accept the transfer of territory to the UN sparked many years of deadlock and negotiations involving almost all UN bodies at some point. The end of the Cold War opened the door to the implementation of a 1978 Security Council resolution establishing a transition plan. In 1989, under the auspices of a UN peacekeeping operation, South African troops withdrew from the country and democratic elections led to the formation of a new government. The UN has also made gains in other areas of Africa, including difficult and perhaps weak progress in a number of conflict situations in West Africa. However, the UN Security Council response rate remains mixed. The Council's failure to agree on a meaningful response to the situation in the Darfur region since 2007 shows that the need for political will among key Security Council actors remains a critical factor. As it increased its own activities in response to the conflict in Africa, the United Nations encouraged and supported African regional organizations to take action

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South African UN peacekeepers watch a Congolese soldier walk past his truck in Bunia, Democratic Republic of the Congo, February 2005. Security in and around the area had been tightened after the ambush and killing of nine Bangladeshi soldiers three days earlier. by local militiamen. SIMON MAINA/AFP/GETTY PICTURES

main role. This amendment, titled African Solutions to African Problems, helps spread the burden of conflict response and allows states in the region with more knowledge of the actors and issues in the conflict to have a greater impact in bringing about a solution . On the other hand, greater reliance on regional actors sometimes means that the burden is shared or simply shifted to actors who have much less capacity to deal with conflict situations than UN forces. Furthermore, the mere fact that they are also from the region where the conflict is taking place means they can pursue their own political agendas. These dilemmas have played out in conflict situations in Africa with mixed results. The UN has worked with some success in this region with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and in a variety of conflict situations with the African Union. The Sudanese government's ability to resist international action in Darfur by allowing African Union troops, who are experiencing significant difficulties in fulfilling their mission, to deny the UN

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The force reveals that additional actors open up the possibility of delay and resistance as well as the potential to enable mutually reinforcing efforts involving regional actors and the UN. Boutros Boutros-Ghali and later Kofi Annan played an important role as Africans in the office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations. With Kofi Annan in particular, African issues became a key theme for the organization and guided the way in ensuring the approach was proactive and multidimensional. In 1998, given the amount of time and resources the UN devoted to the African conflict, Secretary-General Annan published a report on the causes of the conflict and the promotion of lasting peace and sustainable development in Africa. The report prompted the establishment of ad hoc working groups on conflicts in Africa in the Security Council, the General Assembly and the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), among a number of other institutional mechanisms. In 2003, the Secretary-General established the Office of the Special Adviser for Africa. The Special Adviser works to improve international support for security and development in Africa and helps the Secretary-General to improve

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War-torn Sudanese city receives supplies. Sudanese are forming a long line at an aid distribution point to receive food, mosquito nets and clothing from the Islamic charity, which runs the Kriding-2 camp for internally displaced persons (IDP) on the outskirts of the western town of El-Geneina. , near the Chadian border, October 2004. CRIS BOURONCLE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

the coherence of UN support to Africa and facilitating discussions on the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD). Other UN organizations such as the Economic Commission for Africa and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which prioritize Africa in their activities, are also pursuing these goals. In addition, the General Assembly deals with issues of particular importance for Africa. In 2001, for example, the General Assembly held a special session on HIV/AIDS. See also Annan, Kofi; Cold War; Disease: HIV/AIDS, social and political aspects; Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); education, school; healing and health care; Namibia; Organization of African Unity; Rwanda; Somalia; Sudan: wars; War: civil wars.

Souare´, Issaka K. Africa in the United Nations System, 1945–2005. London: Adonis and Abbey, 2006. JANE BOULDEN

PEAK TIME.

See Burkina Faso.

Norte

URBAN PLANNING AND URBANIZATION This entry contains the following articles: GENERAL OVERVIEW PREHISTORY HISTORICAL ERA INDEPENDENCE DWELLING

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bouden, Jane, ed. Dealing with conflicts in Africa, the United Nations and regional organizations. New York: Palgrave, 2003. Laremont, Ricardo Rene. The Causes of War and the Consequences of Peacekeeping in Africa. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 2001.

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GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Until the last two decades of the 20th century, scholars thought that sub-Saharan Africa would remain predominantly rural and that urbanization was not a problem as it was associated with modernization and industrialization. both from sub-Saharan Africa

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Governments and international donor organizations promoted rural development and agriculture-based strategies without paying attention to the rapid rates of urbanization. In the 21st century, urbanization has been added to the long list of potentially devastating development issues that need to be addressed. The fundamental problem is that urban populations are growing very rapidly, while the economic growth and developmental transformations needed to support growing populations and improve the quality of life in cities are not occurring as rapidly. Urban management issues can only be properly discussed and understood in the broader context of national urbanization policies. The need for active urbanization policies is greater in sub-Saharan Africa than in other parts of the world as population growth is high while economic growth rates are low and the role of government is more pervasive than elsewhere. Sub-Saharan governments are clearly facing serious problems in managing their fast-growing urban centers. Urbanization is leading to economic and political changes that are affecting the way sub-Saharan Africans organize spatially and survive economically. The challenge for the development process in sub-Saharan Africa is managing change. The potential contributions of urban centers to national development must be realized if past gains in agricultural production are to be consolidated. Urbanization provides the production efficiencies that support non-agricultural employment, which is the focus of both political and economic decentralization policies, and the main locations for processing and marketing of agricultural products. Urban life patterns in the 21st century will determine the standard of living in urban and rural areas and the possibilities for improving these standards in the years to come. A commitment to explicit urban policies requires expanding the activities of international donors, who must play an important role in supporting public, private and informal sector efforts in urban areas to provide credit, land and infrastructure to low-income people . Families Small and medium-sized urban centers are at the heart of the long-term relationship between urbanization and agricultural development and will play a role

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Key role in urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa. The interdependence of urban and rural populations in the region is striking, with a positive correlation between improved urban infrastructure and increased agricultural productivity. Both should be supported. Medium and small urban centers should be supported through investments in physical and social infrastructure based on their growth potential. City services can only be delivered efficiently if there is a partnership between central and local governments and between the public and private sectors, with greater responsibility being given to local governments and the private sector than has been the case generally. Decentralization makes better use of local human, financial and physical resources and offers the potential for more effective resource mobilization, self-sustaining development projects that better reflect local needs, and greater citizen participation in decision-making in both rural and urban areas. Sub-Saharan Africa faces three problems simultaneously: rapid population growth, declining agricultural productivity and mass migration to urban areas. Urban economies have not been able to accommodate the large numbers of rural migrants. Ethnic conflicts and wars, natural disasters and desertification have accelerated urbanization. Literacy campaigns and vocational training have undoubtedly stimulated rural-urban migration. To stop this, three types of guidelines must be followed. The first aims to boost the rural economy. The second encourages the growth of small and medium-sized urban centers. The third sustains the growth of the major or primary urban centers. TRENDS AND OUTLOOK

Urbanization was not a fully modern development in sub-Saharan Africa. The capitals of some pre-colonial kingdoms date from the 10th and 11th centuries. However, many of the major urban centers in sub-Saharan Africa did not develop until the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of them remaining small for several decades. The rate of urbanization has accelerated significantly since World War II and is expected to continue for some time to come.

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GENERAL DESCRIPTION

pre-colonial urbanization. The first urban centers in sub-Saharan Africa were probably established between the 11th and 8th centuries BC. built. C. East and West Africa. But most of these urban centers were associated with divine kingship, so their rise and fall depended on the lifetime of the ruler. However, most of Africa's urban centers were established from the early 16th to late 19th centuries, when there was significant European trade with sub-Saharan Africa. It is important to distinguish between "old" and "new" forms of urban centers, between pre-colonial, colonial and post-colonial urbanisation. Although sub-Saharan Africa is known for its ancient urban centers (up to the 1st century AD), the pre-colonial era had several urban centers. This applies in particular to West Africa and parts of Central, East and South Africa. Precolonial urban centers did not have the same "urbanity" as modern ones, because the former retained their traditional forms, functions, and structures, while the latter possessed most of the characteristics of a western "urban place". meaning of the term. Medieval urban centers in West Africa, Central Africa and along the East and South African coasts emerged around the 10th century and were closely associated with Islam, which aggressively established trade routes that led to the construction of caravan towns that later became urban centers. The urban centers of sub-Saharan Africa show a mixture of Islamic and traditional African elements. Most of these were built with volatile materials. European colonizers helped build the first trading posts and forts, creating trade routes that influenced urban morphology even before the continent was colonized. In the early stages of colonization, Europeans penetrated the interior of sub-Saharan Africa, and the replacement of caravans by ships hastened the decline or disappearance of most pre-colonial urban centers. Those that survived the space attack emerged as "colonial settlements" with essentially two central business districts, one traditional and one modern. Colonial Urbanization. The imposition of Western European influence (later culminating in

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colonial rule) over Africa gave rise to some important urban centers. Established between the 16th and 20th centuries, they were new settlements that served as the administrative and trading centers of the colonial powers, or improved centers from the pre-colonial era. Other urban areas developed as natural resources were exploited, including Kumasi (gold), Enugu (tin and coal), and the urban copper and diamond center of Elisabethville (present-day Lubumbashi). As colonial powers established their hegemony over sub-Saharan Africa, urban centers emerged as administrative hubs, regional markets, and focal points of transportation networks. Colonial administrations created peaceful conditions, instituted the money economy that helped connect sub-Saharan Africa to world markets, and initiated the general changes that accompanied increased agricultural production and industrial development. All of these combine to boost urbanization growth. European urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa began in the 16th century with small forts and trading posts. These early urban centers included Rufisque, Senegal; Kayes, Mali; Bissau, Guinea-Bissau; Lagos, Nigeria; Luanda and Benguela, Angola; Cape Town, Republic of South Africa; Conakry, Guinea; Sekondi-Takoradi, Cape Coast; and Accra, Ghana. Most urban centers in interior Africa were established in the last quarter of the 19th and first quarter of the 20th century. Since the few industrial jobs were concentrated there, they were magnets for the rural population. The population of most colonial urban centers was initially dominated by adult males, but over time the composition became less different from that of the country as a whole. This male dominance continued until the beginning of the post-colonial era, when African families were allowed to reside legally in urban areas. The post-colonial era is the most important phase of African urbanization. Postcolonial Urbanization. Sub-Saharan Africa essentially remains on the frontier of the urbanization and spatial changes experienced by the rest of the world in the 20th century. The region is still largely rural in a world where the majority of the population lived in urban centers at the end of the 20th century. Sub-Saharan Africa has few very large urban centers and their populations

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the growth rate continues to increase. With the exception of southern Africa, the sub-Saharan region is on the cusp of major urban transformation due to a combination of low urbanization and high urban growth. The ingredients for such a transformation are minimal degrees of urbanization, low urban concentration, high and increasing rates of population and urban growth, unequal distribution of population and resources, increased efforts at national integration, and highly centralized political systems. If past experience is any indication, such conditions point to broad trends towards spatial polarization, with increased urban concentration and greater regional disparities. Sub-Saharan Africa is the least urbanized region in the world, measured by the proportion of the population living in urban centers. At the beginning of the 21st century, only 30.5 percent of the total population live in such centers. But that proportion ranges from 6 percent in Rwanda to 82.5 percent in Djibouti. Despite generally low levels of urbanization, sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates of urbanization in the world, averaging almost 4.4% per year. The average annual urbanization rate is not expected to drop to 3.3% until after 2025. Although sub-Saharan Africa is the least urbanized region, its urban growth will continue to be the fastest in the world. In the 1970s and 1980s, population growth ranged from 4.3 to 4.9 percent. This is double the rate in the most developed countries (LDCs) and the world average. Furthermore, while urban growth rates have generally been declining both globally and in least developed countries (LDCs) for centuries, this is not the case in sub-Saharan Africa. The rapid growth of urban centers in sub-Saharan Africa is an important aspect of the socio-demographic changes of the 20th century. Most Sub-Saharan countries have pursued urbanization policies in order to achieve modern levels of technology. This policy is based on the idea that the degree of urbanization is a criterion for measuring the level of industrialization, modernization and socio-economic development. However, these attributes of urbanization are not present in sub-Saharan Africa. Instead, the countries have become there

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GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Percentage of Population Living in Urban Areas: 1970, 1980, 1994, and 2025 Region

1970

1980

1994

2025

World More developed countries Less developed countries Sub-Saharan Africa Asia Latin America Oceania

36,6 67,5

39,4 71,3

44,8 74,7

61,1 84,0

25.1

29.2

37.0

57.0

20,0 21,0 57,4 70,8

25,0 26,7 65,1 71,2

30,5 32,4 73,7 70,3

50,5 54,0 84,7 84,8

SOURCE: United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 1994 Revision, ST/ESA/SER.A/150 (New York, 1995), pp. 784-785.

Tabla 1.

Victim of a strong rural-urban migration that has often resulted in an average growth rate of up to 6 percent per year, more than double the average national growth rate. The urban population in sub-Saharan Africa increased from 14.7% in 1950 to 30.5% in 1994 and is projected to reach 50.5% by 2025 (see Table 1). In 1950, eight out of ten urban sub-Saharan Africans lived in small and medium-sized urban centers. By 2015, it is expected that more than half of the urban population will continue to live in these urban centers. A low level of urbanization characterizes most of sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of southern Africa. By 1980, 25 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's population lived in urban areas; this figure was just behind Asia (26.7%), but significantly less than half that of Latin America (65.1%) and the MDCs (71.3%). Thus, by 2025, the projected proportion of the urban population of Latin America (84.7%) will be close to the level reached by the MDCs (84%), but well above the 50.5% in sub-Saharan Africa. This chilling forecast assumes a gradual decline in the annual growth rate of cities from about 4.5 percent per year in 1950-1955 to about 3.3 percent per year by 2020-2025. The growth rate in sub-Saharan Africa peaked at 4.9% per year between 1960 and 1965 and slowly began to decline. Up until the 1990s, Africa was characterized by the lack of an urban center of 10 million or more people

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GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Percentage of rural population growth and urban growth: Sub-Saharan countries with at least half of their population growth in rural areas 1965–1970

East Africa Burundi Comoros Eritrea Ethiopia Kenya Madagascar Malawi Rwanda Somalia Uganda Rep. United Tanzania Zambia Central Africa Angola Chad Zaire South Africa Lesotho West Africa Benin Gambia Mali Niger Togo SOURCE:

1990-1995

Percentage of total growth in rural areas

urban growth rate

Percentage of total growth in rural areas

urban growth rate

79 96 57 79 83 80 72 85 94 73 85 84 27 46 54 59 42 50 71 60 50 75 71 79 79

6,2 3,4 6,1 5,1 4,9 6,9 5,0 6,8 7,7 3,3 8,1 7,9 8,1 5,7 5,1 7,2 5,8 2,9 8,0 5,4 7,3 4,8 4,7 7,0 7,3

62 85 54 73 79 52 54 77 90 51 80 53 50 54 48 72 65 36 51 40 55 61 55 73 55

5,4 6,6 5,7 4,4 4,7 6,8 5,8 6,2 4,2 2,5 5,7 6,1 3,5 4,5 6,3 3,6 3,9 3,1 6,2 5,2 4,6 6,2 5,7 5,6 4,8

Vereinte Nationen, World Urbanization Prospects: The 1994 Revision, ST/ESA/SER.A/150 (New York, 1995), p. 30

Tabla 2.

More inhabitants. The first urban center to reach this size was Lagos in 1995; 4.1 percent of the African urban population lived in Lagos that year. The second class of urban centers, those with populations of 5 to 10 million, housed 6.4 percent of Africa's urban population in 1970. After the expected disappearance of the second-order urban centers, moving towards the group of 10 million or more, whose number is expected to reach 11 million by 2015. By that time, they will comprise 11.9 percent of the urban population, or 68 million people. The proportion of Africans living in urban centers of 1 to 5 million people increased from 10.5 percent in 1950 to 21.3 percent in 1990; it should remain at this level until 2015 (20.8%). Starting with a relatively modest 84 million urban dwellers in 1970, sub-Saharan Africa had 240 million urban dwellers in 1995, and this number is expected to increase to 804 million by 2025. Saharans need to absorb

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large numbers of rural migrants while combating rapid urbanization. Between 1990 and 1995, rural areas accounted for more than half of the population growth in East and Central Africa. The share of rural growth in total population growth is even higher in some countries. Table 2 lists the African countries that experienced at least half of their population growth in rural areas in 1990–1995, along with urban growth rates. In East Africa, Rwanda, one of the two least urbanized countries in the world, had the highest rural population growth rate (90%). Burundi, Uganda, Ethiopia, Malawi and Eritrea followed. All of these countries had urban growth rates of more than 4 percent per year between 1990 and 1995. They were also characterized by low urbanization. (Less than a third of the population lived in urban areas.) More than half of the population growth is projected to occur in rural areas in Burundi and Rwanda between 2020 and 2025. In central Africa, Chad and Zaire saw at least 65 percent of their population growth in rural areas

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Percentage of population growth in urban areas, selected years

Sub-Saharan Africa East Africa Central Africa Southern Africa West Africa SOURCE:

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

2000

2010

2025

14,7 5,3 14,2 38,2 10,3

18,4 7,4 17,9 41,9 14,5

23,0 10,4 24,8 43,6 19,6

27,3 14,6 28,1 44,5 25,8

31,8 19,2 31,0 46,2 32,8

37,3 24,6 35,9 50,7 40,6

43,8 30,7 42,9 57,3 48,5

53,8 41,2 54,0 66,6 59,2

United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects: The 1994 Revision, ST/ESA/SER.A/150 (New York, 1995), pp. 78 and 79.

Tabla 3.

during 1990-1995. Lesotho in southern Africa also experienced more than half of its population growth in rural areas between 1990 and 1995; Niger had the highest percentage of population growth in rural West Africa at 73 percent. The most urbanized region of sub-Saharan Africa in 1995 was Southern Africa (48%). West Africa (36%) and Central Africa (33%) were in the middle, with East Africa lowest (21%). This order of degrees of urbanization is expected to be retained until 2025 (see Table 3). By 2025, 66.6 percent of southern Africa's population will live in urban centers; figures for East and West Africa are forecast to be 41.2 and 59.2 percent, respectively. Some countries have a very low level of urbanization (less than 10% of the population in Burundi and Rwanda live in urban areas), while others have more than 80% of the population in urban areas (Djibouti, 83%). In Burundi, Eritrea, Malawi, Niger, Rwanda and Uganda - all except Eritrea, which is classified as least developed by the United Nations - urbanization rates were below 20 percent in 1994. The average annual population growth rates of urban areas in East and West Africa are the highest in Africa. Although rates are declining for both, they were around 6 percent per year for most of the 1970s and are not expected to drop to around 4 percent until after 2005. In southern Africa, increasing population growth will be the dominant factor behind urbanization growth, while in West and East Africa, which have some of the fastest growing urban centers in the world, rural-urban migration and

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The natural increase will be the most significant factor in the growth of urban centers. REGIONAL VARIATIONS

West Africa. West Africa has an indigenous tradition of the “African metropolis” that has developed a complex pattern of rural-urban interdependence. In addition, several established urban centers such as Kano and Kumasi thrived in West Africa for many years. However, most of the urban centers of Anglophone and Francophone West Africa were established during the colonial era. Among individual countries, the highest proportion of urban population in 1995 was in Cape Verde (54.3%), followed by Mauritania (53.8%) and Liberia (45.0%). Those showing the lowest percentage of urbanization in 1995 were Niger (17.0%), Guinea-Bissau (22.2%), the British island of St. Helena (26.9%) and Burkina Faso (27.2% ). The remaining ten countries have rates between 30 and 44 percent. In most West African countries, the urban population growth rate between 1990 and 1995 was four times that of the general population. The corresponding average annual rate of change in the share of the urban population in the total population for 1990–1995 is also very high. The highest was Burkina Faso with 8.44%, the lowest was 1.18% in Senegal. Central Africa. Historically, this region has the second lowest level of urbanization in Africa. But the rate of urbanization has increased; In 1995, 33.2 percent were urban, compared with 14.2 percent in 1950. The average annual rate of change in the proportion of the urban population is generally very high for all countries except Zaire for the period 1990–1995. However, there were clear differences between countries. In 1995

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In Congo (58.8%), a high percentage of the population lived in urban centers, and in most other countries the percentage exceeded the 34.4% figure from sub-Saharan countries. Of eighteen urban centers in the region, eleven are in Zaire, with the largest city, Kinshasa, having a population of about 3 million in 1990. East Africa. Since the 1950s, East Africa has had the lowest rate of urbanization (21.7% in 1995), but has the highest urban growth rate in sub-Saharan Africa (5.4% in 1990–1995). The highest degree of urbanization is found in Djibouti (82.8% in 1995), followed by Réunion (67.8% in 1995) and Zambia (43.1% in 1995). Low degrees of urbanization can be found in Rwanda, Malawi, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Madagascar. They are due to the fact that Africans were not allowed to reside permanently in urban areas during the colonial period. Additionally, most East African countries are primarily agricultural, with very few major industrial or mining sites. In 1990–1995, East Africa's annual urban growth rate of 5.4% was one of the highest in sub-Saharan Africa. During this period, the countries with the highest average annual rate of change in urban population were Mozambique, Burundi and Tanzania; The countries with the lowest exchange rate were Mauritius, Somalia and Djibouti. With the exception of Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia, most pre-colonial urban settlements in East Africa were concentrated in the coastal region, where trading centers emerged as a result of Arab and Portuguese activities along the coast. Urbanization is a current problem in East Africa. In most of the pre-colonial interior, life was based on subsistence and specialized trade patterns were not required due to the prevalence of subsistence farming and livestock farming. An important feature was the existence of periodic markets, which in some areas formed a hierarchy dealing with internal trade and rudimentary systems of transport and communication. Therefore, urbanization in East Africa in the 21st century can be viewed as a result of colonial rule. The major contemporary urban centers were primarily of economic origins and continue to be industrial and mining complexes linked to the world economy. Therefore, they did not arise out of the need to serve the surrounding area.

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South Africa. A large proportion (48.1% in 1995) of southern Africa's population lives in urban centers of 20,000 or more inhabitants. However, most of the urban population is concentrated in the Republic of South Africa. The remaining countries, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Swaziland, are more than 20 percent urbanized. Of the fifteen urban centers in these countries with more than 100,000 inhabitants, eleven are in the Republic of South Africa. Johannesburg (1.9 million in 1995) is one of Africa's ten urban centers with a population of more than 1 million. In 1995, the Republic of South Africa had the four most populous urban centers in southern Africa, plus Johannesburg, Cape Town (1.9 million), Durban (1.1 million) and East Rand (1.2 million). Urbanization in southern Africa is high due to a large industrial base and mining activities in the region. CONSEQUENCES OF URBANIZATION

The degree of urbanization and the growth rate of the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa vary greatly from country to country and from region to region. With the exception of West Africa, urbanization is essentially a 20th-century phenomenon and essentially a product of African colonial history. Southern Africa therefore has the highest rate of urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa. West Africa and parts of Central Africa show the longest urbanization trend, with East Africa being the least urbanized despite its long history of coastal urbanization. URBAN PROBLEMS

rapid growth Although the level of urbanization in Africa is still relatively low, the continued growth of the urban population poses serious planning problems. The high growth rate of cities is mainly due to rural-urban migration, high natural urban growth, indiscriminate expansion of city boundaries, and ethnic wars. In addition, non-spatial factors have had significant effects on the shape, speed, nature, and magnitude of urban growth. These include fiscal, industrial, defense, leveling, agricultural, and immigration policies. Employment, income and the growing role of the informal sector. In Africa, real wages in urban manufacturing have fallen dramatically since the 1970s

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half of those in 1970. This decline, which had begun in the 1960s, has narrowed the income gap between urban and rural areas. African governments are increasingly accepting that the informal sector has dynamic potential for productivity and income generation. It is the fastest growing sector in Africa's urban economies, employing more than 50 percent of the urban workforce. However, for-profit activities are often subject to monopolies through legislation, licensing and control by political, ethnic, family and peer groups.

Understand the impact of a population doubling every nine years. Problems in accessing services are compounded by the fact that most city dwellers have low incomes and cannot afford the services they need. Despite deficiencies in their basic infrastructure and social services, urban centers in Africa are at the heart of modern economic life and offer opportunities for migrants as economic growth and activity are high, even in a context of poor infrastructure and inefficient urban management.

Public service jobs and commercial housing. Two main trends can be identified in relation to African urban centers: a decline in the provision of public sector jobs and the increasing commercialization of low-income housing. A policy of not demolishing slums and illegal settlements was partly responsible for this latter trend. As a result, housing prices and the share of income spent on housing have increased significantly.

decline in gross national product. The growth rate of Africa's urban population has continued to rise, although the growth rate of gross domestic product per capita has fallen from 1.3% in the 1960s to 0.7% in the 1970s and even more so in the 1980s and 1990s have favored.

city administration. Management problems have been observed in all African countries, leading to ailing infrastructure and inadequate urban services. These can be attributed in part to the recession and in part to tensions between central and local governments and between the public and private sectors. State institutions at the city level are financially weak. Strengthening the financial position through fair market prices for services meets with resistance from above (central government) and below (citizens). The assumption that the structural adjustment measures will increase institutional capacity is doubtful, to say the least. Further cutting the existing low salaries of government staff would further undermine the morale of local officials and lead to absenteeism, undeclared work and other coping strategies. Provision of infrastructure services. Because Africa's large urban centers have historically grown at the expense of small and medium-sized urban centers, increasing population concentration has created practical administrative difficulties related to the provision of infrastructure and community services (such as education, water and sanitation). ) for a rapidly growing population. There has been a lack of projection and planning for urban growth. The local authorities were unable

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Weak interurban and urban-rural connections. The inner-city and urban-rural links have serious weaknesses, in particular the lack of infrastructure characteristic of small and medium-sized urban centers. This is a major obstacle in establishing connections between urban areas and the hinterland, such as B. trade. But in large urban centers losses arise from flight to surrounding suburban centers. Structural Adjustment Policy and Urban Bias. Most African economies are pursuing structural adjustment policies, which generally consist of “getting the prices right”, achieving better fiscal and monetary discipline, encouraging private savings and investment, and strengthening economic governance. Part of the structural adjustment policy is expected to change the terms of trade between economic activities and urban and rural households. Agriculture tends to receive more attention than before because one of the aims is to eliminate the 'urban bias' in national and regional development planning by emphasizing bottom-up development directed towards the rural population. Small and medium-sized urban centers and surrounding interior areas. The development of small and medium-sized urban centers in Africa will be the focus of urbanization in the 21st century because it combines urbanization with rural areas.

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Development. The interdependence of urban and rural people in Africa is striking. It is estimated that 70 percent of city dwellers have strong ties to the rural sector, and in some urban centers the proportion can be as high as 90 percent. Small and medium-sized urban centers in Africa have started to grow very rapidly as the surrounding agricultural areas thrive. More attention should be paid to the role of these centers in agricultural processing, marketing, storage, collection and distribution. It is important to understand the nature of urban-rural links in small and medium-sized urban centers by considering, among other things, the rural population's demand for non-food commodities, the inputs and services needed by the agricultural sector, and the demand for agricultural ones Products. . , which is strongly income-elastic. In fact, increasing demand for the latter two is required for farmers to respond adequately to increases in agricultural input prices. Increases in rural income brought about by improved access to markets and increased agricultural productivity lead to higher levels of activity in small and medium-sized urban centers. Low-income households consume products and services that are produced locally rather than in distant urban centers. Therefore, increased rural consumption due to higher income will diversify the economic activities of nearby urban centers and create significant non-agricultural employment opportunities. African farms will be influenced by urban markets. This expansion of urban markets should significantly increase farmers' disposable income. Such an increase will be faster than expected for formal or informal sector activities in urban areas. The growth of urban centers and the links between them and rural areas will support improvements in agricultural productivity and thus help improve macroeconomic performance. Obstacles to achieving effective urban-rural connectivity in Africa include overvalued exchange rates and low administered food prices, reliance on semi-government funds, lack of access to credit, lack of transport information, weak technological institutional strength, and an inability to generate enough local energy. Income Small and medium-sized urban centers should be supported through infrastructure investment based on their own potential, rather than through

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Diverting capital to promote "territorial justice". Public spending should be directed to the centers where rapid growth is already occurring or likely to occur due to structural adjustment measures and changes in macroeconomic and sectoral policies. The best measure of 'need' is that the level of economic activity is above the level of service provision by the public sector. In order to meet this need, however, all the resources of the public sector are required that will be available in the foreseeable future in view of the very high population growth in many places. Economic activity can be stimulated by public sector investments, but ultimately the local sector must also contribute to human resource development. Training programs are key to the success of decentralization efforts. These may include health issues and family planning programs facilitated by better water and sanitation. THE GROWTH OF MEGACITIES AND LARGE CITY CENTERS

Africa will have more megacities and large urban centers than any other continent in the 21st century. Although only one of the 33 major urban centers was in Africa in 1990, urban centers are growing faster than those in the MDCs. The problems associated with high urban growth in Africa are often compounded by the concentration of population in megacities and large urban centers. To the extent that these are the focus of development, they act as a magnet for migrants from both rural and other urban areas. The result is to increase the concentration of urban populations in a large metropolitan area to form what is known as a primate urban pattern. The growth of megacities and large urban centers and the prospects for their further expansion are among the most pressing urban problems of the 21st century. In addition, the size of megacities and large urban centers amplifies the income and development inequalities associated with urbanization and suburbanization. Megacities and large urban centers in Africa are facing increasing problems as population growth outstrips investment in urban infrastructure. In most African megacities and major urban centers, households spend more than 40 percent of their income

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about food. Due to the high population density, the refuge is often overcrowded. An average of five to six people per room was reported in Johannesburg and Lagos. In Kinshasa and Johannesburg, at least two-thirds of households lack water or electricity; for Lagos and Cape Town it is over 40 percent. Most African megacities and major urban centers have less than one phone for every ten people. In Johannesburg and Lagos, less than a third of residents aged 14 to 17 are in school; enrollment rates in this age group are higher in some other megacities. In terms of infant mortality, Cape Town and Johannesburg have achieved relatively low levels (18 and 22 infant mortality per 1,000 live births, respectively). The two African megacities or large urban centers with the highest infant mortality rates (more than 80 infant mortality per 1,000 live births) are Lagos and Kinshasa. Homicide rates are high in Johannesburg. DIPLOMA

Future strategies should control urban growth, develop alternative methods of delivering low-cost urban services, cover investment costs to enable financial substitutability, strengthen national and local institutions, stimulate community participation, develop economic and institutional links between urban and rural sectors, and promote effective city management strategies. Controlling urban growth requires reducing current government subsidies to capital and shifting the financial burden to those who benefit. Developing alternative forms of urban service delivery will require reviewing their pricing and distribution, and developing means to recover an increasing proportion of the economic costs of the services delivered, likely by removing subsidies to urban consumers to allow those who use them , pay according to their means. The introduction of an effective municipal tax system would help recover investment costs for services. Attention should be drawn to the major urban centers because of their consuming large amounts of national income, their relatively high income levels (meaning their residents are more able to pay for services than rural residents), and efficient allocation scarce national resources is essential. if African countries want to improve national income in the future. African governments should reconsider

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Standards and types of services for the growing urban population. If services aim to maintain relatively high standards, they are unlikely to reach the majority of city dwellers, who are primarily low-income. African governments should experiment with privatizing services to improve administrative efficiency. None of the above goals can be achieved unless African governments make serious efforts to strengthen the institutions operating in urban centers. In most African countries, the department dealing with urban planning is understaffed and underfunded to carry out its statutory duties. There should be greater financial autonomy for municipalities, staff training and a clearer definition of municipal responsibilities. Programs should be designed to encourage greater community participation in the funding and delivery of city services. Self-help programs, private sector incentives and the use of community organizations should be encouraged to encourage more activity and interest among urban residents. As part of the economic diversification of urban economies, efforts must be made to develop economic and institutional links between urban centers and rural areas. These linkages should include urban production and the provision of goods and services needed to support rural development, such as Such as the manufacture of agricultural equipment, repair centers for agricultural machinery and the processing of agricultural products. This approach requires that more resources be devoted to the development of small and medium-sized urban centers so that they can fulfill functions that favor the growth of economic, socio-cultural and administrative ties. Economic links are very important aspects not only of local and regional development, but also of national development, as goods and services are exchanged in urban centers. Urban centers are also important links to rural areas as the former are centers of commercial, industrial and cultural services. It is increasingly recognized that urban centers are inevitably growing and that the solutions to their problems depend to a large extent on their effective management. City management is best viewed as a holistic concept. Can strengthen the capacity of governmental and non-governmental organizations

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Organizations to identify alternative policies and programs and implement them with optimal results. The challenge of city management is to respond effectively to the problems of individual urban centers so that they can effectively fulfill their functions.

Gugler, Joseph, and William G. Flanagan. Urbanization and social change in West Africa. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1978.

The need for a clearly formulated national urban policy arises precisely from the importance of ensuring that urban centers play an appropriate role in Africa's regional and national development. In this context, productive investments should be made in the urban centers that are the most efficient and have already shown high economic potential, regardless of their size. A crucial need is to develop links between the economic activities of megacities, large urban centers, small and medium-sized urban centers and national development strategies. The new planning strategy for African cities is to move beyond isolated projects that focus on housing and housing infrastructure to integrated city-wide efforts that boost urban productivity and reduce efficiency constraints; increasing labor demand, emphasizing job creation for the urban poor; improving access to basic infrastructure; and advance our understanding of urban issues through research. These efforts are intended to promote the role of urban centers as engines of growth for rural areas and thus for economies as a whole.

Howard, Allen. "Precolonial Centers and Regional Systems in Africa". Bread African Journal 8, no. 3 (1975): 247-270.

See also Accra; benguela; Children and childhood: infancy and early development; colonial policies and practices; Conakry; economic history; economic systems; ethnicity; Islam; Johannesburg; cano; Monarchy; Kinshasa; kumasi; lakes; Luanda; lubumbashi; Meet; Transport. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amis, Philip and Peter Lloyd, eds. Housing for urban poverty in Africa. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. Baker, Jonathan, eds. Small Town Africa: Studies in Rural-Urban Interaction. Uppsala, Sweden: Scandinavian Institute for African Studies, 1990. Baker, Jonathan and Paul O. Pedersen, eds. The Rural-Urban Interface in Africa: Expansion and Adaptation. Uppsala, Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet in collaboration with the Center for Development Research, Copenhagen, 1992. El-Shakhs, Salah and Robert A. Obudho, eds. Urbanisation, national development and regional planning in Africa. New York: Ember, 1974.

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Hance, William A. Population, Migration, and Urbanization in Africa. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.

Hull, Richard W. African Cities Before European Conquest. New York: Norton, 1976. Hutton, John, ed. Urban Challenge in East Africa. Nairobi, Kenya: East African Publishing House, 1972. Kanyeihamba, George W. and J. Patrick WB McAuslan. Urban legal problems in East Africa. Uppsala, Sweden: Scandanavan Institute for African Studies, 1978. Kuiper, Klaas. "Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Issues and Politics". ITC Journal 2 (1992). Kuper, Hilda, eds. Urbanization and Migration in West Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965. McNulty, Michael L. "West African Urbanization". In Urbanization and Counter-Urbanization, ed. Brian J.L. Berry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976. Bergman, Horace. "The City and Modernization: An Introduction". In The City in Modern Africa, ed. Horace Bergman. New York: Praeger, 1967. Obudho, Robert A. "National Urban Policy in East Africa." Regional Development Dialogue 4, No. 2 (1983). Obudho, Robert A. "The Spatial Structure of Urbanization and Planning in East Africa". In Urban Systems in Transition, eds. J.G. Borchert, I.S. Bourne and R. Sinclair. Amsterdam: Koninklijk Nederlands Aardrijksständig Genootschap, 1986. Obudho, Robert A. "Urbanization and Urban Policy in East Africa". In Inequality and Development: Case Structures from the Third World, ed. Kenneth Swindell, J.B. Baba and M.J. Mortimore. London: Macmillan, 1989. Obudho, Robert A. "Urbanization and City Development Strategies in East Africa". In Urban Management: Politics and Innovations in Developing Countries, ed. G. Shabbir Cheema. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. Obudho, Robert A. & Constance C. Mhlanga, eds. Slum settlements and squatters in sub-Saharan Africa: towards a planning strategy. New York: Praeger, 1988. Obudho, Robert A. and Salah El-Shakhs, eds. Evolution of Urban Systems in Africa. New York: Praeger, 1979. O'Connor, Anthony M. The African City. New York: African Publishing Company, 1983. Parker, D.J. Town and country in Central and East Africa. London: International African Institute, 1975.

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Peel, JDY "Urbanization and Urban History in West Africa." Journal of African History 21, no. 1 (1980): 269-277. Soy, Edward W. and C.E. Weaver. "Urbanization and Underdevelopment in East Africa". In Urbanization and Counter-Urbanization, ed. Brian J. L. Berry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1976. Stahl, Robert W. "The Cities of Tropical Africa." In Essays on African Population, ed. Kenneth M. Barbour and R.M. Prothero. New York: Praeger, 1961. Stren, Richard E. & Rodney A. White, eds. African Cities in Crisis: Coping with Rapid Urban Growth. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989. Tarver, James D., ed. Urbanization in Africa: a handbook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1994. R.A. OBUDHO

PREHISTORY

the Zimbabwean plateau and the east coast of Africa - did so at the instigation or instigation of foreign agents. Western Sudanese cities like Jenne'-jeno and Timbuktu were thought to be North African Arab trading colonies located in the desert to help control Trans-Saharan trade. Europeans believed that the stone capitals of the Zimbabwean plateau were evidence of Mediterranean colonialism in southern Africa. Similarly, the stone-built ruins of abandoned Swahili towns were attributed to Arab colonizers who came to the coast to control Indian Ocean trade with inland Africa. The assumptions behind these interpretations are clear: Africa was a place of inferior people, institutions, and achievements—ideas that jibed well with 20th-century colonial thinking about subjugated populations.

P R E H I S T Ó R I C

Prehistoric African urbanism was only a fringe of broader discussions of global urbanism. This stems from a number of issues and assumptions: that African city forms must conform to conceptual models developed in Mesopotamian and Mesoamerican contexts; that Africa's ecological context might not support urbanism; and that the urban societies of Africa had a foreign inspiration. Traditional models of urbanism ruled out all possible cases in Africa, insisting that features such as literacy, writing, or monumental architecture were key features of urbanism. J. Desmond Clark concluded that "total urbanism was never achieved in southern Africa" (29) because the settlements lacked these key characteristics. For Clark and other anthropologists, urbanism was unimaginable in mid-20th century sub-Saharan Africa because of the continent's favorable climate for agriculture, unlimited land, and the nature of its subsistence farming, which removed all incentives for urban life. Complexity. They believed that these factors meant that individuals in African societies could not accumulate wealth or capital through either control over land or through production, thereby constraining the development of hierarchical societies. Thus arose conventional wisdom that the few great ancient centers that appeared on the continent - cities in the inner Niger Delta, which

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One way African archeology has challenged the strangeness of urbanism is by shifting focus from urbanism itself, the political, social, and economic aspects of cities, to urbanization, a focus on cities and territories and interiors, to which you belong. connected. Susan McIntosh defined a city as follows: "Whatever a city may be, it is a unit of settlement that performs specialized functions in relation to a larger interior. . .. Therefore, urbanism represents a new way of relating between places in a region and implies the emergence of specialization and functional interdependence” (1997, 463). This shift represents a step outwards to the regions around cities, examining the relationships between urban and rural areas, but also points to a more concerted effort to study the evolution of urban centers and regions over time. Both research trends have shown that African cities are part of complex settlement systems that evolved over time and not as a result of rapid colonization or external pressures. AFRICAN URBAN PLANNING

The massive stone ruins of Great Zimbabwe are known today as the central settlement of the Zimbabwe tradition and successor to the first capital of the Zimbabwe tradition at Mapungubwe, 186 miles south. Both Mapungubwe (Eleventh

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PREHISTORY

through the 13th century) and Greater Zimbabwe (13th to 15th centuries) settled in hierarchical settlement systems composed of hundreds of smaller settlements that shared architectural features such as dry granite walls and earth structures. The specialized functions these capitals coordinated were the management of local and regional manufacturing economies that combined cattle transportation, agriculture, stone and mineral extraction, and long-distance trade. The rise of Mapungubwe and Great Zimbabwe is believed to have been based on the successful efforts of leaders to manage domestically produced goods such as gold, used in exchange for long-distance trade in exotic goods from the east coast of Africa. . Similarly, the urban centers of East Africa or the Swahili coast were places where the domestic regional economy traded with long-distance trade. Based on local fishing and trading villages founded in the 8th century AD, these cities emerged in the 11th and 12th centuries and reached their peak in the 13th to 15th centuries. As in Greater Zimbabwe, long-distance trade was a crucial part of the economic base of the Swahili towns. But unlike the sites of the Zimbabwean tradition, they were politically independent, although linked by supra-local ties, in common elements of ritual and Islam. While status in Swahili cities was based in part on material accumulation, as can be seen from the displays of long-distance trade goods in elite homes, mosques and tombs, the cities' abundance and independence meant that status was also largely related to people: ability to attract and keep a population. For example, Shanga, a city on the Kenyan coast from the 8th to the 15th centuries, consisted of different districts united by a corporate organization rather than being forcibly ruled by a single person. Although Swahili cities contained many images of traditional features of urban centers (monumental architecture, status classification), other indicators suggest that crucial aspects of urban organization, such as handicraft production, were decentralized and household-based. The Swahili case is part of a growing body of evidence suggesting that African urban forms differ significantly from traditional models. The urban groups in the interior of Niger are best known

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Delta, represented by research in Jenne´-jeno and surroundings. Jenne´-jeno (250 BC to 1400 AD) marks the center of a group of more than forty mounds representing various settlements that have been functionally integrated, with specific sites relating to production techniques such as forging and fishing have specialized. This urban group appears to have fulfilled the functions of an urban center through corporate organization rather than hierarchical political authority. The organization explains the absence of more traditional features of Jenne´-jeno urban life, such as monumental public architecture, centralization of artisan production, or visible stratification or classification. The diversity of urban forms in Africa, from Zimbabwe's hierarchical and centralized tradition to jenne'-jenos urban corporate groups, suggests that African urbanisms may contradict normative interpretations of what cities should be and what they should look like. The recognition of the importance of corporate forms of socio-political organization as an alternative to highly centralized hierarchical forms compels historians and students to remember that in many African societies, social wealth, "popular wealth", is a far more powerful source of power than the accumulation of material goods. Understanding this concept is an important step in recognizing the rich alternative urbanisms that Africa has to offer. See also jenne' and jenne'-jeno; Prehistory; Timbuktu; Travel and Explore; Zimbabwe cool. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Childe, V. Gordon. "The Urban Revolution". The Urban Planning Review 21, No. 3 (1950): 3-17. Clark, J Desmond. "Africa southern of the Sahara". In Courses on Urban Life, ed. Robert J Braidwood and Gordon R Willey. Chicago: Aldine, 1962. Fleisher, Jeffrey. "Viewing Stonetowns from the Field: An Archaeological Approach to the Swahili Regional Systems, AD 800-1500". PhD dis. University of Virginia, 2003. Haour, Anne. "Power and Persistence in Pre-Colonial Africa: A Case Study of the Central Sahel". World Archeology 37, No. 4 (2005): 552–565. Horton, Mark. Shanga: The Archeology of a Muslim Trading Community on the East African Coast. London: British East Africa Institute, 1996. Kusimba, Chapurukha M. The Rise and Fall of the Swahili States. Walnut Creek, California: Alta Mira, 1999.

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LaViolette, Adria and Jeffrey Fleisher. "The Archeology of Sub-Saharan Urbanism: Cities and their Fields". In African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, ed. Anna Stahl. Oxford: Blackwell, 2005. McIntosh, Susan Keech. "Urbanism in Sub-Saharan Africa". In Encyclopedia of Precolonial Africa, ed. Jose O Vogel. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 1997. McIntosh, Susan Keech. "Pathways to Complexity: An African Perspective". In Beyond Chiefdoms: Pathways to Complexity in Africa, ed. Susan Keech McIntosh. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999. McIntosh, Susan Keech and Roderick J. McIntosh "Cities without Citadels: Understanding Urban Origins Along the Middle Niger." In The Archeology of Africa: Food, Metals and Towns, ed. Thurston Shaw, Paul Sinclair, Bassey Andah and Alex Okpako. London: Roulege, 1993. Pikirayi, Innocent. The Culture of Zimbabwe: Origins and Decline of the Southern Zambian States. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira, 2001. Sinclair, Paul. Space, time and social formation: a territorial approach to the archeology and anthropology of Zimbabwe and Mozambique c. 0–1700 AD Uppsala, Sweden: Societas Archaeologica Upsaliensis, 1987. JEFFREY FLEISHER

H I S T O R I C

Up until the second half of the 20th century, Africa was predominantly rural. Even in the 1960s, there were few major mainland cities, notably Cairo, Ibadan and Johannesburg. But although in the past the vast majority of Africans lived in small towns, villages and in the countryside, cities have played a fundamental role in the history of most African regions from the earliest periods for which historians have information. Of course, Africans shared the experience of most peoples in the world. Unfortunately, the intellectual assumptions associated with imperialism and white supremacy have shaped the study of the history of urbanism in Africa. Colonial scholarship has often focused on showing that indigenous African urban sites did not represent true cities or, if they did, their origins could be traced across the continent. Most notoriously, the South African state, keen to protect claims that the settlement of future South Africa by Bantu-speaking people did not precede the arrival of whites, narrowed the investigation

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this finally showed that Bantu-speaking peoples had built cities in the region well before the 17th century. Anti-colonial scholars, on the other hand, were equally anxious to demonstrate the historical existence of large African cities, although they often implicitly used European urban development as a measure of size. Efforts to create typologies of African urbanism bog down in analytical categories derived from the European experience, while any attempt to define a distinctively African city clashes with the continent's vast regional diversity. The cities were not only characterized by their size, but also by their structural complexity and cosmopolitanism. The accumulation of wealth, generally through control over elements of long-distance trade, led to significant occupational differentiation, often including artisans, and supported the existence of political or religious classes that reflected their positions as centers of secular and spiritual power. Agricultural production was common in African cities, but the cities could not support themselves without controlling the surplus food produced in the surrounding hinterland. What is historically interesting, then, is not so much the fact of the existence of cities as the urbanization processes that were closely linked to the most powerful forces of change. Meroe and its successor centers are in the upper Nile region and date from at least the 4th century BC. C., had a strong influence on the subsequent history of urban development in the Horn of Africa and eventually the entire Sahel. Relatively isolated from the great cities of classical Egypt, Meroe arose from an existing urban tradition in a pattern that would be repeated across Africa, but was also heavily influenced by contact with the outside world. Meroe was said to be a great capital at the crossroads of important trade routes; it had impressive palaces, public baths, temples and cemeteries, the remains of which indicate the existence of a trade in precious metals and an artisan class. Meroic influence extended as far as Axum on the Red Sea coast, where in the 1st century AD The Erythraean Sea Voyage mentions the existence of port cities, the beginnings of a trading power that developed over more than six centuries and laid the foundation for the later Christian kingdom of Ethiopia.

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HISTORICAL

Unfortunately, the lack of archaeological work limits historians' knowledge of the urban centers of Meroe and Aksum, and indeed much of early African history. Consequently, not only are historians limited in their knowledge of the excavated sites, but the existence of collections of more detailed information derived from specific archaeological studies can have the unintended effect of erasing the history of towns where remains have not been excavated. studied and whose existence is hardly known. Urban centers of political and religious power emerged in Ethiopia that were less determined by geography and the location of trade routes than cities in the Sahel, West Africa, and the Indian Ocean coast. In the 17th century, Gondar was the capital of Ethiopia, a position it held for two centuries. Gondar was a walled city befitting its role as a center of political and military power, but in fact the urban seat of royal authority migrated further to temporary urban camps occupied by tens of thousands of people. At the same time, no place could have been more enduring than Laliba¨la, whose ten carved churches formed the center of a large religious community. The existence of these contrasting urban forms illustrates the diversity of drives that brought people together in settlements and the similar diversity of spatial expressions of urbanism. Located on the Limpopo River, Mapungubwe dates from the 11th and 12th centuries and is the oldest known urban settlement in southern Africa. In the surrounding area, other smaller urban settlements developed around the wealth of livestock and the gold trade. A little later, further north, the most important urban center of South and Central Africa, Great Zimbabwe, develops. This city was occupied from the 11th to the 16th centuries and at its peak had a population of over ten thousand people. Great Zimbabwe, which drew its wealth from controlling the gold trade to the Indian Ocean port of Kilwa, was both a political and religious center for a large area. In Great Zimbabwe and in many smaller settlements in the region, an elite lived on the stone-walled compound while common people lived

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in lesser dwellings in suburban areas. This stark contrast underscores the fact that the development of cities has often also been associated with a widening of the gap between rich and poor and with the systematic reduction in the position and material condition of the common people. Ultimately, Great Zimbabwe fell victim to its own success. In Ethiopia, 'migratory' capitals allowed for burden-sharing in maintaining the royal capital, but Greater Zimbabwe's size and incessant need for food ultimately led to environmental degradation at home. Without the technological ability to transport food over long distances, the city had to be abandoned. Urban patterns in the intralacustrine region and throughout Central Africa resembled the Great Zimbabwe pattern, even in the absence of masonry. Kibuga, the capital of the Kingdom of Buganda, lay in an exceptionally favorable ecological niche of consistently productive farming. In the early 19th century, contact with the East Coast brought with it the exchange of slaves for cotton cloth and arms: this led to heavy centralization of an already powerful state, concentrating between fifty and seventy-five thousand people in the capital. This capital was planned and built very rigorously, although it was moved at least once per reign. The royal palace and the great institutions of the high officials were all linked in a symbolic arrangement of beautiful thatched and thatched dwellings in enclosures, fenced in with intricately woven elephant grass and shaded by the leaves of the ubiquitous plane tree. However, the most famous of the cities in this vast region was Mbanza Kongo, the capital of the Kongo kings. One Portuguese visitor put the population at 100,000, while others said it was just a sprawling village, as it actually became after the Portuguese arrived. The divine king exercised some influence over a vast region of several million people, and the king and court elite received food supplies from a wide area. Most important, however, were the shipments of Nzimbu shells from the coast, particularly from the island of Loanda. No one would sell anything like slaves for silver or gold, just for nzimbu. The key issue in urban development across the continent from 1000 AD to the 20th century

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The twentieth century saw the rise of trading cities on or near the Atlantic or Indian coasts or on the southern fringes of the Sahara. These cities grew in response to long-distance trade routes and as part of an effort to control and benefit from them. The drying up of the Sahara drove its peoples south and north, extending without interrupting the gold trade routes from the headwaters of Senegal and Niger. Local creative adaptation and external demand stimulated urban development in favorable circumstances where human, social, economic, or external resources were favorable for settlement. Other factors that stimulated urban development were rain, fertile soil, valuable minerals, complementary products from contrasting ecological zones, communications, and supply and demand channels. The Kingdom of Ghana, with Kumbi-Saleh as its capital, was rich and powerful in AD 800, possessing iron weapons and a large army. KumbiSaleh was a twin city: an indigenous village built of earth and a royal palace, and a Muslim trading town of stone six miles away, with the space between also built up. He controlled the main gold producing areas and supplied caravans in exchange for salt from Taghaza and other Saharan mines. Slaves, ivory, kola nuts, horses, textiles, and leatherwork increased trade. Growing rivalry with the Saharan Berbers led to their conquest of Kumbi-Saleh around AD 1076 and then to their gradual decline. Timbuktu, founded around 1000 AD in the Niger Bend. C. it became an important caravan terminal and a prominent center of Islamic learning in the 15th and 16th centuries. The oldest city discovered by archeology is Jenne'jeno, in the inner Niger Delta, near gold and copper areas. It was in an exceptionally privileged location with plentiful water, fertile soil, rich fisheries and natural protection from impenetrable swamps. Iron users had it 250 BC. BC occupied. C. and there was rapid growth. By AD 800 it was a city of size and complexity, a dense settlement of round brick houses surrounded by a wall, ruled by a king, and producing fine terracotta and pottery. Muslim pressure from the north increased and jenne'-jeno gradually eased. He was followed by the Islamic African town of Jenne, two miles away, which remained an important distribution center with Timbuktu

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caravan trade. The spread of Islam across the Sahara to West Africa and along the Indian Ocean coast played an important role in shaping the development of urban forms in these areas. This was particularly evident in the gender-specific quality of the separation between public and private space. In the local tradition, houses were relatively open, but a Muslim-influenced Sahel model of urban design gained prominence, transforming street enclosures into courtyards. Female seclusion was an urban phenomenon, but apparently not widespread except in Swahili and Hausa cities. Kano, Katsina, Zaria, and many other walled city-states of the Hausa-speaking peoples were trade-oriented rather than empire-oriented. These cities created a remarkable network of exchanges that fed the caravan routes to Tripoli, Tunis and Ghadames between the Mali-Songhay sphere in the west and Kanem-Bornu in the east. They vacillated in bonds of domination and subordination, both among themselves and with neighboring powers. They enriched the trade in swords and other weapons, silk, spices, perfumes, leather goods and books. They had become Muslims in the fifth century. On the southernmost savannah edges of the rainforest, Yoruba city-states emerged, not for proximity to gold or other externally-demanded commodities, but for the potential of fertile soils and reliable rainfall. The Yoruba structure of knowledge and destiny, time and space was symbolically based on multiples of four, eight and sixteen. Sixteen lineage-based business sectors radiated from the divine king's outlying palace and central marketplace to the farms beyond the walls. Sixteen sons left Ife to found and rule other Yoruba city-states and also Benin. Most men tended their farms outside the walls, while most women were merchants, but all participated in the cycle of festivals that structured the urban year. Weavers, wood carvers, drummers, locksmiths and other craftsmen were organized in guilds. Around the 13th century, magnificent heads and figures of rulers were made of brass and terracotta. Located in the savannah, the town of Oyo was able to develop cavalry, giving it political supremacy in the region from the 17th to the 19th centuries.

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While the Mediterranean world prospected for gold in Sudan, traders from the Indian Ocean prospected for it on the east coast of Africa, where sources of gold ranged from Tanzania to the Transvaal and copper was mainly found in Katanga. The most notable site is Mapungabwe-Bambandyanalo on the Limpopo River, which was first settled in the 11th century. The Mapungabwe gold hoard included a rhinoceros and a bowl of beaten gold and gold anklets, a scepter and pearls. This was a sprawling urban center as evidenced by the rough-hewn stone walls, pottery, goldwork, cairn burials, rain basins and dug wells for livestock. Around 600 AD C. gold was traded to Sofala and Kilwa. By the year 700 the ancient city in Zimbabwe was occupied, but its spectacular stone structures were built later. Most of the gold, stone and other artefacts were later looted, but the remains show that Zimbabwe had a ritualized divine kingship and a sizable population. Zimbabwe traded with the coastal ports, but when the Portuguese drove out the Arabs in the 16th century, the gold trade declined, as did Zimbabwe. From Somalia to Kilwa, the essentially urban Swahili-speaking population arose from the merging of Africans and immigrants, including Arabs. Kilwa was the largest of these Swahili cities with its magnificent 13th century palaces, baths and mosques with coral stone arcades and vaults. At the end of the era, Zanzibar City dominated the coast and its commerce; It was a larger and more populous but less lavish town center than Kilwa. West African cities were more numerous, closer together and more connected, creating a momentum of its own within the African urban business community, which held West Africa as the most urbanized sub-Saharan region. European trade in gold, and later slaves, on the west coast began with the arrival of the Portuguese and expanded as other western nations moved in. As a result, the prevailing trade direction was north inland rather than south of the Mediterranean. Countless cities grew to spread this trade over the next four hundred years, or to control and capitalize on its effects. Aside from the European coastal trading posts, these were African cities in population, organization, and way of life.

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Parallel to the Sahel cities, urban centers such as those of Senegal and the Gold Coast developed alongside European quarters, which in this case, however, consisted partly of fortified outposts of European power. The slave port of Ouidah, for example, grew in conjunction with three fortified European trading posts in what is now the Republic of Benin. Although it eventually came under Dahomey sovereignty, that state's capital, Abomey, was inland, far beyond the reach of European authorities. Similarly, the capital of the Asante, Kumasi, developed in the 19th century as a result of its links with Gold Coast trading cities such as Cape Coast and Accra. But Kumasi was an imperial capital, facing both north and coast. Closely linked to its interior, it was at the same time an urban center of particular significance, whose residents displayed that timid cosmopolitanism that so often drew the line between town and country in Africa as elsewhere. See also Aksum; Bantu, East, South and West, History from (1000 BC to 1500); Cairo; Egypt, early; Ethiopia and environs, history from (600 to 1600 AD); Gondar; African history; ibadan; Ivory; jenne' and jenne'-jeno; Johannesburg; cano; lalibala; Niger River; The nil; The Sahara Desert; slave trade; Timbuktu; Tripoli; Tunisia. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, David and Richard Rathbone, eds. Africa's urban past. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2000. Connah, Graham. African Civilizations: An Archaeological Perspective, rev. edition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Coquery-Vidrovitch, Catherine. The History of Sub-Saharan African Cities: From Origins to Colonization, trans. Maria Baker. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2005. Hull, R.W. African Cities and Towns before the European Conquest. New York: Norton, 1976. Law, Robin. Ouidah: The Social History of a West African Slave "Port", 1727–1892. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2004. Southall, Aidan W., eds. Urban Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Urbanization. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Sutton, John. A thousand years East Africa. Nairobi: British East Africa Institute, 1990.

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Across sub-Saharan Africa, the post-colonial period witnessed an explosion in the rate of urbanization. Especially in East and Central Africa, where the large population of European settlers in colonial times had denied Africans the right to live in cities, political independence meant enormous liberation and the freedom to move and live permanently in cities. While in 1960 the urban population in sub-Saharan Africa was only 31 million out of a total of 215 million (14.4%), by 2002 the situation had changed drastically. The urban population jumped to 242 million from a total of 688 million (35%). Even more remarkable was the mass pattern of this population. While in 1960 there was only one city, Johannesburg, with more than 1 million inhabitants, accounting for 3 percent of the total urban population, in 2002 there were 35 such cities, accounting for more than 44 percent of the total urban population. The rural-urban migrations that sparked political independence across the region were in part the result of urbanism's close association with modernism. For most immigrants, who came from a largely pre-capitalist rural subsistence environment, urbanism brought two important changes: wage employment on relatively large off-farm farms and a new pattern of consumption. The latter included living in better housing, access to better educational and healthcare facilities, opportunities to enjoy better clothing, food, drink, entertainment and recreation, and opportunities for collective action and association. The post-colonial period witnessed a significant differentiation between African cities. Five types of cities have been distinguished. First there is the indigenous town, found primarily in West Africa and the East African coast, of pre-colonial origins, which has retained many of its traditional features with narrow, winding streets and mud or stone buildings. Good examples are Timbuktu, Mali; Agadez, Niger; Hargeisa, Somalia; and Lamu, Kenya. The second is the Colonial City, built by the colonial authorities at critical transportation hubs or resource zones to house African workers. Such cities are usually well laid out, with streets forming a grid pattern and houses built

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alot more. Examples are Dakar, Senegal; Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Port Harcourt and Kaduna, Nigeria; and Kinshasa, Zaire. The third is the twin city, which combines the characteristics of the two previous types. Examples are Kano, Zaria and Ibadan in Nigeria and Khartoum in Sudan. The fourth is the European city, which is mainly located in East, Central and South Africa and was originally founded solely for European settlement and therefore has a European level of design and infrastructure facilities. Examples are Nairobi, Kenya; Harare, Zimbabwe; and Pretoria, South Africa. Fifth is the metropolitan industrial city, a hybrid that typically combines features of all of the above types, but without exception has a sizeable area of run-down squatter settlements that have been built since independence to accommodate the large numbers of rural-to-city migrants. City that failed to realize the dreams that sparked their migration to the city. Regardless of the type of city, the post-1960s period was marked by a rapid increase in urban unemployment. Because they were very capital intensive, most modern establishments, whether factories, trading houses, or offices, offered relatively limited employment opportunities. However, immigrants continued to pour into the cities in hopes of landing one of the few jobs. While they waited, those with some skills began to seize opportunities to provide goods and services to the growing mass of underprivileged people like them. The goods and services produced were not of the quality of modern institutions but served the needs of the poor. In this way, an informal economy flourished and became an important feature of postcolonial urban centers. AN INFORMAL ECONOMY

The term informal economy was first used by Keith Hart in the Nima district of Accra, Ghana to describe urban economic activities characterized by easy entry and exit and employing very few people (usually fewer than ten), without formal incorporation by government agencies, and are therefore not subject to government regulatory oversight. Their pattern of employment derives largely from the pre-industrial economic structure of the master (or proprietor), staffed by skilled workers or laborers and apprentices.

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Much has been learned about the nature, structure and functioning of this informal sector since the 1960s. The International Labor Organization (ILO) mission to Kenya in 1972 first drew international attention to the employment capacity and income opportunities offered by this sector. In recent years, researchers have estimated that informal economy workers account for a whopping 78 percent of non-farm employment, 61 percent of total urban employment and 93 percent of all new jobs created in Africa. They also estimate that the informal economy's contribution to non-agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) averages about 40 percent in most years. In the 21st century, a significant degree of integration between the formal and informal sectors has been achieved in many developing countries, including those in sub-Saharan Africa. In some sub-sectors, the dividing line between the two tends to be fluid. Especially in large metropolitan areas, the formal sector has become dependent on the informal market for the provision of goods and services and for hiring cheap labour. On the other hand, the informal sector depends on the formal sector for some of its equipment, machinery and raw materials. Improving urban economic performance therefore implies promoting a conscious linkage and involvement of the informal sector and its approach to poverty reduction. For this reason, under the inspiration of the World Bank and UN-Habitat, an international organization called the Cities Alliance was formed in 1999 to bring together representatives of the world's cities, including those in Africa, bilateral and multilateral development agencies and institutions. The organization's mandate was to improve efficiency and expand the impact of urban development cooperation and investment around the world. The operational program of the Cities Alliance was to promote a dual global campaign of Urban Development Strategy and Cities without Slums. In this campaign, an urban development strategy involves the development of a collective vision of the city that responds to its strengths and comparative advantages in the national and regional context, a vision that belongs to the city and all stakeholders, both formal and informal. , and returns a

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agreed strategic framework for growth and poverty reduction and identified areas of action with assigned roles for each stakeholder. Therefore, an urban development strategy has a pro-poor approach and implies a participatory effort of all socio-economic groups in the city. Such strategies have already been initiated in BoboDioulasso, Mali; Maradi and Dosso, Niger; Karu, near Abuja, Nigeria; and Johannesburg, South Africa. In fact, many cities in the Republic of South Africa are adopting this paradigm to improve their economic productivity and address the difficult problem of urban poverty. SHELTER

Housing is an extremely important issue for migrants in the city. Lacking the resources to secure sufficient rental housing, or finding such housing at any price, migrants are often forced to establish illegal settlements near or near existing urban centers. These settlements initially consist of structures made of non-essential materials such as corrugated iron, cardboard boxes and containers of all kinds. Over time, most squatter settlements show development patterns in which the shack occupants gradually improve them using bricks, cinder blocks and corrugated iron roofing material to convert them into to transform quite respectable houses. This will only happen if the authorities are enlightened enough not to demolish the shanty town before the conversion has taken place. Typically, squatter settlements are considered derelict environments and bulldozed. However, the need for refuge by the underprivileged is so great that new illegal settlements are quickly springing up to replace the destroyed settlements. The cycle of construction and destruction begins again, this time with even more insignificant materials from the migrants. However, the real problem with squatter settlements is that very little action is taken to plan them and provide them with infrastructure and services. The result is poor drainage, particularly of sewage, and large piles of uncollected solid waste, all of which soon become major environmental hazards. However, squatter settlements are neither disorganized nor unorganizable. As a result, where the authorities are compassionate and tolerant, as in Dakar, Senegal, or Lusaka, Zambia, the environmental situation in illegal settlements has changed drastically.

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Such a transformation becomes even more impressive when squatter settlements have been incorporated into the overall city planning process. Planning became the strategy through slum upgrade and site and service programs to minimize the apparent deleterious effects of these settlements. During most of the 1970s, the World Bank became the advocate of this urban planning and development strategy in most of sub-Saharan Africa, with an emphasis on secure property for the poor. Partly because of this security, the poor, for whom the programs were designed, were often bought out by the rich. The resulting failure of the Sites and Services programs to address the housing problem of the urban poor led to a retreat from its vocal advocacy in the 1980s. Meanwhile, it was estimated in 2002 that about 56 percent of urban dwellers in sub-Saharan Africa lived in slums. Consequently, the other phase of the Cities Alliance's global campaign focused on the problem of eliminating urban slums. The City Without Slums campaign aims to encourage cities and countries to adopt comprehensive city-wide strategies and programs to improve slums, set development goals, implement reforms to prevent the growth of new slums, and leverage public and private resources , to improve life in slum residents. . With the support of donor agencies, a Slum-Free Cities Facility for Sub-Saharan Africa was established in 2002, which has provided assistance in upgrading slums in several African cities including Lagos, Nigeria; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Nairobi; Johannesburg; Mbabane, Swaziland; and Kumasi, Ghana. CITY GOVERNMENT

The existence of slums and the pervasive poverty of African cities are increasingly viewed as two sides of the same coin of bad governance. Therefore, its effective solution must go hand in hand with reforms in the way African cities are governed. Consequently, the style and quality of urban governance are at the center of international attention. This approach emphasizes the primacy of municipal financial management in solving urban problems and the relationship between the effective mobilization of financial resources and increased citizen access to municipal services for all.

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Classes The new approach also aims to increase the involvement of the private sector, both formal and informal, in the provision of city services, particularly urban transport. After years of resentment at the apparent intrusion of informal sector operators such as Matatu drivers and their vehicles (usually minibuses or converted vans), local authorities are encouraged to legitimize their involvement in urban mass transit. However, the effectiveness of urban governance in most sub-Saharan African countries remains largely a function of the balance of power between local authorities and central government on the one hand and the citizens of the cities themselves on the other. In anglophone Africa in particular, the 1980s saw a marked shift away from centralized control of urban budgetary and taxation policies towards some support for various forms of decentralization and local initiative. However, the position remains largely at the policy-making level and has not yet translated into real empowerment of local authorities. As of 2006, most of them are still unable to raise the funds they need for infrastructure and local economic development. On the other hand, the relationships that municipalities have with their citizens are not very empowering. UN-Habitat's global campaign for good urban governance emphasizes the growing importance of participatory democracy, as distinct from purely representative democracy, in local government governance if local government is to be more accountable to its citizens and to mobilize and mobilize their resources used effectively to support local government. development programs. Originating in the city of Porto Allegre, Brazil, participatory budgeting is being developed as an important complement to urban development strategies to ensure that citizens help prioritize the development of their communities' capital needs. South Africa is a sub-Saharan African country that reflects the participation of residents in city government. The Local Government Systems Act 1998 details when and how local authorities should communicate with and consult residents and involve them in various local government structures and processes. This participatory governance aims to promote accountability and address issues

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Corruption and mismanagement, promoting better quality of services to residents and informing about the development and implementation of the integrated development plan for each city. The country's nine largest cities, designated metropolitan communities, initiated the establishment of a Network of South African Cities in 2002 to promote the exchange of information, experience and best practice with this type of participatory governance and integrated development plans. Social scientists believe that the formation of the United Cities and Local Governments of Africa (UCLGA) in 2004, with its first South African president, would facilitate the spread of this novel system of governance and urban planning to the rest of the continent. WOMEN AND URBAN SOCIAL RELATIONS

Urban life has a crucial impact on social relations throughout sub-Saharan Africa. It has forced the citizens of all African countries to adapt to the reality of ethnic diversity and heterogeneity in the cities and has encouraged drastic changes in gender relations. Everywhere the increasing education of girls and women has freed them from the slavery of traditional existence. With their growing qualifications and professional competence, they challenge their male colleagues at management level and in politics. However, the resulting independence and individual autonomy of women has an impact on family life. Urban society in Africa is increasingly accepting the phenomenon of female-headed households and respectable single mothers who see no compelling reason to marry. All of this is happening against the backdrop of women's increasing ability to self-manage their fertility through family planning programs. However, this increasing independence of women in the context of more permissive social and sexual norms has exposed them in most African cities of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, particularly as a result of mass migrations and the long absences of male workers outside their homes, a practice dating back to colonial times. Consequently, it is estimated that HIV seroprevalence rates in sub-Saharan Africa's urban areas are not only high, but continue to rise. Recent surveys of pregnant women show that more than 31 percent of pregnant women in urban Botswana and 32 percent in urban Rwanda, Malawi and Zambia are pregnant.

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HIV positive. Even in West Africa, where HIV prevalence is estimated to be relatively low, it is increasing in urban areas of Nigeria and Cameroon. The seroprevalence rates in capitals or large cities show that on average almost a quarter of the adult population has the disease, a much higher level than in rural areas. Although accurate estimates of the impact of HIV/AIDS on the economies of African cities are difficult to ascertain, there is no denying that the disease has been a major contributor to the economic crisis in most sub-Saharan countries since the 1990s and the re-empowerment of women put them under a lot of pressure, especially if they are the sole breadwinner in the family. Runaway inflation and the depreciation of national currencies have further undermined the well-being of most families, reduced healthcare spending and increased child malnutrition. The increase in the number of urban children who are orphaned due to the loss of both parents due to the HIV/AIDS pandemic is also beginning to emerge as a very serious problem in many urban centers across the continent. THE FUTURE

For cities in sub-Saharan Africa, the new millennium promises a new era marked by a greater emphasis on participatory democracy in city governance and greater attention to the social and economic role of cities in the development of African countries. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals are the benchmark against which the achievements of African local and national governments will be measured in the years to come. In many ways, these goals are mutually reinforcing, and achieving them requires African cities to develop their capacity for effective, democratic and accountable governance. This is not only the primary purpose of UCLGA, but also of the New Partnership for African Development (NEPAD), an initiative by African governments supporting UN-Habitat to promote orderly growth and development of metropolitan areas through town twinning and in a safer way Ownership, environmental sustainability and effective poverty alleviation of citizens guaranteed. According to forecasts, by 2025 around 55 percent of the African population will live there

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Cities and more than 65 percent of them will live in large metropolitan areas, some of which have become megacities. Consequently, African governments have an obligation to address the problems of their thriving cities through good participatory governance. There are early signs that circumstances are also increasingly compelling them to use the resources of their history and culture for popular participation to address some of these urban issues in the context of broader globalization, the growing development role of public-private partnerships, and in particular the cascading streams of technological innovations in communication and information that are dramatically transforming social relations in cities. See also Abidjan; Addis Ababa; dakar Disease: HIV/AIDS, social and political aspects; Harare; Johannesburg; Khartoum; Kinshasa; kumasi; Work; lakes; Lusaka; mbabane; Nairobi; Harcourt Harbour; Poverty; praetorship; production strategies; Senegal; Timbuktu; Transport; World Bank. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charmes, J. Estimation and survey methods for the informal sector. Versailles: University of Versailles, 2002. Montgomery, M.R.; Richard Stren; Barney Cohen; and Holly E. Reed; Ed. Transformed Cities: Demographic Change and Its Impact on Developing Countries. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2003. O'Connor, Anthony M. The African City. London: Hutchinson, 1983. Network of South African Cities. State of Cities Report 2004. Pretoria: SACN, 2004. Stren, Richard E. & Rodney R. White, eds. African Cities in Crisis: Coping with Rapid Urban Growth. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. 1989. United Nations Center for Human Settlements (Habitat). An Urbanizing World: World Report on Human Settlements. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. UN-Habitat. The State of the World's Cities 2004/2005: Globalization and Urban Culture. London: UN-Habitat/Earthscan, 2004. AKIN L. MABOGUNJE

ACCOMMODATION

To understand the problem of urban housing in sub-Saharan Africa, special attention must be paid to the historical development of urbanization

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the quantity and quality of housing available, the provision of urban facilities in residential areas, and urban dwellers' access to housing. Cities in general in Africa have increasingly become havens for the poor, who determine an ever larger part of physical development. This is reflected in the growth of settlements that have arisen spontaneously, beyond the control of the authorities charged by law with regulating land use and building construction. Urbanization in pre-colonial and colonial times

In the pre-colonial period, before the 19th century, the population of the African continent was strongly rural. Although it would be inaccurate to say that urbanization was exclusively a colonial import, pre-colonial urbanization was restricted to specific regions. For example, there have been stone-built urban centers in southern Africa dating back to 1000 AD, the most notable of which is Great Zimbabwe. Early and well-developed urban traditions also existed in West Africa, on the Arabian coast of East Africa, and in Ethiopia. By world pre-industrial standards, some of these cities were of considerable size: Yoruba and Benin populations ranged from 15,000 to 20,000; Timbuktu and Jenne ranged from 15,000 to 90,000 in the 15th and 16th centuries; Kumbi-Saleh may have had 30,000 inhabitants in the 10th century, for comparison Cologne, the largest European city in the 15th century, had 20,000 inhabitants. Eyewitness reports from this early period provide information about the population structure and the housing supply in these cities. West African cities functioned as markets and centers of feudal power, financially supported by domestic agricultural production. The cities were socially stratified. They were both the residences of the political and commercial elites and the migratory centers of the rural poor who made their living from prostitution and begging. The well-developed economies of these cities provided the poor with a wide range of unskilled trades: petty trade, porters, heavy manual labor, and simple crafts like rope and gourd making. Urban populations during this period experienced strong seasonal and annual fluctuations in response to agriculture.

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Cycles, famines and business cycles. City dwellers were supported by taxes levied on the goods or production of the urban elite and plantations. Housing in these pre-colonial West African villages consisted of well-built houses in the central areas within the village walls. The outlying areas generally consisted of makeshift thatched huts, occupied by recent immigrants and poor residents doing odd jobs. Urbanization occurred in all colonies during the colonial period. Colonial administrations needed urban centers for control, bureaucracy, tax processes, commerce, transportation (in ports and railroads), and the maintenance of mineral extraction and plantations. At the end of the colonial period, the cities of sub-Saharan Africa could be divided into two types. Type A cities typically predate colonialism and were characterized by indigenous populations, ethnic homogeneity, diverse crafts, economic diversity, laissez-faire attitudes toward housing and land ownership, and poor material housing standards for the masses. Apartments were built on site for owner use or rental. In contrast, Type B cities (probably most cities at the end of the colonial period) were new cities established by the colonial authorities to service mines, plantations and ports or to act as administrative centers. These were built as garden cities with strict planning control. African immigration was tightly controlled, particularly in the settler colonies, in terms of the number and residence permits of immigrants. All residents of these purpose-built cities, whether European, Asian or African, were immigrants by definition, but their legal rights varied widely. In today's parlance, urban African migrants have not been defined as urban actors, only as transients. Africans were confined to unskilled or clerical jobs; Little leeway was given to the landlord or to African entrepreneurship. In many cases, the government or private employers (such as railroad authorities or mine owners) provided tightly controlled housing for migrant workers. In all Type B villages, self-built African-style houses were strictly controlled or deemed illegal under the provisions of planning legislation. The same applied to Type A cities, but was more difficult to enforce. control of

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Housing was part of the general policy of colonial governments to regulate population movements and dominate the colonies' economies. In European cities, the housing stock was growing rapidly at the time thanks to the efforts of private property developers. Housing policies in the colonies reflected a need to control African populations rather than a preference for the social production of housing. Urban housing for Africans was not designed to house families. Authorities preferred men to work in the city for short periods and then return to their families in the countryside. City regulations limited women's migration to the city, although some women managed to gain access to urban areas. As a result of this policy, African men greatly outnumbered women in the cities. The old and new towns remained relatively small until the Second World War. It is estimated that in 1920 only 2-3 percent of sub-Saharan Africa's population lived in cities. The administrative towns were small; The areas of rapid growth were port cities and mining towns. In 1940 only seven African cities had more than 100,000 inhabitants: Ibadan, Kano and Addis Ababa were Type A cities that took on new administrative functions; Lagos, Dakar and Accra were Type B port cities; and Johannesburg was a mining center. POST-COLONIAL AFRICAN URBANIZATION

After independence, African cities grew rapidly. Several factors contributed to this rapid expansion: the removal of direct controls on population movement, the increase in government investment funds, and the shift of political activity in Africa from rural to urban associations. The time frame of these shifts varied. In Zambia, Malawi and Kenya they ended in the early 1960s; in South Africa, controls were tightened in the 1940s and only lifted in 1994. Even after independence, urban development policy and administration were largely determined by political rather than economic agendas for the first twenty years. The government's elitist housing policies, combined with massive internal migration, have led to an inevitable expansion of informal housing. The salient features of sub-Saharan urbanization in the post-independence era are: (1) Demographic changes, which included rapid and relatively uncontrolled growth in urban populations, a more balanced gender ratio, and a younger population.

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demographic; (2) a spatial organization of urban areas characterized by a well-built modern high-rise core surrounded by self-built illegal housing; (3) the largely unsuccessful social production of housing by city authorities, a proliferation of the informal sector market (home-built housing that does not conform to building codes), and recent combinations of government and private-sector government initiatives; (4) high demand for urban housing, making homebuild an attractive investment; (5) the collapse of urban infrastructure; and (6) the spectacular employment growth in the informal sector as a survival strategy for urban poverty. Demographic structure of the urban population. After independence, the African urban population grew rapidly. National population growth rates ranged from 2 to 4 percent after independence, but urban population growth rates were much higher than rural population growth rates (6.2 to 9 percent per year in the 1960s). Africa was the world's least urbanized continent and the fastest urbanizing continent from 1965 to 1985, with an average urbanization rate of 13 percent. Due to high rates of immigration and natural growth, Africa's urban population sometimes doubled every decade. In 2000, some countries like South Africa reached urbanization rates of over 50 percent. Since the mid-1990s, Africa's population growth has slowed due to poverty and HIV/AIDS. Africa's major cities continue to grow rapidly, but at a slower pace than originally forecast in the early 1990s. For example, in 1994 Lagos was predicted to reach a population of 24.4 million by 2015 (making it the third largest city in the world), but over In 2003, that prediction was revised down to 16 million, ranking eleventh among the world's cities. The African urban population became increasingly younger in the second half of the 20th century due to heavy immigration. Immigrants often leave their rural homes for urban centers as young adults between the ages of 18 and 40. Migration of women to cities has also been high, sometimes higher than that of men, and demographic imbalances persist. In West Africa, for example, many cities have a male to female ratio of 2:1. In other cities, such as

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as in Nairobi, the ratio of men to women has increased from 2:1 to 1:1. This has been termed the gendering of Nairobi's urban space, a process repeated in other Type B cities. The urban population in post-independence Africa is also characterized by increasing poverty and income inequality, and ongoing circular migration. spatial structure of urban areas. In the decades since independence, central urban centers have been overwhelmed by a proliferation of self-built, uncontrolled housing and minimal infrastructure. Early colonial capitals or major ports became important leaders in urban development, niches of power many times larger than the next largest cities, and absorbed disproportionate amounts of capital and government investment. By the late 20th century, large cities were being offset by the rapid growth of smaller towns. It is estimated that by 2010 many small towns will be classified as large. Another prominent feature of post-colonial urbanization is the increase in overcrowding. The demand for housing has increased significantly faster than the public or private provision of housing or infrastructure. Production of social housing by the city authorities. The social production of housing was largely ineffective throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century. Even South Africa, with the continent's most dynamic economy, has failed to meet its ambitious targets for housing production. The history of African urban planning can be divided into three phases. In the 1950s and 1960s, governments assumed that the state should provide decent housing and related services (roads, electricity, water and sewage) to all citizens. In the 1970s and early 1980s, self-help became the preferred solution for planners. In the late 1980s there was a withdrawal of state involvement in construction or support for the construction of new housing. Almost all African countries have huge debts. According to the World Bank's 2004 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries Initiative (HIPIC) Progress Report, thirty-two of the thirty-eight countries identified were African.

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Due to the near-universal application of structural adjustment programs, governments are increasingly unable to provide basic urban services, even privatizing water, sanitation, and transportation systems that were once run by the public sector.

Social development fell from 25 percent of the annual budget in 1972 to 15 percent in 1984. Compared to education and health, cheap housing and municipal utilities (water, sewage, and transportation) were very neglected

During the period of government housing, city authorities failed to build affordable housing for the majority. In addition to a lack of political will, African governments lacked the resources to meet even a quarter of the demand for affordable housing. Structural adjustment has seriously undermined governments' ability to upgrade existing self-built housing.

Second, poor social housing performance is due to colonial-era municipal planning codes. These policies required unrealistically high standards of construction, materials and services based on expensive imported materials such as concrete blocks and galvanized steel sheeting. Few efforts have been made to develop better local materials such as stabilized mudbrick and compressed asbestos roofing materials. Efforts to create site and service systems with lower building standards were often viewed negatively by officials. In Kenya in the late 1970s, the low standards proposed for the Dandora low-income housing project were accepted by the Nairobi City Council only after vigorous pressure from the World Bank.

Between 1962 and 1980, the Tanzania National Housing Corporation built 13,000 housing units, an inadequate number by any measure. In Cameroon in the 1980s, 5,800 of the 8,000 new units built by the National Housing Authority were too expensive for even the highest-paid civil servants. In Nigeria, beset by promised high oil revenues, the 1980 Ten-Year Development Plan recognized a post-independence shortage of state-provided urban housing of 867,000 units. After a decade of oil-money revenue, homes produced fell short of projected targets for a year. In South Africa it was estimated in 1987 that there was a deficit of almost a million housing for non-white urban dwellers. Another problem is that public housing is too expensive for up to three quarters of city dwellers. In Nigeria, for example, in the mid-1989s, an affordable home (the government-approved minimum standard) required monthly mortgage payments that exceeded the monthly wages of 70 percent of the population. In 1975 planners in Nairobi made the same calculations for the Kenya National Housing Corporation's low-income housing. Why this discrepancy between income and housing needs of city dwellers and social housing? First, there is a lack of political will. African leaders were determined that city centers display the progressive symbols of wide streets, high-rise buildings, luxury hotels and expensive, green suburbs. In internationally prestigious bets, decent low-income apartments count less than a luxury hotel. But what benefits the state's prestige ranking does not benefit the urban poor. In Africa, percentage of budgets for

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As a result, private builders have largely been unable to legally use cheaper, locally produced, and common materials in the construction of country homes. However, such materials are regularly used in the illegal informal sector, as are recycled urban waste products such as cardboard, cans and plastic wrap. These structures violate housing regulations, pose fire and health hazards, and are threatened with demolition. Building regulations are all too often only enforced after the fact, when it makes political sense to do so. This is economically wasteful and politically damaging. In the second phase of urban development, the government's efforts to secure housing for all citizens transitioned into the phase of assisted self-help. The austerity measures were triggered by the global recession and the demands of the International Monetary Fund's structural adjustment programs. International authorities increasingly demanded social justice in order to install appropriate technologies based on local materials. The two alternative housing provision strategies that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s were location and service programs and programs to improve the informal sector. In Zambia, the World Bank provided 3,666 developed lots and modernized 20,000 existing houses in Zambia. In Kenya, 6,000 cultivated parcels were funded in Nairobi. In Tanzania, the World Bank

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Funded 20,000 developed lots and 17,000 improved lots in Dar es Salaam alone. The provision of social housing and self-help housing is important to provide people with shelter and employment opportunities. Public authorities, NGOs and international donors have played an increasingly important role in promoting maximum employment in housing. It is undeniable that these projects met the needs of large numbers of low-income households, even if they did not correct broader inequalities in the urban housing system. Although women were largely responsible for the domestic production of rural self-support housing, the production of self-support housing and the state in the public sector became the domain of men. Houses were allocated only to male heads of household. Towards the end of the 20th century this bias was challenged by drastic adjustments in procurement procedures, building codes and financing structures. The projects also did little to address class prejudice. Existing housing subsidies were declining, and because the provision of housing for the middle class was inadequate, the better-off often illegally acquired many of the serviced lots intended for low-income families. Upgrading self-built housing in the informal sector proved to be cheaper and more complicated. Part of the strategy was to give homeowners property rights and encourage homeowners to bring their homes closer to municipal building standards. The city authorities installed roads, water intakes and sewers. Low-income homeowners were given loans to replace inferior materials with more durable equivalents (such as tin roofing for cardboard roofs and stabilized adobe for simple adobe walls), thus benefiting from the owner-builder industry. The long-term impact of these internationally funded projects on housing policies and agencies in African countries is questionable. Externally funded alternatives showed the local planning management structures that alternative management styles were possible and often left a corps of trained staff at the end of the project. However, funds for these programs were misappropriated as elite interests often undermined allocation processes. Breeding was hampered by the lack of

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political support and infrastructural support. As external pressure and financial support were withdrawn, enthusiasm for these types of ventures waned dramatically. In the second half of the 20th century, the impact of structural adjustment policies that reduced government social spending and donor pressure to shift social services to the private sector negatively impacted social housing production. The rapid growth of housing in the informal sector. Since the beginning of the post-colonial period, one of the most striking features of African urban development has been the increasing proportion of urban dwellers living in uncontrolled or informal private-sector housing, variously referred to as squatters (when squatting illegally on government or private property). or marginal neighborhoods (refers to the poor materials, generally mud and wattle, cardboard or tin). Some have estimated that by the 1960s, 50 to 60 percent of the urban population lived in this type of housing. The informal sector has met the public's demand for housing much more efficiently and effectively than the state sector has previously been able to do. The urgent need for urban housing has made the informal urban housing sector one of the safest and most dynamic forms of investment in Africa. Change in housing policy in the informal sector. After independence, city authorities continued to operate to outdated high building standards bequeathed by the outgoing colonial regimes, and also continued the practice of demolishing home-built homes without control. Politicians claimed that this behavior would attract allegations of delay. In addition, politicians feared the poor as potential supporters of radicals, dissidents, marginalized groups and criminals. Living in the informal sector solves the housing problem for owners and renters. It is an inexpensive, structurally flexible and culturally sensitive form of living; it also appears to be more gender equitable. Since the mid-1970s, local and national government policies on informal housing have largely moved away from official housing destruction

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Typical slums, Mathare Valley, Nairobi, 1974. Since the 1960s, a growing number of urban dwellers have been living in informal or unregulated private sector housing, variously referred to as "squatter housing" and "shanty towns". but it falls short of the city's strict housing regulations. PHOTOGRAPHY

social housing to a more neutral and in some cases positive stance. In South Africa, this policy did not change until the election of the first black-majority government in 1994. This shift in attitude occasionally gives way to paranoia about the subversive political power of the poor who inhabit these areas, as seen in 2005 when the Zimbabwe government leveled entire slums in Operation Murambatsvina (or Operation Take Out the Trash). Some estimates of the number of people who lost their homes and livelihoods in this operation were as high as 700,000. However, most planners and international development agencies welcome the more realistic and humane approach of most African governments. overpopulation. The biggest housing problems in the informal sector are social in nature. All too often these homes are seen as overcrowded and of poor quality. Crowding and quality are closely related issues, as well as ambiguous and culturally relative concepts, but both terms represent attempts to measure population quality of life.

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Population. According to politicians, some planners, and some social scientists, overcrowding and poor housing quality in urban areas can be directly responsible for immorality, delinquency, crime, destroyed homes, stress, and poor health. This connection is quite controversial. When it comes to defining what overcrowding means, things get even more complicated. The concept is complex and culturally influenced. First, several criteria are used to measure overcrowding. It can refer to the number of people per acre in a neighborhood, the number of people per dwelling, the number of occupants per room, and even the square footage per occupant (difficult to calculate since room size is rarely recorded in records). Data). It can also be the distance between the dwelling units, e.g. B. the size of the plot in relation to that of the house or the area available for communal use for leisure activities or urban agriculture (small gardens, grazing goats or free-ranging chickens). . Finally, it may be related to pressures on services (such as schools, meeting rooms, drainage, sewage and water distribution systems).

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As such, overcrowding is a concept that is difficult to measure in absolute terms. Overcrowding is more often defined by residents themselves as inappropriate use of space than by fixed physical measures. Many people who come from rural African cultures have different norms of coexistence and privacy than architects and planners trained in European traditions. Different age- and gender-specific behavioral norms as well as separation and privacy habits place different demands on the housing structure. In general, the designers of African residential architecture have paid little attention to African urban family structures or local customs of space use. Two young women with their four or five children can happily share a room in Nairobi's Mathare Valley. But a young woman and her mother sharing a room of the same size may complain that they were too cramped. The overcrowding experienced here is more psychological than physical. In the 1960s, planning experts in tropical countries recommended housing densities of two people per room. This is considered the minimum acceptable occupancy rate for those countries where many domestic activities (cooking, washing, playing with children) can be done outdoors. In comparison, the recommended minimum occupancy rate in temperate climates is 1.5 people per room. Housing literature indicates that most African city dwellers have less than minimum standards of space. In the 1980s, most households had more than three people in a room. In Accra, 42 percent of households were above this number; Kumasi, 75 percent; Nairobi, 52 percent; and Kampala, 28 percent. Most of the rooms that make up the family home are less than 86 square feet and few are larger than 140 square feet. Such living quarters must accommodate the family furniture, provide a safe place for all household items (perhaps even livestock), and also serve as a kitchen when it rains. If the head or heads of household pursue an economic activity in the informal sector, it can also be a place of business. There is rarely room for more than two very small beds, which serve as seating during the day. Long-term research in Mathare Valley, a squatter settlement in Nairobi, showed that almost every household lived in one room. Average occupancy per

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The location and service program began in 1973 in New Mathare. This method, one of the alternative housing provision strategies that emerged in the 1970s, provided a "wet core" on a site. The people deployed in these locations gradually built their homes over time as their own skills and/or building resources permitted. PHOTOGRAPH BY NICI NELSON

a one bedroom house was 3.5. All personnel and subsistence activities were carried out in one room. Much of the socializing, subsistence work, and housework was done outdoors. In the 1970s there were open spaces used for urban farming and children's play. In the 1990s, this community became even more densely populated as houses in previously shared spaces continued to be built, resulting in a declining quality of life. Despite the recognition that overcrowding is a culturally relative term, this level of occupancy may not be acceptable in terms of physical or mental health or quality of life. Overcrowding in these unauthorized housing areas has increased as a result

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Redevelopment by wealthier city dwellers for investment purposes. Again using the example of Nairobi: Since 1980, the Dandora Sites and Services Project has been gradually reconstructing the standard project layout: one-story buildings with four rooms around a courtyard that allows air and light for the rooms. and relatively private outdoor recreation area. Since the mid-1980s, Nairobi's wealthiest residents have bought these buildings and then demolished them to build narrow, five-story buildings averaging forty rooms (occupied by two to four people) with opening doors and windows leading to long corridors with no source of light or Air. There is usually one shower and toilet per floor and no place to dry clothes or sit outside. urban infrastructure. In the 1990s, African cities entered their third phase of independent development. The main problems faced by politicians and planners were those of infrastructure management: water supply, sewerage, electricity, waste collection and transport. The systems created at the end of the colonial era have become inadequate to withstand the pressure of the growing population of the cities and the expansion of the suburbs. Machinery (such as buses and water treatment plants) had to be upgraded and replaced. In view of the structural adjustment and the recession there was no money for it. City authorities are increasingly having to turn to the private sector to provide services such as running water and electricity. Selling charcoal in the informal sector, Mathare Valley,

In the late 1970s, the number of people living without running water ranged from 25% in Ethiopia to 75% in Zambia. Figures from the World Health Organization for 2002 show that in Africa as a whole, about 40 percent of the people live without easily accessible water and adequate sanitation. The economy of the informal sector in support of the urban poor. One of the outstanding features of African cities is that the majority of their residents live in informal sector housing and are self-supporting through informal sector economic activities. The inability of the formal sector to provide employment for Africa's rapidly growing population has led to explosive growth in the continent's informal sector, as most new immigrants find employment there.

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Nairobi, 1971. Most slum dwellers also support themselves through economic activities in the informal sector, as this woman does outside her home. For women, this is a meaningful way of earning a living as the conditions and locations are flexible enough to combine them with raising children. PHOTOGRAPH BY NICI N ELSON

On the plus side, informal sector employment is flexible, market-oriented and relatively dynamic. Because it's small and requires little investment and a relatively low skill level, it's easy for city dwellers to get a foothold. It is also particularly attractive to women because its times, conditions and locations are flexible enough to allow for child rearing. On the negative side, the informal sector means harsh and insecure working conditions. the profits are

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through tedious work and the use of unpaid family labor in conditions that are uncomfortable at best and dangerous at worst. Employers often exploit employees. In Kenya, this sector is called Jua Kali (hot sun), a name that recognizes that workers often work outdoors without sun protection. However, a growing proportion of total employment in urban Africa is in the informal sector. In the 1980s, rates in the informal sector typically ranged from 25 to 50 percent, and higher in poorer areas. In the 21st century this trend has continued. In 2004, the informal sector accounted for about 72% of non-agricultural employment in Africa (78% if one includes South Africa), which corresponds to a continental average of 42% of gross national income (GNI) in sub-Saharan Africa. In poorer countries like Nigeria and Tanzania, they accounted for 60 percent of GNI. In the early days of independence, the informal sector was that of the poor and uneducated. As the 1980s progressed, inadequate wages in administrative positions in both the public and private sectors and rising layoff rates (due to structural adjustment wage constraints and high inflation) meant that people from a wider range of class backgrounds in turn sought economic opportunities in this area . This trend continued as structural adjustment policies deepened in the 1990s. Many households may practice some form of income diversification as a long-term strategy, with different members involved in both formal and informal economic activities. The urban area provides the markets and informal economic opportunities for greater independent participation of women in productive economic activity. Female participation rates in the formal economy rarely exceed 15 percent. The division of labor in the informal sector is strongly differentiated by gender, as is the division of labor in the formal sector and the division of labor in the household. Women are often limited to the least lucrative forms of self-employment. Compared to men, they have a lower level of education, suffer from socio-cultural constraints and have less access to capital. Food production, street food selling, street selling of small consumer goods, vegetable and food trading, beer brewing, tailoring and commercialization of sex are the domain of women. Heavy manufacturing, metalworking, carpentry, car repairs and taxi driving are often men's jobs.

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Governments are just as unsympathetic to the informal sector labor market as they are to the informal housing market, although African states appear to be failing to provide decent formal sector employment. The speed and scale of urban growth has exceeded the modern sector's employment capacity to absorb new workers. Just as the informal housing market has closed the gap between supply and demand, so has the informal economy. NEW AFFAIRS AND THE FUTURE

Privatization of housing and city services. Across Africa, international donors have been driving the privatization agenda since the 1990s. It is important to ensure that governments can regulate appropriately and set appropriate agendas for private providers to ensure consumer groups (particularly low-income) are adequately represented and their needs met. NGOs and social movements. City governments were increasingly unable to provide adequate housing. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social movements have stepped into the vacuum. NGOs like Homeless International influence urban development through pragmatic advocacy and help mobilize local NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs) to build or improve low-income housing. Address gender stereotypes. In the past, most types of house plans were gender specific. In the 1990s and into the 21st century, increasing attention was paid to the reasons for and possible solutions to this bias. For example, the initial selection criteria for most housing plans, the financial provisions, and the sheer practicality of undertaking or arranging construction work were biased toward women, although female participants often have better payment histories. This gender bias applied to all forms of formal housing. Women are systematically discriminated against in the following ways: land use planning inhibits women's economic activities; Prejudices against local and makeshift building materials limit women's ability to participate in housing production; and land tenure rules limit women's access to property titles. Gender neutral politics often

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work in favor of men. Care must be taken to improve women's access to finance, tendering procedures and property rights. Sustainable Urbanization and Housing: Ecological Cities. In the 1990s two paradigms came together: the growth and development model and the environmental movement. The sustainability paradigm was developed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. He called for new solutions and priorities related to sustainable urban development and housing. Developed economies should end overproduction and overconsumption, while poorer ones should stabilize population growth and develop pro-poor economic growth. City authorities have been encouraged to develop Local Agendas 21 (Environmental Action Plans) to ensure urban sustainability. Sustainability, as defined by the Brudtland Commission, means meeting the urban needs of present generations without ruining future generations' chances of survival. Agendas 21 imply broad consultation and alliances and emphasize the importance of linkages between sectors and different city institutions. Unfortunately, since the beginning of the 21st century, more effort has been expended in producing these Agenda 21 documents than in addressing the political and economic constraints within which they seek to operate. Special issues of Environment and Urbanization examine all the implications of this concept. The topics examined are: (1) How can cities function better in terms of resource use and waste management; (2) the potential and limitations of partnerships between local government, the private sector, community organizations and local or international non-governmental organizations; (3) political issues centered on democracy and civic participation; (4) improve transportation; (5) ensuring the economic sustainability of settlements and cities with an equitable sharing of economic benefits; and (6) build ecological cities that minimize the ecological footprint of settlements in terms of resource consumption. Ecological urbanization or urban ecology in the 21st century has increasingly become the place where the natural and social sciences discuss the complexities of integrating understanding of human behavior and the built environment with theories of ecosystem dynamics. the special number

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on “Ecological Urbanization” from Environment and Urbanization (2006) makes clear that “the notion of urban ecology itself has become multiscalar, extending from individual urban systems to systems of cities and communities, and from ecosystems within urban settlements to urban settlements as ecosystems, on the way cities and communities shape ecosystems across and within city limits. Several important planning policy issues emerge from these debates: the need for compact, not sprawling, cities; the importance of integrated planning; and ecologically sensitive architecture and planning Integrated urban planning. The demands for green urbanization and poverty reduction mean that from the perspective of politicians, planners and development agencies there is a growing emphasis on integrated planning that emphasizes: (1) the importance of spatial relationships of housing to transport networks, social services and livelihoods; (2) a coordinated spatial and programmatic delivery of services and supporting infrastructure to make neighborhoods function properly; (3) holistic planning, which includes all facilities and services necessary for the proper functioning of the city's communities; (4) understand how the city's land and housing market really works; (5) the importance of transversal coordination and inter-agency connectivity, which is an important aspect of Local Agenda 21; and (6) creating a more just society. It remains to be seen whether this ambitious and difficult agenda can be achieved as Africa enters the second decade of the 21st century. See also Accra; Addis Ababa; aid and development; Architecture; dakar Dar es Salaam; Gender; households and household groups; ibadan; IMF; Johannesburg; Kampala; cano; kumasi; Work; lakes; Nairobi; non-governmental organizations; postcolonialism; Timbuktu; Town planning; Transport; Women: Women and Commerce; World Bank; Zimbabwe cool.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Amis, Philip, and Peter Lloyd. Housing for urban poverty in Africa. New York: Manchester University Press for the International African Institute, 1990.

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Becker, Charles M.; Andres Hamer; and Andrew R Morrison. Beyond urban bias in Africa. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. "Green Urbanization I." Environment and Urbanization 18, No. 1 (2006). Gilbert, Alan and Joseph Gugler. Cities, Poverty and Development: Urbanization in the Third World, 2nd Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. Harrison, Philip; Marie Huchzermeyer; and Mzwanele Mayekiso; Ed. Faced with fragmentation: housing and urban development in a society that is becoming more democratic. Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town Press, 2003. Iliffe, John. The African poor: a history. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987.

Rakodi, Carol. "Some problems in development and urban planning in Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe". In Urban and Regional Change in Southern Africa, edited by David Drakakis-Smith. London: Routledge, 1992. Simon, David D. Cities, Capital and Development: African Cities in the World Economy. London: Belhaven Press, 1992. Smith, David M., eds. The Apartheid City and Beyond: Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa. London: Belhaven Press, 1992. Stren, Richard. "Urban Housing in Africa: The Changing Role of Government Policy". In Housing Africa's Urban Poor, edited by Philip Amis and Peter Lloyd. New York: Manchester University Press for the International African Institute, 1990.

Jones, Sue, and Nici Nelson, eds. Urban Poverty in Africa. London: Intermediate Technology Publications, 1999.

Stren, Richard E. & Rodney A. White, eds. African Cities in Crisis: Coping with Rapid Urban Growth. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1989.

Jones, Sue, and Nici Nelson, eds. Professionals and Poverty Reduction: Influencing City Policy from the Bottom Up. London: ITDG, 2005.

"Sustainable Cities Revisited II." Environment and Urbanization 11, no. 2 (1999).

King, Anthony D. Urbanism, Colonialism, and the World Economy: Cultural and Spatial Foundations of the World City System. London: Routledge, 1990. Larsson, Anita; Matseliso Mapetla; and Ann Schlyter; Ed. Gender and Urban Housing in Southern Africa: Emerging Issues. Rome: Institute of Southern African Studies, University of Lesotho, 2003. McLeod, Ruth, et al. "Influencing urban development through 'pragmatic advocacy': the case of Homeless International". In Practitioners and Poverty Reduction: Influencing City Policy from the Ground Up, edited by Sue Jones and Nici Nelson. London: ITDG, 2005. Moser, Caroline and Linda Peake, eds. Women, Human Settlements and Housing. London: Tavistock, 1987. Nelson, Nici. "Women should help each other." In Women United, Women Divided: Comparative Studies of Ten Contemporary Cultures, edited by Patricia Caplan and Janet M. Bujra. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1979. Nelson, Nici. "Genderization of the urban space of Nairobi". In L'Afrique Orientale Annuaire 2000 edited by F. Grignon et al. Paris: l'Harmattan, 2000. Njoh, Ambe. "Gender Discrimination in Housing and Urban Development Policies in Cameroon". In Feminization of Development Processes in Africa, edited by Valentine James and James Etin. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. Perlman, Janice E. The Myth of Marginality: Urban and Political Poverty in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.

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"Sustainable Cities Revised III." Environment and Urbanization 12, no. 2 (2000). Tait, John. From Self-Help Housing to Sustainable Settlement: Capitalist Development and Urban Planning in Lusaka, Zambia. Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1997. Tipple, A. Graham. "The Demand for New Urban Housing in Sub-Saharan Africa: Problem or Opportunity?" African Affairs 93, No. 373 (1994): 587–608. Agenda 21 of the United Nations. The United Nations Rio Program of Action. New York: United Nations, 1992. United Nations Development Programme. UN World Population Prospects. New York: United Nations, 2003. White, Luise. The Comforts of Home: Prostitution in Colonial Nairobi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. NICI NELSON

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QUTHMAN DAN FODIO (1754-1817). With a program of Islamic reforms, Quthman dan Fodio created Africa's largest independent state in the 19th century. He was born qUthman ibn Muhammad Fudi ibn qUthman ibn Salih (later known in Hausa as Shehu dan Fodio) in Gobir in Maratta in Galmi district. His family were Islamic scholars by profession; He grew up speaking Fulfulde, the language of the Fulani (Fulbe) herders, but his Arabic education included learning from Berber and Fulani scholars. He

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He began preaching at the age of 20 (1774), first in the rural areas and then in the court of the Sultan of Gobir; More populist in his approach than many of his contemporaries, he taught herdsmen, farmers and women the basics of Islam in simple language. By 1804, Quthman's followers had grown so large that he posed a threat to Gobir authorities. Threatened with attack, on February 21, 1804, he made Hijrah (retire with his followers) to Gudu, where he was elected Imam and launched jihad against Muslim states that rejected his leadership and continued to harass him and his followers. Due to his advanced age, he did not take part in the fight. In 1806 he sent his son Muhammad Bello to Birnin Gada to distribute banners of command to followers in other areas of Hausaland and beyond. On December 31, 1808, the last of the great Hausa cities, Zaria, was taken; The jihad was successful and an area of more than 200,000 square miles was united under the Imam of Quthman. In 1812 he divided the region into four parts, the north and east under his son Muhammad Bello and the south and west under his brother qAbdullahi dan Fodio. By 1810 the sheikh had retired to Sifawa to teach; then in 1815 he moved to Sokoto, the capital of the new regime, where he died.

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Quthman wrote over a hundred works in Arabic and probably about fifty poems, mostly in Fulfulde. During his life he had twelve wives and at least one concubine; He had thirty-seven children, the most notable of whom were Caliphs Muhammad Bello, Abubaker Atiku, and Ahmad Rufapi; the poet Muhammad Bukhari; the Sufi Muhammad Sambo; and his learned daughters Asmapu (author of at least sixty poems), Hadija and Mariam. His tomb is still a place of pilgrimage (Ziyara). ) See also Asthma u, Nana; Beautiful, Muhammad; Islam; Literatures in African languages: Hausa; pilgrimage, islam. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boyd, Jean. The Caliph's sister: Nana Asma'u, 1793–1865, teacher, poet and Islamic leader. London: Totowa, 1989. Hiskett, Mervyn. The Sword of Truth: The Life and Times of Shehu Usuman dan Fodio. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973. Most recently, Murray. The Sokoto Caliphate. New York: Humanities Press, 1967. Lovejoy, Paul E. Slavery, Trade, and Manufacturing in the Sokoto Caliphate of West Africa. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 2005. MURRAY LAST

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(1619-1677). Dutch colonial administrator Jan Van Riebeeck was born in the Netherlands. Her father worked for the Dutch East India Company and Jan probably traveled with him from a young age. Although trained as a clerk, he may have been a ship's doctor. He became wealthy working for the Dutch East India Company in Asia, where he developed a deep and enduring respect for the Chinese. However, the company discovered that he had acted on his own account and fined him two months' and seven days' wages and banned him from working in Asia. The penalty was light because many others in the company did the same. Therefore, as punishment, he led the expedition that established a settlement at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652, the first white settlement in what would later become South Africa. The original plan had been simply to build a supply station for ships bound for the East Indies, but Van Riebeeck added a fort to the plans to protect his people from Africans and Europeans from other nations. The fort would soon prove vital to the settlement's survival. Van Riebeeck decided to establish a colony largely on his own initiative. The settlement he founded eventually became Cape Town. He imported slaves (he wanted Chinese, but got West Africans instead) and began farming the land, buying cattle from the locals. He bought so many animals that the local herdsmen could not

sell him more and he had to trade further and further away with others. Whenever he could not buy cattle, he became violent. Eventually, through intimidation and cunning, the settlers of Van Riebeeck owned so many cattle that they needed all of the local grazing land. Their conquest of grazing lands led to war with the local Khoesan peoples in 1659. The colonists retreated to their stronghold where they had supplies, and the Khoesan eventually abandoned the site. When their leader protested to Van Riebeeck that the land did not belong to him, Van Riebeeck replied that it had come to him by right of conquest. He began protecting the settlements with Caribbean thorn hedges, a policy he had wanted to implement since 1651 and which was to have a lasting effect in South Africa; The thorny bushes that originally separated “settlers” from “natives” became apartheid architecture. From the beginning whites and blacks lived separately. Van Riebeeck would rather have conquered the Khoesan than trade with them, as became clear when a group of Khoesan raided the settlement to steal cattle they thought were their own and killed a Dutchman, David Janssen. Van Riebeeck wrote to Holland and the reply was a letter allowing him to kill the killer alone. A 19th-century chronicler says Van Riebeeck: He replied that it was impossible to determine the true perpetrator of the murder. . . The proper way to facilitate the settlement of a horde of idle and useless thieves would be to enslave them. He claimed that the provocation received was sufficient to justify such a procedure, while the

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Christian faith among these wild and brutal people for the glory and honor of your holy name and for the good of our chief lords [the company directors], which we cannot do without your kind help, . . . (Leipoldt, 101-102)

Van Riebeeck remained in charge of the settlement until May 5, 1662. From 1662 to 1665 he returned to Asia, apparently pardoned, as governor of Malacca. In 1665 he was allowed to live in the Dutch colony of Batavia, where he died a wealthy man. See also Cape Coast; Cape Colony and Hinterland, History from (1600 to 1910); Cape Town; colonial policies and practices; Travel and Explore: European (1500s to 1800s). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Leipoldt, Christian Ludwig. Jan Van Riebeeck, a biographical study. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1936. Riebeeck, Jan Van. The Secret Letters of Jan Van Riebeeck, trans. and ed. Robert Kirby. New York: Penguin, 1992. Theal, George McCall. Chronicles of the Cape Commanders. Cape Town: W. A. Richards and Sons, 1882. ALEXANDER GOLDMAN Dutch explorer Jan Van Riebeeck (1619–1677). Working with the Dutch East India Company, Van Riebeeck first claimed what became Cape Town, South Africa for the Dutch. MANSELL/TIME AND LIFE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

Vasa, Gustavus.

See Equiano,

Olauda. The advantages of obtaining ten or twelve hundred head of cattle for breeding, and large numbers of slaves for service on the islands and in Batavia, would be very great. (Theal, pp. 56-57)

Van Riebeeck was both intelligent and extremely greedy. He worked for a company that promoted pious men, and his religion was never incompatible with his work. The Council, which made all the rules in the colony, opened its sessions with the "Van Riebeeck Prayer," a lengthy request that begins: O merciful and benevolent God and Heavenly Father, as Your Divine Majesty has pleased us for the administration of the affairs of the General United Chartered Dutch Company here at the Cape of Good Hope, and we have met with our Associate Council in Your Holy Name to take, on the advice of that Council, such resolutions as may further the interests of said Company, uphold justice and, in time, potentially help spread and spread your true Reformed Church.

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VERWÖRD, HENDRIK FRENSCH (1901–1966). South African politician and apartheid architect Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd was born in Amsterdam in September 1901 and moved to Cape Town with his family when he was two years old. His father ran a grocery store and worked as a missionary for the Dutch Reformed Church, known for its theology of oppressing "savages". Verwoerd was educated at Wynberg High School in Cape Town and Milton Boys School in Bulawayo in Southern Rhodesia. (now Zimbabwe) and Brandfort High School before attending the Afrikaans-language University of Stellenbosch in the Cape Province and then the Universities of Hamburg, Leipzig and Berlin. Verwoerd returned to South Africa in 1927, married Elizabeth Schoombee and began teaching at Stellenbosch University. He was

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when an article denouncing his Nazi beliefs appeared. The case was dismissed on the grounds that he was in fact sympathetic to the Nazi cause. In 1948, the year the National Party gained control of Union government, Verwoerd was appointed to the Union Senate, where he headed the National Party from 1950 to 1958 and served as Minister of Native Affairs. During this period, Verwoerd developed the apartheid philosophy that each race, particularly the white and black of South Africa, should develop independently: a tragic misrepresentation of the true perspectives of Africans in the political, economic and social conditions. and white social supremacy in his country. Verwoerd developed the concept of the bantustans, reserved remote and deficient lands to which Africans would be restricted based on the government's definition of their blackness.

Hendrik French Verwoerd (1901-1966). The former South African Prime Minister speaking in Milner Park on April 1, 1960, sixteen days before he was first assassinated. Eventually he was stabbed to death by Dimitri Tsafendas, a parliamentary secretary in the House of Assembly. SPENCER//TIME LIFE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES

BODEN

Professor of applied psychology until 1932 and then professor of sociology and social work until 1937. Verwoerd was among a group of Stellenbosch professors who openly opposed the Union government's decision to grant asylum to German-Jewish refugees. Verwoerd's interest in politics grew and he became a member of the National Party and a secret society of influential Africans, the Broederbond. In 1936 he helped organize a conference on the "Poor Whites Problem" in which he referred to impoverished rural Africans and diverted attention from the country's much larger and much poorer African population. and in 1937 he became editor-in-chief of the Afrikaans daily Die Transvaaler, where he was famous for his anti-British, anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi sentiments. He filed a lawsuit against a competing newspaper, the Johannesburg Star.

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In 1958, Verwoerd was elected a member of the Heidelberg constituency in Parliament and Prime Minister. Because he chose only whites to represent African interests, tensions rose across the continent. The Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) organized a protest against African politics in March 1960, which was attended by about 5,000 Africans. Nervous police responded to the peaceful gathering in Sharpeville by firing indiscriminately into the crowd, killing 68 and injuring more than 300. The African National Congress (ANC) called for a day of mourning at home to honor the dead. International media drew attention to the conflict, and both the PAC and ANC were subsequently banned amid government fears of further outbreaks. David Pratt, a white, English-speaking farmer, failed in his attempt to shoot Verwoerd in the head at an agricultural fair in Johannesburg that same year. Pratt was declared mentally unstable and eventually committed suicide. Verwoerd, relatively unhurt and fully recovered within two months, took an interest in making South Africa a full-fledged republic. In a 1960 white-only referendum, a majority of 52 percent supported South Africa's exit from the British Commonwealth and the establishment of a republic. In 1961, Verwoerd attended a conference of Commonwealth Prime Ministers in London, where his requests for recognition of South Africa sparked heated debate, leading him to withdraw his request. Two months later,

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However, the Republic of South Africa was formally established and the 1962 elections strengthened the majority of the national party. In 1963 the first Transkei-Bantustan was established with a nominally independent government. However, the white government retained full control of defense, international security, post offices, public transportation, immigration, and most financial affairs. The 'separate' Transkei government was forced to submit the laws of their parliament to the South African President (Verwoerd) for approval. As Verwoerd refused to back down from his white supremacist stance, declaring that the slightest compromise would lead to the eventual downfall of the white government, South Africa became increasingly isolated on the global stage. Verwoerd was stabbed to death on September 6, 1966 by a white man posing as a messenger and gaining access to Parliament. See also apartheid; Cape Town. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kenny, Henry. Architect of apartheid: H. F. Verwoerd, an assessment. Johannesburg: J Ball, 1980. SARAH VALDEZ

FORCE.

See town planning and urbanization;

Guerra.

VOODOO.

Ver Vodu´n.

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´ N. VODU

Vodu'n (French: Vodoun, English: Voodoo), the traditional religion in the southern part of the Republic of Benin (formerly Dahomey), is also popular among the coastal ethnic groups of western Nigeria, Togo and Ghana. Voodoo is well known in large part because slaves brought it to America, particularly Haiti and Brazil. The term "Vodu'n" may refer to religious practice as a whole or to specific deities. Vodu'n is translated, though not without discussion, as mystery discovered, derived from vo (mystery, secret) and du'n (reveal, remove).

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Hundreds of different types of Vodu'n are known, although most of them are only worshiped regionally, the most common being Sakpata', Hevioso', Gun and Dangbe'. The responsibility ascribed to the deities is aimed at the problems of the inner world: they determine human reproduction and, as personified natural forces, intervene in the human world in consensus with the ancestors. Sickness, childlessness, and natural disasters are sanctions attributed to Vodu'n. By punishing theft, spousal infidelity, or disregard for ancestor worship, they exercise social control at various levels of society. The cause of a particular calamity is identified by a diviner (bokono) using the most well-known form of divination, the Fa' oracle. To avoid disaster and maintain order, humans must follow the rules associated with vodu'n, performing sacrifices, ceremonies, and secret initiations on a regular basis. Two central elements of Vodu'n are the practice of initiation and the installation of the priesthood. Initiation ideally occurs every five to seven years and lasts two to three years depending on the Vodu'n involved. Only one-fifth of the population of any given city can become initiates, most of whom are women. Priestly status is generally inherited and restricted to males. Initiation has a dual function: to allow the spread of the cult and to offer protection to the individual initiate. There is no upward mobility within the cult hierarchy. An initiate (vodu'nsi) can never attain priestly status. Access to knowledge, power and wealth characterize the priesthood; Submission, obedience and devotion, the initiate. The central feature of the initiation is trance. It doesn't happen spontaneously during ceremonies; rather, its elements and their application are learned. The trance should not be viewed as the salvation of the initiate, as in other cults of possession. On the contrary, it is the manifestation of the Vodu'nsi's absolute control of will over the body of his slave or wife, the Vodu'nsi. Trance is only performed in a controlled ritual environment, during ceremonies designed to invoke Vodu'n. The trance is insignificant for its actors, but has a political function for the cult, proving the existence of Vodu'n. Only the Vodu'nsi, never the priest, goes into a trance. Initiation is expensive and is one of the sources of priestly income and is also a source of indebtedness and

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village level. Vodu'n is an institution that dictates and controls rules, a local authority that extends beyond the sphere of its followers and beyond religious functions. Priests regulate religious and civil deviations such as theft, violence, marital strife and divorce. However, it would be naïve to assume that Vodu'n exists in harmony with other similar social and political institutions. In fact, Vodu'n competes with other local political institutions such as councils of elders and state assemblies. It was an important source of political debates in southern Benin, with bans on religious practices during the Marxist-Leninist period of Benin's political history after 1975. The struggle to functionalize the political influence of sects dates back to the time of the Kingdom of Dahomey in the 18th century . As an influential institution, Vodu'n is not only criticized by its competitors but also by its supporters. This criticism is not simply a modernization phenomenon, as is often assumed. Vodu'n's critics base their criticism on the controlling functions of the religion's priests; the substance, its perceived ability to lessen the burdens of life, on the other hand, is universally valued. The high cost of initiation and the years of imprisonment of initiates are major sources of grievances, as are the arbitrariness and corruption associated with the exercise of social control by priests. Finally, the secrecy surrounding vodou'n, a common element within property cults, inspires fear not only of dire sanctions but also (although this fear is generally not expressed) of the use of poison.

Goiter symbolizing the Vodu'n Gun. The chain and forehead iron, the material of weapons and wide open eyes symbolize the power associated with Gun. PHOTO BY KAROLA ELWERT-KRETSCHMER

impoverishment. In some cases, the priests are the richest men in town. Vodu'n has been generally described as a belief system. More specifically, Vodu'n is also a means of social control, fulfilling political functions exercised by the priests. As judges, priests are immersed in the system of social control on the plane

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At the end of the colonial period came the development of new, less hierarchical religions that claimed some elements of vodou, such as the promise of protection and trance, but rejected other aspects, such as seclusion for initiation and secrecy. Some of these newer movements still consider themselves part of Vodun (like the religious variants Glo and Tro), while others present themselves as Christian (like Christianisme Cel'leste). The late 20th and early 21st centuries saw an explosion in the religious market. Esoteric cults and evangelical sects were imported from the United States, Europe, India, Japan, and Korea. Not everyone practices Vodun in southern Benin; other religions find an audience. religious affiliation

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it is not considered exclusivity: people can practice the rituals of multiple religions at the same time. Therefore, all statistics on religious practice should be read with caution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

In the cities, Vodu'n's power to declare misfortune has become less convincing. The reference to pacts between lineage elders and natural deities is less plausible in a scenario where individual human action, especially economic action, seems to be more important than collective action and the forces of nature.

Elwert-Kretschmer, Karola. Religion and Fear Sociology of Voodoo Cults. Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 1997.

See also Benin; diaspora; divination and oracles; Introduction; myth and cosmology; political systems; religion and ritual; Obsession; Witchcraft.

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Blier, Suzanne Preston. African voodoo. Art, Psychology and Power. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Rouge, Gilbert. music and trance. Paris: Gallimard, 1990. Verger, Pierre. african gods. Orisha and Voodoo cults on the former slaveholder coast of Africa and in Bahia, the Bahía de Todos os Santos in Brazil. Paris: Hartmann, 1954. KAROLA ELWERT-KRETSCHMER

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¯ ta. wala

Walata is a city at the southern tip of the Sahara in what is now eastern Mauritania. The town probably began as a Mande farming village, but by the 13th century (and perhaps much earlier) it was involved in regional and Trans-Saharan trade. As a trading center, Walata attracted settlers from afar and grew into a multi-ethnic city with a reputation for Islamic scholarship. Due to a long history of immigration, Walata was dominated by three consecutive cultural groups and was therefore known by three different names: Bıru, Iwalatan and Walata. In its earliest times the city was mainly known by the name of Mande Bıru and may have been part of the kingdom of ancient Ghana. It was later moved to the kingdoms of Mali and then Songhay and also became known by the Berber name of Iwalatan. Towards the end of the Songhay period in the late 16th century, West African scholars began referring to the city as Walata, the Arabicized form of Iwalatan. This succession of cultural transformation was primarily the result of immigration, first by Berbers and then by Arabic-speaking peoples, to an originally Mandé-speaking city. But it was also partly the result of representation politics. Mandé speakers generally did not leave Walata as it assumed a primarily Berber identity, nor did Berbers leave the city during the process of its Arabization. In fact, the oldest sources of Walatı indicate that both the chief and the judge (qadı) of the city in 1658 were men belonging to the Soninke lineages famous for their erudition. However, around 1800 it seems so

There were few prominent people left in Walata willing to claim a Mandé or Berber identity. When the French conquered the region in 1900, they found that many old women could still speak some Azer, a dying local language of mixed Mandé and Berber origins. See also immigrants and immigrant groups; Mauritania. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cleaveland, Timothy. "Cultural and Social Reproduction: Women and the Politics of Gender, Age, and Social Rank in Walata." Canadian Journal of African Studies 34, no. 2 (2000): 189-217. Cleaveland, Timothy. Becoming Wal ata: A Story of the Emergence and Social Transformation of the Sahara. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann, 2002. TIMOTHY CLEAVELAND

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WAR This entry contains the following articles: OVERVIEW CIVIL WARS INTERNAL COLONIAL REVOLTS NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL LIBERATION

SUMMARY

War defined as organized armed struggle between different political entities with the aim

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Subduing, capturing, or incapacitating opponents was as common in Africa as it was on other continents, but there it is characterized by several distinctive features. One is the tenuous relationship between warfare and state-building in Africa, which is still relevant in the modern post-colonial order. While in Europe from about 1500, state-building and empire-building went hand in hand with armed struggle and constant technological innovation, and while Asia or the Middle East saw older and often more enduring centralized states and empires based on organized violence, conquest and control buildings, Africa has painted a more fragmented picture. In fact, it has seen the rise of well-organized states or empires, such as Aksum (1st to 10th centuries), the Fulani States, Benin, Kanem-Bornu, Baghirmi, Mali and Congo. Many of these states were supported by a clear ruling elite, organized military, and administrative structure, but because resource and people disputes were a constant problem, their borders were open and shifting, and institutionalization was weak. Many of these African states predated colonization and therefore cannot have arisen in response to it. However, most of Africa was made up of large areas of small, segmented polities, often culturally related but without strong overlords or centralization (e.g. in southern Ethiopia, the Lake Chad region, the Yoruba and Ibo of Nigeria, or East Africa). . Second, Africa's ethnolinguistic and regional diversity, reflected in small and relatively sparsely populated entities in often ecologically vulnerable regions, led to many local conflicts between competing rulers based on environmental scarcity, economic control (trade routes), and specialization. and personal ties of loyalty guided by notions of unified authority and ruling prestige. In some cases, religious identity (Islam in West African empires, Christianity in the Ethiopian Highlands and some post-colonial states) contributed to state formation, as various wars were fought under a religious cloak or ideology. During the colonial period, the colonial powers used local ethnic-regional differences and sometimes deliberately became lines of conflict that needed to be separated. Third, warfare in Africa was more about establishing the allegiance of people as subjects than about conquest, subjugation, or access to resources per se, although these came into play as the dominant dominance

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the winning group was consolidated. The authority and leadership of warfare were often inspired by supernatural symbols and rituals. Loyalty was expressed in the payment of tribute by units of subjects or leaders, and authority was exercised through claims on people (slavery, pawning, forced labour, war aid) and to a lesser extent on land and other resources. Increasing trade with outsiders - from the Middle East and Asia since the founding of Muslim states in the 8th and 9th centuries, and Europeans since the 15th century - gave rise to new elites and patterns of power, reinforced in part by the slave trade. The establishment of colonial rule marked a turning point in the practices and frequency of African warfare, with most local-level conflicts being violently reduced by the colonial powers. However, violent clashes were frequent, based on the concerted action of formerly disparate groups against the colonial power, which in a sense served to forge smaller units into larger ones and to change native military practices and tactics. Furthermore, since colonial rule was generally maintained by force (albeit with surprisingly small armies), large revolts against its authority erupted, although in many cases (as in Somalia, Nigeria or East Africa) local groups were also internally divided or divided. . . against each other. In the colonies, African armed forces such as the King's African Rifles in British East Africa or the Eritrean Askaris in Italian Libya became well-trained pillars of the colonial masters. Throughout modern African history, the often-acknowledged causal link between warfare and linguistic or ethnic (“tribal”) and cultural diversity tends to be weak, as other variables of a political and socio-economic nature usually play a role. THE PRE-COLONIAL PERIOD

In pre-colonial times, Africa's diverse political entities ranged from "headless" and segmented societies to chiefs, proto-states, and empires. This scale ranges from the absence of central authority to highly developed centralized power and a corresponding decline in the power of kinship groups and ethnic or "tribal" identities. The number of political entities in pre-colonial Africa is estimated at around 7,000, but their size and exact number varied constantly. The variety and nature of these entities was too different to really speak of centralized and non-centralized states as essentially different types, because both

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weapon inventory. African Union soldiers and Somali government forces inventory weapons turned in by businessmen in the conflict-torn capital Mogadishu in May 2007. Hundreds of weapons including heavy and small machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades have been supplied in support of a government disarmament plan STRINGER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The dimensions of the central authority and the state organization in the sense of a state support structure moved on a continuum. Some "states" became fragmented and decentralized entities, and powerful states emerged through the use of military force from various so-called headless societies or ritual chiefdoms. While segmental societies had no central ruler or standing army, they had ordered conflict and warfare relations, and indeed can be said to have allowed for relatively peaceful relations between the various political entities.

a "warrior" class. Islam as a political ideology played an important role in warfare in West Africa, such as the Fulani expansion, and in various wars in Northeast Africa, such as the 16th-century jihad of the Somali Afar warrior Ahmed ibn Ibrahim against Ethiopia. Christian and the 19th-century conquests of the Ottoman Egyptian ruler Mohammed qAli in Sudan. Islam provided the basis for conquest and expansion into non-Muslim territories and was a divine "letter" for would-be rulers.

Because warfare in pre-colonial Africa focused much less on territorial conquest and colonization of new lands than on enforcing the loyalty of people and booty, conquered groups were often incorporated and became full members of the ruling society. As in ancient Greece, warfare was also a means of attaining adulthood or social mobility on the basis of reputation and status acquired in battle, a trait co-seen in age-oriented societies

The technology of warfare in pre-colonial Africa was fairly constant until the early 19th century when world trade began bringing firearms and other modern equipment. When it came to preparing for battle and tactics, too, people were less fixated on using new techniques and means of victory than was the case in Europe. But cavalry forces also played an important role in Africa (both in Sudanese West Africa and East Africa).

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The military organization and martial arts of the African peoples and states were impressive. In the pre-colonial period, slavery was an important and constant incentive to wage war. Raids and slave sales often pitted clans and ethnic groups against each other, and indigenous rulers used prisoners of war or sold them to outsiders. This continued and intensified after contacts with the Portuguese and other expanding European colonists who bought, captured and transported African slaves to the Americas. Slavery (in the Middle and Far East) also played a very important role in relations with Muslim Arabs from the 10th century, reorganizing politics and intergroup relations, particularly in East Africa. In North Africa, local Algerian Muslim slave traders attacked European ships and captured and sold tens of thousands of white Europeans into slavery. Other well-known motives for war were booty, theft of livestock or other property, revenge for insults to personal honor or reputation, or elite competition. In Africa there were laws of war with restrictive rules on engagement and who to attack, kill or capture. It was not until the 19th century that devastating, indiscriminate and all-out violence emerged as a means of warfare (e.g., under the Zulu king Shaka, who established a terror-like rule in which subjects were at the mercy of royal whims). During the establishment of colonial rule, indigenous African political entities and armies eventually succumbed to the superior military, technological, and administrative skills of the invaders. THE COLONIAL PERIOD

The war was part of the colonial expansion in Africa since the late 19th century (firearms) and the reactions it elicited from the local indigenous population. The establishment of colonial rule in Africa required a significant military effort. Major setbacks for the western powers included the Zulu War against the British in 1879 and the Battle of Adwa in 1896, in which the Ethiopians defeated the invading Italian colonial army. Apart from the often, but not always, violent manner in which new territories in Africa were carved out after the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885,

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Colonial rulers also engaged in periodic punitive expeditions, for example among the Turkana, the Ashanti, the Nuer, and in Madagascar, Guinea, and Niger. In Namibia, the Germans committed a genocide-like mass murder of Herero rebels. An important effect of colonial warfare and the establishment of colonies under Western hegemony was that the nascent local processes of state formation, often resulting from conflicts and wars, did not take their course because they were interrupted and redefined under Western rule. The imposition of colonial order, resulting in a new geographic-administrative network across landscape and demographics, halted local warfare and brought together disparate and conflicting groups into new overarching entities, often with unexpected boundaries that cut through old policies and ethnolinguistic groups. The colonial state claimed a monopoly on the use of force, local warfare and raids were not tolerated. While pre-colonial patterns of small-scale warfare largely ceased, the new order did not eradicate the roots of deep-seated conflicts, some of which resurfaced in the post-colonial era, such as in Congo, Sudan and Somalia. The colonial government's political authoritarianism and often racist and discriminatory overtones, along with its economic policies, led to strife and rebellion. This accelerated after the end of World War II, leading to struggles for independence among emerging local elites who were locked in a power struggle. THE POST-COLONIAL PERIOD

Before African countries gained their independence around 1960, some went to war to establish or confirm it, as in Kenya (Mau Mau), Algeria or the former Portuguese colonies. In other countries, internal divisions soon led to uprisings and civil wars, as in 1956 in Sudan. Sudan has remained Africa's most violent and divided country to date and a prime example of ongoing post-colonial warfare with an ongoing war in Darfur since 1915 an independent state. Last came Namibia, which gained independence in 1990 after a protracted war with South Africa, and Eritrea, which seceded from Ethiopia in 1993 after a long guerrilla war of varying intensity since 1961, reproducing the colony's borders. Eritrea of Italy (1890-1941). At the time of independence, the machines and institutions were inherited from the centralized and authoritarian colonial regime

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The states, including the national army, became the main theaters of fighting. In essence, they persisted after independence, functioning as resource machines and mechanisms of control over a highly diverse population that was only partially incorporated into state rule. Central authority was to be exercised over all of the state's formal territory, but outlying areas, such as those occupied by segmented pastoral towns, were neglected and weakly policed. External intervention in Africa has always been important. Post-colonial political infighting and warfare soon became embroiled in Cold War politics, with the West and the Soviet bloc (and to a lesser extent the Chinese) supporting incumbent regimes or insurgent movements in a competition for proxy power, and providing arms and funds to their allies. . Guerrilla warfare, based on economic ("greed") or political-cultural ("grievance") motives, or both, became protracted armed struggles with increasing numbers of civilian casualties and an increase in the recruitment of children. Soldiers For a long time, Marxism provided the ideology or language of insurgent and guerrilla movements. These wars led to regime changes in Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia and Chad. Some wars were accompanied by social revolutionary changes. Mass killings as a result of internal warfare have occurred in Burundi since the early 1970s and in the Rwandan genocide of 1994, prepared by the then ruling regime and carried out by army units. The civil wars in Angola and Mozambique also took a heavy toll. Since 2003, Sudan has been involved in a state-sponsored "creeping genocide" in Darfur, with an estimated 280,000 to 300,000 casualties in 2007. Trends in post-colonial warfare have changed significantly since the mid-20th century, and few states have followed suit able to establish a monopoly on the use of force or control the extent of murder. Victims are not only the result of fighting, but increasingly also war-related diseases and famines through the targeted destruction of livelihoods. Post-colonial wars have become entangled with economic competition and organized crime, both on the part of governments and insurgent movements: trends towards the criminalization of the state have taken place, with corruption and illicit trade flourishing, led by sections of the ruling elite.

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Civil wars in Africa are frequent and cyclical and tend to erode the development gains and distributive capacity of the state, perpetuating the reasons disadvantaged regions or groups continue to fight; Collier (2004) called this the "conflict trap". This situation, combined with the heavy reliance on primary resources and commodity exports as a share of national GDP (e.g. oil), has led to increased sensitivity to (civil) conflicts among Africans. countries in the post-independence era (cf. Collier 2003; Fearon & Laitin 2003). The war in Africa shows a combination of technological innovation through the use of modern weaponry (automatic weapons, rocket-propelled grenades, landmines, machine gun-mounted all-terrain vehicles, missiles) and air force (as in the Ethiopian-Eritrean War). . and in the Darfur War) with traditional patterns of warfare such as raids, ambushes and looting by small mobile bands of fighters loosely organized and operating fairly independently of larger (state) armies. Some examples are the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone in the 1990s, the Lord's Resistance Army rebellion in northern Uganda since the early 1990s, militias in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) since the late 1990s, and the Janjaweed Militias that have plagued Darfur since 2003. This has led to mass abuse and killings of civilians who did not take part in the fighting, a loss of combatants' ideological-political goals, and the emergence of a permanent "low-intensity" state of war that did not is decided in battles or peace agreements because the combat partners (states or movements) are diffuse and fragmented. The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is an example. War in such cases has become an economically anchored alternative way of life for socially uprooted youth and is often accompanied by a predatory accumulation of non-state controlled primary resources. A related phenomenon is the rise of well-armed militias or vigilante groups that take over policing functions and claim political power (e.g. in Somalia, the Niger Delta and urban areas of Nigeria) through the extensive use of military force. . These armed conflicts point to an emerging economic logic of war; many of them are locked in a resource competition fueled by the structural youth crisis and government failure (see Keen 2003).

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Since the end of the Cold War and the accelerated demise of the post-colonial order, Islamism has offered a new dynamic of conflict: political Islam as an absolutist and unified ideology of resistance to local divisions and foreign interference or even presence. While this movement originated in the Middle East, it has spread to Africa, where the current regime in Sudan has allegedly pursued an Islamist agenda since 1989. The war against non-Muslims in South Sudan (until 2005) was also a war of conversion with elements of jihad. Another example is the development of certain Somali clan militias into a combat force under the Islamic Courts Council, which is spreading across central Somalia. Various Islamist political and youth movements in East Africa and Nigeria should also be seen in this light. Although Middle Eastern terrorist tactics, al Qaeda-inspired branches of political Islam, are not popular in Africa, they could spread with the arrival of non-African militants, as seen in Sudan, Somalia and Kenya. In some respects, the Islamist violence represents a return to early Muslim notions of war against "infidels" and underscores once again the important and often underestimated role that religious or, more generally, supernatural beliefs play in warfare. PERSISTENCE AND CHANGE IN THE AFRICAN WAR IN THE XXI CENTURY

While states in Africa are still at war, such as Sudan (in Darfur), Angola (in Cabinda), and Ethiopia-Eritrea, warfare in Africa tends to become decentered, localized, and disorganized. Many conflicts are the result of unresolved low-intensity warfare and, in the absence of effective state policies, become embedded in economic ventures and struggles for survival. Several armed conflicts, such as Darfur since 2003, attract bandits and adventurers who invest in violence for resources and fun. These wartime opportunists come from a wide area, and their activities can create new local power formations that compete with existing state structures. This indicates that armed conflicts in Africa tend to be transnational. No modern African war is confined to a single country, either because the communities involved are spread across more than one country, or because the warring factions seek to wage proxy wars and bring about regime change in the enemy country. This became clear in Eritrea in 2006

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Activities in Somalia against pro-Ethiopian factions and in Sudan, Chad, undermining the ruling regime. A notable feature of warfare in Africa in the early 21st century is its cyclical nature. Wars end in one place, like Sierra Leone, Angola, Burundi, Rwanda, Liberia, Ethiopia-Eritrea, Mozambique, but arise in another: Somalia, Congo, Sudan, Chad, Ivory Coast. Similar wars are being waged in countries that face the same set of problems, such as persistent government deficits in the provision of services or education, political repression, chronic poverty and youth unemployment, high population growth, ethno-regional tensions, or religious extremism. Wars can also break out differently in the same country (as in Congo, Somalia, Ethiopia-Eritrea and Sudan). Furthermore, most of today's African wars are civil wars, triggered by state repression of insurgent groups or by inter-regional, inter-ethnic or inter-communal disputes, which in turn can also lead to new partial wars. The social and psychological legacy of decades of war in Africa is important: most countries that experienced war in the post-colonial era struggle to establish normalcy and regenerate the social fabric, especially when the needs of the vanquished are neglected or compromised or simply cannot be met due to lack of resources and poverty. In this sense, war often returns after a generation or two, when people have been impoverished and humiliatingly victimized, when conditions do not allow them to "forget" and start a new life. State capacity and legitimacy in Africa generally remains weak, and the social and political integration of many citizens is superficial. Almost fifty years of post-colonial rule have not allowed African states to effectively suppress wars. See also Aid and Development: Humanitarian Aid; colonial policies and practices; Islam; military organizations; postcolonialism; Shaka Zulu; slave trade; slavery and subservient institutions; Sudan: Wars.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Clayton, Anthony. Frontiersmen: Warfare in Africa since 1950. London: UCL Press, 1999. Collier, Paul. "Natural Resources, Development and Conflict: Channels of Causality and Political Interventions". Washington, DC: World Bank Document, 2003.

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Kohler, Paul. "Development and Conflict". Oxford: Center for the Study of African Economies, 2004. Davis, Robert C. Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2004. Ellis, Stephen. "The Ancient Roots of the New Wars in Africa". International Politics and Society 2 (2004): 29–43. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. "Zande Warfare." Anthropos 52, No. 2 (1957): 239-262. Fadiman, Jeffrey A. An Oral History of Tribal Warfare: The Meru of Mount Kenya. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1982. Fearon, James and David Laitin. "Ethnicity, Insurgency and Civil War". American Political Science Review 97, no. 1 (2003): 75-90. Autumn, Jeffrey. States and power in Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000. Keen, David. "Greedy Elites, Scarce Resources, Alienated Youth: The Anatomy of Protracted Violence in Sierra Leone". International Politics and Society, Vol. 2 (2003): 67–94. Kurimoto, Eisei, and Simon Simonse, eds. Ages of Conflict and Power in Northeast Africa. Oxford: James Currey, 1998. Lampear, John. The Time of Dispersal: Turkana's Responses to Colonial Rule. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Spring, Christopher. African Arms and Armor. London: British Museum Press, 1993. Thornton, John K. Warfare in Atlantic Africa, 1500–1800. London: UCL Press, 1999. Walter, E.V. Terror and Resistance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1969. JON ABBINK

CIVIL WARS

Since the end of World War II, most wars in Africa have been armed conflicts between armed groups within the same country. This trend is consistent with global trends since the late 1940s and the beginning of the Cold War. African civil wars have changed and received many designations over the last century. They have been called wars of liberation, wars of secession and wars of attrition, insurgent conflicts and resource wars. These names reflect outsiders' views of the conflicts and the strategies used to wage these wars.

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ANTI-COLONIALISM AND CIVIL WARS

From the 1950s onwards, most wars in Africa were anti-colonial national liberation struggles fighting to end what the international community saw as the illegitimate rule of foreigners over a defined community. "Liberation rebels" fought in these conflicts and were considered national heroes by many Africans. Other wars during this period were conflicts over national unity. These wars emphasized group unity within the colony and often masked underlying ethnic and religious divisions. In the 1960s and 1970s, at the height of the Cold War, many anti-government groups adopted the ideology of their external sponsor states. For example, Portugal was fighting Eastern-bloc-backed communist rebels in its African colonies of Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique during those years. While many African fighters in these wars of liberation came from rural areas, the leaders of these nationalist struggles were often university-educated urbanites. This may seem incompatible with the unity of a liberation struggle, for the smaller the initial social and cultural gaps between leaders and cadres, the more likely they are to develop effective foundations of legitimate leadership. Such leaders sought the security of rural areas where they were forced to communicate and live with the peasant population. During this process, the leaders of the incipient liberation would come to understand the realities of peasant economy, social life, and the power of traditional myths and rituals. In many of these struggles, the strategies of the liberation organizations followed certain principles. The leadership's first task was to travel through the rural areas and explain their political struggle to the peasants. This tactic not only garnered support and mobilized locals to join the movements; established a relationship with local figures. The second step in the liberation movement's strategy was to send the organization's military arm to establish a "liberated zone" and maintain a dominant presence in the villages. This process was followed by the dismantling of colonial infrastructure and the establishment of parallel hierarchies - rogue administrative and economic institutions that maintained the insurgent presence and managed the needs of the local populace. The focus is on managing and not fighting the enemy.

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it allowed the liberation insurgents to present the locals with alternatives to the repressive forms of government, and further emphasized to the cadres that the main condition for mass support was in the political arena, not the military arena. The use of force against the masses was selective during the early anti-colonial struggles in Africa. Speaking in a village in Portuguese-controlled Guinea-Bissau, revolutionary leader Amilcar Cabral, a Lisbon-trained agronomist, told villagers that "soldiers should never mistreat people." We have to stick together. The soldiers who turn their weapons against the people are worse than the Portuguese” (Chaliand, 198). Counter-insurgency strategies aimed at undermining the social control of insurgents in their liberated areas. Colonial authorities recruited informers, resettled rural populations to isolate them from the insurgents, and used commando units, often posing as insurgents, to determine who in local communities was supporting the liberation struggle. LATE AND POST-COLD WAR CONFLICTS

Many later insurgent organizations showed a much lower organizational hierarchy and seemed to exercise less discipline towards their members. The causes of this change lie in the increasing fragmentation of the conflict and in the numerous commercial activities of these groups. Some insurgents have merged with organized crime networks, using terror and destabilizing local societies to build criminalized economies they control. As one scholar describes: “[T]he wars are fought by loosely knit groups of regulars, irregulars, cells, and not infrequently by local warlords with little or no central authority, rather than highly organized forces based on a rigid hierarchy of command. Authority'' that exploited local civilians (Holsti, 20). Vulnerable groups such as women, children and refugees are often prime targets as insurgents use rape and kidnapping as weapons of war. Some attribute this supposedly ideology-free trend among the insurgents to changes in local social structures, such as the rise of an urban “lumpen proletariat” that has little in common with the rural peasantry and uses violence as the only way to control them. For example, in Sierra Leone, politicians were responsible for much of the violent behavior of "ragged youth" after thugs were recruited

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Criminals in the national security apparatus, separating these new experts on violence from the social groups on whose behalf the insurgents previously fought (Kandeh, 349). For these scholars, the “new wars” are not ideological because they appeal to the rural poor in ways that are much more difficult to mobilize and control with programmatic platforms. David Snow claims that these new wars are completely devoid of any discernible political ideology, something the group can use to justify its activities. While the individual fighters aren't lacking in ideas, they either have the wrong ones or aren't able to coordinate with each other. So the problem is poor leadership and faulty coordination. Since the 1980s much attention has been paid to the relationship between economic performance and the occurrence and organization of internal conflicts. The link between civil war and low-income countries, low growth rates, and reliance on exploitation of natural resources for income has been tested with significant results. In his 2000 paper, Paul Collier identified insurgent warfare as similar to organized crime. He and others link the struggle for natural resources to a perceived tendency for insurgents to abuse local community members to seize opportunities in the global economy. Collier considers insurgents' rational choices in the context of individual incentives and the availability of plunderable resources. In this context, the insurgents fight for personal enrichment from the loot they loot in the conflict. Material incentives are used to recruit conflict participants; a high level of civil abuse is shown. Several United Nations reports indicate that rebels and government soldiers fought each other in Sierra Leone and Liberia to capture diamonds and timber. This dynamic is the subject of many studies, with historians arguing that these resources fuel predatory conflict because insurgents do not need to mobilize local populations to control and benefit from these resources. It is enough to control a mine or forest and organize trade deals with outsiders who will supply weapons and money in return. Many academics ignore the broader political context of this behavior. While some, like Collier, suggest that the presence of weak state institutions contributes to the rise of predatory, non-ideological insurgents, most of the conflict literature denies this

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ideological capacity of individual combatants. These two categories see a decline in insurgents' motivations and ideological expressions, but differ in where they perceive the deficit. For the former, it is the problem of society and leadership. For the latter, individual combatants seem unable to articulate ideologies. CAUSES OF INTERNAL WARS IN AFRICA

Explanations that include ethnic diversity and a lack of political authority in rural areas compete with those that identify causes in personal calculations related to the use of economic opportunities. These explanations have a certain value. One finds that while some insurgents are fighting like predatory looters in the 1990s (i.e. Charles Taylor's Liberian National Patriotic Front), one finds simultaneously insurgents like the Rwandan Patriotic Front among the largest insurgent groups organized hierarchically. Groups in African History. Circumstances related to the ethnic diversity of African countries clearly contribute to the shaping of conflicts. Colonial rule created these states from many pre-existing political entities and often conflicting communities. European colonizers created borders according to their own economic and political goals. Insurgencies of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, such as those found in Eritrea, and the growth of ethnically based surveillance movements in countries such as Congo and Nigeria demonstrate dissatisfaction with the political arrangements of the existing states, rather than just a desire to conquer it . A consistent theme throughout the history of independent Africa has been that many African states lack the capacity for political control in rural areas. Unless a government's control extends far into remote areas, it cannot patrol borders, and arms dealers, smugglers, and refugees can pass through without question. Some scholars, including Claire Metelit's 2004 paper, note that insurgents will refuse the political and material resources of conforming to international norms of democracy if they believe it will lose their power. While political control is better than no order at all in areas where previous state control was insufficient, such dominance can encourage predatory economies or so-called caudillismo.

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These explanations for the prevalence of internal conflict in Africa are not exhaustive. An important factor in the pervasiveness of domestic conflict in Africa, past and present, is the nature of the international political system, particularly since post-1960s decolonization and the associated norm of non-intervention. During the liberation wars of the 1960s, outside powers were quick to recognize anti-colonial insurgents as the legitimate rulers of the newly independent states. But these wars and military coups weakened these states as they produced refugees, cross-border migration and internally displaced people. Now armed groups are fighting for more fragmented states. This means that even small groups can challenge the weakest governments in Africa and assert their own claims to power. Internal conflicts are more violent and frequent due to the fragmentation of coalitions of ruling elites in states such as Somalia, Congo and Liberia. The regime's political cliques are fighting each other and becoming more violent against local communities, whose fighters are being used as tools of manipulation and support. See also Cabral, Amı´lcar Lopes; Cold War; ethnicity; military organizations; postcolonialism; Taylor, Charles Gahnhay. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ahmed, Eqbal. "Revolutionary Warfare and Counterinsurgency". In Guerrilla Strategies: A Historical Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan, ed. Gerhard Schaland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Allen, Chris. "War, Endemic Violence and State Failure in Africa." African Political Economy Review 81 (1999): 367-284. Chaliand, Gerard. "With the Guerrillas in 'Portuguese' Guinea". In Guerrilla Strategies: A Historical Anthology from the Long March to Afghanistan, ed. Gerhard Schaland. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Clapham, Christopher. Africa and the international system: the politics of state survival. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Collier, Paul. "Rebellion as a quasi-criminal activity". Journal of Conflict Resolution 44, no. 6 (2000): 839-853. Collier, Paul, and Anke Hoeffler. Greed and Tort in Civil War. World Bank Research Paper, 2001. Collier, Paul and Anke Hoeffler. About the events of the civil war in Africa. Journal of Conflict Resolution 46, no. 1 (2002): 13-28. Holsti, Kalevi J. The State, War, and the State of War. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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Humphreys, Macartan, and Jeremy M. Weinstein. Management and mistreatment of civilians in civil war: determinants of warring strategies. Lecture at the conference, Techniques of Violence in Civil War. PRIO, Oslo, Norway, 2004. Kaldor, Mary. Wars Old and New: Organized Violence in the Global Era. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999. Kandeh, Jimmy D. "Ransoming the State: Elite Origins of Subaltern Terror in Sierra Leone." African Political Economy Review 81 (1999): 349–366. Ken,David. 1998. The Economic Functions of Violence in Civil Wars. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. Metelits, Claire. Reformed rebels? Democratization, global norms and the Sudan People's Liberation Army.'' Africa Today 51, no. 1 (2004): 65–84. Mkandawire, Thandika. "The Horrible Cost of Postcolonial 'Rebel Movements' in Africa: Towards an Explanation of Anti-Peasant Violence". Journal of Modern African Studies 40, no. 2 (2002): 181-215. Reno, William. Politics of Warlords and African States. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. Ross, Michael L. "How Natural Resources Affect the Civil War?" Evidence from Thirteen Cases.” International Organization 58 (Winter 2004): 35–67. Snow David Uncivil Wars: International Security and the New Internal Conflicts. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996. Van Creveld, Martin. The Transformation of War. New York: Free Press, 1991. Weinstein, Jeremy. Rebellion inside: the political economy of the rebel organization. Cambridge, MA: Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, 2003. CLAIRE METELITS

COLONIAL

Until the 19th century, the interior of Africa remained largely in the hands of the African peoples. With the exception of the temperate colonies of Algeria and South Africa, European presence in Africa was limited to a series of coastal trading enclaves. In fact, by 1876 more than 90 percent of the continent was still in indigenous hands. In the next three decades, however, the situation was to change radically. In the late 1870s a struggle broke out to conquer African territory and by 1914 only Ethiopia and Liberia remained free from European control.

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In his widely read introduction to colonial warfare, Small Wars: Their Principles and Practice (1896), British Colonel Charles E. Callwell wrote that the small wars waged by the imperial powers in Africa fell into three main categories: ( 1) outside campaigns of conquest or annexation; (2) expeditions to suppress lawlessness or riots, or to protect colonists from aggression; and (3) campaigns abroad to avenge an injustice or eliminate a dangerous enemy. From this report, the colonel evidently assumed that some colonial wars were the result of proactive decisions in European capitals, while others were clearly reactions to crises or provocations on the periphery. Modern military historians tend to place much more emphasis on the reactive nature of European expansion. In doing so, they follow Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher's influential study of British imperialism, Africa and the Victorians: The Official Mind of Imperialism (1961), which shifted the place of initiative in the struggle for empire from the capital to metropolitan areas all the way to the global periphery, made the non-European world an active and indispensable participant in this process. The two historians had argued that "peripheral movements," often the result of instability caused by the rise and fall of indigenous "secondary empires," would have forced intervention by European powers that would otherwise have been reluctant to intervene in Africa. The "flow" had to be choked to prevent competing nations from taking advantage of it, or to prevent the loss of markets or sources of raw materials. Not all of the "river" was the result of indigenous activities. A certain degree of imperial expansionism was the result of the machinations of "men on the ground", ambitious army officers or colonial administrators seeking glory or promotion or stealing the upper hand from an imperial rival. This latter phenomenon underscores the central role of the nineteenth-century "secular religion," nationalism, in imperial expansion. This was shown most clearly in the striving of the two new European nation states of Germany and Italy for colonies and thus for legitimacy as great powers. Italy eventually sought colonies in Africa as outlets for its surplus population, an endeavor that utterly failed as most Italian emigrants chose to go to South America or the United States.

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MOBILIZATION AND WEAPONS

African military organization generally took one of four different forms during the age of colonial wars. In some states, soldiers were locally raised and fought as bands from their homelands under feudal Europe-style territorial chiefs. This was probably the most common type of African armed forces. Typical examples were the armies of Ethiopia and the Ashanti Empire in what is now Ghana. In other states, soldiers were mobilized by age group and then organized into regiments. This system was adopted by the various Nguni peoples of Southeast Africa: the Zulu, of course, but also the Swazis of Swaziland, the Ndebele of Zimbabwe, and the Gaza-Nguni of southern Mozambique. "Citizen armies" ruled large parts of West Africa. All free adult males capable of bearing arms were called up in the event of war. Although full-time units of professional soldiers existed in Africa, they were rare and most arose in the mid to late 19th century, emulating the European armies they fought. They functioned as elite or specialized formations within traditional armies: musketeers at the turn of the century, riflemen later. Examples of this phenomenon are the musketeer battalion recruited into the army of qAbd al-Qadir fighting the French in Algeria in the 1840s, and the rifled formations in the armies of the Samori in West Africa and the Mahdi and their successors in Sudan in the 1880s and 1890s Organizationally, the European armies operating in Africa fell into two main categories. British troops in Africa were withdrawn from the regular army at home (or the Indian army in the subcontinent) and sent as expeditionary forces. Italy's colonial army, the Corpo Speciale, followed a similar pattern. When troops were needed in Africa, units for that purpose were recruited from the country's conscript army, outfitted with tropical gear at the colonial base in Naples, and shipped out. The other European powers involved in the African colonial wars tended to station their troops permanently in Africa. Algeria was home to the Arme'e d'Afrique and the French Foreign Legion, while the Marine Corps, whose African contingents fought most of France's fighting in West Africa, had a permanent base in Senegal. Germany and Portugal, which sent fewer European soldiers to Africa than the other colonial powers, withheld small contingents of volunteers from their countries.

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regular armies in their various colonies, however, relied heavily on locally recruited African troops to fight. The exception to this pattern was for the Germans in South West Africa (later Namibia), where their small military establishment consisted entirely of white mounted infantry supported by a settler militia. Colonial wars of conquest in Africa coincided with a revolution in military arms in the West. Rough armament parity existed between the African and European invaders until the mid-19th century. Gunpowder weapons were known to most African armies except for those who, like the Zulus, forsworn them for cultural reasons. From the 1840s and 1850s, however, technological innovations began to appear in Europe that found little or no echo among non-Western peoples: the underwater telegraph; steam iron warships; shoulder weapons, pistols, and breech-loading and rapid-fire artillery; and finally the machine gun. This has led some historians of African colonial wars to the unsurprising but unjustified conclusion that military technology was the determining factor in subsequent European conquests. First of all, there was a considerable lag between the availability of the new weapons and their actual appearance on African battlefields. In some cases they never arrived. The French, for example, managed to absorb most of western and equatorial Africa into their empire without using the machine gun. The artillery was too cumbersome to be easily transported across the plains and deserts or through the tropical jungles of the African continent. The presence of the new weapons on the battlefields of Africa did not necessarily guarantee European victory either, as clearly demonstrated by the British disaster at Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879. A more satisfactory, reliable and historical explanation for European success in the African wars Colonizers that the thesis of triumphant technology was the ability of Europeans to recruit and field large armies of indigenous soldiers. Nineteenth-century European armies, faced with increasing commitments elsewhere and still wary of exposing their white soldiers to tropical diseases, foul water and heat exhaustion, resorted to the massive recruitment of indigenous troops to wage war on their behalf .

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Africa. France deployed the largest number of African troops. During the 1880s almost all of their gains in West Africa were made by the African Light Infantry (Tirailleurs Se'ne'galais) commanded by French officers. However, it was the Germans who employed the largest percentage of African troops. In 1912 his colonial army, or Schutztruppe, outside South West Africa, consisted of 226 whites and 2,664 Africans. Britain also relied heavily on "native" soldiers in Africa. In 1902, the 11,500 soldiers who followed the Union Jack in Africa included only 300 white officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs). As historian David Killingray has argued, "European empires in Africa were conquered mainly by mercenary African armies, occasionally supported by white or other colonial troops" (1989). STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

The armies of the European imperial powers chose to view their campaigns in Africa as "wars against nature" (disease, heat, distance, lack of food and water, inhospitable terrain) and only secondarily against human enemies. Therefore, they saw no need to adopt any particular doctrine for conducting small-scale wars. In keeping with the Napoleonic ethos that continued to inspire them, European commanders sought to outmaneuver native enemies in field battles where their superior firepower and fire discipline would earn them a decisive victory. Their African opponents, for the most part, proved all too willing, which was a major factor in the rapid conquest of the continent by the European powers. Few African insurgents responded to the onslaught by turning to guerrilla warfare in the 19th century. A notable exception was the army of qAbd al-Qadir in Algeria in the 1840s. Algerian resistance provoked a violent response from French forces, a raiding strategy known as raiding that involved the systematic destruction of enemy villages and crops, and killing or kidnapping theirs cattle Although this strategy brought France victory in 1847, the widespread violence and destruction it entailed made reconciliation between the French and their new subjects impossible. In the 20th century, African insurgents, aware of the deadly results of past improvised battles, turned almost exclusively to the option of guerrilla warfare. As mentioned above, the African armies did not hesitate to accept field combat with their European enemies. In some cases, this choice was cultural

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induced. The warrior spirit of the Nguni peoples of Southeast Africa, especially the Zulus, did not allow them to avoid direct confrontation with enemy armies. Jihadist motivations among some of the Muslim "secondary empires" - the Mahdist state in Sudan, the Sokoto empire in northern Nigeria, al-Hajj 'Umar's Tukolor empire in West Africa - generated a similar penchant for open battles. The preferred tactic used by African armies when attacking was to attempt to encircle the enemy. To this end, the typical Nguni army employed a "cow horns" formation when attacking; Its center was tasked with immobilizing enemy forces while its left and right wings raced to envelop and destroy them. A "crescent" formation served the same purpose in the armies of the Mahdi and his successors. The African armies, attempting to emulate the European style of warfare, in some cases developed a maneuverable warfare capability. Perhaps the best example of this was the army of the Guinean Almamy Samori Toure´, who managed to hold the field against the French from 1886 to 1898. RESULT

The colonial wars of the 19th century marked the beginning of more than half a century of foreign rule for most Africans. Aside from Liberia, the US protectorate in West Africa, Ethiopia was the only African political entity left free to determine its own fate at the start of World War I. United behind their ancient Christian heritage, almost alone among African peoples who enjoyed the support of European nations against their enemies, well armed with modern weapons, the Ethiopians managed in 1896 to overwhelm a misled Italian army at Adowa. Though ultimately defeated and conquered by the Italians in 1934, Ethiopia served for some time as a beacon of hope for Africans seeking to break free from European rule. Meanwhile, a significant number of them served their colonizers as soldiers in the world wars of the 20th century. These wars, which killed African soldiers as far away as Burma and the Balkans and devastated villages and towns in East Africa in World War I and in North Africa in World War II, also opened the way to eventual African independence. through the weakening of the colonial powers and the rise to world domination of two superpowers who, for their own reasons, are committed to the end of the European empire.

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See also qAbd al-Qadir; colonial policies and practices; colonialism and imperialism; military organizations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Callwell, Charles E. Small wars: their principles and practice [1896]. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Kiernan, V.G. From Conquest to Collapse: European Empires from 1815 to 1960. New York: Pantheon, 1982. Killingray, David. Imperialism and War: Essays on Colonial Warfare in Asia and Africa, ed. Jaap A De Moor and Henk J Wesseling. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1989. Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa: The White Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912. New York: Random House, 1991. Porch, Douglas. colonial war. New York: Harper Collins, 2006. Robinson, Ronald and John Gallagher, with Alice Denny. Africa and the Victorians: the Official View of Imperialism. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1981. Vandervort, Bruce. Imperial Wars of Conquest in Africa, 1830–1915. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Wesseling, HL Divide and rule: The division of Africa, 1880–1914. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996. BRUCE WATERVORT

R E V O L T I S I N T E R N A L

Internal revolts cannot always be easily distinguished from low-intensity civil wars, but the former term is useful when rebel factions pursue a local agenda or are too weak to seriously challenge the state. Some late 20th-century African events reflect local grievances; others are power struggles in favor of state groups or outside interests (now including international militant Islamist groups). The number of low-level intra-African conflicts appears to be increasing while larger conflicts are declining. Some scholars suggest this is because localized conflict reflects greed, not resentment. Others point to the ongoing destabilizing effects of the Cold War (including a flood of cheap small arms) and still others to demographic factors. Africa is a continent with many unemployed youth. Internal revolts ensure last-minute independence, especially where the state has failed.

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THE AFRICAN WAR BEYOND THE STATE

Local (neo-traditional) means are often used in intra-African unrest. An early example of neo-traditional African internal revolt was the revolt of anti-colonial Mau Mau settlers in Kenya in the 1950s. The Renamo uprising in Mozambique in the 1980s is an important post-colonial case. West Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone) provides examples from the late 20th century. Neo-traditional elements are strongly associated with localized revolts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Internal insurgency practices vary for environmental reasons. Savannah and forest-based methods of warfare are very different. The cavalry's lightning charge on the scattered and defenseless villagers was a feature of savannah warfare. In desert conditions with few roads, the ability to raid, rape, and burn undefended settlements without warning remains devastatingly effective. In Darfur, the activities of the Janjaweed militias are fueling a form of terror deeply entrenched in the local historical imagination, while obscuring the extent of the Sudanese state's involvement in the quelling of an internal revolt. The horse or camel cannot survive in the wetter parts of Africa due to sleeping sickness. In the African bush, cavalry (or armored car) is replaced by small groups of fighters or even lone fighters who sneak up on foot. Well-prepared ambushes are among the basic tactics of forest warfare. The enemy is pursued and secretly surrounded. Disguise and illusion prevail; Nothing is as it seems. The fighter, decorated with an amulet, gives an image of both power and insubstantial invulnerability in forest conditions. Armed revolts tend to occur in regions where the state government has less of a presence, such as the wild border between Liberia and Sierra Leone. Poverty and neglect often alienate these isolated rural people from the state. Insurgents are gaining local support but may not be strong enough to build a national movement capable of overthrowing the state or even ensuring effective local administration. The rebellious terrain is rapidly reverting to statelessness. If this condition persists, the social, political, and economic arrangements that were prevalent in earlier times tend to repeat themselves. Pre-colonial "stateless societies" were less regions of anarchy than regions of complexity.

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Trade alliances that stretch from the Atlantic coast to the interior of the savannah. In these network societies, power was diffuse and exercised primarily by alliances of merchants and warriors. Fighting ensued between rival factions for control of key nodes. A typical pattern was for a merchant to hire warriors and their apprentices ("warboys") to disrupt a rival's business. The merchants “bought the war”. Professional warriors set up base camps in patches of forest between competing trade routes. War combined well with hunting. The fighters knew how to move stealthily in the forest and lay ambushes, and (if necessary) they took as many traps from humans as other creatures. Esoteric means enhanced illusions of invulnerability and invisibility. Apprentices were initiated into "secret societies" (cofradías), weakening family ties and ensuring tacit loyalty to the armed band. Looting, searching, transporting and spying were just as much a part of the war child's job as fighting. Warriors immersed in the arts of magic, deceit, and ostentation sometimes suggest one-handed combat to decide the outcome of an attack. These fighting gangs lived off the land. A successful raid often resulted in the death of rival male fighters and the kidnapping of women from the village. Many became wives of the successful group. Fighters regularly hired by a particular merchant prince could set up camp locally, but the ruler was often careful to specify a separate location for the camp. Others would return to their forest fortress and await a new assignment. An advantage of recruiting distant warriors was that the warriors had no local family ties through which to give away military activity. There were fewer scruples about killing the local population. State failure and armed insurgency in the outskirts in the last decade of the 20th century restored various parts of the forested interior of the coastal region of Upper Guinea (Liberia, Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast) to the conditions described above. The hiring of specialists to protect or disrupt trade, the socialization of combatants through initiation into warrior camps, and the use of fighter boats as tools of war in revolts from Casamance to the Ivory Coast. Away from mainstream society, new warrior settlements have sprung up in the forests. The rebel leaders envision being reborn as warlords imbued with magical invulnerability. Counterinsurgency experts help

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Formation and training of neo-traditional "hunter" militias. Governments and rebels are working together to revive (or invent) forms of conflict resolution based on the "classic" institutions of statelessness, for example the "joking relationship" (specifically permitted jokes or abuse between certain groups or classes of people who are closely connected to each other, showing the special kind of relationship) described by Ferdinand De Jong. THREE DECLARATION OF INTERNAL AFRICAN REVOLT

Analysts offer three explanations for why contemporary African armed revolts are taking a neo-traditional form. The methods are considered by some to be highly functional, i.e. well adapted to the local environment, skills and resources. Others suggest they serve primarily to distance sponsors and practitioners of war on a continent where fortunes can be made (or lost) through intrigue over rich natural resources. A third view is that if modernity recedes, an enduring African rural culture will reassert itself. The disputes between these three positions, functionalist, constructivist and essentialist, have not yet been resolved. By the functional argument, neo-traditional techniques are practically effective. Correct local knowledge explains military success. The Sierra Leone rebels titled their only document Footpaths to Democracy (Sierra Leone Revolutionary United Front [RUF], 1995). Unlike regular troops, they were willing to operate on foot and knew the paths of the forest better than government troops, who have trouble finding even a complete set of maps. Paul Richards (1996) argues that the techniques of internal rebellion employed by the RUF belong to a living tradition of local strategic knowledge. The constructivist argument is supported by recent evidence that various internal revolts are intimately linked to mining deals. Officers in the South African Defense Forces developed what J. Hooper called an "immensely successful doctrine" (Hooper, 8) of counterinsurgency for Angola and Mozambique. Their basic aim was to disguise covert operations as seemingly spontaneous revolts. The counterinsurgency in neo-traditional clothing. After the end of apartheid in South Africa, this military variant of the colonial “invention of tradition” (Hobsbawm and Ranger, 1983) spread from Angola and Mozambique to other countries.

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Sharing Africa through private security companies employing veterans of the South African Armed Forces. The third argument assumes that culture is causal. Accordingly, ethnicity, religious beliefs or social identity determine people's behavior, not vice versa. Youth in Liberia, for example, mutilate their victims because they have adopted a belief system in which human sacrifice is legal. When the modern state recedes, barbarism revives. Deciding between the above explanations on a case-by-case basis requires a better understanding of why there is so much internal revolt in Africa at the beginning of the 21st century. The most important factors are economic and demographic factors. The instability, for some, is primarily associated with free-roaming capitalism. Africa is rich in resources, particularly oil and other highly valuable and easily mineable strategic minerals, which were demanded by the post-Cold War global economic boom. As in the late 19th century, competing international interests (including China and other emerging economies) have engaged in a battle royale to claim these resources. Local dissidents help secure resources for international business sponsors. The Liberian revolt, for example, was explained with a business connection centered around Charles Taylor, involving business interests from Eastern Europe and Asia seeking lumber and diamond deals. A Briton involved with Executive Outcomes, the company that provides counterinsurgency consultancy in Sierra Leone, was arrested and imprisoned in 2004 for taking part in a conspiracy to overthrow the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. He had hired 62 veterans of South African covert operations in Angola and Mozambique, formerly linked to counterinsurgency operations in Sierra Leone, to overthrow the President of Equatorial Guinea and win oil rights. The argument assumes that rebel movements (or counterinsurgency forces) are a cover for international mineral deals. No complaint is sincere. The internal revolts in Africa are economics by other means. The second explanation draws attention to demographics. Africa is experiencing the fastest population growth in the world. War and famine have received too much attention as products of a population that outstrips food supplies. The real destabilizing factor is the socialization of the overwhelming number of impoverished youth.

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Emile Durkheim's theory of social cohesion (1893) explains solidarity as a result of the division of labour. Young people are committed to the values of the community through positive recognition of their work. An open and competitive opportunity structure leads to organic solidarity; an enforced division of labor fuels the revolt. Years of colonial rule by chiefs and merchant elites, coupled with years of post-colonial redistribution of Cold War subsidies by military elites, kept old heritage values alive. For too long, African ruling elites assumed that young Africans needed nurturing more than skills. Bosses offer jobs based on favoritism rather than talent, and perpetuate an enforced division of labor historically rooted in domestic slavery. Among the excluded, feelings of rebellion fester. Around 45 to 50 percent of the population in some African countries at the beginning of the 21st century are children and young people looking for an education or a first job, compared to around 20 to 25 percent in more affluent European countries. This tremendous youth growth, combined with post-Cold War dwindling foundations, has created a crisis across Africa. Increasingly, education and work are no longer fulfilling their role of equipping young people with the skills to contribute to society and thus receive feedback on their social worth. Hardest hit are countries where the state has become dysfunctional and can no longer even administer a basic education system. The revolt is presented as an alternative. Skills are easily acquired. The weapon brings instant gratification and respect. The war is spreading, while the number of socially isolated youth in the population is increasing. THE LIKELIHOOD OF AN INTERNAL REVOLT

Choosing between economic and demographic explanations remains difficult. Some scholars have argued that if the division of labor model is correct, all African countries would be at war, to which they sometimes reply 'not yet'. the region. Analysts point to several factors fueling conflicts in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d'Ivoire: ethnicity (and perhaps religion) in Liberia, diamonds in Sierra Leone, land and migration in Côte d'Ivoire. However, the neo-traditional modalities of internal revolt are common to all

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three conflicts spread by hypermobile youth moving from country to country. Factions grow rapidly as the economy collapses and combat becomes the only type of work available to poorly educated youth.

This was due to both private sector counterinsurgency advice and local agency. At least one country chief in Sierra Leone was explicit; South African mine safety experts urged him to form a "traditional" civil defense force.

Greed, not resentment, seems to fit the facts in a number of cases, notably in three diamond-rich countries, Angola, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which are responsible for most of the world's production of so-called "diamonds". . in conflict". However, work with ex-combatants in Sierra Leone shows that most came from impoverished rural backgrounds and worried about a lack of education and employment. Few, if any, said they were by the promise of diamond wealth been lured into battle.

At the same time, it seems undeniable that internal unrest creates employment opportunities for marginalized African youth, particularly young people with few prospects in remote rural areas. When the first chances of peace in Sierra Leone approached in 1996, the demobilization plan called for about 20,000 combatants. The final number of those demobilized in 2001, after five years of continued chaos, was more than 70,000, with around 85 percent coming from impoverished rural areas. The war ended when serious offers of training in demobilization skills were made.

The spread of internal revolts from Liberia and Sierra Leone to Côte d'Ivoire (once considered the region's most stable country thanks to agricultural prosperity) seems to confirm aspects of the demographic argument. Here the revolt was fueled, at least in part, by the inability of hypermobile youth to find a secure place in the urban or rural economy. At least some fighters, despite their different local goals, see affiliations with and inspiration from similarly marginalized youth groups in Liberia and Sierra Leone. However, the armed revolt in Nigeria's Niger Delta brings back the vast and inexplicable disparities in access to natural resources as a cause of youth alienation. Especially in this case, an analytical distinction between "greed" (meaning resentment about socially shameful poverty in the midst of great wealth) and "grievance" (anger at the state and partners in the oil industry because of their lack of commitment) seems almost impossible to separate analytically on the subject youth unemployment). It seems that the likelihood of internal revolt is best predicted by some sort of synthesis of demographic and greed approaches, rather than grievance approaches. It is undeniable that international business interests helped fund and supply the wars in Africa, even if the story is not always straightforward. Charles Taylor and the Sierra Leonean rebels have been cited as agents and beneficiaries of such support, but closer inspection suggests that other warring factions in Sierra Leone were also aided by diamond mining and international private security contributions. The war against the rebels was presented as spontaneous and involved the traditional hunting civil defense. But later evidence suggests so

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The notion that some of the civil turmoil in Africa in the early 21st century is the result of deep alienation among youth is supported by the long catalog of bizarre and horrific atrocities they produce. At times, fighters as distant, culturally diverse, and with such diverse motivations as Islamist insurgents in Algeria, Mai-Mai warriors in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and reggae fighters in Taylor wigs in Liberia seem to be waging war on society itself. Reducing the number of internal unrests in Africa is likely to require both a review of international business practices and a radical overhaul of youth opportunity structures, particularly in rural areas. In 2004, the International Criminal Court announced that it would in future examine the activities of CEOs of international companies operating in African war zones. South Africa has begun closing down private security companies supplying mercenaries. In terms of connecting young Africans to society, it has been suggested that land issues are at the center of attention. Basic education, free movement, agrarian reform (including an emphasis on contract law in relation to land tenure) and support for agrotechnical innovation will be necessary if the threat of a growing number of impoverished rural youth fueling an epidemic spread of internal revolts is to be avoided. See also work: child; military organizations; postcolonialism; Taylor, Charles Gahnhay; Youth: Rural.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berdal, Mats, and David Malone, eds. Greed and resentment: economic agendas in civil wars. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2001. Clapham, Christopher, eds. African Guerrilla. Oxford: James Currey, 1998. Collier, Paul. Economic causes of civil conflicts and their implications for politics. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000. De Jong, Ferdinand A. "Joking Nation: Conflict Resolution in Senegal". Canadian Journal of African Studies 39, no. 2 (2005): 389-413. Durkheim, Emil. The Division of Labor in Society [1893], trans. G Simpson. New York: Free Press, 1964. Ellis, Stephen. The Mask of Anarchy: The Destruction of Liberia and the Religious Dimension of an African Civil War. London: Christopher Hurst, 1999. Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983. Hooper, J. "Appendix: Sierra Leone". In blood song! An Account of Executive Outcomes in Angola, 2nd Edition. London: HarperCollins, 2003. Humphreys, Macartan and Jeremy Weinstein. What the Fighters Say: A Survey of Ex-combatants in Sierra Leone, June–August 2003. CGSD Working Paper 20. New York: Columbia University, 2004. Jones, Adam. From Slaves to the Palm Kernel: A History of the Country of Galinhas (West Africa) 1730–1890. Wiesbaden, Germany: Steiner Verlag, 1983. Kaplan, Robert D. The End of the World: A Journey at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Random House, 1996. Moyo, Sam, and Paris Yeros, eds. Reclaiming the Land: The Resurgence of Rural Movements in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. London: Zed Press, 2006. The Sierra Leone Revolutionary United Front. Roads to Democracy: Towards a New Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone Revolutionary United Front, 1995. Richards, Paul. Battle for the Rainforest: War, Youth and Resources in Sierra Leone. Oxford: James Currey, 1998. Richards, Paul. "War Like Smoke and Mirrors: Sierra Leone 1991–2, 1994–5, 1995–6." Anthropological Quarterly 28 (2005): 377–402. Smillie, Ian; Lansana Gberie; and Ralph Hazelton. The heart of the matter: Sierra Leone, diamonds and human security. Canada, Ottawa: Africa Association. 2000. Vlassenroot, Coen, "A Social View on Violence and War: Conflict and Militia Formation in Eastern Congo." In Violence, Political Culture and Development in Africa, ed. Preben Kaarsholm. Oxford: James Currey, pp. 49-65.

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Wilson, Kenneth B. "Cults of Violence and Counter-Violence in Mozambique." Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 3 (1992): 527-582. PAUL RICHARDS

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The African liberation wars were mainly fought in the south, first against the Portuguese and then against the Marxist regimes they replaced and the white regimes in neighboring Rhodesia and South Africa. These conflicts ended with the end of the Cold War. Then the Tutsi struggle against the Hutu government in Rwanda led not only to the overthrow of that French-backed government, but also to horrific genocide and the destabilization of neighboring states. Portugal was not only the first colonial power in Africa, but also the last to leave Africa. The African Independence Party of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC), led by Amilcar Cabral, had the support of neighboring Guinea-Conakry and Senegal and received aid from Algeria, Cuba, Ghana and the Soviet Union. Its military arm, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Povo (FARP), was formed in 1964. By 1968 it controlled much of Guinea. The Portuguese fortunes improved with the arrival of Brigadier Antonio de Spinola, as he combined aggressive military leadership with a progressive civic action program aimed at winning back black popular support. His departure in 1972 coincided with the reorganization of FARP and the receipt of more modern Soviet weapons, including surface-to-air missiles, returning the initiative to the insurgents. Although the popular and successful Cabral was assassinated in 1973, the PAIGC claimed Guinea's independence as the Republic of Guinea-Bissau, which Portugal recognized the following year. Upon his return to Portugal, Spinola published the bestseller Portugal and the Future, in which he argued that colonial wars were unwinnable and advocated peaceful political resolution of conflicts. His dismissal by Prime Minister Marcello Caetano led to a coup in April 1974 by the MFA (Movement of the Armed Forces), an association of career officers supported not only by the army but also by a war-weary public, as the ruling junta traded independence treaties with Guinea -Bissau and Mozambique from where the PAIGC and

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The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) took power. The situation in Angola was complicated by power struggles between competing liberation movements, which included the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). . The MPLA was Marxist and its members included white intellectuals and mulattos as well as black Africans. Support came mainly from the Soviet Union. The FNLA, led by Holden Roberto, received aid from Zaire (President Desire Mobuto was his brother-in-law), Algeria, China and the United States. UNITA was founded by Jonas Savimbi when he separated from Roberto in 1966. Portuguese efforts to form a coalition government were unsuccessful and civil war broke out in 1975 with the withdrawal of Portuguese troops. The MPLA prevailed thanks to extensive material support (including jet aircraft, artillery and armored fighting vehicles) by the Soviet Union and the direct intervention of thousands of Cuban troops. The FNLA and UNITA remained intact, but the latter grew into a formidable opposition movement. The 1980s saw large-scale fighting, with significant US and South African aid going to UNITA, becoming a major Cold War conflict. South African troops crossed Angola numerous times and joined UNITA in inflicting painful defeats not only on the FPLA (the MPLA army) but also on their Cuban and Soviet allies. Heavy losses and the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the withdrawal of Cuban troops and the cessation of Russian military aid, while diplomatic efforts by the United States and South Africa resulted in a temporary cessation of hostilities. Despite its previous Marxist leanings, the MPLA benefited from Western interests in Angolan oil. When the conflict flared up again in 1992, the government defeated UNITA with help from the West, including South African professional military company Executive Outcomes. FRELIMO had an insurgent force of 25,000 that controlled almost 90 percent of Mozambique at the time of independence in 1974. The FPLM (FRELIMO's military arm) was given sanctuary

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Tanzania and Chinese and Soviet military aid. Originally led by Eduardo Mondlane, leadership of FRELIMO passed to Samora Machal after Mondlane's death in 1968. Machal advocated a people's struggle on the Maoist model with the aim of establishing a revolutionary socialist state. With a more hegemonic structure than their Angolan counterparts, FRELIMO established a one-party government after Portugal left. Efforts to restructure society along a radical socialist model met with resistance from both rural black traditionalists and urban white businessmen. Neighboring Rhodesia recognized the support offered by the new government of Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) and formed the Mozambique National Resistance (RENAMO) to counterbalance it. The movement became a serious challenge to FRELIMO and continued to receive South African support after Mugabe came to power in 1980. The bloody civil war in Mozambique raged until 1992. Although initially a heavily armed guerrilla force, the FPLM evolved into a mechanized army based on the Soviet model, which had difficulty countering the RENAMO insurgents. Ironically, the collapse of communism led not only to the end of Soviet influence but also to the restructuring of the PFLM with Western advice and support. The new force was better suited to a counterinsurgency role, allowing the government to force RENAMO to negotiate, ending a long and brutal conflict. The withdrawal of Portugal from Africa had a significant impact on the Rhodesian Rebellion as it led to further isolation of the white regime. Two major groups vied for leadership of the liberation struggle: Robert Mugabe's ZANU and Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU). Although both were united as the Patriotic Front, they were rivals. ZAPU's military wing, the Zimbabwe People's Liberation Army (ZIPRA), was based in Zambia, received support from the Soviet Union (including armored vehicles and jet aircraft), and hoped to seize power by invading Rhodesia with conventional forces. ZANU's Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) operated from bases in Mozambique, was backed by China and waged guerrilla warfare based on Maoist principles. your strategy

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was to infiltrate fighters into Rhodesia to build black popular support while wearing down the white regime in a protracted struggle. Despite repeated tactical victories by the Rhodesian security forces, this strategy proved successful as the white population was unable to sustain the fight over time and was unable to maintain black population support or take full advantage of the black troops. Mugabe took power in 1980 with the establishment of majority rule and then turned on his former allies. The conflict took on a tribal character as ZANU was mostly Shona while ZAPU was mostly Matablele. With military aid from North Korea, Mugabe's forces launched an ethnic cleansing campaign in Matabeleland to herald the beginning of his quarter-century of misrule. South Africa has learned from Rhodesia's mistakes and conducted a highly successful counter-insurgency campaign against the South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) in Namibia. A large number of black soldiers served in the security forces, and great emphasis was placed on building support among the local population. SWAPO received the support of the MPLA and operated largely from bases in Angola. This led to South African support for UNITA, often in the form of mechanized columns with armour, artillery and air support. Lighter forces conducting counterinsurgency operations in Namibia also crossed the border, both pursuing fleeing SWAPO guerrillas and attacking their Angolan bases. The most effective unit operating in Namibia consisted of black Angolans who opposed the MPLA regime. Known as the 32nd ("Buffalo") Battalion, this formation was highly secretive and very successful in both conventional military operations and counterinsurgency operations. While led by white South Africans, junior officers had to seek the approval of their black subordinates, who had the right to reject any candidate they deemed unsuitable. Although SWAPO leaders hoped to seize power in Namibia through armed struggle, they were forced to seek it through the ballot box. The collapse of the Soviet Union prompted South Africa to begin the political process by which the former German colony, administered as a mandate since its occupation in 1915, gained independence. Thus, the most successful transitions to majority rule have not been achieved through violent "liberation" movements.

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but by successful efforts to suppress them until a political climate conducive to peaceful change emerged not only in Namibia but also in South Africa. Often referred to as a civil war, the conflict in Rwanda was in many ways a war of liberation. Although the Tutsi minority enjoyed privileged status during Belgian colonial rule, the Hutu majority gained power after independence. In 1990, the mainly Tutsi-based Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) invaded Uganda. French support, which included direct military intervention, enabled the Hutu government to resist the invasion. Subsequent peace talks resulted in the Arusha Accords, which provided a framework for power-sharing in government. The assassination of President Juvenal Habyrimana in April 1994 triggered the start of genocide and the withdrawal of United Nations peacekeeping forces. The well-trained and disciplined RPF, led by the able Major General Paul Kagame, defeated the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), but the exodus of large numbers of Hutu refugees to neighboring Zaire destabilized the region as the conflict spread to neighboring countries. . See also Cabral, Amı´lcar Lopes; Cold War; Machel, Samora; military organizations; Mondlane, Eduardo Chivambo; Mugabe, Robert.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbott, Peter and Philip Botham. Modern African Wars, Vol 1: Rhodesia, 1965–1980. London: Osprey Publishing, 1986. Abbott, Peter and Manuel Ribeiro Rodrigues. Modern African Wars, Vol. 2: Angola and Mocambique, 1961-1974. London: Osprey Publishing, 1988. Edgerton, Robert B. Africa's Armies: From Shame to Infamy: A History from 1791 to the Present. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2002. Finnegan, William. A complicated war: the tearing up of Mozambique. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. Heitman, Helmoed-Romer. Modern African Wars, Vol. 3: South West Africa. London: Osprey Publishing, 1991. Turner, John W. Continent on Fire: The Insurgency Wars in Africa, 1960 to the Present. London: Arms and Armor Press, 1998. FRANK KALESNIK

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The nature of national and international warfare changed significantly in the post-WWII era and can be settled in overlapping phases. In the immediate post-war period, wars of national liberation from colonial rule were the main form, often involving internal settlements between different national liberation movements. Although most colonies gained independence through legislation and negotiation, Algeria (1954–1962), Angola (1963–1974), Mozambique (1964–1974), Portuguese Guinea (present-day Bissau, 1960–1974), South West Africa (present-day Namibia, 1964–1989), Rhodesia (South) (present-day Zimbabwe, 1972–1980), and Eritrea (1960–1991). Although the conflict was a nationalist war of independence, the nationalists often enjoyed the support of the Eastern Bloc (Communist) and Western colonial powers to which they belonged. The second phase involved internal conflicts, often over rivalries within the nationalist movement, and also a series of low-level interstate wars. The former include Congo (1960–1964, 1978, 1979), Rwanda (1963–1964, 1990–1994), Uganda (1966, 1981–1987), Nigeria (1967–1970), Burundi (1972, 1990–2006), Sudan (1955-1972, 1983-2005), Angola (1974-2005), Mozambique (1974-1994), Morocco (1974-1991), Chad (1980-1987, 1996), Congo (Brazzaville, 1994, 1997-1999). ). ) ), Liberia (1989–2003), Sierra Leone (1991–2000), Senegal (1974–2005), Congo (Zaire Succession War, 1996–2006) and Somalia (since 1990). These conflicts often found support for one side or the other in East and West, although both sides of the Cold War were also active in preventing the conflicts from spiraling out of control. Interstate wars between Morocco and Algeria (1963, 1979), Mali and Upper Volta (present-day Burkina Faso, 1963, 1974, 1982), Somalia and Ethiopia (1963, 1979), Nigeria and Cameroon (1972, 1981, 1996), Chad and Libya (1985–1987), Chad and Nigeria (1982), and Eritrea and Ethiopia (1998–2000), generally over disputed borders and no border changes. In fact, such wars were part of the mostly diplomatic process of “Africanization” of colonially inherited borders.

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Domestic consolidation and state failure have left behind the structural and territorial causes of conflict of the post-Cold War era and have become a growing category of domestic conflicts with their own sources that can be characterized as cycles of necessity, belief, and greed. . The cycle begins with greed, not as a reason for rebellion, but as a trait of rulers. By privatizing and hoarding often scarce (but sometimes complete) government resources, rulers are taking their time at rock bottom and depriving their people of expected government benefits; Sani Abacha from Nigeria, Mobutu Sese Seko from Zaire, Gnassingbe Eyadema from Togo, Siaka Stevens from Sierra Leone and then Joseph Momoh, Samuel Doe from Liberia and then Charles Taylor, Denis Sassou Nguesso from Congo-Brazzaville, Hassan al-Bashir from Sudan , Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, Mohammed Siad Barre of Somalia, the military junta of Algeria and Eduardo Dos Santos of Angola are the most egregious examples. The uneasiness that arises from widespread deprivation (need) soon morphs into a sense of deprivation or discrimination (belief) spearheaded by insurgents trying to solidify their allegiance. Typical and diverse examples of the above states in the 1990s and 2000s are the Ogoni protest, the Bayamulenge, the South and West Togolese opposition, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF), the National Liberation Front of the Peoples (NPFL) and then its various oppositions, Congolese opposition militias, Sudanese people's liberation movements and insurgencies of Pelz and Beji, the Zimbabwean Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Somali clan militias and then the Islamists of the Courts Council, the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) and the Army (AIS) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). At this stage, the creed, the conflict is potentially manageable in a number of ways: victory for one side or the other, or negotiations between the two about a new political system. Rare examples of the former include Sassou-Nguesso's dominance over his opponents in 2000 and the Angola National Liberation Front (FLNA) victory over Jonas Savimbi's UNITA in 2003. An even rarer example of a negotiated settlement is the process of gradual development of state reconstruction in Congo since the 1999 Lusaka Accords and the 2002 Pretoria Accords, which led to a new constitution and then national elections in 2006.

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However, when an outcome proves difficult to achieve because neither side wins or loses, the insurgency entrenches itself in its "liberated" territory and turns its efforts to making money, initiating its own phase of greed. Militias in the Kivus in eastern Congo prospecting for gold and coltan, the RUF in Sierra Leone prospecting for diamonds, the NPFL during Taylor's war in Liberia prospecting for diamonds and timber, the Groupes Islamic Armed (GIA) in Algeria attacking neighborhoods and UNITA living on Diamonds in Angola provide examples of civil wars mired in indecisiveness that have turned into lucrative schemes for rebel leaders. It is even more difficult to lead this phase to anything other than a complete reversal of fate on the one hand and victory on the other. Such protracted wars weaken the government side and even undermine the legitimate grievance aspect of insurgencies; the country will emerge from the conflict – if it does – even more devastated and impoverished. Research shows that such wars leave the country vulnerable to a return of conflict within half a decade. However, such civil war cycles do not remain in the devastated state; They tend to become regional conflicts as the predatory government and its civil war create a power vacuum that attracts interference and intervention from neighbors. The neighbors are pursuing their own geostrategic interests in the conflict, but are also joining forces to earn money together. Regional theaters of conflict span much of Africa. In West Africa, after the collapse of the Liberian state in the late 1980s, the conflict spread east to Ivory Coast and spread west to Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau and Casamance in Senegal and threatened over Guinea in 2005 and awaited the death . its president. Outside the immediate zone of conflict, Burkina Faso and Nigeria were predatory states working in the arena. In Central Africa, the 1994 collapse of Rwanda and Burundi drew the interest of Zaire, and then the 1996 collapse of Zaire brought Uganda and Rwanda to the eastern provinces of Congo, Burundi and Tanzania to the southeast, Angola to the west, and Zimbabwe. .. to Shaba in the south in the ensuing ten-year War of the Zairian Succession. In the Horn of Africa, a longstanding conflict within Ethiopia drew the attention of Sudan and Somalia as neighbors supported each other in subversive movements; Independence of Eritrea in 1993, the Eritrean-Ethiopian War 1998-2000

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(the costliest border war in African history) and the collapse of Somalia in the 1990s and early 2000s removed the southern portion of the conflict arena, leaving Sudan as the main focus of the conflict arena in the 2000s, with Libya, Chad, Central Africa and Uganda as neighbors involved . Two other theaters of regional conflict were on the wane since the mid-1990s: in southern Africa, where civil wars in Mozambique and Angola related to the civil war in South Africa, all three ended between 1994 (South Africa, Mozambique) and 2004 (Angola). ). North Africa, on the brink of a resurgence in the Sahara War, which had been dormant since 1982 and under a formal United Nations (UN) ceasefire since 1991, kept the conflict between Morocco and Algeria and its neighbors diplomatic. COOPERATION IN CONFLICTS

These wars imposed an enormous waste of resources and productive capacities on the countries involved and destroyed the opportunities for regional economic cooperation. The regional cooperation organizations promoted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) in the 1970s and 1980s initially had to resort to security in order to create even the basic prerequisites for economic cooperation. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), which had played an important role in attempting to end the first civil war in Liberia, played a role in ending the second civil war following the election of Charles Taylor in 1997 and also in control of the civil war in Sierra Leone before being drawn into the United Nations' ultimately successful effort. ECOWAS also intervened in Guinea-Bissau and played a diplomatic role in ending the civil war in Côte d'Ivoire before giving priority to the African Union (AU). The Intergovernmental Agency for Development (IGAD) was the formal sponsor of the mediation that finally ended Sudan's second civil war in 2004, but failed to deal with the 2004-2005 Darfur genocide. The Southern African Development Community (SADC) played a conflicting role in the War of the Zaire Succession, with three of its members (Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia) providing military support to Congo and aligning itself with it as a military alliance, but

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Organization sponsored the negotiations that led to the Lusaka and Pretoria Accords. A regional peace process, first under Julius Nyerere and then under Nelson Mandela, gradually brought peace and the restoration of a functioning government to Burundi during the first half of the 2000s Behind these efforts by regional organizations, the African Union (AU), a post-2000 renewed version of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), is attempting to play a supporting role. The AU deployed 7,000 troops to Darfur in 2005 with limited effectiveness. Other mediators withdrew to support South African President Thabo Mbeki's mediation efforts in the 2005 conflict in Ivory Coast. Elsewhere, the UN played the supporting role by providing troops through the UN Armed Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL). the UN Mission in Ivory Coast (MONICI) and the UN Mission in Congo (MONUC). As these activities show, at a formal level, regional organizations can effectively coordinate and control neighborly pressures on civil conflicts; but they are unable to stop local predators, which often affects the very members who are part of the reconciliation effort. Rebuilding the embattled state, its dysfunctional economy, and its traumatized society has proven to be a daunting and tedious task. The AU is a useful intermediary when conflicting interests between neighbors in the conflict itself affect its objectivity and effectiveness. The level of last resort, the UN, is also needed to legitimize the effective intervention of external security forces and then provide technical and financial assistance in state building. Even if these efforts continue, the gaping wounds in the African landscape left by failed states and civil wars in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ivory Coast, Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Angola and Zimbabwe Legacy of backwardness Development and vulnerability to new civil conflicts. See also Boundary, Colonial and Modern; Cold War; Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS); ethnicity; Eyadema, Gnassingbe (Eenne); Mandela, Nelson; Mbeki, Thabo; Military Organizations: National armies; Mobuto Sese Seko;

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Mugabe, Roberto; Nyerere, Julius Camp; Organization of African Unity; postcolonialism; Sassou Nguesso, Denis; Savimbi, Jonas; Taylor, Charles Gahnhay; United Nations. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Arnson, Cynthia, and I. William Zartman, eds. Rethinking the War Economy: The Intersection of Need, Belief, and Greed. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. Collier, Paul, et al. Breaking the Conflict Trap: Civil War and Development Policy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. I. WILLIAM ZARTMAN

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WATER AND IRRIGATION. For thousands of years, Africans have used rivers and associated wetlands as a source of water for drinking and for agriculture and/or for hunting, fishing, grazing and gathering. Most major rivers in Africa have associated flood plains, for example Senegal and Niger in West Africa, the Zambezi, Rufiji, Tana and Jubba rivers in South and East Africa, and the Nile. Larger areas of flood plains or interior deltas occur in the Niger off Mali, the Kafue in Zambia, and the Chari-Logone system in Cameroon. These are often associated with permanent swamp systems, for example in the Southern White Nile, in Botswana's Okavango Delta and in the Shire River, which drains Lake Malawi. Almost all of these environments have long histories of human habitation and of economic production and trade based on agriculture, fishing and livestock. In semi-arid Africa, wetlands have strategic importance far beyond its borders. The economic values of rivers depend on the interconnection of geomorphological, hydrological and ecological processes. The aim of this entry is to describe the importance of African wetlands to the local economy and the ways in which modern development has transformed wetlands and their use. Most rivers in Africa exhibit strong seasonal flood patterns, with high discharges in the wet season and extensive flooding and low discharges in the dry season. During the flood period, water spills over the banks of the river causing widespread flooding

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Okavango Delta (Botswana), one of Africa's great wetlands. The delta is fed by the Okavango River, which rises in the Angolan highlands and flows more than 1,000 miles through Namibia into Botswana. It floods seasonally, beginning around January in the north and July in the south.

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the surrounding areas. The flooded area then subsides until the dry season, when some rivers can become pools of water. In the Senegal Valley, about 1,930 square miles are flooded during high water levels and about 193 square miles during the dry season. On the Kafue Flats in Zambia, the flooded area ranges from 10,810 square miles in the wet season to 5,019 square miles in the dry season. In the complex Logone-Chari floodplains south of Lake Chad (the Yae're floodplains), flooding covers about 34,750 square miles, of which only 7 percent remains wet at low tides. RIVER WETLANDS AND AGRICULTURE

Floodland farmers often utilize both wetlands and adjacent drylands, taking advantage of the economic opportunities that both offer. Dryland and wetland crops require labor at different times of the year, and by leveraging the two environments, farmers can minimize labor shortages while spreading risk. This is how floodplain agriculture is practiced in the West African Sahel zone

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Techniques include both rising flood farming (sowing before the tide arrives) and falling flood farming, which utilizes the residual soil moisture left behind by receding waters. Farmers in flood plains typically have a good knowledge of the ecological requirements of crops, flood patterns and different land types. This agriculture is ancient: West African rice was domesticated 3,000 years ago in the inland Niger Delta and is still widespread. In several areas of Africa, irrigation systems emerged long before the introduction of Western irrigation technology and formal government development plans of the 20th century. However, the scale and sophistication of indigenous irrigation was not recognized until the last few decades of the 20th century, particularly in the large wetlands that dot Africa's vast arid regions, such as Mali's Inner Niger Delta or the Valley of Senegal. These flood culture systems could be technically excluded by a strict definition of irrigation, but they are

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It probably makes more sense to adopt a loose definition that includes them with gravity irrigation systems (e.g. the East African Rift Valley furrow irrigation systems and various forms of water harvesting) and systems dependent on them (bucket, shade, animal). electricity or pump). The extent of small-scale informal irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa is not known precisely, but a study published in 1986 by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Investment Center found that it accounted for 47 percent of the irrigated area in sub-Saharan Africa. Saharan Africa (9,266 square miles). In about half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, more than 75% of the total irrigated area was classified as small-scale or informal. Since the 1980s, African farmers have built new small-scale irrigation systems in many places, some using tried-and-tested methods and some using new technology (e.g. tubular wells and petrol pumps in northern Nigeria). No large-scale surveys have been conducted in the 21st century, but the expansion of peri-urban irrigated commercial horticulture in many countries suggests that the area of informal irrigation has increased, not decreased. River meadows are not only important for farmers. Pastoralists also use wetlands seasonally, focusing on land that becomes seasonally flooded when the surrounding grasslands dry up. A relatively small wetland that provides grazing at critical times of the year and therefore a much larger area can support pastoralists for the remainder of the year. In the central valley of Senegal, Fulani herdsmen move their livestock away from the floodplain during the rainy season, but return to farming when the floodwaters recede from the valley in the dry season. Due to its flooding, the inland Niger Delta can support more than 1 million cattle and 2 million sheep and goats, 20 percent of the total in Mali. Fisheries are also important to the economies of many African floodplains. The FAO estimates that there are more than 60,000 fishermen on the Niger, who collectively produce 130,000 tons of fish per year, 75% of which comes from the Niger Inland Delta. The life cycle of many fish species is linked to seasonal flood regimes. Many species of fish undertake a lateral migration during the flood period in order to breed in the warm, shallow and nutrient-rich waters of the floodplain. When the tide recedes, the fish return

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main channel of the river and eventually to permanent ponds where they can be caught. If the flood patterns change, playback will pause. RIVER COURSE PLANNING

Until the 20th century, the only large-scale hydrological developments in Africa were in the Nile Valley. Within sub-Saharan Africa, only Sudan had developed irrigation on any scale prior to the 1960s. Most of the development of rivers in Africa has taken place since the 1960s. Major engineering work began on the Nile in the 19th century. Canals and dikes were built in the delta area and north of Cairo to allow for perennial irrigated crops in Egypt. The first Aswan High Dam was built on the Nile in 1902 and intensified in 1912. Attention then turned to the upper part of the Nile. Many plans and dams were proposed on the Blue Nile in 1925 and 1937; the Aswan High Dam was raised again in 1934. Meanwhile, Egypt and Sudan had signed the Nile Water Agreement, which divided rivers between the two countries. The first Nile Water Agreement in 1929 allocated 48 billion cubic meters to Egypt and only 4 billion to Sudan. By the time of the second accord in 1959, it had been calculated that there was more water to be distributed and 25.5 billion cubic yards were allocated to Sudan while 72.6 billion cubic yards were allocated to Egypt. Various attempts to plan for water resource development were made in other parts of Africa during the colonial period (e.g. the Mission d'Amenagement du Senegal in 1938), but international planning dates mainly from the 1960s and 1970s, when institutions such as the Organization for the Development of the Senegal River (Organization pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Se'ne'gal, OMVS) were founded by Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. Other international river basins subject to international planning are the Zambezi, where the Central African Power Corporation built dams at Kariba (between Zimbabwe and Zambia) and Cahora Bassa (Mozambique). National river basin planning systems have also been put in place, the most extensive in Nigeria. The Niger Delta Development Board was established in 1960 and the Niger Dams Authority in 1961. In 1973, the federal government of Nigeria established the first two River Basin Development Authorities (RBDAs) in the arid north of the country (in Sokoto-Rima and Lake Basin). Chad),

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and these were followed by another seven RBDAs in 1976. By the end of the decade there were eleven RBDAs, a number that increased to eighteen in 1984. Nigeria's RBDAs were multi-functional semi-governmental agencies with functions ranging from dam building and irrigation to water crossing. from supply, environmental protection and fisheries to agricultural processing, seed propagation and rainfed agriculture. Most initially focused on dams and irrigation systems. Dams, used for hydroelectric power generation and irrigation, are the most significant results of river basin planning in Africa. Almost all major African rivers were dammed in at least one place in the 1960s, when African states gained independence, with a number of grand schemes. Both tributaries of the Nile are dammed and the dam at Aswan controls the flow of the combined river within Egypt. In the Zambezi basin there are dams on the Kafue at Kafue Gorge and Itezhitezhi and on the Zambezi itself at Kariba and Cabora Bassa. In West Africa, the Volta is dammed at Akosombo, the Bandama at Kossou (Ivory Coast) and Senegal at Manantali and Diama. There are numerous dams in the Niger Basin (e.g. Bakolori on the Sokoto and Lagdo on the Benue, and Se'lingue', Sotuba, Markala, Karamsasso, Kainji and Jebba on the Niger itself). THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF DAMING

Dams are designed to change the environment for the benefit of humans. They hold back seasonal flood flows for later use (to generate electricity year-round or provide water for irrigation in the dry season). The implications of this restructuring of flood patterns are complex in detail but simple in principle. A new reservoir is being built upstream of the dam. Land is lost (often highly productive floodland) and people's homes and economic infrastructure are flooded. A significant number of people need to be relocated (e.g. 85,000 at the Akosombo Dam in Ghana and 57,000 at the Kainji Dam in Nigeria, both in the 1960s). Resettlement costs include both the actual financial costs (surveys, compensation, reconstruction and evacuation) and the less tangible human costs of resettlement stress. The ecology of such lakes is complex, but when conditions are right there can sometimes be economic benefits, such as for the fishing industry and tourism on Lake Kariba.

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The downstream effects of dam construction are more complex and subtle. Many different aspects of the floodplain economy are affected. Dams affect the magnitude and timing of downstream currents. Flood peaks are smaller, although flood flows can last longer. The exact effect depends on the size of the dam and reservoir and the purpose of the project. Dams used to store irrigation water for the dry season are often filled early in the rainy season before the water is released downstream. Such dams can change the regime of a river from a river with a short flood season to a river with more moderate flows throughout the year. Dams tend to reduce size and delay flood peaks. They also make the timing of floods at the whim of dam managers, making it difficult for downstream farmers to predict or understand water flows. Changes in the natural hydrology of rivers affect the ecology of floodplains and thus the ability of farmers, ranchers and fishermen to manage their land and resources effectively. Significant negative economic impacts on floodplain agriculture can be observed in many African rivers, particularly in the major West African floodplain rivers. irrigation in Africa

The first large-scale irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa was the Gezira Irrigation System, begun in Sudan in 1925 using water from the Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile. The area of the plan was more or less doubled between 1958 and 1962 when the Managil Extension and Roseires Dam were built. The early 21st century project covers approximately 3,088 square miles. Although critics have pointed out many problems of mismanagement at Gezira, the plan was deemed a success by the British and French colonial governments and served as a model for large-scale irrigation development elsewhere in Africa. For example, the French colonial government used the Gezira system as a model for the Office du Niger, which was developed in the inner Niger Delta (in the area that became Mali) in the 1940s and was intended to cover 3,861 square miles of land. Since independence, irrigation has been an important feature of agricultural development in many African countries. In Kenya for example

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The World Bank funded the construction of the Bura Project, Kenya's largest irrigation system, on the Tana River in 1975 for the National Irrigation Board. In Nigeria, massive investments in large-scale irrigation systems were made by the River Basin Development Authorities in the 1970s. Irrigation was viewed as an essential means of coping with stagnant agricultural productivity and rising food imports (particularly wheat and rice) and as a means of harnessing rising oil revenues. The plans were highly ambitious. The Fourth Development Plan (1981-1985) stipulated that 5,405 square miles of land would be irrigated in the future and that a quarter of the 8.9 billion naira (US$5.24 billion) allocated to agriculture be invested in irrigation should be. . There were similar stories elsewhere. In its Firth Plan (1977-1981), Senegal earmarked almost half of its agricultural budget for irrigation. However, actual rates of irrigation expansion have been slower than expected in many countries. FAO data suggests that the total irrigated area in sub-Saharan Africa increased by about 671 square miles per year between 1965 and 1974 and by 157,000 hectares between 1974 and 1982. In the late 1980s, less than 606 square miles were actually irrigated in Nigeria. In the vast majority of countries, a small part of the cultivated area is irrigated; even in Sudan only 15 percent of arable land is irrigated, in Mali 9 percent, in Mauritania 6 percent and in Senegal and Nigeria 3 percent. In retrospect, the large-scale government irrigation systems of that era had a poor economic record. Projects like Kenya's Bura program were abandoned, and those in northern Nigeria could not cover their operating costs (let alone construction costs). Key problems included high capital costs, unsuitable and complex technology, poor project planning and management, a lack of trained staff, and a lack of basic research on the environment and local economy. Irrigation systems also suffered from more widespread problems of poor national infrastructure and communications, poor public sector management performance (including corruption), and the ineffective top-down approach that prevailed in African development planning. In addition, the terrain, soil quality and precipitation variability pose significant technical problems.

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Irrigation Restrictions in Africa. In 1994, the World Bank estimated its experience with irrigation credits that the investment cost per square mile of irrigation in Africa was 15 times higher than in low-income countries in South Asia. THE FUTURE OF IRRIGATION IN AFRICA

Despite this poor record, growing urban and rural populations, crop shortages, drought problems and seasonal rainfall suggest that irrigation will continue to have a place in Africa's agricultural planning. In many countries there is little potential to expand arable land. Therefore, an increase in agricultural production must be achieved by increasing the yields of existing arable land. This can be achieved through crop breeding, improved agricultural techniques (e.g. manure, mulch, agroforestry), increased use of agrochemicals (e.g. inorganic fertilizers and pesticides in fields and storage), and irrigation where appropriate. Although national government planners and aid organizations continue to advocate for irrigation development, it is not entirely clear how this irrigation will be achieved. Several experiments have been conducted with Farmer Managed Irrigation Systems (FMIS), which attempt to "hand off" management of inefficient government systems to groups of farmers. The planners hope that by making farmers themselves accountable for water supply, irrigation planning and service delivery to harness farmers' skills and entrepreneurial spirit, more economically efficient systems will be created at low cost to government. This strategy reflects the broader attempt to reduce government intervention in agricultural markets under the umbrella of structural adjustment. Irrigation has expanded in two agricultural sectors during the turn of the millennium. The first is found on large commercial farms that typically provide high quality produce for international markets. The classic example is cut flower production in countries like Kenya, where large plastic greenhouses and extensive use of pesticides and fertilizers allow for a fully controlled growing environment where artificial irrigation is part of a precision farming system. One of the attractions of these farming systems is the availability of cheap labor from the surrounding impoverished communities of small rain-fed farmers. The other growth sector was micro-scale irrigated agriculture.

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The Pongolapoort Dam on the perennial Pongola River in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The river's floodplain has long been used by the Tembe-Thonga for farming, fishing, and grazing. The river was dammed for irrigation in the late 1960s. However, the area near the Mozambique border has never attracted white farmers as settlers, although a small irrigation system for African farmers was developed in the 1970s. ªJASON LAURE´

of vegetables and other high value crops, often adjacent to or even within urban areas. Such “indigenous irrigation” is part of the thriving informal sector in African economies. THE FUTURE OF RIVER CATCHMENT DEVELOPMENT

The extensive scope of river basin plans proposed in the past reflects the geography of the continent, the lack of good dam sites, and the large distances separating dams from potential water users. They also reflect the expansive vision of expatriate planners (colonial government officials or contemporary engineering consultants) who tended to see Africa as a blank drawing board on which to build. Large-scale programs are still being proposed for Africa without considering the complexity of the floodplain environment and the economy. In 1978, construction began on the Jonglei Canal in South Sudan, designed for 26 million people

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cubic meters of water per day around the swamps of the south to irrigate Egypt. Perhaps coincidentally, given the likely sudden environmental impact on the wetlands and their people, work was halted in 1984 as a result of renewed civil war in South Sudan. There are voices calling for an end. There have also been proposals to channel water from the Ubangui River (in the Zaire Basin) north to the headwaters of the Chari system and hence to Lake Chad and the arid Sahel through a series of dams, tunnels, pipelines and canals. Such plans reflect the megalomania that sometimes seems to afflict African development planners. At the other end of the scale, there is interest in using dams to release artificial floods to downstream users and to recreate some version of natural flood regimes. The idea was proposed in the 1980s and tested on the Pongolo River in Kawzulu Natal, South Africa

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Senegal and Waza-Logone in Cameroon. Such strategies are exciting, but technically and politically demanding. Understanding of the potential environmental and social impacts of dams has grown tremendously since large dam construction began in Africa in the 1960s. The World Commission on Dams produced a report in 2000 and new approaches to dam planning and design designed to minimize damage and maximize benefits. River basin planning in Africa still faces formidable challenges. These relate to environmental complexity (particularly the problem of annual variations in precipitation and drought), the lack of African research and experience (both the lack of knowledge and the lack of people in African institutions with this knowledge), and problems of governability and insecurity . Major river basin development projects in Africa in the second half of the 20th century had mixed success, creating and solving problems. Most observers have concluded that the future should lie in smaller projects that are carefully developed with local needs and ecological diversity in mind. However, large projects retain their appeal for planners who are willing to change. The future is balanced between those who want green river basin development and those who want to change it. See also agriculture; modern desertification; ecosystems; Energy; Niger River; The nil; production strategies; World Bank. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, W. M. Wasting the Rain: Rivers, People, and Planning in Africa. London: Earthscan, 1992. Moris, J.R. and DJ. Thom. Irrigation Development in Africa: Lessons from Experience. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. Scudder, T. The Future of Large Dams: Dealing with the Social, Environmental, and Political Costs. London: Earthscan, 2005. Waterbury, J. The Nile Basin: National Determinants of Collective Action. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002. World Commission on Dams. Dams and development: A new framework for decision-making. London: Earthscan, 2000. WILLIAM M ADAMS

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WEST AFRICA, FOREST REGION, HISTORY FROM (1000s TO 1880s). The West African rainforest stretches along the coast from Guinea Bissau to Cameroon, except for the Dahomey Gap, an area between eastern Ghana and western Nigeria where drier forest savannahs reach the coast. The boundaries of inland forest vegetation have historically changed with changes in precipitation patterns and, to a lesser extent, with human activities. The boundary between forest and savannah is thought to have fluctuated by as much as 124 miles over the past millennium. The West African climate experienced a dry spell from about 1100 to about 1500 that caused the northern forest edge to recede southward. A brief rainy season from 1500 to 1630 was followed by drier periods that lasted into the late 19th century. These climatic fluctuations set the stage for important changes in forest peoples' relationships with the savannah. The relative humidity of the forest fostered a disease-hostile environment that made human life difficult and led to pro-natalist values in the agricultural societies developed there. Along with much of the surrounding savannah forest, the forest was home to malaria and the tsetse fly, a vector of trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) that infects humans and is fatal to horses, camels, donkeys, sheep and all others. but a breed of cattle. Though a barrier to local livestock farming, the tsetse helped protect forest dwellers from the domination of savannah horse-warrior societies. Because of the difficulty of clearing land in forested areas, settlement tended to occur later than settlement of the savannah, and the increase in human population in the forest was inevitably related to the spread of iron clearing technology. that occurred in the first millennium AD or earlier. Small settlements grew up around cleared land, which were only gradually expanded; in some areas these cities

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Political units remained the standard unit of government, although peoples over a wide area could share cultural and linguistic habits. Trade with outsiders initially oriented these jungle peoples towards the savannah and, with the advent of European shipping connections and traders shortly before 1500, increasingly towards the coast. They produced cola, spices, gold, ivory and slaves for trade in the north and abroad. Communities and sometimes states developed both within the forest and along the boundaries separating the forest from the savannah to the north and the ocean to the south. But it was the communities and border states that bridged the physical and cultural differences between the jungle peoples on the one hand and their trading partners in the savannah or in Europe on the other hand, and became important intermediaries between the jungle peoples and the savannah peoples. The history of the forest peoples is best understood by considering three distinct subregions that are now parts of (1) Nigeria, (2) Ghana and to a lesser extent southeastern Côte d'Ivoire, and (3) Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea . NIGERIAN FOREST

The lower Niger River Basin was home to important states even before the year 1000. East of the Niger, the Igbo-speaking peoples developed the Nri civilization, which flourished in the 9th and 10th centuries AD and was in decline by the year 1000, while the Spanish-speaking Yoruba city-state of Ife was being built west of the river by this time had been. Ife, the founding city-state of a series of urban polities scattered across the forest and eastern Dahomey Gap, was the most powerful Yoruba state by the 15th century. Benin, situated between Ife and the Niger, grew in the 14th century and reached its peak in the mid-15th century. The forest dwellers' fondness for the staple yam, which grew best on virgin soil, required a concentration of the population to clear the land and encouraged long-distance trade links within the region. Goods shipped north via the intermediate states of Igala and Nupe were partially bartered for copper, aiding local brass smelting technology. Exceptional cast brass and terracotta works from these cultures have been added to the museum collections. The forested states of Nigeria were characterized by political systems with rulers with religious convictions.

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as well as a secular authority balanced by chiefs representing the leading families. Women were politically important and notoriously female rulers, particularly in Yoruba states, although power was more often divided between male and female offices. Portuguese seafarers opened trade contacts with the Benin Empire in 1485. For more than a century, cotton cloth, a women's trade, was the most common export item from Benin to these Europeans, who traded it for gold along the coast of present-day Ghana. This pattern of Europeans trading African goods along the coast continued until the establishment of sugar plantations in the Caribbean in the mid-17th century. These developments in America were followed by a massive expansion of the slave trade along the West African coast. Over time, Atlantic trade has impacted local production, impacted the region's demographics, and influenced the rise and fall of numerous states. New imports included cowrie shells, used as currency, weapons, alcohol, textiles, and tobacco, while important New World crops transformed agriculture, as maize and cassava were grown as staple crops alongside yams. The effects of firearms in warfare were limited, as the most effective warfare was the use of machetes, javelins, and clubs in hand-to-hand combat. It was only with the introduction of rifles and the first repeating rifles in the second half of the 19th century that European armed forces acquired the technology to achieve colonial conquest. Each of Nigeria's jungle states and communities responded differently to the expansion of the Atlantic slave trade. The state of Benin sold slaves at times well into the 19th century, but in addition to slaves it produced and exported a variety of goods, most of which were prisoners of war. In Igbo country in eastern Niger, village-level politics dominated the political culture, but this did not prevent local communities from being active in the slave trade. For example, through the manipulation of an oracle, Arochukwu, the Aro Igbo were able to channel large numbers of people, rightly or wrongly convicted of a range of crimes, into the slave trade. Along the coast and in the Niger Delta, in places like Bonny and Calabar, warlike intermediate city-states arose to control access inland and thrived on the slave trade.

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To the west and northwest of the Nigerian jungle, the more open and accessible Dahomey Gap facilitated slave raiding, which in turn led to the consolidation of scattered settlements into states even as slave trade routes through the area developed into coastal runoffs. Allada already existed when the Europeans arrived along the coast and became both a slave trading kingdom and a major slave export port, thriving until its destruction by the landlocked kingdom of Dahomey in 1724. Dahomey appears to have formed sometime in the 17th century, the amalgamation of village communities into a state that avoided most raids from Allada and other neighbors. Dahomey itself came under Oyo in 1730, the northernmost of the Yoruba city-states nestled between the forests and the Hausa Muslim states on the savannah. Oyo's military successes were based in part on the fact that it was in an area that permitted the use of horses. After building up a cavalry force in the early 18th century, Oyo raided the adjacent regions to the southwest, established tributary relationships with raided and conquered peoples, and used his successful conquest of Dahomey to sell his prisoners of war in the war trade. with trade routes passing through the Dahomey Gap. At the end of the 18th century, Oyo itself was destabilized by domestic politics and the effects of the jihadist movement in the north, and civil war broke out. The resulting southward movement of people disrupted both forest peoples and forest savannah peoples, leading to the establishment of new Yoruba city-states such as Ibadan and recurrent wars between them in the 19th century. These struggles, in turn, led to a huge increase in slave exports, particularly to Cuba. THE GOLD COAST AND NEIGHBORING AREAS

The exploitation of the inland gold deposits, which began sometime after the year 1000, expanded with the opening of foreign trade in the late 15th century along the beaches west of the Volta, which Europeans later called the Costa Dorada. Local coastal rulers kept Europeans out of the interior, but allowed them to build stone "castles" in exchange for rent and royalties. Unique along the West African coast and important heritage sites in the early 21st century, these castles were built in the 16th and 18th centuries

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17th century by Portuguese, Dutch, English, Danish and German trading companies. In the heavily forested interior of southern Ghana, settlement was sparse in the period 1000-1500. Gold sold to Europeans paid for the purchase of slaves acquired both north of the forest and from the Portuguese needed to clear forested areas for large-scale human settlements. High-calorie crops of New World corn and cassava fed these workers, who were brought from other places and later assimilated into the Akan lineages. A number of city-centric states developed as populations grew around trade networks. As in the Nigerian jungle, women played a prominent role in politics, and each state was ruled by a male and female ruler. Political consolidation and the growth of larger states began in the 17th century. This often violent process culminated in a powerful Asante state established at the end of the century as a confederation based in Kumasi, the inland capital. In less than 100 years, Asante grew into an empire that encompassed much of present-day Ghana. In the 18th century, the sale of slaves to Europeans and the purchase of slaves in the northern savannahs increased dramatically, while gold was kept internally as a sign of the ruling classes' success. Meanwhile, coastal trading centers developed Creole cultures from the mix of European merchants and local women. UPPER GUINEA FORESTS OF LIBERIA, SIERRA LEONE AND GUINEA

Similar Creole communities, formed by early Portuguese interaction with native women who had access to inland trade networks, were important on the Guinean coast from the 15th century. However, connections to the interior, particularly to the Mali Empire and its savannah successors of the 16th and 17th centuries, shaped Upper Guinean forest cultures in important ways. Long before the era of European contact, the jungle peoples of Guinea had developed techniques for growing wet rice, Oryza glaberrima, which had been domesticated in the northern inland Niger Delta and became their staple crop. The forests of Guinea also produced Malagueta pepper, ivory, iron, woods such as mahogany, and cam cam, which became an important dye.

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The difficulty of clearing habitable spaces in these forests encouraged village settlements, which persisted until the late 19th century, but regional cohesion arose through the development of "secret societies" in which all youth were initiated into separate-sex schools. Poro society for men and Sande/Bundu for women offered shared cultural experiences, avenues to exercise political power, and limited means to travel safely in the region. These initiation societies were based on models from the Mande peoples of the savannah. Like their neighbors to the north, the forest peoples practiced a form of outsider social integration whereby outsiders (male) were incorporated into the lines by receiving wives from local patrons as wives. An invasion of warriors known as the Mani in the mid-16th century and the movement into the territory of blacksmiths and traders who had been intermediaries between the forest and the Mande heartland in the savanna followed the opening of trade links with the Trade interests of Europeans and also contributed to the cultural integration of the coast of Lower Guinea. These invaders conquered the areas of what is now Sierra Leone and Liberia and were later culturally absorbed. The continued lack of security in the region led the Guinean forest peoples to develop significant defensive warfare skills and strategies unique to the region.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bay, Edna G. Women of the Leopard: Gender, Politics, and Culture in the Kingdom of Dahomey. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1998. Brooks, George. Owners and Strangers: Ecology, Society, and Trade in West Africa, 1000–1630. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993. Ehrlich, Christopher. The Civilizations of Africa: A History to 1800. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002. Hawthorne, Walter. Planting Rice and Harvesting Slaves: Transformations Along the Coast of Guinea-Bissau, 1400–1900. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2003. Iliffe, John. Africans: The Story of a Continent. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1995. EDNA G. BAY

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In the late 18th century, the British selected a site at the mouth of the Sierra Leone River for Freetown, intended as a colony for African peoples returning from the Western Hemisphere and later for victims of the slave trade, recaptured by the British army and were released there. Similarly, the American Colonization Society established Monrovia in modern Liberia as a haven for freed slaves from the United States wishing to return to Africa. The hinterland of Monrovia was recognized as an independent state of Liberia in 1847, while the adjacent hinterland of Freetown became the British protectorate of Sierra Leone in the late 19th century. Both colonies developed difficult relationships with the peoples of their respective interiors that lasted into the 20th century.

West Africa and the Sahara saw the rise and fall of several great empires from the mid-1st millennium to the first half of the 2nd millennium. Archeology is beginning to understand that the region's history is much more than the sum of its imperial achievements. Although they claimed large tracts of land, these early states often did not exercise direct control over the populations in their core areas. Empires relied heavily on largely self-governing communities within their lands, not the other way around. Most societies were small, based on local agriculture, and organized along ethnic and linguistic lines. Some had exaggerated political hierarchies, although most were fairly egalitarian. Postcolonial archaeological evidence suggests that these populations were far more dynamic than historians thought, as evidenced by the sophisticated and interconnected networks of ideas, goods, and power that flowed through the region. For example, for more than two thousand years (1000 BC – 1400 AD), Jenne'-Jeno, situated on the Niger River in present-day Mali, was an important metropolitan group, attracting trade from near and far and a high level of quality exhibited sociocultural sophistication.

See also agriculture; Creole; Niger River; Slave Trade: Atlantic, West Africa; slavery and subservient institutions; Textiles; Western Desert and Rims, History from (1000 BC to 600 AD).

The regional climate entered an 800-year wet phase around AD 300, improving conditions for agriculture. Iron processing was already common in West Africa around 500 BC. a common practice.

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political rivals were Takrur to the west along the Senegal River and Kanem on Lake Chad. The Ghana Empire lasted until the 11th century when it was challenged by a religious movement invading the Sahara.

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Nomadic and semi-nomadic groups of the Sahara and the desert grasslands herded cattle and used camels for trade and transport; their shore colleagues often fished. In the much lusher climates farther south, sedentary populations grew maize, millet, yams, walnuts, African rice, cotton, and tobacco, while also hunting, fishing, and herding. Since the first millennium B.C. C., supra-regional trade was already an important aspect of economic life. Caravans crossing the Sahara shipped slaves, spices, and ivory, and brought back copper, silver, and other goods. Among West African exports, the region was best known for its gold, which dominated markets in Europe and the Middle East. It was the resource that created and destroyed local empires. The first major West African power of the first millennium was the Ghanaian empire of the Soninké, which arose in Kumbi-Saleh in the third century. In the 9th century, Ghana controlled trade in Western Sahara, particularly gold and salt. Its elite classes were a mix of warriors and merchants, some claiming to be divine in nature. Ghana regional

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The Sahara began developing around 7,000 years ago and reached 2,000 BC. its current extent. As the environment became increasingly harsh, the population of the Sahara adapted or migrated. From the Atlantic to Lake Chad, the region's peoples represent a mixture of West African and North African influences, although genetic analyzes suggest population continuity from the Paleolithic (30,000 to 40,000 years ago). The arrival of the camel two millennia later helped the Sahrawis face the challenges of life in the great desert. It also helped facilitate trade between North and West Africa, the flagship enterprise of the Sahara. For many, the camel was and is a way of life. During the first and second millenniums there were three main trade routes across the Sahara. The northern and southern ports often changed, depending on which regional power could wield the most influence. In the northwest there was Sijilmasa (Morocco); in the north center Tlemcen (Algeria); and to the east Tunis (Tunisia) and Tripoli (Libya). An archipelago of southern ports stretched from the Atlantic to Lake Chad. The best known were Awdaghust, Tagdawst, Kumbi-Saleh and Walata (Mauritania); Jenne´, Timbuktu and Gao (Mali); Kano and Katsina (Nigeria); Takkeda and Agdez (Niger); and Lake Chad. Some of these, like Kumbi for Ghana and Gao-Timbuktu for Songhay, became seats of power for empires, giving rulers direct control over the flow of goods across the Sahara. The grassland belt stretching from Mauritania to the Red Sea, separating the desert from the savannah below, was given the name Alsahil (Sahel), meaning coast or coast in Arabic. The Islamic invasion of north-west Africa reached the Atlantic in 700 AD and soon crossed into Spain. The Saharawi population began to embrace Islam a century later; in the Sahel, the ruler of Gao converted in 1010, and an early Islamic state emerged in the Lake Chad region around this time. When Muslim sociologists and historiographers began studying this region, they started doing it

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Distinguishing between the “white” Arabs and the native Berbers of North Africa, both of whom are called Albidan, and the “black” peoples of the south of the Sahara, al-Sudan, from whom the entire sub-Saharan region of the desert would merit the name Sudan. Islamic scholars also identified three main indigenous groups living in the Sahara and in countries along the Mediterranean Sea. The Zenagah (alsanhajah in Arabic) were nomadic pastoralists in Western Sahara. Their homeland formed a triangle from today's southern Morocco across the Aır massif in Niger to the Senegal river. Zenagah's neighbors to the north were Masmuda in present-day Morocco and Zenata to the northeast, who controlled Sijilmasa as far as Libya. The Zenagah had three main branches, the Coastal Gudalah, the West-Central Lamtunah, and the Northeastern Massufah. While 20th-century French and Spanish colonial ethnography insisted that Saharan societies were divided into warrior, artisan, and slave castes, recent research has shown that these categories were regularly transgressed. It was Lamtunah Zenagah who would create one of the most spectacular, albeit short-lived, empires in all of North West African history. Around 1040, qAbdullah Ibn Yasin al-Gazuli, a supposedly strict Islamic teacher trained in southern Morocco, began evangelizing in the Sahara. Calling himself al-Murabitun (Almoravids), Ibn Yasin led an army of Lamtunah out of the desert around 1050. In 1090, Almoravid power was at its peak, having conquered Sijilmasa, established Marrakesh as a capital, occupied half of Spain, and subverted the Ghana Empire, chiefly under the leadership of Ibn Yasin's successors, qAbu Bakr ibn qUmar and Yusuf Tashfin. Controlling such a vast empire quickly became impossible. A Masmuda movement, al-muwahhidun (Almohads), arose to reconquer the northern part of the Almoravid lands; in the south, the Malian Empire received the other half. After returning to the brink of power, West Zenaga saw their country increasingly threatened by Arabs of Yemeni origin. These were the Awlad Hassan, a vast contingent of Bedouin raiders grouped around the six sons of Hassan ibn qAqil. Also known as Banu Hassan or Maqqil, this new region

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Their presence - what the Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun likened to a swarm of locusts - had been unleashed on North Africa by the Fatimid Caliphate of Egypt around 1050. Unable to cross the mountains of Morocco, these tribes moved south and took control of Sijilmasa in the fourteenth century. Century. Over the next three hundred years, the Banu Hassan conquered, subjugated, assimilated, and combined with the Zegana, resulting in the Arabic-speaking and Arabic-identifying populations of modern Mauritania and Western Sahara. Farther east, in lands untouched by Maqqil influence, the largely nomadic populations of Central Sahara retained their Berber language and social system. In the 21st century, these populations are collectively known as Tuareg (al-tawariq in Arabic) or Kel Tamashaq. THE GREAT ISLAMIC EMPIRES OF WEST AFRICA

The crumbling Almoravid Empire sparked inter-regional conflicts between Ghanaian communities in the 12th century. A breakaway faction, the Malinke, established their own kingdom on the upper Niger and a century later established the Malian Empire under the Keita dynasty (1230-1390), led first by Sundiata (or Sunjata) and then by his son, Mansa. wali. After gaining control of the main trading posts in the Sahara (Jenne', Gao and Timbuktu) with its large army, Mali had an immense influence on the gold markets of Europe and the Middle East. The peak of Mali's power was at the beginning of the 14th century during the reign of Mansa Musa, who doubled its territory. Under him, Islam became the official religion, aided by efforts to develop Islamic knowledge and practices (architecture and science) throughout West Africa. A devout Muslim, Mansa Musa traveled to Mecca in 1324, bringing with him so much gold that it drove world prices down when he visited Cairo. Sankore University was founded in Timbuktu in 1327 as a center for international higher education. However, Mansa Musa's successors were unable to maintain the empire as more and more trading centers declared their independence. Mali's empire disintegrated over the next two hundred years. The Hausa leader Yaji (1348-1385), who was the first to convert to Islam, challenged Malian hegemony from Kano. Other regional powers

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Sankore Mosque, Timbuktu, Mali. This mosque, built in the 15th century with mud and metal fittings, was also used as a university. Within 100 years of its construction, it housed one of the largest Arabic learning schools in the Islamic world. SANDRO VANNINI/CORBIS

these included Be'nin in southern Mali and Bornu north of Lake Chad. However, Kawkaw, along the Niger River south of Gao, began to exert the greatest influence. They eventually emerged as the Songhay Empire under the Sunni qAli (1464–1492) and conquered Timbuktu (1468) and Jenne' (1473). But it was under Askia Muhammed Ture´ (1493-1528) that Songhay reached its greatest extent, encompassing all the lands of the late Malian Empire. With Timbuktu as the main center of Islamic learning and trade, Songhay's influence was felt from Europe to China. Like the Almoravid and Mali empires, the Songhay leaders drew their legitimacy from Islam. Muhammed Ture', who converted and made Islam the religion of the empire, was later appointed caliph (deputy) to the Sharif of Mecca. After the death of Askia the Great, at the height of his power, questions of succession destabilized the empire.

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The 16th-century invasion from the north also undermined Songhay's power. In 1551 the Ottoman Empire conquered Tunisia and twenty years later pierced the Fezzan River in the Libyan Sahara, giving them influence on trade routes east of the Sahara outside of Songhay's control. Then, in 1591, the Moroccan Sultan Mulay al-Mansur, aided by the European powers, crossed the Sahara and attacked the Songhay forts in Gao and Timbuktu, first robbing them of their wealth and then leaving proxies to trade in the interest to manage from Fes. . There were also more subtle interventions in West African and Saharan affairs at this time. Throughout the 14th and 15th centuries, Portuguese ships explored, raided, landed and traded along the Atlantic coast of Africa, a foretaste of centuries to come. See also Fez; Gao; Ghana; Islam; jenne' and jenne'-jeno; cano; Lake Chad Societies; Mali; gentle muse; Niger River; The Sahara Desert; Sunni qAli; Timbuktu; Western Desert and Rims, History from (1000 BC to 600 AD).

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cavalli-Sforza, L. Luca; Paolo Menozzi; and Alberto Plaza. The history and geography of human genes. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994. Cleaveland, Timothy. Becoming Wal a ta: A story about the emergence and social transformation of the Sahara. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2002. Falola, Toyin. Key Events in African History: A Reference Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2002. Houtsma, Martijn Theodor, et al., eds. The Encyclopedia of Islam, vols. 3 and 6. Leiden and London: E.J. Brill and Luzac, 1991. Lapidus, Ira M. A History of Islamic Societies. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988. MacEachern, Scott. "Two Thousand Years of West African History". In African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction, ed. Anna Stahl, pp. 441–466. London: Blackwell, 2004. Norris, Harry T. The Arab Conquest of Western Sahara: Studies in the Historical Events, Religious Beliefs, and Social Customs that Made the Most Remote Sahara a Part of the Arab World. Burnt Mill, UK: Longman, 1986. JA MUNDY

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DESERT AND WEST EDGE, HISTORY FROM (1000 BC TO AD 600). The climate and environment became significantly drier in Western Sahara and its margins after 4500–4000 BP, leading to progressive southward migration of the desert margin as rainfall decreased. In the period around 1000 B.C. C.-600 AD C. (3000-1400 BC), the archaeological record of human habitation in Mali and Niger is concentrated between 15 and 17 degrees north, compared with a primary distribution of 18 to 22 degrees north in earlier ones millennia. . In Mauritania, people also moved south with cattle and native millet, but hunter-gatherers stayed along the coast and north up to 20 degrees. The greatest drought crises occurred around the year 3000 BC. C. and around the year 2000 a. C., before the climate from the year 300 d. C. Human responses to climate change challenges between 1000 B.C. c. and 600 d. C. Included changes in mobility patterns and plans, colonization of new areas, adoption of new domestic animals, reproduction and greater development of domesticated plants, greater sedentariness in favorable areas,

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and the growing importance of ecologically based barter systems. Between 3300 and 3000 BC (c. 1500-1000 BC) Agropastoralists, who had occupied important villages in seasonally well-watered valleys and basins such as Azawagh in Niger and the Hodh/Dhar Tichitt region in Mauritania, moved south with the edge of the Sahel. They colonized regions such as the Middle Valley of Senegal, the Me'ma along the middle Niger, and the clayey basins of a shrinking Lake Chad to create dry season pastures. Munson's classic work at Tichitt suggested that seasonal lakes formed after 3000 B.C. C. the sites were smaller, less numerous and defensively positioned in almost inaccessible areas. In the Lake Chad basin around 500 B.C. built defensive walls. around several fairly large (25 acres) recently discovered settlements. A common motif in Saharan rock art at this time is the bicorner style "Libyan" warrior, carrying a spear and shield. Increasing mobility and conflicts shaped the arid north during this period, while increasing sedentariness characterized preferred areas in the Sahel. In some cases of sedentary and intensification, conflict may have been avoided by the strategy of niche specialization and subsistence exchange that linked producers in interdependent alliances. Archaeologists have suggested that this is the pattern found in the first millennium BC. was observed. C. in Mema and in the first millennium d. C. Inland Delta of the Niger. In both cases, ecological interdependence (of fishermen and agropastoralists) allowed larger settlements to grow in a characteristic clumpy pattern. In the middle of the first millennium B.C. Inland in the Niger Delta around Jenne'-jeno, this pattern had assumed urban proportions. Hunting and gathering continued in areas unsuitable for grazing or cultivation, as in the case of shellfish gatherers off the coast of Mauritania and along the Senegal River estuary. In the Sahara, the cattle rock art of earlier millennia was replaced by depictions of horses and riders and inscriptions in Tifinagh, an alphabet related to Phoenician and more recently used by the Berbers. The introduction of horses offered clear offensive advantages in terms of speed and height, which made raiding by unmounted groups a huge success. From 500 BC C. to 400 d. C. The Garamants of Fezzan (south-western Libya) used kidnapped "Ethiopian" (i.e. black) forced laborers in raids.

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used horse-drawn carts to tap the aquifers that enabled urban settlement of their desert kingdom. During the same period, the horse may have begun to transform warfare and political economy in the Sahel, but there is no evidence of its presence before the 6th century AD with the introduction of the camel to the Sahara (the oldest archaeological evidence dates back to the 2nd century AD) the horse, cart and all wheeled vehicles disappear from the rock art and are replaced by camels. The camel's ability to carry loads of 300 to 500 pounds across waterless desert terrain for days transformed desert economy and eventually made large-scale long-distance trade in goods possible. One of the first products to be commercialized was probably salt, which is required by camels, other livestock and humans and whose distribution in West Africa as rock salt is limited to a handful of desert sites. Historically, control of salt springs and trade routes was to emerge as an important source of political power in the first millennium AD. It is not yet clear whether the salt trade of the first millennium B.C. C. was integrated into a real trans-Saharan trade, transporting goods from North Africa to sub-Saharan regions. Contacts between the Sahel and North Africa in the first millennium BC. C. are undisputed and between 800 and 200 BC. Involved in the exploitation of copper deposits in Mauritania (Akjoujt) and Niger (Agadez region). Contact with the Mediterranean is attested at Akjoujt with North African-style bronze jewelry from the 6th century BC. A distinctive style of copper earrings has been found in tombs from Morocco to southern Mauritania. Bronze jewelry has also been found in Niger. Years ago it was suggested that Libyan Berbers from the Sahara mining southern Moroccan copper for the Phoenicians, as Herodotus mentioned, might have introduced the technology to the south. The distribution of thousands of surface copper finds in Mauritania along the seasonal ranges of interdunal troughs implies mobile herders in the movement of these objects from headwaters like Akjoujt. Iron technology seems largely contemporaneous with copper mining from 2600-2400 BP in the Agadez and Termit regions of Niger (smelting furnaces); 2600–2500 BP in Lake Chad Basin; 2100 in the inland delta of the Niger (Mali); and 2500AP

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in the middle valley of Senegal. The scholarly debate on the indigenous and exogenous origins of iron technology in West Africa focuses on iron artifacts found on the eroded surface of some sites in the termite region of Niger, dating to the 2nd millennium BC. C. In pottery fragments found on the same surfaces. Some archaeologists are skeptical that iron and pottery are contemporaneous; others argue they are. Since iron contains carbon, it should be possible to directly radiocarbon date iron objects and solve the problem. However, more detailed chronological questions about the chronology of early metallurgy in different regions can be difficult to resolve with radiocarbon dating due to the wide time periods (c. 300–400 years) that result when the dates are calibrated, around 2500 BP. This is due to a plateau in the calibration curve at this point, caused by the fact that tree rings with known dates between 800 and 400 B.C. C. have radiocarbon dates around 2500 BC. This phenomenon makes the chronological interpretation of a large number of events in the middle of the first millennium B.C. C. be quite challenging. In Western Sahara, the dry period was between 300 B.C. c. and 300 d. C. was intense. The flow of the Senegal River was reduced to such an extent that fresh water did not reach the estuary and salt water reached the mouth by 1900 BC. Flowed 186 miles inland in the river channel. The abandonment of copper mining in both Mauritania and Niger in 2000 BC. 400 BC may reflect the disruptions in pastoralism and salt trade that accompanied this drought crisis. During this period, new settlers came to the Middle Valley of Senegal, their pottery differed from that of earlier agropastoralists, and Jenne´-jeno settled in the interior of the Niger Delta as the tide receded. The development of camel husbandry in the early centuries CE was one strategy to deal with these environmental constraints. While it is unwise to generalize about climate change across large areas of Africa, given that research has shown that neighboring regions can experience vastly different patterns of wetter and drier weather than usual on the scale of decadal weather patterns, this dry spell seems quite distant widespread and serious. As it faded after AD 200, Berber camel herders continued to establish themselves. The appearance of black and white painted pottery in the interior Niger Delta after 200 AD C. can attest to Berber contacts far to the north

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like Germa in Fezzan, Libya. Some historians are convinced that the Trans-Saharan trade was established at this time and that the Empire of Ghana emerged soon after. However, chemical studies of North African gold coins indicate that the chemical signature of West African gold does not appear until the 9th century AD. Previously, coins were minted with gold recycled from Byzantine coins. While the empirical evidence for Trans-Saharan exchange before the 8th century is weak, it is clear that after AD 300 climate improvement led to a new period of revival of long-distance inland trade in copper and salt, the expansion of cattle grazing in the Sahel and growth of communities in areas well positioned for agriculture and trade. The trading empires of western Sudan were built on these foundations. See also climate; desertification, reactions to, history of (ca. 5000 to 1000 BC); Ecosystems: deserts and semi-deserts; Jenne´-jeno; The Sahara Desert; Transportation: Caravan; West Africa, Forest Region, History (1000 to 1880); West and Saharan Africa, History from (600 to 1000 AD). BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bulliet, Richard W. The Camel and the Wheel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975. Keyes, David. "Kingdom of the Sands". Archeology 57, No. 2 (March-April 2004). Killick, D. "What do we know about African ironworking?" Journal of African Archeology 2, no. 1 (2004). MacDonald, KC "Socioeconomic Diversity and the Origin of Cultural Complexity Across Middle Niger (2000 BCE to 300 CE)." PhD dis. University of Cambridge, 1994. McIntosh, Roderick. Peoples of Middle Niger. London: Blackwell, 1999. McIntosh, Susan. "Changing Perceptions of West Africa's Past: Archaeological Research Since 1988". Journal of Archaeological Research 2, no. 2 (1994): 165-198. Stahl, A., ed. African Archaeology: A Critical Introduction. London: Blackwell, 2004. SUSAN KEECH MCINTOSH

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WESTERN SAHARA. Western Sahara, also known as Sahara al-Gharbiyya and Sub-Saharan Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), is a region of Western Sahara.

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Sparsely populated desert region in north-western Africa, bordered by Morocco to the north, Algeria to the northeast, Mauritania to the east and south, and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. Western Sahara covers 102,703 square miles and has a population of 273,000. The first permanent residents date back several thousand years, when Western Sahara was part of a savannah zone that covered much of the modern Sahara Desert. The cave paintings indicate that the people lived by hunting and raising cattle. Successive generations of seafarers visited the coastal areas, including the Phoenicians in the 4th century BC. C. The arrival of the camel in the first century AD. C. brought with it an extremely important new mode of long-distance travel and trade. Camels enabled new types of business activities and connected people across the Sahara. In the eighth century intermarriage between Berbers and newly arrived Arabs and the spread of Islam worked together to create a new culture with its own hybrid language, semi-nomadic lifestyle and interpretations of Islam. Beginning in the 1050s, a band of holy warriors calling themselves al-Murabitun moved north from the Sahel. The Almoravids (1073–1147) eventually ruled an area that included the western part of the Sahara, Morocco and southern Spain and conquered the kingdom of Ghana. Successive Moroccan dynasties ignored their southern provinces until the Saqadian Sultan al-Mansur conquered Timbuktu in 1591 to control important Trans-Saharan trade and defeat the Songhay Empire. The Moroccan invasion force attracted large numbers of fighters from the south of the Atlas Mountains, including from the western desert. Environmental changes in the 17th and 18th centuries brought important changes to daily life in Western Sahara. Older trade patterns dissolved and established long-distance routes slowly shifted westward from the Timbuktu Corridor, where routes across the Sahara remained safer and water sources more secure. The growing long-distance trade and associated services (guides, protection, supplies and equipment) also brought closer ties with Moroccan merchants and holy men. Long-distance trade declined after the 1830s, but by this time Europeans were beginning to explore the area

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possible ports. A number of European outposts were quickly abandoned, but in 1884 the Spanish Society of Africans and Colonists, led by Emilio Bonelli, signed a series of treaties with local leaders in which the Spanish proclaimed a protectorate over the coastal area. Rebel leaders like Ma alqAynayn slowed Spanish colonization in the early 20th century, but failed to stop it. In 1957 Morocco claimed Western Sahara, but the disorganized Moroccan forces were held at bay by the Spanish army. Spain merged Río de Oro and Saguia el Hamra into a single new province called Spanish Sahara in 1958. Discoveries of valuable natural resources such as phosphates in the 1960s piqued the interest of Mauritania and Morocco, but a new indigenous rebellion forced the Spanish to promise an independence referendum. On November 6, 1975, thousands of unarmed Moroccans crossed the border into Western Sahara in an event known as the Green March. Spain immediately began withdrawing, although its official mandate ended on February 26, 1976. Mauritania and Morocco then divided the area, with Morocco claiming the phosphate-rich northern two-thirds and Mauritania taking the remaining third. A new uprising called the Polisario Front (Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el Hamra and Río de Oro) arose, supported by Algeria. The Polisario used the Algerian oasis of Tindouf as a base to attack Moroccan and Mauritanian forces. Fierce fighting convinced Mauritania to withdraw in 1979 and now recognizes the Polisario Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic. Fighting with Morocco continued sporadically until a United Nations ceasefire was agreed in 1991, conditional on a referendum on the territory's future. The referendum has yet to take place as neither side can agree on who gets to vote. In the 1990s, the Polisario lost Algerian military support when the Moroccan government transferred thousands of immigrants to the territory. Talks have since stalled and Morocco has vigorously restated its claims, and by 2005 renewed fighting seemed likely. See also Art, Genres and Periods: Rock Art, Sahara and North Africa; Ecosystems: savannas; Morocco: history and politics; Transport: caravan.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hode, Tony. Western Sahara: The Roots of a War in the Desert. Westport, CT: Lawrence Hill and Co., 1983. Joffe, George. ''Self-determination and Uti Possidetis: Western Sahara and the 'Lost Provinces''. Journal of the Society for Moroccan Studies 1 (1996): 97–115. Keenan, Jeremy. The Sahara: Past, Present and Future. specifications. Edition, Journal of North African Studies 10, Nos. 3-4 (2005). Pennell, C. R. Morocco since 1830: a history. London: C. Hurst and Co., 1997. Zoubir, Yahia H. and Daniel Volman, eds. International Dimensions of the Western Sahara Conflict. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. DAVID GUTELIUS

WIDOWS.

See women: widows.

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WILDLIFE This entry contains the following articles: PROTECTION AND DESTRUCTION NATIONAL PARKS HUNTING, SPORTS

RESERVATION AND RESERVATION

Africa's wildlife is one of the most unique and valuable resources on earth. Historically, Africans have relied on many species for food. The first foreign travellers, hunters, explorers and traders returned home with fantastic tales of rare and magnificent animals. As early as 166 AD, Roman traders were delivering ivory, rhinoceros and turtle shells to southern China. Rome also imported many wild animals from North Africa for its games and circuses. In 1415, a giraffe arrived in China, much to the amazement and amazement of court officials and the general populace. Ivory, animal skins and other rare or valuable trophies were also prized throughout the Middle East. In the past, preserving Africa's wildlife was a complex and often frustrating task. As in other parts of the continent, North Africa was home to a diverse fauna. Oral histories and rock carvings throughout the region attest to this

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Presence of a variety of wildlife including baboons, maned lions, maned deer, barbary sheep, maned hogs, cheetah, elephant, hippo, jackal, gazelle (addax, atlas, dama and dorcas), leopard, lion and red fox, serval cat and spotted hyena. The disappearance of most of these species was mainly caused by climate change and desertification, deforestation, overgrazing, poor agricultural techniques, and unregulated hunting. However, several North African and international conservation organizations are attempting to reintroduce at least some species to the region. Between the mid-18th and early 19th centuries, killing animals for profit became an increasingly lucrative industry in many parts of Africa. Robert Foran, one of Britain's best known big game hunters, estimates that between 1850 and 1890 at least 1,878,000 elephants were killed to supply ivory to markets around the world. Other valuable species include antelope, buffalo, cheetah, hippo, leopard and lion. 19TH CENTURY CONSERVATION EFFORTS

The rise of European colonial powers (Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain) marked a significant period of fundamental changes in the nature of human-wildlife interactions. Big game hunters swept Africa in search of adventure and riches, but many colonial governments took steps to protect Africa's rapidly dwindling wildlife. For example, South Africa passed the Cape Game Preservation Act in 1886 and extended the legislation to all British territories in South Africa in 1891. In 1892 the country established the Sabie Game Reserve in the Transvaal. In 1897, Herman von Wissman (1853–1905), governor of German East Africa (present-day Tanzania), authorized the establishment of a hunting license system. In 1900 the colonial powers met in London and passed the Convention for the Conservation of Animals, Birds and Fish in Africa. The convention aimed to standardize and enforce gambling laws across Africa. create a list of endangered species; limit the sale of elephant tusks to less than eleven pounds; Build and secure reserves

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Invasion; and work out licenses that would limit the number of each species that could be killed. However, the Convention never came into force as most signatories did not ratify it. On December 11, 1903, Edward Buxton (1840-1924), a former British big game hunter who became a passionate conservationist, founded the Society for the Preservation of Empire Wildlife (SPWFE) and served as its President. Within a year the SPWFE had seventy full and thirty honorary members, including Lord Kitchner of Khartoum; Alfred Lyttelton (1857–1913), Secretary of State for the Colonies; and President Theodore Roosevelt (1858–1919). The SPWFE also had five politically influential Vice-Chairs (Lords Cromer, Grey, Milner, Curzon and Minto). In later years, the SPWFE, which changed its name to the Fauna Preservation Society in 1950, helped found the International Union for the Protection of Nature (1948), which was renamed the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources in 1952. and the World Wide Fund for Nature (1961). CONSERVATION EFFORTS AND CHALLENGES IN THE 20TH CENTURY

In the early 20th century, conservationists campaigned for the creation of national parks across Africa. In 1925, King Albert Leopold I established a gorilla sanctuary in Congo called Parc National Albert (later known as Virunga National Park); Years later, three more national parks were created. In 1926, Colonel James Stevenson Hamilton (1867–1957), who became the architect of wildlife conservation in South Africa, converted Sabie Game Reserve into Kruger National Park. The following year, Malagasy officials approved the establishment of conservation areas in Madagascar. On November 8, 1933, the London Conference for the Protection of African Fauna and Flora adopted the Convention for the Conservation of Fauna and Flora in their Natural State. Two more technical meetings were held in London (1938) and Bukavu (1953), but little was achieved, largely due to the outbreak of World War II and growing African demands for decolonization. During the early post-colonial period, the Organization of African Unity (OAU; currently

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CONSERVATION AND DESTRUCTION

The African Union, in collaboration with the World Conservation Union and various UN agencies, drafted the Algiers Convention, which the OAU endorsed in 1968. In 1981, Cameroon and Nigeria asked the OAU to revise and update the Algiers Convention. On July 11, 2003, the African Union approved the revised African Convention for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. All of these conventions, treaties and agreements helped lay the foundation for the conservation of Africa's wildlife. The history of African wildlife conservation varies from region to region. During both world wars, hunters in Kenya, Tanzania, and to a lesser extent Uganda, killed vast numbers of wild animals to feed POWs and Allied troops. In parts of these lands, European settlers competed with wild animals for supremacy over the land and its resources. A number of new threats also emerged, some more serious, including mass tourism, which is putting increasing pressure on fragile environments; lucrative big game safaris, particularly in Kenya and Tanzania; widespread large-scale poaching; and a rapidly growing human population that slowly gained dominion over the land and its resources by killing wild animals or attempting to confine them in reserves or national parks. In May 1947 the Conference on the Fauna of British East and Central Africa was held in Nairobi. Conference resolutions called for scientific management, expert planning, and colonial governance in wildlife conservation. The rangers who attended the meeting opposed the centuries-old African hunt. Ironically, representatives from almost every area reported that wildlife had increased. However, the British Colonial Office accepted the report that African hunters had reduced wildlife across the region. At the turn of the 21st century, many experts feared for the future of wildlife, despite the passage of the Wildlife Conservation and Management Act of 1977, which outlawed poaching and the ruthless killing of wildlife. In Kenya, for example, Lake Nakuru's pink flamingos, which attract tourists from all over the world, have seen a sharp decline due to falling water levels. Deforestation of the Mau Mountains, the largest remaining contiguous nearby montane forest in the region, continues to be depleted

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Water levels in the Mara River which feeds the Masai Mara National Reserve and the northwest corner of the Serengeti of Tanzania. Developers are urging politicians to abolish Nairobi National Park, located in the southeast corner of the city and now completely surrounded by the city and its suburbs. In Uganda, the elephant population declined from about 30,000 in the 1960s to 1,350 in 1980 as a result of widespread ivory poaching and civil war. Between 1999 and 2003, the elephant population grew to just 2,400. Other species have also suffered from the government's inability to protect the country's wildlife. According to a 2005 study titled Wildlife Population Trends in Uganda, 1960–2005, the black rhino, white rhino, oryx, and derby eland are all extinct. Many other species also saw significant declines between the 1960s and 1999-2003, including Burchell's zebra (10,000-2,800), Eland (4,500-450), Elephant (30,000-2,400), Hartebeest (25,000-3,400), Hippopotamus (26,000 to 5,300), the Uganda Kob (70,000 to 44,000) and the Rothschild giraffe (2,500 to 240). Tanzania's post-independence conservation record was better than either Kenya or Uganda. The number of national parks increased from eleven in 1989 to fourteen in 2005 and game reserves from seventeen to thirty-four. The elephant population, which had declined as a result of poaching, increased from 55,000 in 1989 to 141,646 in 2006. Tanzania and other African countries such as Botswana, Zambia and Zimbabwe have adopted community-based conservation (CBC), which is said to allow local communities to join in participate in shaping wildlife policy. To facilitate grassroots participation, Dar es Salaam has developed a Wildlife Management Area where the local population has full mandate over conservation activities. However, some observers argue that governments that have adopted the CBC still have an advantage in designing and implementing wildlife policies. South Africa, which maintains eighteen national parks, has one of the best conservation records in Africa, particularly when it comes to supporting transboundary parks. According to South African game officials and their counterparts in Southern Africa, the border parks have improved cooperation between states and increased funding for implementation.

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Agencies, donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). On May 12, 2000, South Africa and Botswana opened the first transfrontier park in Southern Africa (Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park). On June 11, 2001, South Africa and Lesotho signed an agreement to create the Maloti-Drakensberg Transfrontier Conservation and Development Area. On December 9, 2002, South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe opened the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Park. CONSERVATION IN 21ST CENTURY AFRICA

Black rhino carcass mutilated by poachers, May

In 2003 South Africa passed the National Environmental Management Act: Protected Areas No. 57. This Act required South African national parks to prepare conservation, protection and management plans for all of their national parks in consultation with local stakeholders. South Africa also recognized that wildlife and other natural resources must contribute to the country's economic well-being. In many ways, Zambia's post-colonial wildlife policies were in stark contrast to those of much more prosperous South Africa. Kenneth Kaunda, Zambia's first president, wanted to protect the country's wildlife but lacked the financial resources to fund large-scale conservation programs. Furthermore, few Zambians shared his vision and wanted the country's limited resources to be devoted to social and economic development. However, President Kaunda saw to it that the National Parks and Wildlife Act was passed in 1968. However, due to the need to add various changes, it did not come into force until January 1, 1971. Unfortunately, the ruling United National Independence Party used wild animals to reward their members with jobs, trophies, game meat, and concessions based on their loyalty. There was also constant conflict between rangers and villagers whose ancestors had hunted wild animals for food. As a result, poaching increased and villagers found guilty of illegal hunting were fined or imprisoned. At the beginning of the 21st century, Zambia has nineteen national parks, but many of them are unmaintained, have no facilities and few animals.

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2006, Tsavo East National Park, Kenya. Kenyan authorities have killed three suspected poachers and recovered horns from rare black rhinos killed in the famous national park, 300 kilometers southeast of Nairobi, during a massive manhunt by security forces for poachers. STRINGER/AFP/GETTY PICTURES

Historically, West Africa's conservation record has also been poor. Nigeria, the largest and most influential country in West Africa, maintains eight National Parks, nineteen Game Reserves/Conservation Areas and eight Strict Conservation Areas. However, Nigeria lacks the resources to protect the biologically diverse environment of protected areas. Common problems in West Africa include environmental degradation, overhunting, deforestation, unregulated poaching, logging, agricultural projects that pose a threat to wildlife, increased urbanization, and widespread road construction. Despite the passage of wildlife regulations across the region, increased international aid to conserve the region's dwindling fauna, and some cooperation between states, public apathy, inadequate funding and hunting laws, and widespread corruption, conservation efforts continue to be jeopardized. One of the most serious threats to wildlife across Africa, particularly antelope, chimpanzee, gorilla and many other species, relates to the bushmeat trade. According to the Washington, D.C. The resident Task Force on the Bushmeat Crisis harvests more than a million tons of bushmeat from Central Africa every year. In addition to the threat the bushmeat trade poses to wildlife,

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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that diseases transmitted from wild animals to humans by eating infected bushmeat account for three quarters of all emerging diseases. Despite far-reaching efforts to ensure their survival, the conservation of African wildlife faces an uncertain future. Africa's great apes are declining at an increasingly alarming rate, largely due to the industrialized world's insatiable demand for cheap timber, agricultural products and other natural resources. Africa's growing population and the relentless destruction of wildlife habitats are the most serious threats facing the continent. In addition, land clearance, human population explosion, wildfires, and shrinking tropical forests not only reduce the survival rate of great apes, but also threaten many other wildlife species. Africans, particularly those living in rural areas, often complain that wild animals eat crops and livestock, destroy homes, and often injure or kill people. In recent years, however, conservationists have attempted to reduce human-wildlife conflict by creating new national parks and wildlife sanctuaries, fencing off areas populated by humans and wildlife, and relocating species to more remote areas. Needless to say, many Africans who have been preyed upon by wildlife are not big advocates of conservation. Some countries share park fees and big game revenues with local communities in hopes of reducing hostility toward wild animals. Tanzania and South Africa appear to have struck a balance between human and wildlife needs, but this is unlikely to last as both have strong commitments to social and economic development. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Dar es Salaam; Ecology; Cultural Heritage: Management and Conservation; Ivory; Kaunda, Kenneth; Organization of African Unity; Tourism.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Anderson, David, and Richard H. Grove, eds. Conservation in Africa: People, Policy, and Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Caldecott, Julian and Lera Miles, eds. World Atlas of Great Apes and their Conservation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

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The International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources - The World Conservation Union. Introduction to the African Convention for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Cambridge, UK: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources Publication Services Unit, 2004. Morrison, Michael; Bruce G Marcot; and R. William Mannan. Wildlife-Habitat Relationships: Concepts and Applications. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2006. Neumann, Roderick P. Imposing Wilderness: Livelihood and Conservation Struggles in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. Nienaber, Georgianne. Gorilla Dreams: The Legacy of Dian Fossey. Lincoln, NE: iUniverse, 2006. Ofcansky, Thomas P. Paradise Lost: A History of Wildlife Conservation in East Africa. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 2002. Oldfield, Sara. The Trade in Wild Animals: Conservation Regulation. London: Earthscan, 2003. THOMAS P. OFCANSKY

NATIONAL PARKS

Conservationists have long considered national parks the best way to protect wildlife in sub-Saharan Africa. In South Africa, the problem of wildlife decline became a public concern in the early 19th century. Later in the century, as European trade and conquest increased, observers elsewhere noted a similar pattern of wildlife decline. In response, big game hunters and conservationists from Europe and North America founded the Society for the Preservation of the Fauna of the Empire (SPFE) in 1903 to promote parks and conservation in the colonies. Modeled on Yellowstone National Park in the United States, the London-based SPFE members began lobbying the British government for the establishment of national parks in their new African colonies as early as 1905. However, the establishment of the South African government did not last until 1926 when the Kruger National Park (Krüger NP) became the first on the continent. Then, in 1933, the London Convention, signed by all European colonial powers and their individual colonial governments, recommended the creation of national parks as the primary means of protecting wildlife. Colonial governments in Africa were slow to add new parks: Kenya and

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Tanganyika established its first parks only in 1946 (Nairobi NP) and 1948 (Serengeti NP), and only in the post-colonial period did their number increase significantly. The establishment of national parks has never been simply and exclusively about the protection of wild animals. For example, the growth of African nationalism provided the political context for the creation of the Kruger National Park, intended to symbolize a white South African identity rooted in nature. The national parks also served as the physical manifestation of a romantic European myth of Africa as a desert paradise. Finally, and related to the myth of wild Africa, they served as tourist destinations for tourists from Europe and North America, particularly after the introduction of international commercial air travel in the 1950s. As tourist destinations, national parks can be an important source of foreign exchange, a fact that helped persuade the post-colonial governments to greatly increase their numbers. THE IMPACT OF THE PARK ESTABLISHMENT ON AFRICAN INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES

The establishment of national parks has historically led to conflicts with indigenous African communities, many of which remain unresolved in the early 21st century. According to international agreement, a national park is a geographically extended area in which all settlement and human activities, except tourism, are prohibited. Thus, parks in Africa were created through combined processes of displacement of native African populations and their resettlement outside park boundaries and concentration of wildlife populations within parks. Across Africa, parks have encompassed pre-existing villages, crop fields, and pastures, changing rural settlement patterns, land use, and access to resources. In most cases, those claiming pre-existing rights were inadequately compensated, if at all, and resettlement efforts were ill-conceived or non-existent. The creation of national parks can affect national land rights in a number of ways. First, governments can strip away land rights entirely through mass evacuations of people and their property within park boundaries. Second, governments have typically banned neighboring communities from access

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critical resources (e.g., firewood, water, dry season grasses, and building materials) or ceremonial sites within park boundaries. Access bans have hit nomadic pastoralists hard, as primary cattle ranges often overlap important wildlife habitats, particularly in East Africa. Third, wildlife in the park attacking crops can affect people's ability to fully utilize agricultural land or pastures near borders. Governments often prohibit farmers and herders from harming wildlife near national parks, even when defending crops. It is important to see conflicts between people and parks in their broader social, legal and political context. The origins of the park's policy of exclusion go back to European colonization and a still widespread Anglo-American nature conservation ideology. Most conservation laws date back to colonial times and, while regularly reviewed, have not changed significantly. Many of the national parks created by post-colonial governments are based on existing colonial game and forest reserves. The SPFE and the major international conservation non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that succeeded it, such as the World Conservation Union (IUCN; formerly the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF; formerly the World Wildlife Fund) have been instrumental in promoting and funding a “fortress” approach to conservation across the continent. In addition, colonial and post-colonial governments have integrated park clearance and resettlement into broader national development programs. Colonial governments created many parks and reserves as part of a general process of alienating European lands. For example, some park clearances were an integral part of the Southern Rhodesian government's agenda to establish exclusive European settlement zones in the 1950s and 1960s. Some post-colonial governments saw evictions from parks as a complement to their rural development agendas, as in the case of Tanzania's Ujamaa (Socialism and Self-Reliance) Village Scheme, which involved the forced abandonment of scattered dwellings and the relocation of rural populations to concentrated settlements.

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Many of the conflicts between people and the park are compounded by issues related to identifying pre-existing land rights. Identifying legitimate claims is difficult, partly due to the lack of land titles or other written legal documentation of historical land occupation, and partly due to distortions of African tenure systems during colonialism. These two issues allow for numerous and conflicting interpretations of the validity of land rights in national parks. CURRENT TOPICS AND TRENDS

The political and economic context of national parks has changed significantly since the introduction of democratization and neoliberal economic reforms in the 1980s. Foreign investment is pouring into the tourism sector, creating new opportunities and challenges for land claims for national parks. New African environmental, legal and human rights NGOs have taken the cases of populations displaced by national parks to court. Recognizing that conflict threatens wildlife conservation, African governments and major international NGOs have initiated programs aimed at redistributing the benefits of conservation locally and encouraging community participation. At the same time, concerns about declining elephant and rhino populations in the 1980s led to further militarization of the parks. Another important new initiative is the creation of transboundary (also transnational or transboundary) parks, particularly the Greater Limpopo Transfrontier Conservation Area, which spans the borders of South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Such protected areas should solve the problem of political boundaries of ecological processes, such as e.g. B. long-distance migration of wild animals, and promote regional integration. In the case of Greater Limpopo, the largest attempt of its kind, the establishment of transboundary on-site conservation areas has led to new forms of enclosure, restrictions on settlement and human movement, and the displacement of local communities. As such, some of these emerging trends are helping to mitigate existing conflicts between people and parks, while others reproduce historical conflicts or create the conditions for new ones, raising challenging questions about the future of national parks in Africa. See also Help and Development; colonial policies and practices; human rights; non-governmental organizations;

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production strategies; socialism and post-socialisms; Tourism. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adams, William. Against Extinction: The Story of Conservation. London: Earthscan, 2004. Adams, William and Martin Mulligan, eds. Decolonizing Nature: Conservation Strategies in a Postcolonial Era. London: Earthscan, 2003. Anderson, David and Richard Grove, eds. Conservation in Africa: People, Policy and Practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Brockington, Daniel. Fortress Conservation: The Mkomazi Game Reserve Preserve, Tanzania. Oxford: James Currey, 2002. Carruthers, Jane. The Kruger National Park: A Social and Political History. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: University of Natal Press, 1995. Hughs, David McDermott. From Slavery to Environmental Protection: Politics on a South African Border. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2006. Igoe, Jim. Conservation and Globalization: A Study of National Parks and Indigenous Communities from East Africa to South Dakota. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, 2004. Neumann, Roderick P. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Nature and Livelihoods in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Ranger, Terrence. Voices from the Rocks: Nature, Culture and History in Zimbabwe's Matopos Hills. Oxford: James Currey, 1999. RODERICK P. NEUMANN

HUNTING, SPORT

A new era in African sport hunting began with the passage of a law in 1977 making all sport hunting in Kenya illegal by residents and visitors. Although hunting remains legal in Tanzania and many other African countries, notably Zimbabwe, Zambia and Botswana, the Kenyan government's response to pressure and stimulus from international conservation lobbies marked a turning point in two centuries. long history of sport hunting on the African continent. If sport hunting by Africans (a traditional practice outside of the usual understanding of sport or big game hunting) is excluded, the beginnings of sport hunting in Africa are among the earliest scientific and geographical observers and

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Hunters on the South African frontier in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Hunters such as Andrew Smith, William Harris, R.G. Cumming, and later Frederick Selous found enthusiastic readers for tales of frontier adventure. South African sport hunting was closely related to the expansion of the frontier of exploration and settlement. In the 1870s the frontier and the diversity and abundance of wildlife in South Africa dwindled. The frontier shifted north through Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) and Mozambique, and jumped north in the 1880s as increasing British influence on the Swahili coast and the well-known exploits of explorers such as Verney Cameron and Joseph Thomson drew attention to hunting opportunities East Africa steered . Inside. Experienced hunters in South and Central Africa, such as Selous and Captain Charles Stigand, followed these new hunting trails. The opening of the "sportsman's paradise" in the hunting grounds in Kenya, Uganda and Tanganyika stimulated a stream of international visitors. In addition to the abundance of game, several factors helped attract the rich and famous from Europe and North America to East Africa: the relative ease of navigation following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869; the existence of an established trade route for caravans; and the safari trade linking the coastal ports of Swahili with the distant hinterland of East Africa's Great Lakes. Later, the construction of the Uganda Railway through some of the best hunting grounds in the region and the program of settling European men and women with capital and titles in what became the "white highlands" of Africa Oriental also helped create a new type of Sport hunting: the big game safari that peaked between the First and Second World Wars. Safari hunting arose directly from the merging of Arab-Swahilian merchant caravans and the mostly British-European tradition of "hunting", which was seen as an activity suited to knights and nobles, as well as many upstarts. The commercial safari was a means of inland travel used by early explorers, soldiers, and administrators for whom hunting was a primary concern. Their interest led to Europeans organizing their own safaris inland, exploiting the bountiful game taken along the way as "meat bonanza".

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for its numerous supporters and to subsidize its travel expenses. Spurred on by the decline of hunting in Europe and the American West and southern Africa, many wealthy and high-ranking knights came to East Africa on safari. Lords Delamere and Cranworth were among the first English nobles to hunt, eventually settling in the white Kenyan Highlands to pursue their passion for hunting. Winston Churchill and Theodore Roosevelt came to East Africa in the first decade of the 20th century to hunt on safari under the guise of imperial or scientific research as justification. Roosevelt made a significant contribution to East Africa's fame as a sportsman's paradise and introduced the term safari to English speakers around the world. Additionally, these two distinguished visitors directly contributed to the other differentiator of sport hunting in Africa: the rise of the Professional White Hunter (PWH) as a class of entrepreneurs who used their local knowledge of African languages and terrain to create a market for their services as guides and hunt companions. Because of their notoriety, both Churchill and Roosevelt received the hospitality of the British East African governments, who provided them with the services of local hunters to accompany them on their safaris. By the time World War I broke out, Nairobi had become the headquarters of a burgeoning industry of professional hunting guides, men with experience and skill as hunters, often well educated and upper class, who made a living doing what they wanted from them had come to East Africa, to do: to hunt as an athlete. Bror Blixen and Denys Fitch Hatton were the best known of these professional gentlemen, or great white hunters, although both eventually became best known for their marital and extramarital affairs with writer Karen Blixen (Isak Dinesen). From the turn of the century until the end of legal hunting in Kenya, the presence of such professional hunters on safaris became a distinctive feature of sport hunting in Africa, unparalleled in other hunting histories. Under the glare of celebrity of both visitors and their professional white hunters, the success of big game safari has always depended on the skill and labor of hundreds of now African hunters.

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Trackers, weapon bearers, scouts, porters, skinners, cooks and workers without whom the safari would not have worked. In fact, the safari leader's most important skill was to recruit, organize and communicate with African staff (usually Swahili for 'kitchen') who knew where to find animals and where to camp after dark. Between 1919 and 1939, the big game safari's reputation for glamor and status reached its peak of fame, largely due to the efforts of Dinesen, Ernest Hemingway, Beryl Markham and other literary hunters. During this period, punctuated by a series of royal safaris (e.g. the Dukes of York, Gloucester and Norfolk, the Prince of Wales and the Maharajah of Jodhpur), early years safari practices were formalized. The PWHs became an obligation to visit hunting safaris and formed an association for their self-regulation. The trophy industry was regulated by careful record keeping and measurement standards. The list of preferred wildlife was standardized as the "Big Five" (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo) and the established game department began to regulate the "pouch" and permitted hunting methods. and hunting, as well as promoting hunting opportunities for European and other sportspeople. Additionally, photo safaris became more popular and well-known as cameras became more portable and safari trips became more specialized and simplified with the development of the Land Rover and other land vehicles for transporting hunters, photographers and their staff and their equipment and accessories. Despite increasing international attention and popularity, Big Game Safari remained the preserve of the world's wealthy sporting elite as the time and money costs of international travel remained prohibitive for the world's growing middle class. After a lull in sport hunting caused by World War II, a new breed of safari hunter emerged as international air travel and the growing affluence of the middle classes in Europe and North America, and later Latin America and Asia, made East Africa accessible to larger numbers of people. Class traveler The possibility of a two or three-week African safari instead of one of so many months allowed the popularity of African tourism to increase the number of photographic safaris, as well as the emerging international ones.

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The conservation movement discredited sport hunting. Although writer-hunters like Robert Ruark continued to trumpet the virtues of big game hunting, after 1946 the growth of national parks soon supplanted hunting through observation and wildlife photography. Similarly, the post-war introduction of more middle-class residents began to undermine native sport hunting as the older generation of aristocratic hunters faded from the scene. The emergence of the Mau Mau in the 1950s and the end of British colonial rule in the 1960s also accelerated the decline of the big game. In addition, population growth since the 1950s and the resulting scarcity of land, periodic droughts, and degradation of rangelands have increased competition between African farmers and pastoralists and those who hunt and conserve wildlife. But it was the combination of pressure from international wildlife conservation organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the increase in commercial poaching in the 1970s that drove sport hunters away from the countryside and led Kenya to ban licensed hunting in 1977. The "endgame" in Kenya, in turn, pushed sport hunting back towards the southern cone of Africa (Botswana, South Africa and Zimbabwe), where it had begun two centuries earlier. See also ivory; Photography; Tourism; air transport.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Adamson, George. Bwana game. London: Collins and Harvill, 1968. Cameron, Kenneth M. Into Africa: The History of the East African Safari. London: Constable, 1990. Cranworth, Lord. A Colony in the Making, or Sport and Profit in British East Africa. London: Macmillan, 1912. Holman, Dennis. Inside Safari Hunting with Eric Rundgren. New York: Putnam, 1970. Mackenzie, John M. The Realm of Nature: Hunting, Conservation, and British Imperialism. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1988. Roosevelt, Theodore. African hunting trails. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1910.

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Selous, Frederick Courtney. The adventures of a hunter in Africa. London: Bentley, 1890. Trzebinski, Errol. The Kenyan Pioneers. New York: Norton, 1985. EDWARD I. STEINHART

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Windhoek is the capital of the Republic of Namibia. Settlements on the site of today's city date back at least to the Stone Age. Herero cattle herders called the place Otjomuise ("steam place") because of its hot springs and seem to have settled there in the 18th century together with the shepherdess Damara. In the early 1840s this mountainous area was inhabited by about 2,000 immigrants from the Cape Colony to the south, led by Jonker Afrikaner, who gave the place the first version of its current name, Wind Hoock. Jonker Afrikaner built a church and recruited Rhenish missionaries. Although he abandoned it in 1852, the settlement prospered for another twenty years, functioning primarily as a trading center between settlers and the indigenous Herero, Damara, and Nama people. Windhoek was abandoned sometime in the 1870s and only resettled in the 1890s when the Germans, then in the process of colonizing the area that later became known as South West Africa, built a fort and set up their headquarters there. Modern Windhoek evolved from the old German city, built between 1890 and 1915 when the Germans lost South West Africa to the Union of South Africa. Windhoek was the territory's capital until Namibia's independence in 1990, a League of Nations (later a United Nations Trust Territory) mandate that treated South Africa as a fifth province or colony. Relatively few German-speaking settlers remain in Windhoek, although the heritage of German culture is evident in the food, beer and annual Oktoberfest. The city's population is diverse, including Herero, Damara, Nama, as well as North Ovambo, Africans who stayed, and mixed races. This latter group includes South Africans of mixed (mainly Khoi and European or Asian) heritage. The separate living patterns of all these groups in present-day Windhoek reflect this fact

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that the town, like the rest of Namibia, was subject to most South African apartheid laws for nearly forty years. In 1959, the South African authorities relocated all black residents of Windhoek to a township on the outskirts of the city proper. The new involuntary residents of this new community called them Katutura, meaning "We have no permanent home". The colored residents were moved to another parish, Khomasdal; Windhoek itself was reserved for the whites. In the 2000s, mainly ethnic Germans and Africans still live in central Windhoek (where the main businesses are based), although some wealthy Africans also live there. Most residents of Namibian origin still live in Katutura; It is the fastest growing part of the metropolitan area with a population of over 110,000 in 2004, 60 per cent of the total population of Windhoek, Khomasdal and Kattura combined. Windhoek is the political center of Namibia, and not just because it is the capital. All major political parties, from the ruling South West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) to the National Party (the country's oldest political body, which opposes black majority rule), have their headquarters there. Like most capital cities, Windhoek is a Center for Educational and Cultural Institutions: The University of Namibia is located in the city, as is the State Museum (housed in the old German fortress or Alte Feste). Local industries include the processing of karakul (Persian lamb) skins and the production of food and clothing from sheep and cows. Located in the center of the country, Windhoek is a major rail and road hub for goods to and from other parts of the country, with Namibia's main port at Walvis Bay being the most important. All main links of the national transport system (originally designed for the needs of South Africa) pass through Windhoek; the country's only international airport is 29 miles from the city. Windhoek thus benefits from international tourism, the fastest growing sector of the Namibian economy. Tourists flock there for the annual carnival in late April. See also Colonial Policy and Practice: German; Namibia.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

Pendleton, Wade C. Katutura, A Place We Have Stuck: Living in a Post-Apartheid Community in Namibia. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1996.

Helbig, Ludwig. La Boya Blanca. Windhoek: Longman Namibia, 1992. JAN BART GEWALD

Simon, David. "Windhoek: Desegregation and Change in the Former Colony of South Africa's Capital." In Homes Apart: South Africa's Segregated Cities, ed. Antonio Lemon. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. MARGARET ALISON SABIN

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WITBOI, HENDRIK

(1830-1905). Nama chief, prophet and guerrilla fighter Hendrik Witbooi was born in Pella, in what is known as Namaqualand, south of the Orange River in southern Africa. He was the son of Moses Witbooi, also a Nama chief. Trained as a carpenter and elected deacon, after his near death at the hands of the Herero in 1880, Witbooi embarked on what he believed was a divinely inspired mission to lead his followers to a promised land in the north. In 1885 he led a tour with about 600 Christian followers. Despite being promised safe passage, the migrants were ambushed by the Herero under the command of Samuel Maherero. In the attack, Witbooi lost all his wagons, a large number of cattle, and twenty-four of his followers, including two of his sons. From a mountain fortress near Hoornkrans, he and his followers then waged a successful guerrilla war against the Herero, whom he berated for signing a protection treaty with the Germans. Witbooi was attacked by German soldiers at Hoornkrans, killing eighty-five of his followers. A year later he reached a negotiated agreement with the newly arrived German commander Theodor Leutwein. For ten years Witbooi, confined by the Germans to the city of Gibeon, cooperated with the German colonial government, even to the point of providing troops for the colonial administration. In October 1904, ten months after the outbreak of the Herero-German War, Witbooi led his people to war against Germany. A year later, he was mortally wounded in an attack on a German supply column at Vaalgras in southern German Southwest Africa (modern-day Namibia). See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Maherero, Samuel.

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OVERVIEW WITCH AND CHRISTIANITY WITCH AND ISLAM WITCH AND POLITICS WITCH AND PROPHETISM WITCH AND WEALTH

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Terms such as "witchcraft", "witchcraft" and "sorcery" are now commonly used throughout Africa to denote occult forms of aggression. The adoption of these Western terms has specific consequences. Particularly important is the strongly pejorative tenor of these terms, while the local terms they are meant to translate are often much more ambivalent: the latter refer to forces that are considered bad in many situations, but can also be used constructively. The widespread use of Western terms like "sorcery" and "witchcraft" risks reducing a rich cosmology in which the entire human environment is animated to a negative and ugly core. Often a more neutral translation like "hidden powers" would be preferable. However, terms such as "witchcraft" and "witchcraft" are used just as frequently on Radio Trottoir ("sidewalk radio"; i.e. gossip) and in newspaper articles and debates on development and politics, and in local media. Problems that are hard for social scientists to avoid. Another disadvantage of these Western terms is that they gloss over all sorts of local variations. There are important differences between local discourses, for example in describing witches and their abilities and in conveying "witchcraft". Sometimes it is thought to be inherited; It is sometimes thought to be acquired later in life. However, these representations have a common core. A basic theme is that misfortune - and often spectacular success - is attributed to hidden human action. They think they are witches and wizards

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use secret powers to hurt other people or impose their own success. Witchcraft and sorcery are therefore closely associated with jealousy, inequality and the illicit pursuit of power. Such ideas are, of course, not unique to African societies; rather, they seem to reflect an underlying fear that may be universal. Indeed, the powerful popular reactions evoked by rumors of child sexual abuse in the West or the recourse to esoteric expertise - whether from astrologers or public relations experts - in the politics of modern democracies show intriguing parallels to the reactions and trust in Witchcraft contemporary Africa. The same applies to the flourishing of all kinds of spiritual cults, for example in the emerging countries of East Asia. However, some features appear to be specific to witchcraft in Africa. One is the strong emphasis in many African societies on the connection between witchcraft and kinship; another is the equation of witchcraft with food. A basic image that haunts people in many parts of Africa is that of witches, both male and female, leaving their bodies at night and flying off to meet others of their kind. At such gatherings they hand over their loved ones, vital parts of which are often intended to be consumed during cannibal feasts. In many African societies it is believed that the basic impulse of witches is to eat the kin. Since these speeches emphasize the use of occult powers, there is always a close connection between witchcraft, sorcery and divination. If one fears falling victim to an occult attack, one should seek the help of a specialist who is able to "see" what the witches have done and force them to break their spell. The fortune teller who "sees" and the counter-sorcerer who attacks the witches can be the same person or two different people. The conceptual triangle of sorcery/divination/counter-sorcery underscores the circular nature of most witchcraft discourse. Only specialists can offer help, because only they are familiar with the world of the occult. The fortunetellers must be able to "see" the witches, which means that they themselves are involved. In many Bantu societies, acquiring a "second pair of eyes" is considered the first step in initiation into the world of witches.

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Similarly, the wizards' power to overcome witches and force them to break their spells is believed to stem from their own extraordinarily developed witchcraft. People often refer to witch doctors as "super witches". That makes them very ambivalent characters. In the case of southern Cameroon, for example, authors such as Lluis Mallart and Elizabeth Copet-Rougier refer to a vague but widespread belief that one can only become a nganga (healer, witch doctor) by sacrificing a parent. The Nganga themselves repeatedly emphasize that their "teacher" has sworn to use their power only to heal, never to kill. But the populace is never sure: there is always a danger that the witch's basic impulse to kill her fellow witches will take over. It is precisely this circular reasoning characteristic of witchcraft discourse - the main protection against witches is found in the world of witchcraft - that makes it so difficult to break away from these ideas. This could also explain why these ideas seem to retain their relevance despite modern changes. The inherent circularity of witchcraft discourse may also explain why the scholarly distinctions that anthropologists and other social scientists have attempted to apply to the field remain so precarious. A good example is E.E. Evans Pritchard's classic distinction between witchcraft, which he defined as an innate quality often activated unconsciously, and sorcery, which he understood to be the conscious use of an acquired technique. He derived this distinction from his study among the Azande people of southern Sudan. Some later anthropologists have attempted to generalize them, while others have insisted that this distinction simply does not fit their ethnographic data. In particular, it can be doubted whether it is of much use in understanding the modern transitions of these representations. Rather, it is the circularity of these discourses and the ease with which all sorts of conceptual distinctions are overlooked that make them so ubiquitous in African society today. The Modern Age of Witchcraft

One of the most striking aspects of social interactions in contemporary Africa is the spread of witchcraft and wizardry discourses in modern settings. There are rumors about the use of these occult powers in politics as well as in sports or in society

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churches; at school and in relation to modern forms of entrepreneurship; in urban contexts as much (or even more) than in the city. An often implicit assumption of many Western observers was and is that witchcraft would inevitably disappear under the influence of modernization. In the 1970s, European priests in Cameroon declared: "Where there is electricity, there is no witchcraft". Since then, Cameroon has experienced an intense electrification campaign, but no one would repeat that claim now. On the contrary, it is surprising - in Cameroon as in other African countries - the dynamic and innovative nature of discourses on witchcraft. Rumor incorporates borrowings of all kinds, seemingly without much difficulty: conceptions of other ethnic groups as easily as Christian or Islamic elements; "Magic items" sold by mail order companies in Europe, as well as medical knowledge or thoughts from Eastern wisdom books. Witchcraft conspiracies are said to reproduce on a truly global scale: witches are said to have their teachers in Europe or be connected to the Mafia. This gives conceptions of the occult a rather piecemeal character—contradictions seem to abound—but it is precisely this resilience that keeps them relevant in the face of new developments. A growing fear of the spread of witchcraft, of witchcraft that has “run away,” is particularly expressed in new social environments where people face new and bewildering inequalities. This is particularly evident in the rumors about new forms of witchcraft, which explicitly refer to new forms of wealth. In many parts of Africa it is believed that the nouveau riche accumulate wealth by exploiting the labor of their victims of witchcraft. An explicit contrast is often made between the old forms of witchcraft, in which the victims are eaten, and the new forms, in which the victims are turned into zombies who go to work on "invisible plantations". In West Africa, the whites are still ascribed a mediating role. Other elements of these beliefs suggest that they reflect the traumas of the slave trade and forced labor during the colonial era. But now they are closely linked to the rise of new entrepreneurs in the African population. Eric de Rosny suggests that these beliefs have such an impact on

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in people's minds because they at least offer an explanation for the mysteries of the market: the spectacular successes of a few and the poverty and unemployment of many. Strikingly, in some areas these beliefs seem to inspire determined attacks on the nouveau riche, while in others they seem to reinforce or even legitimize their alienation from the poor. The role of these conceptions in politics and in relation to the state is equally full of ambiguities. On the one hand, state officials seem determined to intervene to stop the spread of witchcraft. Postcolonial officials regularly warn villagers not to use their witchcraft to sabotage government projects. Indeed, in the official propaganda of many African regimes, witchcraft is described as a particularly dangerous form of subversion. It is also considered to be one of the main obstacles to achieving "development". through radio broadcasts. The results of such propaganda have often been, and still are, contradictory. It evokes, as Jean-Francois Bayart emphasized in his earlier publications, the image of witchcraft as a kind of "popular political action" against the authoritarian state and its claims to hegemony. In practice, however, it is often not clear that people are attempting to use these beliefs in this way. Rather, it is the government's insistence on witchcraft as a pervasive form of subversion that serves to politicize it. Officials' denunciation of witchcraft appears to reflect their private fears of escalating attacks to undermine their enviable new position. In different parts of Africa, members of the national elite fear being "eaten" by their former compatriots; in such expressions there is a clear indication of the threat of witchcraft. This is not surprising. Since the 1950s, anthropologists have emphasized that notions of witchcraft in many African societies have a profoundly leveling effect on relationships within the local community. The new elites' accumulation of wealth and power far exceeds traditional limits: unsurprisingly, they fear leveling attacks from within their own communities. Again, witchcraft seems to have two faces. There are many examples from members of the

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new elite using the same concepts of witchcraft to protect and affirm the new inequalities. This is facilitated by the commercialization of witchcraft and sorcery practices. In many situations, "drugs," jujus, and other "charged items" are literally for sale. Witch doctors offer their services to the highest bidder, who is usually a member of the new elite. Thus, instead of having a leveling effect, witchcraft discourses can serve to reinforce the new inequalities and make them appear obvious. The continued involvement of elites in the occult renders the effects of the government crackdown on witchcraft highly ambiguous. A striking aspect of witchcraft rumors in new settings is the relative absence of women. In the earlier version of witchcraft, both women and men are believed to participate in occult conspiracies. In fact, many myths about the origin of witchcraft have women at the top (although it is often added that men soon followed). However, women are largely absent from speculation about the links between witchcraft and new forms of wealth or new power struggles. This may reflect male dominance in the new political and economic arenas. It may also be related to a tendency in much discourse on witchcraft to relegate women's activities primarily to the domestic sphere. THE SEARCH FOR NEW PROTECTION: THE MOVEMENTS ANTI-WITCHES, THE CHURCH AND THE STATE

Widespread fears of witchcraft and rumors of new forms of occult aggression have fueled a relentless search for new forms of protection. The first reports of new experimental movements against witchcraft predate the colonial era. But it was precisely in the colonial era that such movements grew. They invoked a variety of forces and procedures in their fight against witchcraft: poison testing, "traditional" jujus, Christian symbols. In the extensive literature on the subject, such anti-witchcraft "medicine" is often distinguished from the occult powers of witchcraft itself. Supporters of such movements, of course, strongly emphasize this separation. However, observed over a longer period of time, such distinctions turn out to be rather unreliable. In a fascinating study of north-western Congo, Georges Dupre' shows how an anti-witchcraft movement was initially opposed

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Witchcraft of the Elders, appropriated by the latter, who use their sanctuary to extort large fines from the city's young people and employees. In the post-colonial period, the fight against witchcraft was primarily led by Christian movements: independent churches, Jehovah's Witnesses, more recently by Pentecostal movements, but also by the popular churches. There is a lively debate, especially within the Roman Catholic Church, about how far its priests can go. Several black priests and even bishops have had difficulties with the Catholic Church for going beyond orthodox exorcism rites and trying to follow in the footsteps of the Nganga too clearly, as in the case of Zambian Archbishop Emmanuel Milingo. Of particular importance is the growing pressure on the state to intervene. Since the establishment of the colonial state, the state has been accused of protecting witches because it forbade the use of poison tests and the execution of witches by chiefs or warlocks. Post-colonial state elites seem more inclined to intervene against witches, or at least have a harder time resisting popular pressure to do so. The Ke're'kou witch hunt in Benin was certainly not an isolated case. Isak A. Niehaus, for example, shows that the African National Congress (ANC) has considerable difficulty in preventing its younger members from engaging in witch hunts in Lebowa, as in other former "Bantustans". An example of direct state involvement comes from Cameroon. In the late 1970s, state courts, particularly in the province of Earl, suddenly began trying witches, based largely on the experience of witch doctors. This official recognition of the magician represents a spectacular reversal of previous case law. Magicians were always at risk of prosecution by state courts (for defamation and breach of the peace) during the colonial period and in the first decades after independence. Now they appear as witnesses for the prosecution. This investment is clearly related to the state's anti-witchcraft campaigns. But even in this region, where local societies have long been highly segmented, there seems to be strong pressure from the population for the state to intervene. In this context, it should be noted that such processes rarely occur in other parts of Switzerland

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country, for example in the west, where the authority of the chiefs is still deeply rooted in the local societies, or in the Islamized parts of northern Cameroon. Direct government intervention seems to have coincided with the emergence of a new, more modern breed of nganga. Wizards working with the state often seek publicity. They demonstratively use all sorts of modern symbols: sunglasses, Eastern wisdom books, Christian objects, and medical knowledge. And they boast of membership in new organizations, such as the more or less official national associations of "traditional healers," as well as elite societies like the Rosicrucians. Most importantly, they have a very aggressive style of recruiting clients and exposing witches. They will often approach people of their own accord, warning them of the dangers in their immediate area and insisting that they need to "clean up" their yard. They therefore play an important role in increasing popular fear of the spread of witchcraft, especially as this allows them to gain official recognition. Analytical Approaches: Witchcraft and Morality

Although witchcraft and sorcery have always been central themes in anthropological discourse, anthropologists, at least until recently, have surprisingly little to say about the modern transformations of these phenomena on the African continent. One of the reasons for the long delay in addressing the modern dynamics of this ancient anthropological problem may have been problems with the discipline's dominant paradigms. In the 1970s, Mary Douglas noticed some surprising changes in the anthropological study of witchcraft and wizardry. Of course, he takes as his starting point the undeniable classic in the field, Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande (1937) by Evans-Pritchard, who examined the witchcraft beliefs of this South Sudanese people in terms of issues of cognition and social limitations of perception. This work had a profound impact on later anthropologists, but, as Douglas notes, in "directions not foreseen or even blessed by its author." For example, in the series of monographs on Central Africa by British anthropologists of the 1950s and 1960s, which profoundly influenced the study of wizardry and witchcraft (particularly those of Victor Turner,

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James C. Mitchell and Max G. Marwick, and the collection edited by John Middleton and E. H. Winter), the Evans-Pritchard problem has been refocused in a particular sense. These authors did not concentrate on questions of knowledge, but on the relationship between witchcraft and the maintenance of social order and on micropolitics, in accordance with the functionalist theories then in force. They focused on allegations of witchcraft to be studied as a kind of "social tension gauge" (Marwick's term), that is, indicators of social tension, particularly in relationships within local kinship groups, where aggression could no longer be expressed direct. Thus, witchcraft was viewed as a "homeostatic control system": accusations of witchcraft were considered critical to the reproduction of social order because they allowed latent tensions to be expressed and managed so that the local community could be controlled. reconstituted This view of witchcraft, which dominated anthropological studies until the 1980s, had remarkable consequences. In his 1970 article (an introduction to a series of articles by anthropologists and historians studying European societies), Douglas wryly notes a striking difference: Anthropologists in the 1950s were developing insights into the workings of the beliefs of people responsible for European society Experience as relevant seemed like it came from another planet. Dangerous in Europe, the same beliefs seemed tame, even tame, in Melanesia and Africa; They served useful functions and were not expected to go insane. (p. xiii)

This anthropological view of witchcraft as something "domesticated" appears to be of limited relevance in addressing growing popular fears of its spread. In many parts of Africa, people in the early 21st century are convinced that witchcraft is truly "savage". Another problem with this micropolitical perspective is that the contents of the witchcraft allegations are neglected; the allegations are only analyzed as expressions of something else: hidden socio-political tensions. In his 1993 analysis of the witch hunts in South Africa's Lebowa, Isak Niehaus instead emphasizes the need "to take seriously the whistleblowers' own perceptions of witches."

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related to the United Democratic Front or even the ANC – in their witch hunts made a clear distinction between witches and political opponents: the latter could be attacked but not accused of witchcraft. In his opinion, the allegations had a specific aim: by denouncing witchcraft, the young people wanted to assert the legitimacy of their role in the "politics of public morality". But the strong moralistic tenor of the functionalist view of witchcraft also poses problems when trying to understand the resilience of these ideas in modern contexts. In the functionalist vision it was necessary to make a strict distinction between the positive and negative expressions of the latent forces. Often this forced the anthropologist to apply a Manichaean distinction to more open local concepts. (A good example is Middleton's 1963 study of Lugbara witchcraft.) Only by isolating witchcraft as a distinctly evil force could one believe that these beliefs function as a "homeostatic control system," a sort of safety valve that controls the expression of the social willingly allowed . Tensions without endangering the social order as such. But it is the fundamental ambiguity of ideas about the occult that allows them to remain relevant in modern contexts. Although witchcraft as such is certainly considered evil, people often believe that the same powers can be used constructively to amass wealth and power. It is the potential for multiple interpretations that makes the terms witchcraft and wizardry such alluring tools for trying to understand the vicissitudes of life in modern sectors. This is another reason why the use of a derogatory term such as witchcraft causes great difficulties. Rather than starting from seemingly fixed conceptual distinctions, it might be more instructive to examine the various ways and means by which societies seek to enforce conceptual distinctions from what are essentially very diffuse and volatile concepts. The ongoing struggle to reproduce conceptual distinctions in this treacherous field may hold a key to better understanding the remarkable dynamics of witchcraft concepts in contemporary Africa. This is a common theme arising from the recent and rather sudden surge in witchcraft studies in modern Africa, such as B. Modernity and Its Malcontents (1993), edited by Jean and John Comaroff; Niehaus's 1993 article in

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Africa; and Michael Rowland and Jean-Pierre Warnier's 1988 article in Man. An important starting point for understanding the pervasive notions of witchcraft in modern contexts is the close conceptual link between witchcraft and kinship. Even in highly urbanized contexts, witchcraft remains the dark side of kinship: witch doctors always seek to unite the family when treating a patient; The sources of aggression are mainly sought in the area of kinship and intimacy. This connection can help to understand both the enduring power of discourse on witchcraft and the uncertainty it creates. In many parts of Africa, kinship and family still seem to form the basis of social security, even for urban elites. However, it is clear that family relationships are becoming increasingly strained; they must overcome the increasing inequality between rich and poor, between town and city; they often appear to be stretched to the breaking point. This configuration may explain both the spread of witchcraft rumors despite modern changes, and the desperate search for new forms of protection against witches in many parts of Africa. See also Social Anthropology and African Studies; diaspora; divination and oracles; ancestry and ancestry; postcolonialism; Prophetic Movements; religion and ritual; Obsession; Voodoo. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ashford, Adam. Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy in South Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2005. Bayart, Jean-Francois. L'etat au Cameroun, Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politique, 1979. Bayart, Jean-Francois. The Illusion of Cultural Identity, revised and updated edition, trans. Steven Rendall, Janet Roitman and Jonathan Derrick. London: C. Hurst and Company, 2005. Bernault, Florence and Joseph Tonda, eds. Pouvoir's Magicians. Political Africa 79 (2000). Bond, George C. and Diane M. Ciekawy, eds. Dialogues of Witchcraft, Anthropological and Philosophical Exchanges. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2001. Ciekawy, Diane M. and Peter Geschiere, eds. "Witchcraft Contained: Conflict Attitudes in Postcolonial Africa". African Studies Review 41, no. 3 (1998): 1-14. Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff, eds. Modernity and its Dissatisfaction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

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Copet-Rougier, Elizabeth. "Categories of Commands and Responses to Disorder Among the Mkako of Cameroon". Droit etcultures 11 (1986): 79-88.

Rowlands, Michael and Jean-Pierre Warnier. "Witchcraft, Power, and the Modern State in Cameroon." Man 23 (1988): 118-132.

Douglas, Maria. Introducing: Thirty years after witchcraft, oracles and magic. In Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, ed. Maria Douglas. London: Tavistock, 1970.

Turner, Victor W. Schism and Continuity in an African Society: A Study of Village Life in Ndembu. Manchester, Reino Unido: Manchester University Press, 1957.

Dupre', Georges. An order and its destruction. Paris: Publications of the Office for Scientific and Technical Research Abroad, 1982.

Willis, Roy. "Instant Millennium: The Sociology of African Witch Purification Cults". En Witchcraft Confessions and Allegations, ed. Maria Douglas. London: Publications Tavistock, 1970.

Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937. Felder, Karen E. Revival and Rebellion in Colonial Central Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985. Fisiy, Cyprian F., and Peter Geschiere. “Judges and witches, or how will the state deal with witchcraft? Examples from south-eastern Cameroon.” Cahiers d’e’tudes africaines 30, no. 2 (1990): 135–156. Fisiy, Cyprian F. and Peter Geschiere. "Witchcraft, Sorcery, and Hoarding: Regional Differences in South and West Cameroon." Critique of Anthropology 11, No. 3 (1991): 251–278. Geez, Peter. "Witchcraft and the State in Cameroon". Critique of Anthropology 11, No. 3 (1990): 251–278. Geez, Peter. The Modernity of Witchcraft, Politics, and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Geschiere, Peter. "Witchcraft and the Limits of the Law, Cameroon and South Africa". In Postcolonial Law and Disorder, eds. Jean Comaroff and John Comaroff. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006. Mallart Guimera, Lluis. Neither two nor ventre. Paris: Socie´te´ d'ethnographie, 1981. Marwick, Max G. Sorcery in Its Social Setting: A Study of the Northern Rhodesian Cewa. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1965. Meyer, Birgit. Translating the devil: religion and modernity among the sheep in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Middleton, John and Edward Henry Winter, eds. Witchcraft and Wizardry. London: Routledge and Paul, 1963. Niehaus, Isak A. Witchcraft, Power and Politics: Exploring the Occult in the South African Lowveld. London: Pluto, 2001. Niehaus, Isak A., eds. Justice et Sorcellerie, Yaoundé: Presses de l'Université' catholique d'Afrique centrale, 2005. Rosny, Eric de. Les yeux de ma che`vre: Sur les pas des maıˆtres de la nuit en pays douala. Paris: Plön, 1981.

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PETER SCHIERE

Witchcraft and Christianity

The relationship between Christianity and witchcraft has only come into the focus of Africanist scholarship since the 1990s, prompted by Jean and John Comaroff's Modernity and Its Malcontents (1993) and Peter Geschiere's The Modernity of Witchcraft (1997), scholars began to consider witchcraft no more than something to conceptualize a traditional phenomenon doomed to disappear with increasing modernization, but as a convenient entry point into the ambivalent experiences of modern life. Even a quick internet search reveals that combining the terms witchcraft and Christianity leads straight into a minefield of misunderstandings, tensions, and conflicting interests. Pentecostalists have launched vigorous attacks on witchcraft based on the idea that witches exist and operate as Satan's agents in the world. Defenders of traditional values emphasize that witchcraft is a mistranslation of a plethora of specific African forms of spiritual power unrelated to the Christian figure of the devil. Others suggest a connection between African witchcraft and the modern Wiccan movement and New Age thought in general, either emphasizing the need to avoid the hegemony of Christianity, which seeks to marginalize non-Christian religious forms, or vice versa, African witchcraft in a perpetually expanding world. more global diabolical scheme. As research on the subject shows, these views derive from and inform actual practices in contemporary Africa: from violent attacks on alleged witches to provoked self-confessions in Pentecostal churches; from popular pamphlets and Ghanaian and Nigerian films exposing the operations of witchcraft to the struggles of intellectuals and artists who reject demonization

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traditional religion to Pentecostal Christianity and witchcraft as a normal part of African belief systems. However, the importance of the links between Christianity and witchcraft in contemporary Africa should not be misunderstood as an indication of the novelty of the phenomenon itself. Rather, the point is that recent approaches to witchcraft, not in contrast to modernity but as an intimate part of it, have produced innovative historical and ethnographic research examining the complex relationship between witchcraft and Christianity, past and present. Missionary and current Christianity and witchcraft

It is often believed that missionary Christianity alienated Africans from their cultural roots by launching attacks on certain elements of traditional culture and religion and promoting modern and enlightened attitudes. Mission research shows that things are much more complicated. A significant number of 19th-century missionaries, particularly those from a Protestant Pietist background, preached that witches, both in local terms and in English terms, were agents of Satan. More importantly, it also appears that large numbers of African converts to Catholic missions, as well as Protestants, envisioned witches associated with the Christian devil. This imagination encompassed two dimensions: (1) the originally ambivalent indigenous spiritual forces were transformed into distinctively evil demons; and (2) local terms referring to specific spiritual powers used to gain wealth or harm others through spiritual means were combined into the English term "Witchcraft". The process of translation on which this idea rested was not only imperfect, reducing a multitude of spiritual forms to a single concept, but also excessive, as it linked to the European idea of witches serving Satan and thus conducting the Great Witch Hunt the time extended onto African soil. Far from simply opposing witchcraft, local appropriations of Christianity have reshaped it to the dark side of the Christian universe, often to the dismay of European and African church leaders. In this way, witchcraft became part of the Christian discourse rather than outside it (Meyer 1999, West 2005). the legacy of

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this process of translation is still evident in contemporary debates about witchcraft in Africa: just as the supposed connection between witches and Satan dates back to early African appropriations of Christianity, so can the attempt to establish a positive connection between African witchcraft and the modern Wiccan movement viewed as a denial of witchcraft's connection with Satan. Research has emphasized the need to address the links between images of hidden forces and overt socioeconomic relationships, at least as the latter are interpreted by modern social science. Also in the context of Christianity, the synthesis of devil and witchcraft was made to speak of broader socio-economic concerns. To the disappointment of church leaders, many converts were often drawn to Christianity because they expected this new religion to offer effective protection against witchcraft, thus drawing an analogy between anti-witchcraft movements in their own heritage and those of their own mission . Christian ideas of witches as agents of Satan made it possible to continue to take seriously the danger of witchcraft as the dark side of kinship. The appeal of Christianity at the grassroots level can be attributed, at least in part, to its attitude toward the extended family and traditional patterns of distributing material wealth. The individualistic ethic of Christianity was in stark contrast to local forms of emphasis on obligations between blood relatives, in which witchcraft was used to level inequality and, conversely, to exclude excessive accumulation. For many local converts, conversion to Christianity was the ultimately unfulfillable promise of enjoying the wealth that comes from a civilized life without fear of being attacked or destroyed by witchcraft by jealous relatives. The enduring obsession with witchcraft as a destructive force operating through blood ties testifies to the ambivalence of local converts toward the new patterns of personal accumulation and limited distribution that emerged in the context of colonial modernity. In this sense, the modernity of witchcraft is not as recent as its contemporary coinage might suggest. What is new is the awareness among scholars that the relationship between Christianity and witchcraft is far more complex than common sense would suggest. The fact that common sense ideas about this relationship have existed for some time can at least be attributed to

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minus two factors: the neglect by Africanist scholars of the missionary churches, which were seen as similar to their European mother churches and therefore seemed much less interesting than the independent African churches; and the position of contemporary mainline churches (Catholic, Methodist, Anglican, Presbyterian) that belief in witchcraft (and even in the devil) is a superstition destined to disappear with the education they would provide . Indeed, in the context of attempts, supported by Vatican II and the World Council of Churches, to more positively accommodate indigenous culture and beliefs, many church leaders and theologians have committed themselves to Africanizing Christianity from the top down. Although intellectual elites and enlightened Christians in Europe (often embarrassed by previous missions' disregard for cultural and religious traditions) welcomed such attempts, local believers often rejected the Africanization offered to them. Denial of witchcraft and failure to offer rituals to protect against witchcraft and exorcism formed and continues to form the Achilles healing of mainstream churches, which tend to lose members in favor of other churches that take witchcraft seriously. . Witchcraft in the Independent Charismatic and Pentecostal Churches of Africa

The African Independent Churches (AIC), the Pentecostal Charismatic Churches (PCC) and the Catholic Charismatic Renewal (CCR) show clearly different attitudes towards witchcraft. Although these churches arose at different historical times and emphasized different concerns: being rooted in the African context in the case of the AICs, which gained prominence from the beginning of the 20th century; the promise of granting access to global networks of believers in the case of the PCCs and CCRs, which became very popular in the last two decades of this century - note an equally strict dualism of God and Satan, in which witches understand them as one evil, satanic power to be fought and defeated by the Holy Spirit (Ashforth 2005, Green 2003, Meyer 1999, Ter Haar 1992). This deep opposition to witchcraft has its roots in popular Christianity. This evil power is often suspected among the poor relatives in the village who try to bring down the successful family members or prevent success at all

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of witchcraft In a context where people face serious problems in everyday life and where they encounter inexplicable cases of wealth and sudden loss of others, witchcraft is called to explain and condemn excessive success and misfortune in a Christian setting justify. While most churches focus primarily on empowering and protecting members through prayer services, some are also actively involved in clarifying self-confessions or pointing out witches in need of exorcism. Research on charismatic Pentecostal theology shows that the emphasis placed by PCCs and similar churches on the fight against witchcraft should not detract from the fact that witchcraft is at the center of a vast space of Christian imagination that separates the abjective and the immoral, but continues to affirm it under the banner of the devil. While scholars disagree as to whether the Christian obsession with witchcraft expresses a moral critique of the Fantastic Record or opposes development and Enlightenment, it is equally clear that charismatic Pentecostalism is not only opposed to witchcraft, but also fights against witchcraft, but also actively affirms its dangers The inability to keep witchcraft out of the charismatic Pentecostal discourse is also evident in rumors about pastors who owe their power not to the Christian God but to a connection to witchcraft and other occult forces. The image of the satanic shepherd is a powerful testament to how witchcraft is not simply opposed to contemporary Christianity, but deeply intertwined with it. Images of the charismatic shepherd offering protection from witchcraft and the evil shepherd secretly relying on it are common in contemporary popular culture. There are a variety of tracts, paintings, folk plays, and videos that approach witchcraft from a Christian perspective. With the continent-wide popularity of Ghanaian and especially Nigerian videos, which draw heavily on Christian repertoires and frame plots related to the war between God and Satan, these Christian notions of witchcraft have been visualized and therefore tended to be codified - consistently Africa. These films, in turn, feed on the Christian imagination, thereby affirming the danger of witchcraft as a real force and compelling theologians to act. Through this circularity that unites the popular Christian

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unavoidable challenge not only for Christianity, also the major churches are increasingly allowing charismatic prayer groups fighting witchcraft, but also for contemporary researchers. How to develop appropriate spellings of witchcraft without acknowledging its existence or dismissing it as mere superstition, and how to frame discourses of witchcraft in relation to the broader social, political, and economic issues they address is still a matter of debate (Ashforth 2005 , Geschiere 1997, West 2005). Genealogical approaches that trace how Christianity helped introduce witchcraft as a new concept that both encompasses and re-articulates earlier local conceptions are relevant, as are attempts to understand the moral subtexts of Christian witchcraft discourses or to understand the spread of popular discourses . Christian views of witchcraft in entertainment and politics.

Hand-painted poster announcing the Ghanaian video film Unleashing the Powers of Darkness (Sam Bea, Accra, 1992). This film features a woman who is possessed by the spirit of witchcraft and later released. The film suggests that a spiritual battle is taking place between indigenous priests (represented on the right side of the poster) and Christianity (symbolized by the shepherd). PHOTOS BY BIRGIT MEYER

Fantasy, modern mass entertainment, churches and even politics, witchcraft appears as an ultimate reality that cannot be denied, only avoided. Or, as one participant in the discussion surrounding the BBC World News article 'Is Witchcraft Alive in Africa?' put it: 'I don't believe in witchcraft, but I know it exists' (2005). The fact that more and more scholars have begun to pay attention to the connection between witchcraft and Christianity stems not so much from a conscious interest in the study of witchcraft (or Christianity) per se, but rather from the importance attached to the pre-eminent and disturbing aspects of witchcraft permeate people's everyday lives. Witchcraft has become one

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The central point of the research is that witchcraft and Christianity cannot simply be understood as opposed to each other. The fact that contemporary debates portray the dangers or the virtues (whatever) of witchcraft versus Christianity shows the power of Christian discourses to define what is at stake in everyday life. The appeal of popular Christianity, which thrives on a logic of resistance and embrace, seems to depend heavily on witchcraft precisely because witches seem to be God's most powerful counterparts. See also Christianity; Media: Cinema; Pop Culture. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Asamoa-Gyadu, Kwabena. African charismatics. Current developments within the independent indigenous Pentecostal movement in Ghana. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004. Ashforth, Adam. madumo A persecuted man. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Ashforth, Adam. Witchcraft, Violence and Democracy in South Africa. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2005. Bastian. Misty L. "Vulture-men, College Cultists, and Teenage Witches: Modern Magic in Nigerian Popular Media." In Magical Interpretations, Magical Realities. Modernity, Witchcraft, and the Occult in Post-Colonial Africa, ed. Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Sanders. London: Routledge, 2001. BBC News. "Is Witchcraft Alive in Africa?" 27 July 2005. Available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4705201.stm.

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Comaroff, Jean and John Comaroff, eds. Modernity and its Dissatisfaction. Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. De Boeck, Filip and Marie-Francoise Plissart. Kinshasa Tales of the Invisible City. Tervuren, Belgium: Ludion, 2004. Ellis, Stephen and Gerrie Ter Haar. Worlds of Power Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Geschiere, Peter. The modernity of witchcraft. Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Gifford, Paul. Ghana's New Christianity. Pentecostalism in a Globalized African Economy. London: Hurst, 2004. Green, Maia. Priests, Witches, and Power: Popular Post-Mission Christianity in Southern Tanzania. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Meyer, Birgit. "The power of money. Politics, Witchcraft, and Pentecostalism in Ghana.” African Studies Review 41, no. 3 (1998): 15-38. Meier, Birgit. translation of the devil. Religion and modernity among the Ewe in Ghana. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1999. Ter Haar, Gerrie. Spirit of Africa. The Ministry of Healing by Archbishop Milingo of Zambia. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1992. Van Dijk, Rijk. "Witchcraft and Spectacle by Proxy: Pentecostalism and Laughter in Urban Malawi". In Magical Interpretations, Magical Realities. Modernity, Witchcraft, and the Occult in Post-Colonial Africa, ed. Henrietta L. Moore and Todd Sanders. London: Routledge, 2001. West, Harry G. Kupilikula. Governance and the Invisible Kingdom in Mozambique. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press 2005. BIRGIT MEYER

W I T CHC RA FT E I S L A M

Witchcraft broadly refers to the intentional or unintentional use of supernatural powers to gain control over something normally beyond the reach of humans. It may involve the use of magical or medicinal substances or tools, or consist of the psychic ability to affect people's lives and health. It is often articulated in terms of illicit consumption. Whether inherited, learned, or purchased, witchcraft has traditionally been described by anthropologists as a representation of evil, an activity engaged in for nefarious ends, and an explanatory system that helps explain the inexplicable. in large parts of the

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In the anthropological literature, the term is used interchangeably with words such as magic, occultism, sorcery, and enchantment to characterize a variety of phenomena ranging from drought, disease, and murder to zombies, spirit possession, and the destruction of races. of body parts. However, recent studies have shown that not all linguistic categories associated with the concept of witchcraft and power evoke negative experiences. In some cases, witchcraft is used for positive purposes (successfully passing an exam and protection from harmful forces). As an ambiguous form of power, sorcery can be used to harm or to protect and empower. A few decades ago, scholars in African societies struggled to distinguish witchcraft, a mystical power inherited, from sorcery, malevolent magic acquired with the conscious intent of harming others. At the beginning of the 21st century such distinctions were abolished. The importance of witchcraft, it is now recognized, remains tied to the European history from which it originated. In this respect, the term is nothing more than a vague umbrella term that only imperfectly describes the complexity and diversity of African realities. Despite its problematic ontological status, it cannot be completely avoided. Africans themselves have adopted the words witchcraft and sorcery, or the French term sorcery (as well as indigenous loanwords from neighboring groups), a practice that further complicates anthropological efforts to measure translation errors and adequately record the phenomena. their changing forms of expression. In part because Africa was historically characterized as the proverbial home of witchcraft, the occult became a central dimension of the anthropological approach to African societies. The history of anthropology's focus on witchcraft can be roughly divided into a number of significant periods: In the early 19th century, the French scholar Lévy-Bruhl (1857-1939) claimed that witchcraft was evidence of African prelogical thinking. In 1937, in his seminal study of Zande witchcraft, British anthropologist E.E. Evans-Pritchard demonstrated that Zande's thinking was no less rational than European epistemologies. Witchcraft, he argued, was a figure of speech used to explain bad luck. After the Second World War,

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Members of the Manchester School shifted the focus to the social impact of witchcraft. Through their exploration of the dynamics of witchcraft suspicion and accusation, they demonstrated how witchcraft led to division and, less often, fusion of social groups. A generation later, a shared interest in the meanings of human actions led anthropologists to study witchcraft as an expression of people's confrontation with the problem of evil. Since the 1990s, the study of witchcraft has experienced a renaissance as scholars attempted to show that witchcraft beliefs and practices, far from being a measure of primitivism and an expression of tradition, are an integral part of contemporary modernity. Contrary to modernist predictions that religion would die out under the combined onslaught of science and development, belief in magic remains central to how Africans understand contemporary realities. In many places, these beliefs are growing, fueled by the uncertainties Africans have experienced after modernity failed to achieve the progress that once seemed guaranteed to those championing development. The intensification of witchcraft belief has routinely led to the rise of witch cleansing movements, in which self-proclaimed individuals identified witches blamed for the calamities (drought, poverty, and epidemics) that afflicted communities. The notable emergence of such movements during the colonial period has been seen as a result of the socio-economic collapse caused by the introduction of colonial politics and, in some cases, the effects of missionary activity. From such a perspective, the inequalities and insecurities caused by the emergence of new forms of production, consumption, and political power led to tensions that were often expressed through the language of witchcraft. In the 1930s, the Watchtower and Mchape movements in present-day Zambia aimed to create a radically new and harmonious society through the elimination of evil. Young leaders, hoping to revitalize society, exposed the elders as witches. Elsewhere, concerns about fertility and production have sparked accusations of witchcraft against older women, often viewed as wealthy but no longer fertile contributors to society than prototypical witches. Between

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In Sukuma, northwestern Tanzania, these victims of witchcraft allegations are being expelled or executed. In Congo, children have been the target of accusations of witchcraft and have been victims of domestic violence or abandoned altogether. Misfortune, the death of a neighbor, and an unexplained illness in the family are some of the reasons that lead to accusations of witchcraft against a child. There, as in other parts of the continent, witches and the discourses they generate are often critical of development and capitalism, that is, a world in which the rich seem to obtain their wealth through illegal means and often at the expense of the poor. While Christian missions originally condemned African attempts to seek protection from occult powers, Muslim clerics encouraged the use of wards, amulets, and other methods, which they made for a fee. Among other things, they shared with the practitioners of indigenous religions the acknowledgment of the existence of spirits, for them geniuses. They also prescribed Muslim prayers and amulets as a preventive treatment against accusations of witchcraft. Most of the techniques developed to ward off the harmful influence of spiritual forces on human life used (and still do) Arabic texts such as the Korpan, from which they drew some of their effectiveness. As the Word of God, the Korpan is said to contain divine power. In fact, the holy book is often viewed as a form of protection for the believer as well as a source of healing. Techniques such as prayers, blessings, geomancy (divination by reading sand or pebbles), astrology and amulets draw their power from the secret knowledge that Muslim clerics acquire through intense and specialized training. Amulets (referred to as gris-gris in the French colonial lexicon), which may be worn on the body or hung, deployed, or buried in specific locations, usually contain verses from the Korpan. Choosing corpanian verses to craft amulets requires specialized knowledge for different diseases and specific threats that require different chapters, verses, or combinations of verses. Although these protective devices are sometimes made so that their contents can be rubbed onto objects or used for bathing, another popular technique is to write a verse from the Qurpan in ink on a wooden tablet. The text is then washed out with water

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drunk by the clergyman's client. Absorbing the power of the Qurpan in this way is generally considered more efficient than wearing it on the body through the use of amulets. Amulets can be lost and are vulnerable to ritual contamination and may lose their protective power. Given the power that Muslim specialists seem to wield over spirits, they are sometimes suspected of engaging in nefarious activities for mainly selfish purposes. Some are even accused of making immoral deals with the spirits in order to get rich: in exchange for the riches they receive from the spirits' work, they have to make human sacrifices to the supernatural workers. Due to the ambivalent nature of the esoteric knowledge of Muslim specialists, it is also believed that some create harmful amulets at the request of clients wishing to harm a competitor or enemy. While many Africans rely on the expertise of Muslim specialists to protect themselves from drought, car accidents and a host of other disasters, some Muslims believe that relying on amulets, regardless of the purpose for which they are used, is a corrupt interpretation become Qurpan. . The 14th-century North African scholar Ibn Khaldun urged Muslims to abandon such practices on the grounds that it was a form of idolatry. More recently, reform Muslims who have campaigned for the purification of Islamic practices across the continent have similarly condemned the manufacture of amulets as a heretical activity. See also hunger; Ibn Khaldun, Abd al-Rahman; Islam; Linguistics and African Studies; religion and ritual; Obsession. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Masquelier, Adeline Marie. The prayer ruined everything: property, power and identity in an Islamic city in Niger. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001. ADELINE MASQUELIER

W I TC HCR SUPPORT AND POLICIES

Belief in witchcraft has been found throughout African history, in virtually every part of the continent, and remains a key feature of the modern day. Edward Evans-Pritchard's (1902-1973) classic study of the Azande in Sudan (1937).

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between witchcraft and sorcery for their different techniques. He defined the first as the innate and inherited ability to cause misfortune or death. Witchcraft involved unconscious psychic powers that emanated from a black swelling near the liver. In contrast, Azande defined sorcery as the performance of rituals, the casting of spells, and the manipulation of organic substances such as herbs with the conscious intent of causing harm. Although this distinction is widespread in East Africa, it is not made in other parts of Africa. Therefore, many contemporary authors use the terms witch and witchcraft more broadly to refer to both types of people and ways of acting. Philip Mayer (1954) notes several common features of the belief in witches: 1. Witches embody non-human power. Witches work with animals like snakes, cats, baboons, and owls that they have as familiars; or the witches themselves take the form of these beasts. 2. Witches are almost always adults. 3. Witchcraft tends to gain social importance in times of crisis when all sorts of misfortunes are attributed to it. 4. Witches are more likely to harm their own relatives and neighbors than strangers. 5. Witchcraft is motivated by envy and malice rather than the pursuit of material gain. 6. Witches reverse usual behavioral expectations. They work nights, commit incest, practice cannibalism, go around naked instead of clothed, or recoil when there's a knock on a door. 7. Witchcraft is almost always immoral. Anthropological theories attempt to uncover the ideological and social realities underlying these witchcraft beliefs and the cultural meanings they encode. Evans-Pritchard demonstrated how the Azande belief in witchcraft provided a logical explanation for unfortunate events. He insisted that the theory of witchcraft does not preclude empirical knowledge of cause and effect, but that it complements theories of natural causes and answers questions about the specifics of calamity. He quoted the famous

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Example of a collapsed barn injuring those below. The Azande explained this event empirically: termites had eaten the supports. But they resorted to witchcraft to explain why certain individuals were sitting under the barn at the precise moment it collapsed. Another influential theory proposed by Max Marwick (1965) is that accusations of witchcraft reformulate problematic social relationships that are inaccessible to law enforcement. Accusations of witchcraft arose among the Chewa of Zambia when the matriline exceeded the size their resources could support. As inheritance tensions became apparent, accusations of witchcraft served as locutions to initiate schism proceedings and allowed prosecutors to sever superfluous relationships. More recent theorists posit that witchcraft allegations are at the heart of political and economic struggles, and that witchcraft discourses are avenues for interpreting modern change. This association with power comes because witchcraft involves constant transgression. Concepts of power and political processes are thus at the heart of witchcraft. In pre-colonial Africa, political actors tapped an important source of political legitimacy by neutralizing witchcraft to deal with misfortune. Among the Azande of Sudan, kings and princes held prestigious poison oracles to which the commoners appealed for final judgment in witchcraft cases. Likewise, the Nyakyusa chiefs in Malawi were considered leaders in the night war against witchcraft. Chiefs were moral guardians who used their python power to uncover evil, defend villagers against witchcraft, and punish evildoers. Colonial governments were committed to a civilizational mission and viewed witchcraft beliefs and practices as primitive, unfounded, and even diabolical superstitions. They enacted a series of anti-witchcraft laws that banned accusations of witchcraft and attempts to practice witchcraft. In practice, however, colonial regimes consistently ignored belief in witchcraft and allowed chiefs and caciques to continue hearing cases of witchcraft. In the colonial era, witch-cleansing cults easily crossed ethnic and national boundaries. The Kamcape movement of the 1930s, for example, spread from Nyasaland to Northern and Southern Rhodesia, the Congo and Mozambique. He

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The organizers used hand mirrors as a form of divination and then administered medicine to render witchcraft ineffective and protect the innocent from mystical attacks. The witches identified themselves through confessions and usually resumed their place in the community, and a morally reborn life began for all. However, these cults were associated with considerable ambiguity. Though aimed at restoring social order, they also promoted a new unity. The cults temporarily placed power in the hands of younger men at the expense of older ones. The younger men had a broader range of interests and were often associated with African nationalist movements. Witchcraft beliefs and allegations remain important features of political processes in postcolonial societies. After independence, some governments, such as that of Tanzania, vigorously pursued modernization plans and continued colonial suppression of witchcraft laws. Others, like the governments of Malawi and Cameroon, have treated witchcraft as a reality and allowed major and state courts to try witches. For example, regional courts in the eastern province of Cameroon even sentenced witches to prison terms of up to ten years on the basis of statements by certified fortune tellers (nkong). Similarly, the Ralushai Commission of Inquiry into Witchcraft-related Crimes in South Africa argued that accused witches should be tried according to African standards of propriety and recommended that those who have reasonable suspicion of practicing witchcraft should be punished . Postcolonial discourses on witchcraft are closely linked to new forms of inequality and address the fear of the young that the old will block their path to prosperity. Peter Geschiere (b. 1941; 1997) argued that in countries like Cameroon, witchcraft was a popular type of political action, through which rural communities expressed their dissent against the offensive behavior of elites. Cameroonian villagers see power, wealth and success as a reflection of possessing hidden powers called Djambe. When the villagers experience calamity, they can accuse the rich and powerful of witchcraft or threaten them with witchcraft. Such accusations put members of the city's political elite under significant pressure to reallocate resources.

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See also Colonial Policies and Practices; ancestry and ancestry; postcolonialism; religion and ritual. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Among the Azande. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1937. Geschiere, Peter. The Modern Age of Witchcraft: Politics and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1997. Marwick, Max. Sorcery and its social environment: a study of the Cewa of Northern Rhodesia. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 1965. Mayer, Philip. Bruges inaugural lecture. Grahamstown, South Africa: Rhodes University, 1954. Wilson, Monica. Good company: a study of the villages of the Nyakyusa era. Boston: Beacon Press, 1967. ISAK NIEHAUS

witchcraft and prophecy

In contemporary social science and popular culture language, the word witchcraft often refers to damage caused by human agency using special powers. The word witchcraft, derived from the Old English word wicca, referred to human actions aimed at affecting nature in a variety of ways and not exclusively associated with harm. It was similar to how the word magic was used in the 21st century. Through the influence of some forms of Christian thought, people who attempted to manipulate nature were believed to be dependent on harmful or helpful spiritual entities, and their activities were categorically labeled as harmful or helpful. During the Renaissance, all forms of magic came to be associated with damage and the devil's influence, and the term witchcraft largely represented this hostile perspective on magic. Contemporary science continues to reproduce the problem of identifying the different forms of magic. Some scholars use the term "harmful magic" instead of "witchcraft" to avoid some of its narrower historical and geographic associations. prophecy

The English word prophecy derives from the Greek word profeteia and has the same root as the word prophemi, meaning to speak before or to someone. In ancient Greece, the term prophet referred to a religious specialist.

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who interpreted messages from the gods as well as other types of signs. These interpretations referred to the present and the future and could involve many different types of mediators. There is a long history of anthropological discourse pioneered by E.E. Evans-Pritchard in identifying the characteristics of relatively benign "prophets" that contrasted them with colonialist notions of harmful "witches." In the 21st century, most scholars use the term prophet to describe a religious specialist who has the ability to perceive, understand, and transmit communications from a supreme being, gods, or other non-human spiritual entities. The term diviner often refers to a religious specialist who interprets the symbolic meaning of features in the natural world or the results of manipulation techniques. In some religious systems, diviners communicate with divinity or a spirit in their attempt to discover meaning, just like prophets. In some religious systems, diviners are distinguished from prophets because they seek information on behalf of an individual client rather than for the good of society as a whole. Most African societies cultivate some form of prophecy and divination. As mediators between the divine and humans, prophets and soothsayers have the potential to use their power to guide human thought and action. Prophets often have unusual intellectual and spiritual talents. Some of them are also known to possess charismatic leadership qualities. Those whose skills in prophecy are well developed are given high status in society. In some religious systems, the prophet's ability is believed to be authorized by divinity or ancestral spirits, and in other systems by the prophet's position in a succession to a previous prophet. Most religious systems have specific rules that are used to determine the legitimacy of a prophet's work or the specific words or interpretations that prophets provide. In times of rapid change, prophetic leaders often combine different traditions of prophecy and develop new ways of interpreting the world around them. In the religious systems of some African societies there are people whose skills in prophecy include the ability to identify problems caused by harmful magic. In the Mijikenda Society of Costanera

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In Kenya there are male and female prophets who work in a specialized guild or brotherhood. At the beginning of the 21st century, the brotherhood is called Kaya. These Prophets are elder Mijikenda who have Prophets in their lineage, chosen by ancestral spirits to guide their clanmates and other Mijikenda. They interpret communications from ancestral spirits and the Supreme Being Mungu through dreams and during prayer. They warn Mijikenda of far-reaching problems such as insect infestations, climate change, communicable diseases, and harmful magic that affects rainfall and crop fertility. Some religion specialists can combine the skills of prophecy and divination to identify the sources of harmful magic as well as the practitioners of harmful magic. Witch-finders in Africa claim to be able to reduce or rid society of harmful magic and have spearheaded large-scale movements reshaping social and political life. Since the mid-20th century, various Mijikenda men who claimed descent from a lineage of prophets and possessed divination skills have initiated such movements. The most famous witch finder was Kajiwe, who worked from 1966 to 1991. With the support of local elites and state administrators, he performed rituals to find the alleged witches and cleanse society of harmful magical influences. Local and state political support enabled Kajiwe to assert her power to find witches over the power of prophets and other religious specialists with legitimate traditional claims to identify the sources of social harm. The struggle between various religious specialists to identify and deal with harmful magic and to secure political support from state officials continues to shape life in Mijikenda. Throughout the history of religious movements and the establishment of independent churches in Africa, prophetic leaders have often opposed the use of harmful magic and provided their followers with the means to prevent it. In the Kimbanguist movement, which began in what is now Congo in 1921, there were a number of Congo prophets who provided analyzes of society's moral failure to explain misfortune and other unacceptable living conditions. These mistakes included practicing harmful magic. The greatest prophet, Simon Kimbangu, started the movement that later became one of the

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the largest independent churches on the continent. Claiming to heal in the name of Jesus, he taught people that the existence of evil in their hearts, largely referred to as witchcraft, brings disease and discomfort. Her religious rituals and prayers provided her followers with new opportunities to reconceive and redesign their lives. See also Death, Mourning, and Ancestors; Kimbangu, Simon; ancestry and ancestry; Prophetic Movements. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ciekawy, Diane. "Witchcraft and Statecraft: Five Technologies of Power on Kenya's Colonial and Post-Colonial Coast". African Studies Review 41, no. 3 (1998): 119-141. Johnson, Douglas and David Anderson. "Prophets of Revelation". In Prophets of Revelation: Prophecy in East African History. London: James Currey, 1995. McGaffey, Wyatt. Modern Congo Prophets: Religion in a Pluralistic Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983. DIANE CIEKAWY

witchcraft and wealth

Witchcraft, broadly defined as the use of supposed magical powers to achieve a specific goal, has always been part of popular beliefs in many societies around the world, particularly in Africa, and varies from culture to culture and from time to time. In Africa, anthropological studies have shed light on the different meanings of beliefs in witchcraft and how they might have operated on that continent since pre-colonial times. While previous generations of anthropologists generally viewed African witchcraft as an expression of primitive thought, early 21st century scholarship sees this popular belief as a product of the modernization process. In some cases, belief in witchcraft is viewed as a popular response to the socio-economic changes that many African societies have been experiencing since the early 16th century. Associated with the accumulation of material wealth and political dominance in Africa, the witch craze seen in many African countries in the early 21st century has a long history, dating back to the 16th century and often referred to as the early stages of the globalization in what is now known as the sorcery of wealth were the result of the involvement of African societies in commercial activities.

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Trade with Europe and North America, particularly the slave trade, which mainly benefited African coastal chiefs. In fact, the slave trade offered these usual leaders, who acted as intermediaries, new economic opportunities to gain wealth and acquire dependents. As the commodification and enslavement of people increased across the continent, so did rumors of witchcraft against African slave traders, suspected of stealing the spiritual and material vitality of their rivals and enemies and sending them to unseen forces abroad. For example, many communities in the Gulf of Guinea and West Africa, whose kings thrived on the slave trade, firmly believed that their leaders owed their wealth and power to their involvement in Nkong, Djambe, Evu, or Sem sorcery, all of which Cumulatives emphasize witchcraft's tendency in relation to power. As a result of this prevailing belief, any accumulation of imported European and North American goods was viewed as suspect due to their alleged links to occult forces. The colonial era witnessed a significant increase in witchcraft discourses in Africa about material accumulation. The witch craze that arose during this period addressed social and economic inequalities, exacerbated by African societies' involvement in the expanding plantation economy. In many areas of the continent, particularly East, West, and Central Africa, local people generally expressed some concern about their newfound wealth. More importantly, the witchcraft rumors fueled by these new ways of accumulating wealth were no longer directed against the former usual leaders, who had lost their economic and political prerogatives as the British and other colonial powers suppressed the slave trade. The prime suspects were fairly successful farmers and planters who took advantage of the new opportunities for enrichment presented by the growing business of commercial farming. The general opinion of these new financial elites, who were often untitled people and even former slaves whose economic success and consequent new status belied their lowly position in the traditional status system, was that they made their fortune in converting their unsuspecting victims into zombies, who could then work invisibly for him.

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In regions where the accumulation of wealth occurred at the expense of the indigenous people, misfits and misfits were the prime targets of insane rumors of witchcraft, which generally portrayed them as sorcerers enriching and empowering themselves by sucking off the life-forces of the natives. The Duala and Bakweri of Cameroon's coastal regions regularly assumed that the wealthy Bamileke and Bamenda planters in the country's highland areas had capitalized on their wealth by enslaving them in Nyongo or Famla sorcery. A Nyongo or Famla warlock was identified by his modern tin-roofed house, which popular belief could not have been built without the slave labor of unseen zombies. The modern belief in witchcraft perpetuates these ancient visions of wealth and power, fueling an unprecedented proliferation of alarming rumors about the nouveau riche and their so-called wizard money. These rumors claim that in an environment of widespread poverty, only those who are members of a mystical organization can amass fabulous fortunes in times of economic crisis for the majority and a declining labor market. Rumors identify successful con artists, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians, and shady businessmen whose alleged connections to the occult forces enable them not only to amass vast fortunes in a short period of time, but also to secure political power and social prestige. In many African countries, where marginalized groups face exuberant flows of imported luxuries and fantastic but seemingly unattainable wealth, many of the less fortunate have been quick to express their bewilderment at the hidden sources of this fabulous wealth. Over time, widely used terms such as blood money, magical money, devilish fortune, or what the popular imagination in Cameroon calls mokoagne moni (money obtained through occult means) have become key terms to explain the wealth gained through the victims of innocent people became mystics. Organizations These concepts also explain the accursed money that must never stay in its owner's pockets or be wisely spent, due to a mystical power that compels the wealthy magician to squander or squander his wealth on women and lavish consumption. The unique aspect of contemporary witchcraft beliefs in Africa is that they are connected to the present

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neoliberal capitalism and global spread of informal economies. Local people interpret the new forms of witchcraft in terms of global transactions in human goods and an international market for sorcery where wealthy wizards can buy and sell human flesh. In Cameroon, for example, mokoagne men (wealthy sorcerers) are said to be working with the mafia and organizing a global zombie trade in which the country, like many African countries, is just a local relay of global shadowy deals dominated by Europe and the United States . North America.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION

Norte

WOMEN This entry contains the following articles: PANORAMA WOMEN AND ISLAM IN NORTH AFRICA WOMEN AND ISLAM IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA WOMEN AND NON-ISLAMIC RELIGION WOMEN AND SLAVERY WOMEN AND THE LAW WOMEN AND THEATER WOMEN AND TRADE WOMEN AND URBAN PLANNING WOMEN IN THE HISTORY OF AFRICA

Since at least the early 16th century, witchcraft has been a powerful metaphor for interpreting seemingly inhuman forms of social, economic, political, and other domination in Africa. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; divination and oracles; Economics and Studies of Africa; slave trade.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ardenner, Edwin. "Witchcraft, Economics, and the Continuity of Faith". In Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations, ed. Maria Douglas. London: Tavistock, 1970. Comaroff, Jean, and John L. Comaroff. Modernity and its Dissatisfaction: Ritual and Power in Postcolonial Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. Douglas, Mary, eds. Witchcraft, Confessions and Allegations. London: Tavistock, 1970. Evans-Pritchard, Edward E. Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic Between the Azande. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937. Geschiere, Peter. The Modernity of Witchcraft, Politics, and the Occult in Postcolonial Africa. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1997. Latham, Anthony JH "Witchcraft Allegations and Economic Strains in Pre-Colonial Old Calabar." Journal of African History, 13, no. 2 (1972): 249-260. Muller, Jose. Death Road: Merchant Capitalism and the Slave Trade in Angola, 1730–1830. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Shaw, Rosalind. "The Production of Witchcraft/Witchcraft as Production: Memory, Modernity, and the Slave Trade in Sierra Leone." American ethnologist, 24, no. 4 (1997): 856-876. Bianca, Louise. Talk to vampires. Rumor and History in Colonial Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. BASILE NDJIO

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SUMMARY

In pre-colonial African societies, the woman's world was domestic, but her place was not just home, as was the case for middle-class women in the West in the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. Instead, it encompassed a more general responsibility for breeding and feeding the household, so its place was both in the field and in the household. Each woman was a unit of production and reproduction, with partial autonomy for her own barns, kitchen, and sometimes even her own livestock, but still in a state of quasi-slavery to the householder who was in charge of overseeing production. At the same time, of course, women's reproductive role as mother and cultural reproducer was all the more important when fertility was very high, at the maximum limit of biological possibilities (birth rate close to 50 per 1000, but with a very high infant mortality rate). mortality rate, according to statistics from Meillassoux 1981). Colonization brought significant changes, increasing the workload of women but also creating opportunities for individual emancipation. Several women took advantage of this opportunity despite two obstacles: the disapproval associated with the Victorian style of colonialism and the traditional conservatism of African chiefs who clung to the last vestiges of their male privilege. Particularly important were those who gave up the hard life in the countryside and emigrated in large numbers to the cities. In most late 20th-century African cities, women made up the majority of the population, a fact that became particularly significant after independence. As a result, women are an explosive force burdened with social responsibility.

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and cultural disabilities, but endowed with energy, creativity and above all a crucial economic role in livelihood that gives them an important place in the future of sub-Saharan Africa. DETERIORATION OF THE LIVING CONDITIONS OF COUNTRY WOMEN

In the case of most countries in sub-Saharan Africa, it is more productive to study rural women than rural men. With few exceptions (among the Songhay of Mali, the Hausa and Yoruba of Nigeria, and to some extent the Fon of Dahomey), the hoe was reserved for women (to do actual farming) while the ax (for cutting) was used by men fall trees and clear fields). Possibly the stress on women, at least in West Africa, was increased by the effects of the Atlantic slave trade, which demanded more men than women (while the Arab and Muslim slave trade demanded more women than men). This may have meant in certain societies (particularly central/equatorial and southern Africa) that women were assigned to the more arduous, routine aspects of agriculture, while men concentrated on defence, politics, and more prestigious activities, often less critical to subsistence . like hunting, fishing and blacksmithing. In the countryside and in many towns it was (and is) common to see groups of women and children carrying water and firewood on their heads. Rural women were beasts of burden, their lives hard, their responsibilities varied, although they also found ways to influence their own situations, to find some joy in life. Because of this, women accepted polygamy (perhaps accentuated by the departure of male slaves, which locally, as Loanda showed, led to a shortage of men) as it allowed them to share labor between fellow wives. The younger became servants (often effectively slaves) to their elders, who had previously served their mothers-in-law. The condition of rural women deteriorated with colonization, which disrupted the fragile internal balance of dependency and autonomy that may previously have existed between the sexes. There were two reasons for this. The first is that the cultivation of export crops (peanuts, oil palm, coffee, cocoa) and a surplus of subsistence crops (corn, yams, rice) intended for sale in local markets led to an increase in women's work, the work had to be done in the interstices of the circuit

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subsistence farming. While the women continued to grow food for a living, they now also helped their husbands on the plantations, where they did much of the essential work. Men were the main beneficiaries of the new system because they were the ones who traded with European merchants. Even when the women were traders (mainly in West Africa) they seldom saw real money because they found their old, trusted trade and distribution network to compete and even go bankrupt with import-export companies, and then with those bought by men truck . . For marriage, the traditional payment by the husband's family to the wife's family as compensation for the loss of work and children suffered by the wife's family—anthropologists call it a “reciprocal gift”—gradually became a woman's outright purchase . The process occurred in some societies, particularly West Africa, well before colonialism under the influence of increased trade generated by trade contacts with the broader non-African world, but it was accelerated by the monetization imposed by colonialism. The purchase, which had previously consisted mainly of various gifts including livestock, ornate jewellery, copper pans and loincloths, was converted into cash, a conversion of bride value into bride price. The chiefs, rich and old, demonstratively practiced polygamy. Their plantations of cash crops such as cocoa and coffee in Cameroon, Uganda and Northern Rhodesia (modern-day Zambia) secured protection from the colonial powers. The same plantations had a female workforce whose social status corresponded more closely to slavery than marriage. Some chiefs had as many as thirty or even a hundred wives who were actually non-money farm workers. Although the worst excesses disappeared after the 1930s, this system had profound and lasting consequences. As early as the 1980s, the husbands of nurses at Salisbury Hospital in Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, queued up at the end of the month to collect their wives' wages. They were encouraged to do so by laws supposedly based on tradition. The colonial administration paid no attention to the needs of women. Instead, it focused on luring men into the money economy by demanding cash taxes, wage labor, and speculative farming. The women's lack of money trapped most

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continue to extend their working hours in the old subsistence economy. Gold Coast (present-day Ghana), which had a strong matrilineal tradition, began growing cocoa for export between 1891 and 1911. Between the world wars there was a trend towards patrilineal inheritance, encouraged by the British authorities. The native authorities had to gradually ratify the process of changing inheritance from matrilineal (uncle to sister's son) to patrilineal (father to son) with more or less willingness to keep the plantations more in the same hands. Even if the impact had less of an impact on what was happening on the ground than the colonizer had anticipated, the results were even worse in Southern Rhodesia (modern-day Zimbabwe), where colonial legal measures were more authoritarian and women's obedience more entrenched, thus undermining this hostility towards them matrilineal practices very often women's rights. A colonial ideology, shaped by Christian morality and Roman or British customary law, superimposed old traditions of male supremacy. Private property, which was always in the name of the (male) head of the family, restricted women's access to land. As in France, this expulsion of women became law in the French colonies with the adoption of Napoleon's code. Part of the caciques also attended, who were consulted on customary rights. Like all elders, they tended to distort the past, exaggerating the subjugation of women and thus encoding their dreams instead of reality. The women quickly realized that it was better to lodge legal complaints with the colonial authorities than to go to the usual chiefs, who always ruled against them, especially in land and divorce cases. They did this early on, in the early 20th century, once there was an administrative center nearby. Some of them were more successful in the city to defend their rights to the countryside. This was the case in southern Tanganyika in 1901-1910. So was the city of Lagos, Nigeria, where Yoruba women, who traditionally had strong family rights, defended their urban homeland tooth and nail. URBAN MIGRATION AND WOMEN'S INDEPENDENCE

The migration of women, especially young women, to the cities was all the more important

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be unexpected. Mainly caused by the harsh rural conditions for women, it was also stimulated by the political instability of the late 19th century. There were battered wives; widows who are compelled by habit to take their deceased husband's brother as their spouse against their will; women rejected for infertility; runaway slaves; and women fleeing the exploitation of female production. Going to the city allowed them to marry whomever and whenever they wanted, without having to wait for the chosen man to amass enough wealth to pay the bride price. It allowed them to avoid marrying an older, polygamous man who would treat them like slaves. This migration of young women was a social victory. They were not encouraged by either the colonizers or the traditional African world. The colonizers, in the Victorian spirit, did not accept the idea of female independence; For missionaries, the idea of women working in the fields with their breasts bare was the height of indecency. The administration discouraged female migration as best it could, associating girls' migration to the city with prostitution. These independent women were clearly referred to as "free women". The Africans knew that women were needed for the field work. Arguments only appeared before the 1930s, initially against the daughters of the agrarian petty bourgeoisie, that the city was superior in terms of education and health. But in those days far fewer girls than boys went to town. The only exception, and it was a great and old exception, was in the cities of South Africa. Whites ignored women as sources of employment until they legally forgot them. Women were therefore not regulated by the system of oversight and savings accounts, that tragic imposition on black workers that dates back to the late 19th century. As a result, women had much more freedom of movement than men between the two world wars and were able to migrate to the cities in large numbers. There they performed the essential functions required by single men, the majority of the workforce. The women were (as always) responsible for the livelihood: they bought food at the markets; clandestinely brewed beer; done "informal" housework

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All kinds; and they served this mass of single men as prostitutes. In the 1920s, the most conservative state, the Orange Free State, attempted to impose savings accounts on women. The women reacted so violently - with demonstrations, delegations to the Pretoria government and other actions - that the Pretoria government had to back down. Only with apartheid was the savings book finally forced on women; Even then, the law passed in 1950 met with fierce resistance. It was the women who organized the burns. A path that led directly to their economic survival and freedom led them into politics, and there they fought barefoot for survival. On the other hand, in tropical Africa, more men than women lived in cities. When Zaire became independent in 1960, there was only one woman for every three men in Le'opoldville (now Kinshasa). In the early 21st century, there are more women than men living in cities, except in Lagos, Nigeria, which is a major industrial port. In Saint-Louis de Senegal, whose demographics were specifically studied, the ratio is particularly high at 877 men to 1,000 women. Because the informal economy follows demographic trends but the wage economy lags behind, women working in the informal economy are more likely to find employment than men. Much, perhaps too much, attention has been paid to prostitution. As in South Africa, the women took advantage of all the city had to offer. Lacking connections and resources, they found jobs that required little or no capital and great flexibility in the local market, working in the 'informal' economy and then as domestic workers. On average, each white person working in the formal sector provided work for an average of six African women working in the cheap informal sector (washing laundry, cooking, providing sex, etc.). Therefore, in the past, at least during the first half of the colonial period, prostitution was a trade like any other that enabled women to assert their economic independence. The fact is, before independence, women had no choice but to engage in informal activities because they were out of school; In 1960, at the time of independence, there was only one woman going to university in all of Zaire, and that was the daughter of the mayor of Kinshasa.

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WOMEN AND POLITICS

Although officially ignored or defamed during the colonial period, urban women played important roles there and responded strongly to attempts to control them. When the British government in 1925 and again in 1929 in Igbo country (southern Nigeria) tried to collect royalties from traders in the markets, the women joined their resistance. They organized the "women's war" which involved mass demonstrations and the looting of administrative buildings, leading to the decision not to impose the tariffs. In 1933 the authorities in Lomé, Togo tried to tax textile traders; The women took to the streets and paralyzed everything until they achieved their goals. The movement grew stronger around the time of World War II, particularly in the Yoruba and Egba areas (western Nigeria). In the west coast ports, from Saint-Louis, Freetown and Accra to Luanda in Portugal, women had a long trading history dating back to the 16th century. Ironically, however, the social conventions of the rising bourgeoisie prevented the rise of feminist movements in the colonial era. In a rare instance, Freetown, women (like Adelaide Smith Casely-Hayford, of Fante, English, Mandinka and Maroon descent, who was the wife of a Creole lawyer) influenced by English suffragettes, won the right to vote in 1930 Between the During both World Wars, the teaching profession produced some militant socialists, particularly in Abeokuta, Nigeria, Beere Anikulapo-Kuti-Ransome, aunt of late 20th-century writer and Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka and mother and grandmother of a well-known musician Women's pugnacity worked wonders during of the national liberation wars. South Africa was just one of many nations where female political consciousness grew out of active resistance. Women played an important role in the wars of independence in Kenya (the Mau Mau uprising), the Portuguese colonies, Zimbabwe and Namibia. These were societies where women were always subordinate to men and tied to the land. The Revolutionary Wars marked the first time they were allowed to attend events. Although few women were truly activists, they left an indelible mark.

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A pioneer in Mali was Aoua Keita, a midwife born into the Sudanese aristocracy. Her father, who had fought in World War I, sent her to the first girls' school in Bamako in 1923. She was the only woman elected to Mali's Constituent Assembly and worked closely with Aissata Sow, the leader of the Sudan Teachers' Association. But Aoua Keita was exceptional because she was divorced, independent and childless. Over time, women have found it less necessary to give up marriage and children to gain independence. In 1991, Malians of all stripes took to the streets to overthrow dictator Moussa Traore´. In 1996, two women were ministers in the government of Alpha Umar Konare'; one was ambassador and some hold high positions in trade unions. Women in other African countries also hold union posts. In 2005, for the first time, a woman was elected President of Liberia, giving great hope to all African women that every woman will be recognized for her skills and talents and no longer be biased because of her gender. WOMAN AND MODERN

Women may be political actors now, but they are still involved in day-to-day survival rather than affairs of state. Being poorly educated, most of them do not have the concept of a "social contract". At the beginning of the 21st century, women are fighting for an end to polygamy, the right to control fertility, and access to better education and health care. However, men's traditional prejudices are a major obstacle to domestic change, as is the position of international, Catholic or Islamic, religious authorities. The individualization of women was the outstanding development of the 20th century. As a result of this change, at least in the cities, it is often the woman who files for divorce; Most of the time, it is against a man's self-interest to get a divorce, because divorce may involve the return of the bride price and also because in most towns, among poor people, women's informal economy can be more profitable than that of unemployed husbands. Official or covert polygamy often remains the norm, and the "ring woman" (a woman who believes in the monogamous marriage contract of the church, temple, or city hall) might fear it

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Income is used and abused by the husband. Of course, this may vary by geographic area. Divorce and independent women are very common in Lusaka (Zambia) or Congo-Kinshasa, for example; Divorce rates are also very high on the Lamu Islands (Kenya), but Muslim women must remarry quickly; In Senegal, the woman firmly believes that it is still the husband's responsibility to pay the so-called depense, or cover the daily expenses of each of his wives (in a Muslim society). Therefore, depending on where they live, women adapt economically and socially in relation to their children and their ability to get what they need in a still male-dominated world. As a general rule, women's day-to-day independence, which is directly related to women's economic autonomy (probably more developed in Africa than in the western world, albeit at a very low overall level), is increasing very rapidly, even if conservatism of men Mostly time is counteracted violently. But is the modern woman really emancipated? She is increasingly reluctant to accept a polygamous marriage. Nor is it willing to accept the semi-official concubinage practiced by much of the male bourgeoisie, often referred to as the "second (or third) trade". The radical reaction of women to modernity is surprising. In both rural and urban areas, women are increasingly the head of the family. Since the 1980s, particularly in urban areas, consensual unions have become plentiful, the modern woman is much better off than the traditional first wife who would eventually leave. Ironically, educated young women who see the misery of the "ring woman" or "inner woman" choose to be the "outer woman." Few data are available on contraception. Its use increases with education and urbanization. The women who use it have abandoned ancient traditions and have both the knowledge and the means to use effective techniques. They are also women who have a job (formal or informal) that allows them to hire domestic help. Therefore, those women who can use contraceptive methods are usually those whose pregnancy would not limit their independence. Even in the most modern places, female fertility has stabilized or even increased, and the average number of births per woman remains between five and seven. Since the early 1990s, however, that number has evidently been declining, a trend that will no doubt accelerate.

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Empowerment of women in a society plagued by AIDS. In the sprawling Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya, these young women have little protection and are less aware of their rights as women. In these classes, they teach each other about their bodies, their right to say no, how to avoid dangerous situations, AIDS, safe sex education, and financial empowerment. HIV rates for women in Kenya are five times higher than for men, indicating strong feminization of the disease. ªB RENT STIRTON/GETTY PICTURES

Finally, social scientists do not know what impact the rapid spread of AIDS will have on fertility. In Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, about 40 percent of young pregnant women tested positive at the end of 1987, and AIDS can be transmitted to children born to women who have it. Significantly, AIDS is particularly high where machismo is most developed (like South Africa). The independence of women not only changed morals, but also unleashed female creativity. Singers, dancers, artists, intellectuals and above all authors appeared in a few years, women with originality, potential and conscience. Modern businesswomen, women of power—women ministers, ambassadors, and other important officials—were few but no less exceptional in a world context that remains opposed to women's emancipation. A basic fact is that the prerequisite for women's emancipation was the improvement of women's economic supremacy. At the beginning of the 21st century, "informal" (people's) trade, i.e. trade outside the western market economy, is carried out by urban women. There were always women in the market

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West Africa. In the cities of southern Ghana, for example, 90 percent of city women were employed, mostly in business. In southern and central Africa, women entered the market more slowly and in large numbers only after independence. Their number increased as urbanization progressed and the crisis in the capitalist sector spread. In Johannesburg and Nairobi, women entered the market around the time of World War II. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in the 1960s, 60 percent of street vendors were women. In Lusaka, Zambia, before independence, there were virtually no women in the market. Despite their low level of literacy, 90 percent of women work in the national economy. The increasing scarcity of formal employment, the inability of wages to keep up with the rising cost of living, and the devaluation of African currencies have made women's labor essential to the survival of the group. In both rural and urban areas, women continue to perform the heaviest jobs; They often take full responsibility for the survival of the group. This explains how in large metropolitan areas like Lagos and Kinshasa (early 21st century Africa there are more than thirty cities with

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population of over 1 million, up from just two in 1960), people can be assured that while life is tough, it is generally less prone to unpredictable disasters than life in rural areas.

Berger, Iris, and E. France White. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa: Restoring Women to History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.

The role of women in development should be thoroughly examined. The sheer number of studies on this topic is misleading. Certainly these studies show an awareness that much of the non-industrial production – outside the mines – is in the hands of women. That's why it's important to understand women. Despite repeated calls for awareness, education and mobilization, the official stance remains that women should be used rather than listened to.

Coquery-Vidrovich, Catherine. African Women: A Modern History. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997.

Two facts must not be forgotten. First, African women help themselves; Especially in rural areas, men and many women also have to accept women's right to co-determination. Also, and perhaps most importantly, working day 'til night, most women don't have time to learn new techniques that can help them. Women must be given help to help themselves. The only way is through education. Girls have always had less education than boys. In Islamic countries, the problem is one of numbers: Fewer girls are getting an education. In southern Africa, the problem is a quality issue. At the beginning of the 21st century, three quarters of adult African women are illiterate and girls' schools are of lower quality than boys' schools. At most a third, perhaps as much as a quarter, of girls attend school, compared with more than half of boys. It is therefore important that young women are educated so that they can understand their role in the economy, culture and nation. See also Colonial Policies and Practices; Demographics: fertility and infertility; Diseases: HIV/AIDS; economic history; education, school; ancestry and ancestry; Work; Law; Literature; marital systems; production strategies; Soyinka, Wole; urbanism and urbanization. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Boserup, Esther. The role of women in economic development. Brookfield, VT: Gower, 1986.

Coquery-Vidrovich, Catherine. The History of Sub-Saharan African Cities. Princeton, NJ: Markus Wiener, 2005. Cromwell, Adelaide M. An African Victorian Feminist: The Life and Times of Adelaide Smith Caseley Hayford, 1868–1960. London: Frank Cass, 1986. Davies, Carol Boyce and Anne Adams Graves, eds. Ngambika: Women's Studies in African Literature. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1986. Hay, Margaret J., and Sharon Stichter, eds. Sub-Saharan African Women, 2nd Edition. London: Longman, 1995. Hay, Margaret J. and Marcia Wright, eds. African Women and the Law. Boston: Boston University, 1982. Jeter, Diana. Marriage, perversion and power: the construction of moral discourse in Southern Rhodesia 1894–1930. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. Keita, Aoua. Femme d'Afrique: La vie d'Aoua Keita raconte´e par elle-meˆme. Paris: Presence Africaine, 1975. Mann, Kristin. "Women, Land, Property, and the Accumulation of Wealth in Early Colonial Lakes." Character 14, No. 4 (1991): 682–705. MB, Nina. Mobilized Nigerian Women: Political Activity of Women in Southern Nigeria, 1900-1965. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982. Meillassoux, Claude. Girls, Food and Money: Capitalism and the Domestic Community. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Mikell, Gwendolyn, eds. African Feminism: The Politics of Survival in Sub-Saharan Africa. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1997. Obbo, Christine. African Women: Their Struggle for Economic Independence. London: Zed Press, 1980. Parkin, David and David Nyamwaya, eds. Transformations in African Marriage. Manchester, United Kingdom: Manchester University Press, 1987.

Allman, Jean Marie, and Victoria Tashjian. I Shall Not Eat a Stone: A Woman's Tale of Colonial Asante. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann 2000.

Roberts, Ricardo. Litigants and Households: African Disputes and Colonial Courts in French Sudan, 1895–1912. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 2005.

Allman, Jean; Suzanne Geiger; and Nakanyike Musisi; Ed. Women in African Colonial History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002.

Wells, J.C. Now we challenge! The story of women's resistance to legislation in South Africa. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press, 1993.

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WOMEN AND ISLAM IN NORTH AFRICA

Wright, Marcia. Strategies of Slaves and Women: Life Stories from East-Central Africa. London: James Currey, 1993. CATHERINE COQUERY-VIDROVITCH

WOMEN ARE ISLAMIC IN NORTH AFRICA

In their relationship to Islam, North African women are believing actors who participate in the construction of Islam through daily religious practices, as well as being subject to Islamic laws and regulations pertaining to femininity. Both positions are hotly debated and are in flux. WOMEN AND THE ISLAMIC AGENCY

As religious actors, women deal with the five central duties of Islam according to their means and possibilities. The creed enjoys a wide following; Even highly secularized women consider themselves Muslims. Fasting during Ramadan is largely maintained despite the temptations women must endure in preparing the lavish Ramadan dinners, as women are seen as role models for their children in learning abstinence. The male provider usually gives the obligatory alms for the whole family, but the women themselves give money, help or food. The pilgrimage to Mecca used to be reserved for wealthier and older women, but economic development and ease of travel are now making it possible for more and more women. Visits to local saints or participation in Sufi rituals are more common. The daily prayers are mostly recited by older women. Young mothers feel that they deal too often with environmental pollution from menstruation, childbirth, sexual activity, or caring for children and the sick to maintain the purity necessary for regular prayer. They often lack the time, money, or permission to visit the bathhouse to perform ablutions and ritual purification. To show that they are faithful believers nonetheless, they promise to begin praying when the children are older and show their piety through humble, patient, and obedient behavior. Deficits in religiosity can later be compensated for by additional earnings, which older women actively pursue. With the Islamic revival in the 1980s, girls and young women began to express their Islamic identity by attending class and prayer sessions in the mosque and taking a serious interest in the religion. Some used religious arguments to win

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more opinions in choosing a husband or in distancing oneself from family control, leading to generational conflicts and descent within the family. Many wore a modern veil and a long-sleeved, floor-length overgarment, the hij a b, which was consistent with their school or work duties, but was also a powerful if controversial symbol of Islam. It replaced the traditional leaf-like body wrap, the haik, which was more of a wearable sign of seclusion and modesty that could not be worn at work. Increasingly, women are studying and imparting Islamic knowledge, disintegrating male dominance in religious matters from within, and making unprecedented contributions to Islamic interpretation that will no doubt influence the position of women in the future. WOMEN UNDER ISLAMIC LAW

The Maliki Sunni Islam practiced in North Africa is gendered in the sense that men and women have unequal rights in relation to marriage, divorce, children, sexuality and inheritance. Men can marry up to four women. However, the proportion of polygamous men in North Africa is significantly lower than in sub-Saharan Africa. Tunisia has legal restrictions on polygamy, and elsewhere it is hampered by the high cost of marrying and supporting another wife and children, as most women are economically inactive. The Islamic prerogative of men to divorce women at will is greatly feared. Most states have restricted this male privilege, requiring registration by a notary or only accepting divorce in court, as in Tunisia. Egypt and Morocco expanded women's opportunities for divorce in 2000 and 2004 respectively. Feminist lawyers advise women on how to use the marriage contract to gain the right to study, to work, not to have a wife in common, or to keep the marital home after divorce. In practice, however, few brides have the power to do so. Women also have fewer rights over their children. Divorced mothers retain the right to custody (hadana) of young children, but legal custody remains in the hands of the father, subjecting the mother and children to his whims. Both men and women are required to be sexually modest according to Islam, but women are subject to much stricter social control and punishment if they engage in premarital sex, adultery or prostitution. While

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Boys and men enjoy relative freedom of experimentation, girls and women are closely monitored, restricted access to public spaces, and kept separate from unrelated men. Female genital mutilation is only practiced in eastern North Africa. In the Maghreb it is not practiced or viewed as an Islamic form of purification. According to Islamic law, women keep their own wealth and income in marriage, but are expected to contribute to the household if the husband cannot adequately support the family. The marriage payment (mahr) becomes the property of the bride, not her father or male relatives, as is often the case in sub-Saharan Africa. It is usually converted into gold like any salary the woman earns to create a security fund. Faced with the threat of divorce, women guard this economic property right granted to them by Islam, and often quarrel with their husbands over it. For the same reason, inherited assets, reduced by the law that a woman's inheritance rights are half those of a man, often remain in the hands of the woman's brothers who look after her if she is divorced or widowed . All North African states signed the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (1979), but all made the reservation that this must not conflict with Islamic law (Shariqa). Therefore, none of these states has granted full equality to women since 2006. Since the beginning of the 20th century, women's movements have tried to improve the position of women. Whether this is compatible with Islamic principles is controversial. Some secular feminists and NGOs espouse universalist values and see gender inequality as inherent in laws that purport to be Islamic, such as the global network Women Living Under Muslim Law, founded in 1984 by North African women, with activists elsewhere. Others believe that Islamic feminism is the only possible or viable path. Activism within Islam ranges from strict Islamists, who believe that better observance of Islam gives many women more rights than they actually have, to liberal Muslims who seek to present Islamic sources in a light more favorable to women interpret. Both groups managed to improve the position of women in certain aspects.

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See also Introduction: Clitoridectomy and Infibulation; Islam; Law: Islamic; religion and ritual; Religion and African Studies. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Buitelaar, Marjo. Fasting and Feasting in Morocco: Women's Participation in Ramadan. London: Berg, 1993. Charrad, Mounira. States and Women's Rights: The Making of Postcolonial Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001. Che'rif-Chammari, Alya. Le mariage: Guide des droits des femmes [Marriage: A guide to women's rights]. Tunisia: Association des Femmes Tunisiennes pour la Recherche et le Development, 1995. Cooke, Miriam. Women Reclaiming Islam: Creating Islamic Feminism Through Literature. New York: Routledge, 2001. Jansen, Willy. Women without men: gender and marginality in an Algerian city. Leiden: EJ Brill, 1987. Jansen, Willy. "The Economics of Religious Merit. Women and Ajr in Algeria.” The Journal of North African Studies 9, no. 4 (2004): 1-17. Karam, Az. Women, Islamisms, and the State: Contemporary Feminisms in Egypt. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Mernissi, Fatima. The veil and the male elite: a feminist interpretation of women's rights in Islam. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1991. Mir-Hosseini, Ziba. Marriage in Court: A Study of Islamic Family Law in Iran and Morocco, London: Tauris, 1993. Moghadam, Valentine M. "Islamic Feminism and Its Dissatisfaction: Towards a Resolution of the Debate". In Gender, Politics and Islam, ed. Therese Saliba, Carolyn Allen, and Judith A. Howard. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Women living under Muslim law. Available at http://www.wluml.org. Zuhur, Sherifah. Reveal Reveal: Islamist Gender Ideology in Contemporary Egypt. New York: New York State University, 1992. WILLY JANSEN

WOMEN AND SUB-SAHARAN ISLANDS IN AFRICA

It is difficult to identify the specific impact of Islamic normative principles on the regulation of gender relations in African Muslim societies, on women's place in the family, and on their status in society in general. This is because many African Muslim societies are not just compliantly organized

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WOMEN:

WOMEN AND ISLAM IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

their understanding of Islamic commandments, but also according to a highly complex status system stratified according to profession and genealogical descent. The implications of Islamic precepts for gender relations are further complicated and often mitigated by the ways in which historically and regionally specific political and religious authority structures and economic organizations affect women's participation in public life and influence in family affairs. These different factors create different, sometimes conflicting, experiences for women, sometimes within the same society. Power inequalities and hierarchies therefore exist not only between men and women, but also between women of different ages and social status. It would be just as problematic to assume a clearly defined “Islamic” gender ideology in African Muslim societies. For example, the vision of complementarity and interdependence of women and men, often seen as a distinctive feature of societies influenced by Islam, applies to African societies in general. Historically, Muslim social institutions and authorities have often shown considerable tolerance of local practices and gender norms as long as the core precepts of Islam have been followed. For this reason, ideals of femininity (and masculinity) vary from one Muslim society to another, and