Subsaharan Africa
• Midterms
• Geography in the News
– Due in 44 days
– 15 sources?
• Subsaharan Africa
– Development colonial legacy
– Medical geography & disease
– Cultural patterns
Colonial Legacy
• Boundaries & intertribal antagonism (e.g., Rwanda)
• Transportation network
• Interior to coastal ports
• Dual economy
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70% of labour force in agriculture
Cash crops for export: cocoa, coffee, tea, cotton
Subsistence agriculture (maize, millet, sorghum, tubers, plantain)
Land tenure issues, need for land reform
• Colonial institutions
• Government and legal framework
Medical Geography
• Epidemiology
• Africa is uniquely vulnerable
– High disease incidence and diffusion
– Widespread nutritional deficiencies
– Vectors and hosts
• Spread of disease
– Endemic
– Epidemic
– Pandemic
Medical Geography
• Endemic disease
• Infects large numbers without rapid death
• Equilibrium & persistent ill-health
• Typically endemic to a region
– Hepatitis
– STDs or STIs (formerly venereal diseases)
– Parasites e.g. hookworm – chronic anemia
– Schistosomiasis (Bilharzia)
• snail borne blood fluke
– River Blindness (Onchocerciasis)
• parasitic worm vectored by black fly
Medical Geography
• Epidemic
• Local or regional dimensions,
• Often acute onset
• Distribution often depends on vector
– Sleeping Sickness
• Vectored by tsetse fly
• Endemic in wildlife but kills Bos indicus/Bos taurus
• No ‘domestic’ cattle breeds on African savannah
Medical Geography
• Pandemic
• Spread is “worldwide”
– Mosquito borne:
• Yellow Fever
• Malaria
– DDT
Medical Geography
• Imminent Pandemic?
– Spanish influenza 1918-19
• H1N1: 20-50 million deaths worldwide
– Avian influenza?
• H5N1
MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY
• AIDS
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Pandemic since 1990s
ARV drugs in developed countries e.g. AZT
80% of 37 million infected are in Africa
Shifted from equatorial belt to southern Africa
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Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe
25% of 15-49 population infected
Life expectancy is declining
Impact on labour force and economic development
Population declines of 10-20%
– Bubonic plague in Europe
– Small pox among indigenous people of Americas
AIDS Transmission in the U.S.
SOURCE: UNAIDS, 2000
Growing Incidence of
AIDS in Africa
CULTURAL PATTERNS
• Population distribution
• African languages
– Colonial lingua franca
• Swahili
• Hausa
– Multilingualism
• Religions
– Christianity
– Islam
– Tribal religions
POPULATION
DISTRIBUTION
Traumatized children after
massacre of 1,000 in
Congo
Reprise
Generalized
Language
Regions of
Africa
REGIONS OF SUBSAHARAN AFRICA