Sub-Saharan Africa:
Cultural Diversity

Maps are very useful tools. One of the authors of our textbook, Harm deBlij, has said "if a picture is worth a thousand words, then a map is worth a million ." But maps can also be used to conceal. Look at these maps of Africa:

• aflang
• afrelig
• afclosed

These maps, although useful, conceal the great cultural variety found in Sub-Saharan Africa. Maps often simplify, or over-simplify, so that we can more easily use them. These maps of Africa are useful (we used them to explain why geographers divide the continent of Africa into two different realms), but by grouping similar religions and similar languages together we obscure Africa's great cultural diversity.

For example a map of Africa's countries [afclosed] shows the borders established on the African landscape by the European colonizers. But a map of Africa's tribal [afdivmp], or cultural groups, shows much more complexity. This complexity was ignored by the colonists as they laid down the State borders [afclosed] in 1884. Most of these borders still exist today.

Look at the country of Nigeria on the map of African languages [aflang]. This map conceals the fact that there are over 250 different languages in use in Nigeria today [peonig].

Africa was dominated by tribal religions [afrelig]. Islam then spread into Africa from the northwest [nwmslwor]. European colonizers brought Christianity to much of Sub-Saharan Africa. Whereas a process of acculturation occurred in the Islamic areas (Islam completely REPLACED earlier religions), transculturation occurred in many of the European controlled areas as Christian beliefs were COMBINED with existing tribal religions creating different, unique, Christian, or African Christian, religions.

One online source of cultural (and other) information on the world's States (countries) is the CIA's Online Factbook [factbook/country].

The colonial boundaries established in the late 19th and early 20th centuries have become the State boundaries [afclosed] of today. Many of these boundaries surround a large number of different cultural groups, or tribes [Tribes]. This has contributed to many of the conflicts found in Africa. The vast majority of these conflict occur WITHIN a country's borders. Some current examples include: Sierra Leone, Sudan, Angola, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, and Rwanda.

As a result of European colonization few Sub-Saharan African States are nation states. (ee: [peonig] [peoliber]). Lesotho [peolesot] is one of the few nation-states in sub-Saharan Africa]

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