You're one unified creature with four distinct zones: your head, arms, torso, and legs. We naturally want to name these three major zones in Africa. We've already named one: Madagascar. So now we need to name that big desert. Let's use the Arabic word for desert: Sahara. Finally, what do we call everything else?
Maybe we should have called it the Green Zone. However, we ended up calling it the Sub-Sahara, meaning, "Under the Sahara. If those who invented maps and compasses had oriented the world to the South Pole, then we would all be using a map that looks like this:.
In the South Pole oriented world, perhaps we would have called Africa's green zone the Super-Sahara , which alludes to the subscript and superscript distinction. Now that would certainly shut up all these Sub-Sahara name haters. They would brag about living in the Super-Sahara.
Some oversensitive people cringe whenever they hear the term, Sub-Saharan Africa. I cringe too, but for different reasons. Most people who cringe do so for the reasons that I argued against above. I cringe because it's needless verbose. Is there a Sub-Saharan Asia?
Or a Sub-Saharan America? Or Sub-Saharan Europe? Let's make it shorter by just saying, the Sub-Sahara. It is, after all, the world's one and only Sub-Sahara. Yes, I know it's not that much shorter than Sub-Saharan Africa.
But it's an improvement and isn't needlessly wordy. It's 12 letters instead of 16 letters. And while we're at it, let's not call the people who live there Sub-Saharan Africans. That's too wordy for the same reasons.
Let's just call them Sub-Saharans. I dislike the term the Sub-Sahara and Sub-Saharans. I understand that oversensitive souls will think it sounds too close to "sub-human.
If I could start from scratch, I'd come up with a sexier term, like Green Africa and the people who live there are the Greens, even though their skin is more dark brown than green. If you have a better name for the Sub-Sahara region and its people, put it in the comments below.
I also dislike that the United States hogs the term Americans. I wish I could change that too. Americans should be reserved for the people of the Americas. We have Africans, Asians, Europeans, and then Americans. Because the USA owns that term, we no longer have a good word for people from the American super-continent. I'd be happy to be called Yankees or Gringos. Although Sub-Saharans and Americans are imperfect terms, trying to change them is tough, especially since nobody has offered a good replacement for the Sub-Sahara.
Some used to say Black Africa but that's even more politically incorrect than the Sub-Sahara. The point is that Sub-Sahara is really not that bad of a term. Learn to embrace it just like gays embraced the word queer. It reminds me of my endless nights debating with Eastern Europeans who hate the term Eastern Europe, especially if their countries are considered Eastern European.
I tell the Sub-Saharans the same thing I told the Eastern Europeans: focus your energies on making a real improvement to your region so that the term you use to describe your region has a positive connotation.
Sub-Saharans are trying to take the easy way and simply re-brand themselves. Such a superficial change is meaningless if you don't change what really matters.
It won't fool anyone. Trump and others will continue to think the Sub-Sahara is a shithole even if you call it the Super-Sahara. He explains in his book :. The name [AU] is a tainted one, African Union represents the vision of the likes of Libyan dictator Colonel MuammarGadhafi and the Big Men Club, while a new name [Union of Africa] represents a new vision crafted by a new generation for the next generation and the next.
The name AU cannot be kept as it represents the past and that is where it belongs like many of the Leaders of that era in the dustbins of history. His argument might be a bit more convincing if Africans hadn't already done such rebranding. But I'm sure the Big Men spent days and weeks debating the name change. Simply renaming something does nothing to solve complex problems. Putting lipstick on a pig won't make it sexy.
Germany and Japan had extremely negative connotations from to After World War II, they kept their names and focused on making a real substantial transformation. The Sub-Saharans should do the same. Here's the quick answer. Africa has 54 countries, according to the UN. They are those grey countries on the map on the right.
I include Western Sahara as part of Morocco since it basically is. Those five countries are not in the Sub-Sahara. All the other African countries, including its island nations e. Therefore, there are 49 Sub-Saharan countries. They are all those lovely green countries on the map. If you want me to spell them out, I will:. Indeed, in the map on the right, Sudan is in light green, showing the ambiguity of its position. Still, I would argue that it's in the Sub-Sahara.
I just wouldn't be that passionate about that argument. On the other hand, taking Djibouti, Somalia, or Eritrea out of the Sub-Sahara makes no sense unless you're trying to argue that Sub-Sahara is just a polite term for Black Africa. More from Quartz About Quartz. Follow Quartz. These are some of our most ambitious editorial projects. From our Obsession. How borders are drawn and enforced has far-reaching consequences, whether we live on either side of them or halfway across the world.
By Max de Haldevang Geopolitics reporter. Published September 1, Last updated on September 2, This article is more than 2 years old. In the Belgian Congo, what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, there was a racist ideology of paternalism where Africans were essentially viewed as children needing a fatherly, or paternal, authority to educate them in the ways of the West. In the far-reaching French colonies, from present-day Madagascar to Morocco, the colonizers emphasized an assimilationist policy, spreading the French culture through language, laws, and education.
In the British colonies, like present-day Uganda, Ghana, and Nigeria, settlers partnered with local rulers who were made representatives of the British crown. This was known as indirect rule. The Portuguese, however, continued to be primarily interested in resources rather than local politics or culture. Their policy of exploitation in places like Angola and Mozambique ignored local development and the empire kept rigid control over local economies. European colonizers were generally focused on exporting goods, with little attention given to local development or connectivity.
These easily sold raw materials or agricultural goods are known as commodities. Local communities which may have previously practiced subsistence agriculture were shifted to export-oriented crops destined for European markets.
When rail lines were built in Africa, they were generally constructed to simply take resources from the interior to the coastal ports without concern for developing regional linkages. Eventually, the African colonies gained their independence, though the ease with which they were granted independence and the ease of their transition varied widely.
Belgium, however, initially opposed the independence movement in its colonies, which were ruled directly by Belgian leaders. The last European colony to be granted independence was Djibouti in While independence movements successfully broke territories free from European control, many areas were faced with a difficult decision regarding how to politically organize as a state.
The European powers had redrawn the map of Africa with no regard for underlying ethnic territories. Some ethnic groups were thus grouped together, sharing colonial territory with groups they had long-standing conflicts with. Other ethnic groups were split apart, divided between two or more colonies. As the new political map of Africa took shape, it generally followed many of the colonial boundaries that had been artificially created.
Where two or more ethnic groups shared a newly independent territory, how should they decide who should rule? Perhaps the groups could simply share power and live peacefully.
But what if one group, because of imposed colonial boundaries, no longer had access to resources? Many of the political and economic challenges facing the countries in contemporary Africa are rooted in its colonial history.
Today, Sub-Saharan Africa is comprised of 48 independent countries and is home to million people. While colonialism transformed African politics and economics, the way of life for many Africans has changed relatively little. Only around one-third of people in Sub-Saharan Africans live in cities, and as of , 72 percent of these city-dwellers lived in slums.
Sub-Saharan Africa is still largely rural. Urbanization is increasing, however, as governments have invested in industries in an effort to strengthen economic development drawing impoverished farmers from rural communities.
Relatively few Sub-Saharan Africans live in large cities; most live in urban areas with fewer than , people. A notable exception to this is Nigeria, which was 48 percent urbanized in and contains several cities with over one million residents including its former capital Lagos see Figure 6. The metropolitan area of Lagos has a population estimated to be 21 million; it is the most populous city in Africa.
In Angola, for example, on the southwest African coast, most women have around six children. This has created a very high dependency ratio across the region, referring to the ratio of people not in the labor force to the number of productive workers.
Nigeria, with population of over million, is projected to surpass the population of the United States by to become the third-most populous country in the world. In addition to rapid population growth, another significant challenge facing the governments of Sub-Saharan Africa is related to healthcare.
Across the region, imbalances exist between the availability and quality of care. In some areas, western aid workers have been viewed with suspicion by Africans fearful of western intervention given their colonial histories. In other countries, foreign aid meant to help the poorest in the region has instead financed corrupt governments and military spending.
There are a number of illnesses, like hepatitis and hookworm, that are endemic to Sub-Saharan Africa, meaning they are found within a population in relatively steady numbers. Before a vaccine was developed, chicken pox was endemic in the United States, existing in a relative state of equilibrium.
When a disease outbreak occurs, it is known as an epidemic. Epidemic diseases often affect large numbers of people on a regional scale. The flu in the United States is an example of an epidemic disease, with increasing numbers of people affected during the winter months.
Malaria, a disease spread by mosquitos, is the deadliest disease in Sub-Saharan Africa and sudden epidemics can affect large populations.
If left without proper treatment, the disease can also reemerge months later. Other insect-borne diseases that have a significant clustering in Africa include Yellow fever, which is also spread by mosquitoes, and trypanosomiasis, better known as sleeping sickness, which is transmitted by the bite of the tsetse fly. In the hardest-hit countries, like Swaziland, Botswana, and Lesotho, more than one in five adults are infected. The disease is most often spread here by unsafe sexual practices, such as having sex unprotected with multiple partners even after marriage.
Still, there have been strides to try to slow the spread and assist those with the disease. Countries like Uganda have supported public awareness campaigns promoting monogamy in marriage and contraceptive use.
They were able to slow the prevalence of HIV infections from 15 percent in the early s to just 5 percent in In recent years, however, the infection rate in Uganda has once again climbed. Some say the government squandered aid money from the international community and did not keep up the public health initiative once rates decreased ultimately causing the infection rates to rise.
There is also a concern that religious initiatives promoting abstinence have not had the desired effect. In a survey, around one-quarter of married men in Uganda reported having multiple sexual partners in the past year and just eight percent of them reported using a condom. Periodically, regions in Africa, particularly West Africa, have experienced epidemics of Ebola, a viral hemorrhagic fever. Although Ebola is relatively difficult to transmit from person-to-person — it cannot be spread through the air like the flu — a combination of lack of understanding about disease transmission, inadequate infrastructure, and a distrust of Western intervention has made the region particularly vulnerable to deadly outbreaks.
An outbreak beginning in in the coastal West African country of Guinea spread across the surrounding area and killed 11, people over the course of two years see Figure 6. Bribery, even to access some public services, is common in many areas. Several governments deteriorated to the point where they are no longer functional, which is referred to as a failed state. In fact, of the ten states most vulnerable to failure in the world, seven are located in Africa. In some areas, political conflict has gone hand-in-hand with ethnic conflict.
Where competing ethnic groups found themselves sharing the same territory after independence, civil wars sometimes erupted as one group vied for power. Some groups turned to genocide , the systematic elimination of a group of people, in order to gain territorial and political control.
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