Word: saharan
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...quarter of a century after the nations of sub-Saharan Africa began to gain their independence, that bleak view is shared by increasing numbers of Africans and non-Africans alike. The New Year's Eve coup in Nigeria was only the most recent recurrence of a pattern of failure that has gripped the continent. Black-ruled Africa is suffering today from a political and economic malaise that few could have imagined when British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan spoke eloquently in 1960 of the "wind of change" then sweeping the continent...
...capita food production. Such essential government services as education, health care and transportation are in disarray. African countries are so riddled by foreign debt, estimated at a total of $100 billion annually, that they are rescheduling loans by arguing that they are near bankruptcy. In the meantime, sub-Saharan Africa's population of 210 million in 1960 has grown to 393 million. It continues to increase by 2.9% annually, the fastest growth rate in the world...
...Saharan Africa is burdened with half the world's 10 million refugees, partly as a result of the drought that has held the Sahel region in its arid grip for more than a decade. As nomadic herdsmen wander thousands of miles in search of food and water, some 14 million acres of potentially productive grasslands are destroyed each year by their livestock. At least 20% of the continent is desert; experts believe that the process of "desertification" could encompass 45% of Africa in 50 years if current patterns of land use are allowed to continue. Famine and pestilence plague...
...major exceptions to the litany of failure is South Africa, which has become sub-Saharan Africa's premier economic and military power. But this has been achieved at an unacceptable price: the disenfranchisement of its 21 million blacks, who account for 70% of the population. They are allowed to work, but cannot vote in central-government elections. They have little freedom to choose where they work or live. Many are forced to settle in bantustans, or black homelands, that the white government has set aside to segregate blacks while exploiting their labor. The elaborate canon of apartheid laws means...
...1970s Dike established the first History Department survey courses on Sub-Saharan Africa, and laid the groundwork for more instruction in that area, Womack said. "Until he came, there was no serious instruction, given in that field," he added...