Africa Geography

The geography of Africa has always been a mix of a desert, an inhospitable dense forest and a small area in between perfect for hospitable living space. As a result, this diversity of climates has effected parts of Africa socially, politically, economically, and has also effected the ability for Africa to build a military. Some parts of Africa developed more of less than others simply due to their conditions. Africa was socially impacted due to the geography of the continent. For example, stateless societies living near the northeastern part of Africa had contact with the Arabian peninsula, such as the Bantus. Although there were multiple versions of the Bantus depending on where they migrated, one group made contact with the Muslims; the diffusion of each language created Swahili. Swahili was much more diverse than any Bantu dialect because it had direct contact with another language. Other Bantu dialects occurred from isolation after certain …show more content…
Correlated with political and social effects, the surrounding area defined how economically successful a region of Africa would be. An example of this would be the Ghana empire. The Ghanas controlled many important trade routes, leading to great wealth from taxing any traders who crossed their territory. An area in the savanna can lead to easy farming, food surplus, and eventually specialization. For example, the Mali empire had a large area conquered, and was all in the savanna. It was easy to provide food to its inhabitants, making it a strongly successful empire. In contrast, an area in the desert leads to a constant struggle for food. If people are constantly struggling for food, then there won't be time to focus on other tasks like specialization. However, there are exceptions based on social encounters. For example, some groups in Africa lived in the savannas, however they never reached specialization because they were always conflicting against each