This is a map of Africa showing the different HDI ratings for the countries in it. You can see that all of the ratings are high and that the highest of all (Sierra Leone) is located on the West coast of Africa with a HDI of 175.
Ethiopia is another country with a high HDI of 170, it is shaded red on the map. I have chosen Ethiopia as a less economically developed country in Africa, which I am going to compare with the United Kingdom, a small group of countries in Western Europe.
The UK has a HDI of which compares to a HDI of 170 in Ethiopia, this shows that the UK is more developed than Ethiopia. However, as the HDI is in rank order, it is impossible to tell how much less developed Ethiopia is. A good way to see how developed a country is, is to look at the percentage of people employed in agriculture; 86% of working Ethiopians are employed in agriculture compared with only 2% of the working population in the UK. These figures give some idea of just how under developed African countries are, below there are more figures that compare the UK and Ethiopia.
All of these figures show that the quality of life in Ethiopia is extremely poor compared to that of a developed area like the UK. By looking at the number of people per doctor, you can see that Ethiopia’s service industry is very small and that there is little money spent on the public.
Most of Africa’s population lives in the region south of the Sahara, known as sub-Saharan Africa. In this area, eastern Africa includes such countries as Ethiopia, Somalia, and Uganda. Among the nations of Central and West Africa are Angola, Cameroon, Ghana, Nigeria, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Southern Africa is dominated by the country of South Africa, and also includes Botswana, Lesotho, and Namibia.
Sub Saharan Africa’s climate is mostly hot and humid with a high annual temperature and high rainfall. Southern Africa is mainly arid or semi arid, with a long dry season.
Africa is very rich in mineral resources, possessing most of the known mineral types of the world, many of which are found in significant quantities, although the geographic distribution is uneven. Africa has some of the world’s largest reserves of gold, diamonds, copper, bauxite, manganese, nickel, platinum, cobalt, radium, germanium, lithium, titanium, and phosphates.
Traditionally, the vast majority of Africans have been farmers and herders who raised crops and livestock for subsistence. Manufacturing and crafts were carried out as part-time activities. A few states developed long distance trade systems, and in these places complex exchange facilities as well as industrial specialization, communication networks, and elaborate governmental structures maintained the flow of commerce. But overall trade in Africa was limited by transportation and communication difficulties, and by differences in currency and other incompatibilities.
With European colonization came overseas demand for certain agricultural and mineral products and internal labor migration; new and safer transportation systems were constructed; European technology and crops were introduced; and a modern exchange economy evolved. Local industries and crafts—textiles and iron making, for example—were frequently undermined by cheaper or better European goods. Processing industries developed, as did ports and administrative centers.
Despite the expansion of commerce and industry and the importance of these activities to the economy, most Africans remain farmers and herders. South of the Sahara, shifting agriculture was popular; a method in which small areas were burned, cleared, and planted and then allowed to revert to bush, but this has given way in most areas to settled farming. Grain is the main crop outside the rain forests; rice, yams, cassava, okra, plantains, and bananas are raised for food. Cattle cannot be raised in tsetse fly-infested areas, which cover more than one-third of the continent. Outside tsetse fly areas and dense forests, cattle are raised in large numbers, primarily for beef. Dairy farming is limited, located mainly around urban centers in eastern and southern Africa.
Although some 60 percent of all cultivated land is in subsistence agriculture, commercial or cash-crop farming is common in all parts of the continent. Foodstuffs are grown for local urban markets, but coffee, cotton, cacao (cocoa beans), peanuts, palm oil, and tobacco are grown by Africans for export.
Mineral extraction provides the bulk of African export earnings, and extractive industries are the most developed sectors in most African economies. Approximately one-half of Africa’s mineral income comes from South Africa; much of this is derived from gold and diamond mining.
The bulk of Africa’s manufacturing takes place in South Africa. Heavy industry, such as metal producing, machine making, and transportation manufacturing, is concentrated here. Throughout much of the rest of Africa, manufacturing is limited to making or assembling consumer goods, such as shoes, bicycles, textiles, food, and beverages. Such industries are often confined by the relatively small size of the consumer market.
Coal is concentrated in Zimbabwe and South Africa; the bulk of their production is used internally. Although Africa has some 40 percent of the world’s hydropower potential, only a relatively small portion has been developed due to high construction costs, inaccessibility of sites, and their distance from markets.
The economic development of virtually all African nations has been hindered by inadequate transportation systems. Most countries rely on road networks that are composed largely of dirt roads, which become impassable during the rainy seasons. Road networks tend to link the interior of a country to the coast; few road systems link adjacent countries.
The commercial sectors of most African states rely heavily on one or a few export commodities. The bulk of trade occurs with industrialized nations, which require raw materials and sell industrial and consumer goods. Trade between African states is limited by the competitive, rather than complementary, nature of their products and by trade barriers, such as tariffs and the diversity of currencies. Most former British colonies in Africa continue to have loose trade relations with Great Britain and keep monetary reserves in London.
Sub Saharan Africa is the world’s least developed region, using the HDI as a measure of development, the bottom 19 countries are all in Africa.
Africa is a very dry continent in which is the World’s largest hot desert, the Sahara. The Sahara has an area larger than the whole of Europe and is inhabited by few people due to the extreme weather conditions. The rest of Africa generally has a wet and dry season, however, the length and intensity of these seasons are hard to predict and change immensely from year to year. This makes it difficult for a continent that is reliant on agriculture to break away from subsistence farming and produce a surplus.
There is an increasing amount of desertification occurring in Africa where the deserts, especially the Sahara are becoming larger, enveloping area around them. This process is partly due to the deforestation of areas of forest; with no roots to hold soil in place, it blows away leaving an infertile desert.
The weather system El Niño also affects Africa. El Niño is the periodic warming of the Pacific Ocean that occurs once every five to seven years. In 1997-98 El Niño caused extremely heavy floods in some parts and drought in others
