Net Effect of Imperialism in Africa

Positive effects of imperialism in Africa:

• Schools and hospitals were built
• Cities got colonized
• The Europeans made infrastructure projects
• Railways, shipping ports and other transportation systems were built
• Made a better and more stable government
  

Negative effects of imperialism in Africa:

• Thousands of Africans were taken to European countries and sold as slaves
• Natural resources and other goods were taken for free
• Europeans brought their own culture and religion and forced the Africans to do the same as they do, with that they destroyed parts of the African culture
• Civil wars started
• Families were separated
• Africans were treated as if they weren't human

Central Africa Today

Most of Central Africa's countries are poor. The Democratic Republic of the Congo was a Belgium colony until 1960. When they became independent, many Belgians left and there were only a few teachers, doctors and other professionals. This mainly happened so that Congo would stay poor. Then, Joseph Mobuto came to power in 1965, and he changed the countries name to Zaire and his own name to Mobuto Sese Seko, to make it sound more African than European. Civil war broke out and the farmers, etc. struggled, the war stopped in 1997 but they still struggled. The Democratic Republic of the Congo has gold, diamonds and cobalt and the forest provides wood. They don't earn a lot of money from it though because they scare their trading parters off with all the crimes and civil war. They also don't have railroad and ports to transport it. Cameroon if fairly stable. It is a republic, has an elected president and a lot of oil. Equatorial Guinea has elections, but it has had the same president for 25 years. Sao To Mé hand Príncipe  struggle with their political instability. Unlike Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, that have oil and earn most of their income on that, They only have Cacao. Gabon only had one president since 1967 and they haven't held multi-party elections. More than half on Gabon's income comes from oil, just like Congo's. Congo also gets income from forest products though. A civil war in the late 1990's hurt its economy. Angola won its independence from portugal in 2002 and since then it has become more stable. In Zambia about 85% of the population are farmers, but they are rich anyways with copper mines. Its economy is slowly growing but it is in a lot of debt and inflation.  In Malawi, about 75% of the population are villager living in rural areas. Help from foreign countries and religious groups Ehas helped its economy. People think that it will soon be able to rely on itself not other countries. 

Some health issues are war and civil war. Land mines are still lying around on the fields, making it dangerous for farmers and kids playing id former war areas. People also can't work if there is fighting going on outside. Another issue is malaria. It is the most common death cause in central africa and every 30 seconds a child dies on malaria. There is almost no treatment and the treatment that they have is very expensive, too expensive for most of the victims. HIV and AIDS are another issue, and so is Malnutrition.

As you can see, there are a lot of issues in Central Africa, but the Countries are improving their economies

Africa News Current Event #3

In Cameroon, a new language called Frananglais, has developed. It is a mixture of French and English. This language developed because the French speaking people wanted to communicate with the English speaking people, and the other way around. To make that happen, they made up their own language, a mixture of English and French. This reminded me of India, because there they also mix Hindi and English, to make it easier to understand for the English people. 

Frananglais has its pros and cons. It is good for the community and is unites the country, but it isn't good for their language skills, writing and reading if they don't know how to separate French from English and English from French. That is why the schools have rules that on some days they are only allowed to speak French, on others only English. If students speak Frananglais, they get punished, but that doesn't stop them from speaking it when no teachers are around. They might say, "Je veux go," which simply means I want to go. As you can see, I think that this is important because it might form a completely new trend and it might make cameroon more independent, unique and united if they all speak the same language. It might also destroy their French and English skills thought. So it will be interesting to see what happens. 

Link to News Article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6376389.stm

Link to Picture: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39710000/gif/_39710213_cameroon_province_map203.gif

Colonialism

The main visual elements in this cartoon are the black Africa and the white footprint that is all chipped up on it. I think that this cartoon is about the Europeans colonizing Africa and changing its culture, history and practices, leaving a big footprint behind.
I don't that the cartoonist agrees with the idea of colonialism because it is black and white which aren't happy colors and it looks like the Europeans are trampling on Africa without any respect and care. I agree with the cartoonist and that colonialism is bad. I think the cartoonist could have put some blood drops or native signs to make the cartoon more persuading.

image from: http://img.photobucket.com

Central Africa's History and Culture

Central Africa's culture has changes over the years. many thousands of years ago, the native Africans lived in Central Africa and practiced their own culture and religion. The, natives, though, had less impact on Central Africa's new culture than the European colonists. They say that about 1,000 years ago people started moving to Africa because of its valuable natural resources. Central Africa had animal skins, shells, slaves and ivory, all of the Europeans favorite resources. The Europeans took millions of slaves from Africa over a span of about 300 years. The European countries, mostly France, Belgium, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal trades with African countries and made some of them richer in the beginning, but in the end, all of them were poorer. They took whatever they wanted and however they wanted and ignored the natives cultures and practices. They changed the cultures and religions of the natives and caused conflicts between the many ethnic groups. They only became independent after Word War II and Angola only became independent of Portugal in 1975. Even after they gained independence, the ethnic groups fought with each other and some still do. The Europeans changed their religion, language, and customs/ practices. The ethnic groups speak different dialects, or even different languages. There are hundreds of different languages. Most of the Natives are Roman Catholic, but there is also Protestant Catholic, Islam and Hinduism. As you can see, the Europeans had a huge impact on Central Africa's culture.

Scramble For Africa

1. What strategy did you use to claim land?
Me and my team, Portugal, looked at natural resource maps on Google, looked at an atlas, looked at the economy and other research. We tried to find out and take the countries that had the most coal, iron and zinc. After the first round we realized that most of the teams were going for the countries we chose and we had to try a different strategy. The strategy we tried next was to form alliances with who ever we could. The big and powerful countries like Great Britain wouldn't become es though, so we went to form an alliance with Germany and Spain.
2. What factors did you consider in claiming land?
The factors that i considered were mostly the natural resources the country had. I did that because Europeans are always looking for coal, iron and zinc and we could become rich by selling those resources.
3. Who won the Scramble for Africa?
I think that Great Britain won the Scramble for Africa because they occupied a lot of area and most of it was the area with the most natural resources.
4. Who lost in the Scramble for Africa?
I think that Spain lost the Scramble for Africa because they only owned little land and the land that they owned wasn't the best region for natural resources and the location wasn't the best either.

Africa News Current Event #2

A war might break out in Congo, again. There were Angolan and Zimbabwean troops in Congo, armed. They fear that the conflict might be re-run. Also, there are soldiers everywhere in Congo now, but the problem is that they don't speak french, Swahili or Lingala. They speak Portuguese!
I think that this is important because if two countries start fighting each other, usually they pull in their befriended countries and then these countries get other counties involved and so forth. This could turn from a conflict to a big war. Also, Africa's economy isn't very good, and if there was a war, the economy would go down, and they would become more poor.


News Story from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7726690.stm
picture from: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/45195000/gif/_45195276_dr_con_virunga_466_8.gif

Central Africa's Physical Geography

Central Africa has some variety of physical geography. Central Africa's main physical feature is the Congo Basin. A basin is a flat area that is surrounded by mountains and plateaus. Some of the mountains around the Congo Basin rise up to 16,700 feet or 5,090 meters! The Congo River is another feature that makes Central Africa unique. The Congo River connects with many, many smaller river and most of them empty into the Indian Ocean. Near the mouth, many rapids and waterfalls come along. The most famous waterfalls are the Victoria Falls. Central Africa's climate is humid, warm and very tropical, it has a very dense forest vegetation. The trees form a complete canopy, which lets no light go through and get to the ground. Therefore, not many animals live on the ground, but mostly on or in the trees. Some of the ground living animals include gorillas, elephants, boars and okapis (brown, short necked giraffes). The tree living animals include insects, birds, monkeys, bats and snakes. All these animals are in danger. Forest is being cut down and they are hunted. To help the animals, the government has set up national parks to promote protection of the forest and other environmental issues. The northern and southern areas of the Congo Basin are areas with tropical savannas. These areas are warm but they are dry. Central Africa's resources include timber, dams which produce electricity, oil, natural gas, oil valuable minerals, copper, uranium, tin, zinc, gold and cobalt. As you can see, Central Africa hast many forests but also savannas, a big variety of animals and many natural resources.

Can We Trust?

Can we trust Julius Lester who wrote To Be A Slave and the information in the book?
I think that we can trust the information in To Be A Slave. I think so because Julius Lester is a well known and liked author who has written other outstanding books. Another reason why I think the information in To Be A Slave is true because he used entries from other trusted books and he interviewed people who were slaves and asked them about their own experience. Also, he cited all the passages, which gives them credit and we could find out if it is true. Lester also has ancestors who were slaves, which makes him understand everything better because in his own family the same or similar thing happened. My last reason is that all books go through editing processes and if they found out that the information was invalid, they wouldn't allow the book to be published. In conclusion, I think that the information in To Be A Slave is trustworthy because of these reasons that I just discussed.

Africa News Current Event #1

The elections in Gabon, Central Africa are coming up and they will happen on the 17th of December. They are electing new members for the National Assembly who will lead the city. The Gabonese Democratic Party (PDG) will go against about 50 other parties, one of them being the Gabonese Presidential Majority (UMPG). The PDG is leading right now and is expected to do well at this years elections too.
This is important because of a few reasons. One of the reasons is that the winning party will lead Gabon and might improve its wealth even more, though it already is the wealthiest nations in the Sub-Saharan region. It is also important because then there would be a change in the government. Bongo who is from the PDG has been president since 1967. He is Africa's longest serving president. If they had a new president some faults Bongo had could be corrected and that would lead to a more stable economy.


Link to the news article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6182345.stm

5 Themes Of Geography

The five themes of geography are movement, region, human environmental interaction, location and place. The movement in this picture is the people moving from booth to another booth and also the clothes and other goods that they sell that have moved from wherever they came from to this flee market. The region is medium warm, they speak German and there are many trees. Human environmental interaction, the people are buying goods that come from the environment, like cotton and maybe fruits. Location, this is in Germany and there are many trees. This place, Germany, has four seasons and it seems to be winter or autumn right now because the leaves fell form the trees. Also, they seem to be a bit environmental friendly, because they have bicycles and no cars. These are the 5 themes of geography in this picture.

picture from: http://lh3.ggpht.com/_y4fa8HhQaIw/R59tRBpTRAI/AAAAAAAAA60/KE7hHS2f-yM/DSC00130.jpg

"Violence leads to more violence"

"Violence leads to more violence," is a quote that I think is true. I think that this quote is true because when one person gets killed, all the people who killed the person, usually get killed too in the end. One example is in the play Julius Caesar. Caesar gets killed by Casca, Brutus, Cassius and a few more people and in the end all of those people get killed because Antony, Caesar's friend, stirs the crowd up and wants to take revenge. When people take revenge, it turns out to be worse than the thing that made them take revenge. In Julius Caesar, one person was killed and then they took revenge and over three people died. One real life example is when one city gets bombed, the city that got bombed would probably bomb the whole country that bombed them. I think that a solution to this could be that 1. don't be violent at all, which of course would be nice, but probably won't happen and 2. sort things out by talking and not taking revenge, like Gandhi did.