Dubai: Regional Star?

• Economy not based mostly on oil, but on trade

• Trade has long history in Dubai

– Allowed tax free operations for foreign traders in 1800’s

– In early 1900’s dredged Creek while other ports silted up

– In 1940’s moved away from doomed pearling industry

– In 1960’s, built Port Rashid/Jebel Ali container port, largest artificial port in the world

• Allowed immigrants (80% of population) to practice religion, follow customs

– Has, like Hong Kong and Singapore, become a leading re-export center (bring large amounts of goods into port, ship them out in smaller bundles)

Dubai (cont.)

• Current rulers have continued tradition of openness and thinking big

• Has/will have biggest hotel, duty-free shopping, richest horse race, largest artificial island, world’s biggest mall, tallest buidling

• Built Internet City, Media City, Wild Wadi Water Park (run entirely on desalinized water), Ski Dubai

– Microsoft, Dell, GM regional HQ

• Has events like Shopping Festival

Sub-Saharan Africa: Part 1

The Basic Fact

• Africa is NOT a country

– Africa is a continent, which contains many countries and many, many more languages and cultures

– Highly impacted by colonialism, where weak states made, wealth removed (which followed the catastrophe that was the slave trade)

•  Wealth continues to be removed, under neo-colonialism, now as likely to be by Chinese companies as those from Europe or US

• At the same time, most states in Sub-Saharan Africa have seen rising GDP’s in the past decade

– Partially due to debt forgiveness; but also to the overall volume of economic activity increasing with mobile phones and increased urbanization

Africa Chapter Themes

• Roots of Economic Difficulty in the Continent

• Population and Health

• Urbanizaton

• Impacts of Climate Change

• Encouraging Developments

Physical Patterns

• Second largest continent

• Landforms

– At the center of Pangaea

• Continues to break apart at Red Sea – Rift Valley

– Continent is a plateau, surrounded by narrow coasts

• Plateau dips towards the North

– Hurt transport

• Plateau cliffs stop river navigation

• Few natural harbors

Climate

• Whole region (except highlands and South Africa) is warm year round

– Climate varies more by rainfall than temperature

• Rains in intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ) where warm winds meet, rise, dump rain

– Chases hemispheric summers

– Ecosystems mirrored north and south of the equator.

Climate (cont.)

– Deserts at 30 N (Sahara) and 30 S (Namib)

• Between Sahara and rain forests are is the Sahel (a pure grassland) and the Savanna (wetter mix of grass and trees)

– Water in short supply, climate change causing more droughts, leading to desertification

• Horn of Africa is unexpectedly dry, b/c a north blowing wind keeps ITCZ away

– Warm, year round climate favorable for disease carrying insects

• Malaria, river blindness huge problems for Africa

– Where its wet, organic matter from decaying forest provides nutrients

• If forest cleared, water leaches (washes out) nutrients from soil

– Soil can be leached, baked into permanently hard laterite

Environmental Issues

• Africa has many species of plants and animals in need of protection, many people who need conditions improved

– These come into tension, amplified by climate change

• Wood

– The rate of deforestation is higher here than any world region

– Dry forests (which lose leaves under in dry season) are more under threat than rainforests

• Easier to get to, used for fuel

• But also, tropical hardwoods are targeted as well

– Recent efforts have been made at reversing loss with agro-forestry

• While not as diverse as old growth, it can provide some lesser habitat, sequester carbon (ie get carbon out of atmosphere and into plants) and give income.

– Also, if there are commercial sources maybe remaining old growth has a chance.

• Desertification (turning grazing land to desert)

– Worse in Sahel

• Move towards cattle, away from sheep and camels has made problem worse

Environment and Agriculture

– Most Africans produce much of their own food by farming small plots, raising livestock, or a combination of both.  Much of this subsistance done by women.

• Also produce small amounts of cash crops

– As populations boomed, farming is more intense, fields don’t lie fallow as much

• Fields encourage on herding land, harder to make living with smaller herds

– Urban agriculture, providing employment, nutritional variety, has been a major positive development, extension of older traditions.

Environmental Issues

• Water

– Water supplies being spread thinner as more agriculture, population, pumped from deeper aquifers, more frequent droughts

• This is especially true as more herders settle to do mixed farming; leading to desertification in marginal environments

– Cleaner water even harder to find

• Contaminated by chemicals, human waste

– Dams are not a good solution, because it leads to standing water, which leads to mosquitoes and evaporation

• Groundwater is exhaustible here, just like everywhere.

– Looking at old technologies like roof cisterns, water brigades (or foot pump drip irrigation), eco-toilets to protect, extend water supply

Environmental Issues

• Wildlife and Wildlife Parks

– Animal hides, horns, fish long part of diet/economy/trade from Africa

• Overkilling, poaching b/c of few other economic options

• Predators killed for attacking livestock, gorillas killed in human wars

• Changing climate (especially as it reduces water resources).

– Africa has 1/3 of all national park land

• Parks not profitable, not well-patrolled

• Need to balance rural poverty with wildlife protection

Human Patterns Over Time

• Europe gave it the reputation as being the “Dark Continent,” where no human achievement ever took place

– Simply untrue

• Africa home to major cities like Benin, Loango

– As well as great diversity

• All humanoids originated in Africa, including modern humans 200,000 ybp

• Cultivation 7000 ybp in Sahel, Ethiopia/ Sudan highlands

Patterns (cont)

• Long history of trade with Europe, Asia

– Until 1500, a major part of global trade as equal partner

– Iron smelting, steel spread throughout continent

– Great Zimbabwe a large, advanced mining/smelting civilization

– Ghana, Mali both large, important kingdoms in West Africa

• From 700 to 1600’s, 9 million Africans sent as slaves to Islamic lands

– Built on established, more humane intra-African traditional captive taking

– dated to b4 Islam, not as harsh as later slavery, because less field work (but still slavery)

European Slave Trade

– Europeans took 12 million slaves away from the interior of the continent (Port., Brits, Dutch, French) in 250 years

• Differences:

–  Used as commodified labor in America

– Slave taking was the cause, not side effect, of wars

» Needed to get guns, money

• ¼ died on the Middle Passage, ¾ went to Latin America, Mostly male

– Loss of labor, increased strife devastated interior economies, built dependent relationship on Europe

– African cuisine, religion, music, art survived in Americas

Scramble to Colonize Africa

– Europe always looked at Africa as source of resources (named places Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, Slave Coast)

– After slavery, colonizers found it more profitable to use African labor in Africa to extract raw materials.

– At 1884 Berlin Conference, with no African input, entire continent divided between European powers

• Only Liberia, Ethiopia remain independent

• These boundaries are the problem in Africa

Scramble (cont)

• The basic patterns of European domination were:

• Europeans settled where Euro-like climate, or great resource wealth

– Forced Africans onto reservations, marginal land

• European controlled farming areas

– B/c taxes, switch food to export crops and livestock

» Led to malnutrition, food instability

– Little infrastructure built to match economic change

• Remote areas were treated as “labor reserves.”

– Men to mines, plantations for dangerous work

– The objectives of colonization

• Extract raw materials (both agriculture and mining)

• Create markets for European goods

• Keep government costs and commitments low

Colonization Example: South Africa

– The Boers (Dutch immigrant farmers) pushed indigenous people off their land

• Also brought enslaved people from other parts of Africa to work on their large farms

– British take over (1795), they outlawed slavery in 1834

• Boers trek towards interior, fight groups there

• Establish Orange Free State/Transvaal, where gold and diamonds discovered

– Britain invades, leads to Boer War, which leads to independence for the white minority

South Africa (cont.)

– White control codified in apartheid laws (1948-1994)

• Non-Whites had to carry passbooks and live in segregated areas

– 80% of land goes to 15% white

– Similar to Kenya, Rhodesias, where it did not last as long

– African National Congress fights for African civil rights

• Nelson Mandela, Arch-Bishop Tutu

– Apartheid ends in 1994

Some More African Case Studies

The Congo Free State/Belgian Congo

• Congo basin last area to be explored by Euros

– Last part sorted out by Stanley’s search for Livingstone

• Established at the conference as a free trade zone and one of the largest colonies

– Run as a personal colony by King Leopold II of Belgium

• During Rubber Boom, 50% of workers died, many had hands cut off as punishment for slacking

– Was such a large, brutally run state other European countries, Mark Twain protested

• Eventually the Belgium parliament took over in 1908

– Far less violent in control, but locals had almost no control or role in government

Independence

– Colonization short in time, deep in influence

• Ghana first to gain independence

• Still dependent on the export of raw materials

– Hurt by fluctuations on world market, more frequent droughts

• Many governments remain authoritarian, antidemocratic, and dominated by elites

– Coups result of one group being suppressed by another group, and that group rising up

– This sometimes leads to genocide, where one ethnic group is targeted for elimination

» Leads to large internally displaced person and refugee populations