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Africa

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Lord, bless Africa. May her horn rise high up. ~ Enoch Sontonga

Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most-populous continent. It is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the north, the Isthmus of Suez and the Red Sea to the northeast, the Indian Ocean to the southeast and the Atlantic Ocean to the west. The continent includes Madagascar and various archipelagos. It contains 54 fully recognised sovereign states (countries), eight territories and two de facto independent states with limited or no recognition. Africa is considered by scientists to be the origin of humanity, and is also famous for its animals, such as the "Big Five". It is maritimely bounded with Europe at the Gibraltar strait, and with Asia at the Suez Canal and Guardafui Channel.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Quotes

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Africa is wealthy in natural resources; the problem is they are not optimally utilized. ~ Yoweri Museveni
The destiny of the great African continent, to be added at length — and in a future not now far beyond us — to the realms of the highest civilization, has become apparent within a very few decades. ~ Calvin Coolidge
I bless the rains down in Africa! ~ David Paich
To understand who we are as a species, and why we vary as we do, we must examine our genetic diversity in the context of a common African origin... Today's human population is far larger, more diverse, and more complex than it ever has been. We are all related, more than seven billion of us, recent cousins to one another, and, ultimately, everyone is African. ~ Daniel J. Fairbanks
Africa will grow irrespective of limited perceptions that prevent so many from seeing the opportunities... Those who wish to engage with the continent are, therefore, well-advised to take an appreciative view of the place, its people and its future. ~ Morne Mostert
Africa has a voice. Fifty years after independence, Africa demands that its voice must be heard. ~ Uhuru Kenyatta
One's thirst cannot be quenched by hunger, we shall never find a statesman, though we are blessed with politicians... We are good fighters but lousy builders. Our last piece of original architecture was during ancient Egypt. What are we known for now? A continent plagued with inadequate health facilities but rich Ministers of Health. ~ Michael Matogo

A

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  • Africa was the part of the world with the institutions least able to take advantage of the opportunities made available by the Industrial Revolution. For at least the last one thousand years, outside of small pockets and during limited periods of time, Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world in terms of technology, political development, and prosperity. It is the part of the world where centralized states formed very late and very tenuously. Where they did form, they were likely as highly absolutist as the Kongo and often short lived, usually collapsing. Africa shares this trajectory of lack of state centralization with countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nepal, which have also failed to impose order over their territories and create anything resembling stability to achieve even a modicum of economic progress. Though located in very different parts of the world, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Nepal have much in common institutionally with most nations in sub-Saharan Africa, and are thus some of the poorest countries in the world today.
    • Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012)
  • If you can’t have electricity you can’t drive any industrial development. Electricity drives everything, so until we fix that problem Africa faces huge challenges.
It’s the most critical issue holding back Africa’s development.
  • One of the many economic differences between developed and developing countries is that developed countries subsidize farmers while developing countries tax farmers. . . . World Bank studies suggest that US subsidies alone reduce West Africa’s annual revenue from cotton exports by $250 [million] a year.
  • None of us has yet begun to grasp the full impact of this horror—on the quality of life in Africa, its economic potential and its social and political stability.

B

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  • Before the sixteenth century, slavery was not regarded by anyone (outside or inside Africa) as a particularly African institution. The association between Africa and slavery emerged in the fifteenth century. It was then that ship design made it possible for sailors from the Mediterranean to make long journeys down the coast of Africa and ultimately across the Atlantic to the Americas.
  • The sheer number of slaves taken was unprecedented. The large scale of trading destabilised the social and economic order. By the end of the 18th century one historian estimates 70,000 people a year were captured and taken against their will to the Americas. What is now Angola was reduced in parts to a wasteland. In total, at least 12 million Africans were forcibly removed from the continent.
  • Africa will rid herself of the maniacs. Africa will live to show that "Black is beautiful".
  • Notwithstanding the interruptions of war, the plantations made a very substantial contribution for many decades, indeed for the greater part of the century after 1720. Between 1761 and 1808, British traders hauled across the Atlantic 1,428,000 African captives and pocketed £60 million - perhaps £8 billion in today's money - from slave sales.
  • If the continent of Africa had drifted relatively as much as the boundaries of Poland have drifted in the last two hundred years, then Africa would at one time have touched the north pole and at another the south pole.
  • It was trade with Europeans that introduced modernity to iron-age Africa. Far from hobbling and holding the continent back, colonization laid the foundations for whatever evidence of economic progress can now be found in Africa. It was Europeans who built roads and rail lines, introduced piped water, schools and telecommunications, and built national administrations. Nothing suggests that Africans would have achieved any of this on their own. There is no question but that life for Africans improved steadily under colonization. By the 1960s, when most of Africa became independent, the region exported food. Now, it devours more than $1 billion a year in Western food aid, and thousands still starve.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa has the world’s smallest number of motorized vehicles but the highest rate of road traffic fatalities, with Nigeria and South Africa leading the pack. Trauma has become a silent epidemic in Africa, an epidemic that will only spread as the economy grows. More and more Africans are buying cars and working in heavy and dangerous industries. At the same time, infrastructure is poor, safety laws lax, and cars badly maintained.
  • African peoples are now writing your own story of liberty. Africans have overcome the arrogance of colonial powers, overcome the cruelty of apartheid, and made it clear that dictatorship is not the future of any nation on this continent. In the process, Africa has produced heroes of liberation, leaders like Mandela, Senghor, Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Selassie and Sadat. And many visionary African leaders, such as my friend, have grasped the power of economic and political freedom to lift whole nations and put forth bold plans for Africa's development... Because Africans and Americans share a belief in the values of liberty and dignity, we must share in the labor of advancing those values. In a time of growing commerce across the globe, we will ensure that the nations of Africa are full partners in the trade and prosperity of the world. Against the waste and violence of civil war, we will stand together for peace. Against the merciless terrorists who threaten every nation, we will wage an unrelenting campaign of justice. Confronted with desperate hunger, we will answer with human compassion and the tools of human technology. In the face of spreading disease, we will join with you in turning the tides against AIDS in Africa.

C

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  • African citizens are certainly better off in countries that support their aspirations and communities rather than becoming 3rd or 4th class citizens in Europe... When did Europe ever operate on behalf of African people except when Africa or its people were used to benefit the goals and priorities of Europe?
  • The destiny of the great African continent, to be added at length — and in a future not now far beyond us — to the realms of the highest civilization, has become apparent within a very few decades. But for the strange and long inscrutable purpose which in the ordering of human affairs subjected a part of the black race to the ordeal of slavery, that race might have been assigned to the tragic fate which has befallen many aboriginal peoples when brought into conflict with more advanced communities. Instead, we are able now to be confident that this race is to be preserved for a great and useful work.

D

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  • We want to rewrite the history from our perspective, and not the perspective of what we read, which is often negatively biased towards Africa.
F.W. de Klerk: The main motivation was the expansionist policies of the U.S.S.R. in southern Africa. They were supporting all the [African] liberation movements—they were supplying weapons and training—and it was part of their vision to gain direct or indirect control over most of the countries in southern Africa. They financed the deployment of many thousands of Cuban troops, especially to Angola, and this was interpreted as a threat first by Prime Minister John Vorster, and following upon him P.W. Botha. [The nuclear arsenal] was never intended, I think, to be used. It was a deterrent. Because of apartheid South Africa was becoming more and more isolated in the eyes of the rest of the world. There wouldn’t be, in the case of Russian aggression or invasion, assistance from the international community.

E

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  • It should not be a surprise then that poverty continues to breed conflict. Of the 13 million deaths due to armed conflict in the last ten years, 9 million occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, where the poorest of the poor live.

F

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  • To understand who we are as a species, and why we vary as we do, we must examine our genetic diversity in the context of a common African origin, followed by intra- and intercontinental diasporas that transpired over a period of tens of thousands of years, culminating in an era of major migrations that reshuffled the worldwide human genetic construction over the past several thousand years and is still underway. Last, we must recognize that today’s human population is far larger, more diverse, and more complex than it ever has been. We are all related, more than seven billion of us, recent cousins to one another, and, ultimately, everyone is African.

H

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  • Is the proxy war in Ukraine turning out to be only a lead-up to something larger, involving world famine and a foreign-exchange crisis for food- and oil-deficit countries?
    U.S. Cold War strategy is not alone in thinking how to benefit from provoking a famine, oil and balance-of-payments crisis. Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum worries that the world is overpopulated – at least with the “wrong kind” of people. As Microsoft philanthropist... Bill Gates has explained: “Population growth in Africa is a challenge.” His lobbying foundation’s 2018 “Goalkeepers” report warned: “According to U.N. data, Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050. Its population is projected to double by 2050,” with “more than 40 percent of world’s extremely poor people … in just two countries: Democratic Republic of the Congo and Nigeria.” Gates advocates cutting this projected population increase by 30 percent by improving access to birth control and expanding education to “enable more girls and women to stay in school longer, have children later.” But how can that be afforded with this summer’s looming food and oil squeeze on government budgets?

I

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  • Forget the idea of controlling Africa through military coups, as Russia is doing in Niger, or economic neo-colonialism only. [The Communist Party of] China is one step ahead. It perfectly understands that economic and military control are not enough without political and ideological hegemony. Hence the idea of training Africa’s ruling classes to reject democracy, embrace authoritarianism, crack down on civil society (including religion), and feel good about it.
  • As Europeans with experience in the field of promoting freedom of religion or belief, we cannot tell Africans what is needed in their beautiful and special context. They will find solutions and practices based on their own culture and traditions. But we can express our appreciation for [the African Forum for Religious and Spirituality Liberty (AFRSL)] and for its young and energetic African Coordinator and his team, and our warning that the same forms of intolerance and discrimination we combat in Europe may raise their ugly head in Africa too. Now, however, they will find AFRSL to oppose and resist them.

J

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K

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  • "Africa is a tough place and they were on top for a long time. It’s their turn to be dominated now," a friend I'd previously regarded as a liberal told me.
  • We will embrace partnerships based on mutual respect and win-win scenarios. We will not accept partnerships that do not recognise we also have the intellectual capacity to engage on equal terms. Africa has a voice. Fifty years after independence, Africa demands that its voice must be heard.

L

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  • Creeping with awe to the verge, I peered down into a large rent which had been made from bank to bank of the broad Zambezi, and saw that a stream of a thousand yards broad leaped down a hundred feet [30 m] and then became suddenly compressed into a space of fifteen to twenty yards.
  • Still licking the scars of past wrongs perpetrated on her, could she [i.e. Africa] not be magnanimous and practice no revenge? Her hand of friendship scornfully rejected, her pleas for justice and fair play spurned, should she not nonetheless seek to turn enmity into amity? Though robbed of her lands, her independence, and opportunities – this, oddly enough, often in the name of civilization and even Christianity – should she not see her destiny as being that of making a distinctive contribution to human progress and human relationships with a peculiar new Africa flavour enriched by the diversity of cultures she enjoys, thus building on the summits of present human achievement an edifice that would be one of the finest tributes to the genius of man.

M

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  • The United States, having been the first to abolish within the extent of their authority the transportation of the natives of Africa into slavery, by prohibiting the introduction of slaves and by punishing their citizens participating in the traffic, cannot but be gratified at the progress made by concurrent efforts of other nations toward a general suppression of so great an evil.
  • Africa's intellectual class are totally bereft of solutions to their problems, and they lack creativity. I am coming to the belief that conservatism merged with philosophy breeds bigotry... We have realized that the sloganeering of the 60s was nothing but ego drive for the lust of power. One's thirst cannot be quenched by hunger, we shall never find a statesman, though we are blessed with politicians. And in any society the weaknesses of a politician are the strengths of a statesman. That is why you have so many people fighting for peace, but once they are in power only force makes them can relinquish power. Thus we are good fighters but lousy builders. Our last piece of original architecture was during ancient Egypt. What are we known for now? A continent plagued with inadequate health facilities but rich Ministers of Health.
  • Africa is deeply dichotomous, and this dualism is not likely to disappear in the short term. This makes her challenging to grasp. But Africa will grow irrespective of limited perceptions that prevent so many from seeing the opportunities. In celebrating Africa Day on May 25, those who wish to engage with the continent are, therefore, well-advised to take an appreciative view of the place, its people and its future.
  • I shall not be deterred by people who don't see where the future of Africa lies. It is the short-sighted people who put their opinions in writing. They don't understand that the future of all countries lies in processing.

N

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  • Naturalization laws are hereby extended to aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent.
  • The African "nations" of today, created artificially by foreigners for their own purposes, neither originate from ancient African civilisation, nor do they fit in with our African way of life or habits of exchange. They are not even, for the most part, economically viable. Yet they continue to struggle on, each one separately, in a pathetic and hopeless attempt to make progress, while the real obstacle to their development, imperialism, mainly in its neo-colonialist stage, is operating on a Pan-African scale. Already, huge zones of Africa have been integrated economically in the exclusive interest of international finance capital.
  • In unity lies strength. African states must unite or sell themselves out to imperialist and colonialist exploiters for a mess of pottage.

P

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  • Slaves from Africa also started as prisoners of war. Black slave owners captured slaves from other tribes and sold them to white slave traders—a product of warfare between black tribes in Africa. White men didn’t go to Africa and run through the bush and grab men to be slaves; they simply went to the dock and said, “Do you have some slaves to buy? We’ll provide gold, rum, or other goods in exchange for the slaves.” When the slave owners had sold all the slaves they had, they went out and captured more. There was a change in the style of slavery when new world slavery appeared, because then it became commercialized and it wasn’t just for the sake of war. War prisoners were turned to commercialized slaves, sold for goods, and then shipped off.
  • The 21 countries with the highest incidence of HIV infection are all in Africa, and in 10 of those countries, at least 10 percent of the population is infected.
  • In the 1960s and early 1970s, South Africa's response to developing guerrilla movements and a changing regional security environment was to increase security-force cooperation with Portuguese forces who were fighting guerrilla insurgencies in the former colonies of Angola and Mozambique; Portuguese tactics influenced the South African military and police.
  • The Portuguese military was the first to use chemical and biological warfare for counterinsurgency warfare in Africa, Portuguese troops poisoned wells and threw drugged prisoners out of aircraft. South African military officers were dispatched to Portuguese arms units in Angola to gain experience in counterinsurgency warfare. In general, South African military personnel were not impressed with the overall effectiveness of Portuguese counterinsurgency programs.
    • Helen E. Purkitt; Stephen Franklin Burgess (2005). South Africa's Weapons of Mass Destruction. Indiana University Press., p.89

R

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  • Rediker says history has conveniently left out that there were many black pirates. His research of 15 pirate ships shows almost one-third of the pirates were, quote, "negroes or mulattoes." Some black pirates were runaway slaves. Some were sailors whose merchant ships were captured. And many blacks ended up on pirate ships when pirates grabbed slave ships as they traveled from West Africa through the middle passage.
  • Our ties with Africa are rooted in the heritage of many Americans and in our historic commitment to self-determination. We respect the hard-earned sovereignty of Africa's new states and will continue to do our utmost to make a meaningful contribution to their development. We have no illusions that the United States can single-handedly solve the seemingly intractable problems of apartheid and minority rule, but we can and will encourage non-violent, evolutionary change by supporting international efforts peacefully to resolve the problems of southern Africa and by maintaining our contacts with all.
  • The United States has always supported the process of self-determination in Africa. Our friendship for the African countries is expressed in support for continued peaceful economic development, expansion of trade, humanitarian relief efforts and our belief that the entire continent should be free from outside military intervention. Millions of Americans recognize their historical and cultural ties with Africa and express their desire that United States policy toward Africa is a matter of great importance. We support all forces which promote negotiated settlements and racial peace. We shall continue to deplore all violence and terrorism and to urge all concerned that the rights of tribal, ethnic, and racial minorities be guaranteed through workable safeguards. Our policy is to strengthen the forces of moderation recognizing that solutions to African problems will not come quickly. The peoples of Africa can coexist in security, work together in freedom and harmony, and strive together to secure their prosperity. We hope that the Organization of African Unity will be able to achieve mature and stable relationships within Africa and abroad. The interests of peace and security in Africa are best served by the absence of arms and greater concentration on peaceful development. We reserve the right to maintain the balance by extending our support to nations facing a threat.
  • We recognize that much is at stake in Africa and that the United States and the industrial west have vital interests there, economically, strategically, and politically. Working closely with our allies, a Republican administration will seek to assist the countries of Africa with our presence, our markets, our know-how, and our investment. We will work to create a climate of economic and political development and confidence. We will encourage and assist business to play a major role in support of regional industrial development programs, mineral complexes, and agricultural self-sufficiency. Republicans believe that African nations, if given a choice, will reject the Marxist, totalitarian model being forcibly imposed.
  • The African peoples are convinced that the west is central to world stability and economic growth on which their own fortunes ultimately depend. A Republican administration will adhere to policies that reflect the complex origins of African conflicts, demonstrate that we know what U.S. interests are, and back those interests in meaningful ways. We will recognize the important role of economic and military assistance programs and will devote major resources to assisting African development and stability when such aid is given on a bilateral basis and contributes directly to American interests on the continent. In Southern Africa, American policies must be guided by commonsense and by our own humanitarian principles. Republicans believe that our history has meaning for Africa in demonstrating that a multiracial society with guarantees of individual rights is possible and can work. We must remain open and helpful to all parties, whether in the new Zimbabwe, in Namibia, or in the Republic of South Africa. A Republican administration will not endorse situations or constitutions, in whatever society, which are racist in purpose or in effect. It will not expect miracles, but will press for genuine progress in achieving goals consistent with American ideals.
  • We are committed to democracy in Africa and to the economic development that will help it flourish. That is why we will foster free-market, growth-oriented, and liberalized trading policies. As part of reforming the policies of the International Development Association, we have assisted in directing a larger proportion of its resources to sub-Saharan Africa. To nurture the spirit of individual initiative in Africa, our newly created African Development Foundation will work with African entrepreneurs at the village level. In addition, through our rejection of the austerity programs of international organizations, we are bringing new hope to the people of Africa that they will join in the benefits of the growing, dynamic world economy. We will continue to provide necessary security and economic assistance to African nations with which we maintain good relations to help them develop the infrastructure of democratic capitalism so essential to economic growth and individual accomplishment. We will encourage our allies in Europe and east Asia to coordinate their assistance efforts so that the industrialized countries will be able to contribute effectively to the economic development of the continent. We believe that, if given the choice, the nations of Africa will reject the model of Marxist state-controlled economies in favor of the prosperity and quality of life that free economies and free people can achieve. We will continue to assist threatened African governments to protect themselves and will work with them to protect their continent from subversion and to safeguard their strategic minerals.
  • We reaffirm our commitment to the rights of all South Africans. Apartheid is repugnant. In South Africa, as elsewhere on the continent, we support well-conceived efforts to foster peace, prosperity, and stability.
  • Republicans have three priorities in our country' s relations with Africa. The first is to oppose the forces of Marxist imperialism, which sustain the march of tyranny in Africa. This priority includes giving strong assistance to groups which oppose Soviet and Cuban-sponsored oppression in Africa. Our second priority is the need to develop and sustain democracies in Africa. Democrats have often taken the view that democracy is unattainable because of Africa's economic condition, yet at the same time they refuse to promote the conditions in which democracies can flourish. Economic freedom and market-based economies are the key to the development of democracy throughout Africa. Our third area of concern is humanitarian assistance, especially food aid, to African nations. The Reagan-Bush Administration has always provided this assistance.
  • On the other hand, the European authors of this article consider that they have a responsibility concerning the misdeeds of colonialism in Africa. Like Italy, Spain also resorted to a strategy of scorched earth in its colonies, including the use of poison gas (Kunz and Müller 1990). As in other Mediterranean countries, the Spanish massacres in Morocco and Equatorial Guinea (Pando Despierto 1999; Guerín 2008) have been deleted from cultural memory and replaced by nostalgic accounts of the empire. We have to help construct a critical memory that reviews the works of totalitarianism and racism in other continents, because our societies have to learn about a history that has been so often forgotten, sanitized or sweetened through popular films, books and magazines. ‘These new visual and textual formations... today shape the mental geography and the imaginary of people who travel blindly and unencumbered through geographic and historical space. As temporal distance increases, these popular constructions may even, one day, be regarded as factual truth and assimilated as knowledge by those who have only a remote inkling of colonial history’ (Norindr 1996: 158). By exposing colonialism, we may contribute to rethink its legacies in the present.

S

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  • The regeneration of Africa means that a new and unique civilization is soon to be added to the world. The African is not a proletarian in the world of science and art. He has precious creations of his own, of ivory, of copper and of gold, fine, plated willow-ware and weapons of superior workmanship. Civilization resembles an organic being in its development – it is born, it perishes, and it can propagate itself. More particularly, it resembles a plant, it takes root in the teeming earth, and when the seeds fall in other soils new varieties sprout up. The most essential departure of this new civilization is that it shall be thoroughly spiritual and humanistic – indeed a regeneration moral and eternal!
  • When you fall, get up, oh oh
    And if you fall, get up, eh eh
    Tsamina mina zangalewa
    Cause this is Africa
    Tsamina mina eh eh
    Waka waka eh eh
    Tsamina mina zangalewa
    This time for Africa.
  • Lord, bless Africa. May her horn rise high up. Hear Thou our prayers. And bless us. Descend, O Spirit. Descend, O Holy Spirit.

T

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  • [T]he result of a collaboration, most likely unthought-out and maybe even unconscious, between outsiders and insiders; almost a conspiracy of Africans and their European apologists, who would very much like to see Africa succeed, even at the expense of a pogrom, a thorough purge of these immigrant peoples.
  • I bless the rains down in Africa!

X

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  • Encyclopedic article on Africa on Wikipedia
  • Africa travel guide from Wikivoyage
  • The dictionary definition of africa on Wiktionary
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