For the central african Federation ( 1953-1963 ), see Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland
This video over Central Africa and the Middle East was taken by the gang of Expedition 29 onboard the International Space Station in October 2011 Central Africa is a subregion of the African celibate comprising respective countries according to different definitions. Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, the cardinal African Republic, Chad, the democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Rwanda, and São Tomé and Príncipe are members of the Economic Community of Central African States ( ECCAS ). [ 1 ] Six of those states ( Cameroon, the central African Republic, Chad, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon ) are besides members of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa ( CEMAC ) and share a common currency, the cardinal African CFA franc. [ 2 ]
Reading: Central Africa
The African Development Bank defines Central Africa as Cameroon, the central African Republic, Chad, the democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. [ 3 ] Middle Africa is an analogous term used by the United Nations in its geoscheme for Africa. It includes the lapp countries as the African Development Bank ‘s definition, along with Angola and São Tomé and Príncipe. [ 4 ]
list of cardinal african countries [edit ]
setting [edit ]
The central african Federation ( 1953–1963 ), besides called the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland, was made up of what are now the nations of Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. similarly, the Anglican Church of the Province of Central Africa covers dioceses in Botswana, Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, while the Church of Central Africa, Presbyterian has synods in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. These states are immediately typically considered contribution of East or Southern Africa. [ 5 ]
geography [edit ]
The basin of Lake Chad has historically been ecologically significant to the populations of Central Africa, specially with the Lake Chad Basin Commission serving as an authoritative supra-regional organization in Central Africa .
history [edit ]
prehistory [edit ]
archaeological finds in Central Africa have been discovered dating back, over 100,000 years. [ 6 ] According to Zagato and Holl, there is tell of iron-smelting in the central African Republic and Cameroon that may date back to 3000 to 2500 BCE. [ 7 ] Extensive walled settlements have recently been found in Northeast Nigeria, approximately 60 km ( 37 mile ) southwest of Lake Chad dating to the first millennium BCE. [ 8 ] Trade and improved agricultural techniques supported more sophisticate societies, leading to the early civilizations of Sao, Kanem, Bornu, Shilluk, Baguirmi, and Wadai. Around 2500 BCE, Bantu migrants had reached the Great Lakes Region in Central Africa. Halfway through the first base millennium BCE, the Bantu had besides settled as far south as what is now Angola .
ancient history [edit ]
Sao civilization [edit ]
The Sao civilization flourished from ca. the sixth hundred BCE to angstrom late as the sixteenth century CE in northern Central Africa. The Sao lived by the Chari River south of Lake Chad in territory that late became separate of Cameroon and Chad. They are the earliest people to have left well-defined traces of their presence in the territory of modern Cameroon. Today, several cultural groups of northern Cameroon and southerly Chad but particularly the Sara people claim lineage from the civilization of the Sao. Sao artifacts show that they were skilled workers in bronze, copper, and iron. [ 10 ] Finds include bronze sculptures and terra cotta statues of human and animal figures, coins, funerary urns, family utensils, jewelry, highly decorated pottery, and spears. [ 11 ] The largest Sao archaeological finds have been made south of Lake Chad .
Kanem Empire [edit ]
The Kanem and Bornu Empires in 1810 The Kanem–Bornu Empire was centered in the Chad Basin. It was known as the Kanem Empire from the 9th hundred CE ahead and lasted as the freelancer kingdom of Bornu until 1900. At its height it encompassed an area covering not only much of Chad, but besides parts of modern southern Libya, easterly Niger, northeastern Nigeria, northerly Cameroon, parts of South Sudan and the central African Republic. The history of the Empire is chiefly known from the Royal Chronicle or Girgam discovered in 1851 by the german traveler Heinrich Barth. [ 12 ] Kanem rose in the eighth century in the region to the north and east of Lake Chad. The Kanem conglomerate went into decline, flinch, and in the fourteenth hundred was defeated by Bilala invaders from the Lake Fitri area .
Bornu Empire [edit ]
The Kanuri people led by the Sayfuwa migrated to the west and south of the lake, where they established the Bornu Empire. By the belated sixteenth hundred the Bornu empire had expanded and recaptured the parts of Kanem that had been conquered by the Bulala. Satellite states of Bornu included the Damagaram in the west and Baguirmi to the southeast of Lake Chad .
Shilluk Kingdom [edit ]
The Shilluk Kingdom was centered in South Sudan from the fifteenth hundred from along a undress of land along the western trust of White Nile, from Lake No to about 12° north latitude. The capital and royal residence were in the town of Fashoda. The kingdom was founded during the mid-fifteenth hundred CE by its beginning ruler, Nyikang. During the nineteenth hundred, the Shilluk Kingdom faced refuse following military assaults from the Ottoman Empire and later british and sudanese colonization in Anglo-Egyptian Sudan .
Baguirmi Kingdom [edit ]
The Kingdom of Baguirmi existed as an freelancer submit during the 16th and 17th centuries southeast of Lake Chad in what is now the country of Chad. Baguirmi emerged to the southeast of the Kanem–Bornu Empire. The kingdom ‘s first rule was Mbang Birni Besse. Later in his reign, the Bornu Empire conquered and made the express a tributary .
Wadai Empire [edit ]
Abéché, capital of Wadai, in 1918 after the French had taken over The Wadai Empire was centered on Chad and the cardinal African Republic from the seventeenth century. The Tunjur people founded the Wadai Kingdom to the east of Bornu in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth hundred, there was a rebellion of the Maba people who established a Muslim dynasty. At beginning, Wadai paid tribute to Bornu and Durfur, but by the eighteenth century, Wadai was fully autonomous and had become an aggressor against its neighbors .
Lunda Empire [edit ]
Lunda township and populate Following the Bantu Migration from Western Africa, Bantu kingdoms and empires began to develop in southern Central Africa. In the 1450s, a Luba from the royal syndicate Ilunga Tshibinda married Lunda king Rweej and united all Lunda peoples. Their son Mulopwe Luseeng expanded the kingdom. His son Naweej expanded the empire further and is known as the first Lunda emperor, with the title Mwata Yamvo ( mwaant yaav, mwant yav ), the “ Lord of Vipers ”. The Luba political arrangement was retained, and conquered peoples were integrated into the system. The mwata yamvo assigned a cilool or kilolo ( royal adviser ) and tax collector to each state conquered. [ 15 ] [ 16 ] numerous states claimed descent from the Lunda. The Imbangala of inland Angola claimed descent from a founder, Kinguri, brother of Queen Rweej, who could not tolerate the govern of mulopwe Tshibunda. Kinguri became the championship of kings of states founded by Queen Rweej ‘s brother. The Luena ( Lwena ) and Lozi ( Luyani ) in Zambia besides claim descent from Kinguri. During the seventeenth hundred, a Lunda headman and warrior called Mwata Kazembe set up an eastern Lunda kingdom in the valley of the Luapula River. The Lunda ‘s western expansion besides saw claims of descent by the Yaka and the Pende. The Lunda linked Central Africa with the western seashore deal. The kingdom of Lunda came to an end in the nineteenth century when it was invaded by the Chokwe, who were armed with guns. [ 16 ] [ 17 ]
Kongo Kingdom [edit ]
Kongo in 1711 By the fifteenth hundred CE, the farm Bakongo people ( ba being the plural prefix ) were unified as the Kingdom of Kongo under a ruler called the manikongo, residing in the prolific Pool Malebo area on the lower Congo River. The capital was M’banza-Kongo. With superior administration, they were able to conquer their neighbors and extract protection. They were experts in metalworking, pottery, and weaving raffia fabric. They stimulated interregional trade via a tribute organization controlled by the manikongo. Later, corn ( corn ) and cassava ( cassava ) would be introduced to the area via deal with the Portuguese at their ports at Luanda and Benguela. The corn and cassava would result in population increase in the region and other parts of Africa, replacing millet as the chief staple.
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By the sixteenth century, the manikongo held authority from the Atlantic in the west to the Kwango River in the east. Each territory was assigned a mani-mpembe ( provincial governor ) by the manikongo. In 1506, Afonso I ( 1506–1542 ), a Christian, took over the toilet. slave trading increased with Afonso ‘s wars of conquest. About 1568 to 1569, the Jaga invaded Kongo, laying waste to the kingdom and forcing the manikongo into exile. In 1574, Manikongo Álvaro I was reinstated with the help of portuguese mercenaries. During the latter part of the 1660s, the Portuguese tried to gain control of Kongo. Manikongo António I ( 1661–1665 ), with a Kongolese united states army of 5,000, was destroyed by an army of Afro-Portuguese at the Battle of Mbwila. The empire dissolved into junior-grade polities, fighting among each early for war captives to sell into slavery. [ 18 ] [ 19 ] [ 20 ] Kongo gained captives from the Kingdom of Ndongo in wars of conquest. Ndongo was ruled by the ngola. Ndongo would besides engage in slave trade with the Portuguese, with São Tomé being a transit point to Brazil. The kingdom was not deoxyadenosine monophosphate welcoming as Kongo ; it viewed the portuguese with bang-up misgiving and as an foe. The Portuguese in the latter separate of the sixteenth hundred tried to gain control of Ndongo but were defeated by the Mbundu. Ndongo experienced depopulation from slave raid. The leaders established another state at Matamba, affiliated with Queen Nzinga, who put up a strong resistance to the Portuguese until coming to terms with them. The Portuguese settled along the seashore as deal dealers, not venturing on conquest of the interior. Slavery wreaked havoc in the department of the interior, with states initiating wars of conquest for captives. The Imbangala formed the slave-raiding submit of Kasanje, a major source of slaves during the 17th and 18th centuries. [ 21 ] [ 22 ]
modern history [edit ]
During the Conference of Berlin in 1884-85 Africa was divided up between the European colonial powers, defining boundaries that are largely integral with today ‘s post-colonial states. On 5 August 1890 the british and French concluded an agreement to clarify the boundary between french West Africa and what would become Nigeria. A limit was agreed along a line from Say on the Niger to Barruwa on Lake Chad, but leaving the Sokoto Caliphate in the british sphere. Parfait-Louis Monteil was given accusation of an expedition to discover where this line actually ran. On 9 April 1892 he reached Kukawa on the prop up of the lake. Over the adjacent twenty years a large part of the Chad Basin was incorporated by treaty or by coerce into french West Africa. On 2 June 1909, the Wadai capital of Abéché was occupied by the french. The remainder of the washbasin was divided by the british in Nigeria, who took Kano in 1903, and the Germans in Cameroon. The countries of the basin regained their independence between 1956 and 1962, retaining the colonial administrative boundaries. In 2011, South Sudan gained its independence from the Republic of Sudan after over 50 years of war. In the twenty-first hundred, many jihadist and Islamist groups began to operate in the central african region, including the Seleka and the Ansaru. Over the course of the 2010s, the internationally unrecognized secessionist state called Ambazonia gained increasing momentum in its home regions. [ 29 ]
economy [edit ]
Fishing in Central Africa The main economic activities of Central Africa are farming, herding and fish. At least 40 % of the rural population of northern and easterly Central Africa lives in poverty and routinely face chronic food shortages. Crop production based on rain is possible alone in the southerly belt. Slash-and-burn farming is a common rehearse. [ 31 ] Flood receding department of agriculture is practiced around Lake Chad and in the riverine wetlands. mobile herders migrate with their animals into the grasslands of the northerly character of the basin for a few weeks during each short showery season, where they intensively graze the highly alimentary grasses. When the dry season starts they move back south, either to grazing lands around the lakes and floodplains, or to the savanna further to the confederacy. In the 2000-01 time period, fisheries in the Lake Chad basin provided food and income to more than 10 million people, with a harvest of about 70,000 tons. Fisheries have traditionally been managed by a system where each village has recognized rights over a define part of the river, wetland or lake, and fishers from elsewhere must seek license and pay a fee to use this area. The governments merely enforced rules and regulations to a limited extent. local anesthetic governments and traditional authorities are increasingly engaged in rent-seeking, collecting license fees with the serve of the patrol or army. oil is besides a major export of the countries of northern and eastern Central Africa, notably making up a large proportion of the GDPs of Chad and South Sudan .
Demographics [edit ]
UN Macroregion of Central Africa Following the Bantu Migration, Central Africa is chiefly inhabited by Bantu peoples and Bantu languages overriding. These include the Mongo, Kongo and Luba peoples. Central Africa besides includes many Nilo-Saharan and Niger-Congo Ubangian communities : in north western Central Africa the Nilo-Saharan Kanuri [ 36 ] [ 37 ] predominate. Most of the Ubangian speakers in Africa ( often grouped with Niger-Congo ) are besides found in Central Africa, such as the Gbaya, [ 38 ] Banda [ 38 ] and Zande, [ 39 ] [ 38 ] in northern Central Africa. celebrated central african supra-regional organizations include the Lake Chad Basin Commission and the Economic Community of Central African States. The overriding religions of Central Africa are Christianity and traditional faiths. Islam is besides practiced in some areas in Chad and the central African Republic .
due to coarse diachronic processes and far-flung demographic movements between the countries of Central Africa before the Bantu Migration into much of southerly Central Africa, the cultures of the region tell many similarities and interrelationships. alike cultural practices stemming from common origins as largely Nilo-Saharan or Bantu peoples are besides discernible in Central Africa including in music, dance, art, body adornment, knowledgeability, and marriage rituals. Some major ethnic groups in Central Africa are as follows :
culture [edit ]
artwork from cameroon
architecture [edit ]
dress [edit ]
cuisine [edit ]
music [edit ]
religion [edit ]
Film industry [edit ]
science and engineering [edit ]
Further information in the sections of History of science and technology in Africa:
See besides [edit ]
References [edit ]
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