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Review Papers | Geography | Nigeria | Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2014 | Popularity: 6.5 / 10
Past of Africa: A Legacy to Present and Future
Nazifi Umar
Abstract: Human being is curious and rationale being interested in finding and deciphering dynamics of himself and his surroundings. The questions man had been asking since the dawn of civilizations; were always natural; social; economic or fictitious. His natural questions gave him good understanding and exploitation of nature; social questions supplied him potency to better coexistence in societies; economic questions facilitated his mercenary improvement till he owned almost all what he wanted and manage it well; fictitious questions elevated man to purifying his set of believe and organizing the right way of translating the forces of nature. It may be trite but really right; that man at first ask about what he sees in space nearby him before what is far away; and this is the beginning of the discipline of geography. Geography grew with natural; social; economic and fictitious questions of man and finding their answers in spatial context. It is not uncommon to appreciate why somewhere is different from somewhere else economically; socially; technologically etc. In antiquity social; economic and fictitious disparity displayed less variability over the globe; as man then was at the level of testing different hypothesis that came to his mind regarding his questions. Fortunately or unfortunately variable responses to the challenges of environment over the surface of the earth created much disparity in social; economic and cultural context as well as set of believe and adherence to new changes as time goes on. In present time; world is polarized economically; socially and technologically with some areas advanced far up leaving behind others far behind as if they were not started dealing with the aforementioned questions together in the ancient period. One can appreciate the said point when observe that economically small island nation of Japan has a per capita GDP of $30; 660 while a giant continental Nigeria has $2; 221 only (WDR 2013). In socio-cultural arena; we can see a disparity also where 72 % of Estonians claim no religious faith with them at the time significant percentage of Bhutanese devoted themselves as monks working in the temples. Notwithstanding; the political scene also show inconsistency in the sense that all west European countries have right to vote for their heads of states while in some Asian and African countries people only see sons inheriting their fathers over their national affairs. These disparities are not only restricted to international correlations; rather found even within the national boundaries. Africa in the recent times has become the pivot of debate by regional analysts; definitely due to the disseminations of poverty; hunger; malnutrition; civil war; disease and the measures taken by African countries to rescue themselves. Many observers especially outside Africa consider it as the continent of ds i. e. : destitute; doomed; dark; disaster prone; drought-stricken; disjointed; disconnected; and debt-ridden (Johnson et al 2012). However; one who move closer to Africa will appreciate a lot of its diversity of culture; history; huge resource deposit; many developmental efforts and a lot of potentialities. Past of Africa supplied us with the fact that the continent is a hub of development; civilization and development in recent and far times. Whether Africa will overcome its challenges and turn potentialities to reality in the near future; this remain a subject of discussion and this review will try to give some insights into the past lessons for the current and future Africa.
Keywords: African physiography, AncientAfrica, African civilizations, languages and religions of Africa
Edition: Volume 3 Issue 6, June 2014
Pages: 429 - 437
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