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What is Africa to me? The regional representation of Africa in undergraduate Geography of Africa textbooks, 1953 to 2004

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Title: What is Africa to me? The regional representation of Africa in undergraduate Geography of Africa textbooks, 1953 to 2004


1
What is Africa to me?The regional representation
of Africa in undergraduate Geography of Africa
textbooks, 1953 to 2004
Paper presented at the annual meeting of the
Ghana Geographical Association, 7-10 September,
2005 Akosombo International School, Akosombo,
Ghana
Roy Cole Roy Cole
Visiting faculty Department of Geography and Tourism University of Cape Coast, Ghana Associate Professor Department of Geography and Planning Grand Valley State University, USA
2
Purpose and method
  • Purpose
  • To understand how and why geographers have
    regionalized Africa in the past.
  • To create a better regionalization for use in
    Cole and de Blij (2006) Survey of Africa A
    Regional Geography, Oxford University Press.
  • Method
  • Forty-two English-language texts were examined.
  • All regionalizations were mapped.
  • The rationale for regionalization was found in
    the text or inferred if not made explicit by the
    author.

3
Regionalization
  • Process of dividing the earth or an area of the
    earths surface into smaller, more homogeneous,
    units for close analysis (breaking down).
  • Process of grouping like units into larger units
    (building up).
  • The character and uniformity of subsequent
    regions depend on what criteria are used for the
    grouping.

4
Results
  • Thirteen systematic texts treated Africa
    without regionalization.
  • One systematic text mentioned 4 regions but
    neither put forward any rationale for the regions
    nor used the regions in any way to organize the
    text.
  • Twenty-eight texts regionalized the continent.
  • Number of regions ranged from 4 to 12.
  • The mean number of regions was 7.5.
  • The geographic extent of regions was highly
    variable.
  • Rationales for each regionalization scheme were
    equally variable.
  • To a limited extent almost every regional text
    treated the entire continent is a systematic
    way.

5
14 Texts that contained no regionalization
Author Title Publication date
O'Connor The Geography of Tropical African Development. 1971
Barbour and Prothero Essays on African Population 1961
Prothero People and Land in Africa South of the Sahara Readings in Social Geography 1972
Clarke et al. An Advanced Geography of Africa 1975
Knight Newman Contemporary Africa Geography and Change 1976
Buckle Landforms in Africa An Introduction to Geomorphology 1978
Grove Klein Rural Africa 1979
Christopher Colonial Africa 1984
Grove The Changing Geography of Africa 1989
Gleave Tropical African Development Geographical Perspectives 1992
Binns Tropical Africa 1994
Stock Africa South of the Sahara A Geographical Interpretation 1995, 2004
Adams, Goudie, Orme The Physical Geography of Africa 1996
Aryteetey-Attoh Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa 1997, 2003
An entirely systematic text that merely
mentioned that Africa has 4 regions.
6
28 Texts that regionalized Africa
Author Title Date Number of regions
Stamp Africa A Study in Tropical Development 1953 11
Suggate Africa 1957 8
Hance African Economic Development 1958 7
Kimble Tropical Africa 1960 6
Sillery Africa A Social Geography 1961 9
Kingsnorth Africa South of the Sahara 1962 5
de Blij Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa 1964 4
Harrison-Church Africa and the Islands 1964 8
Fordham The Geography of African Affairs 1965 4
Hance The Geography of Modern Africa 1965 7
Fitzgerald Africa A Social, Economic, and Political Geography of its Major Regions 1967 8
Grove Africa South of the Sahara 1967 9
Hodder Harris Africa in Transition Geographical Essays 1967 6
Mountjoy Embleton Africa A New Geographical Survey 1967 10
Pollock Africa A Systematic Regional Geography 1968 8
Prothero A Geography of Africa Regional Essays on Fundamental Characteristics, Issues and Problems 1969 8
Pritchard Africa The Geography of a Changing Continent 1969 8
Stamp Morgan Africa A Study in Tropical Development 1972 11
Coysh Tomlinson Africa 1974 12
Hance The Geography of Modern Africa 1975 7
Best de Blij African Survey 1977 6
Harrison-Church Africa and the Islands 1977 8
Boateng A Political Geography of Africa 1978 7
Udo The Human Geography of Tropical Africa 1982 4
Mountjoy Hilling Africa Geography and Development 1988 8
Hickman The New Africa 1990 7
Chapman Baker The Changing Geography of Africa and the Middle East 1994 9
Newman The Peopling of Africa A Geographic Interpretation 1995 6
7
Authors represented Africa as a world region
(realm) in one of three ways
  • Continental Africa.
  • Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Tropical Africa.

8
The continent, Subsaharan Africa, and authors
9
The African Tropics and authors
10
The regional geographies
  • A total of 60 different names were used to
    identify the regions of Africa.
  • Three basic concepts were identifiable from the
    region names.
  • The authors employed a wide variety of
    regionalization schemes as well.

11
Three regionalization concepts were observable in
the names of the 60 regions
Concept Frequency Percent
Physical 19 31.7
Physical and political 2 3.3
Political 16 26.7
Political and physical 3 5.0
Relative location 15 25.0
Relative location and physical 5 8.3
Total 60 100.0
12
Frequently-used names for regions
Region name Type Frequency Percent of authors Closely-related terms Percent of authors Total percent of authors
West Relative location 24 88.9 Western 11.1 100.0
East Relative location 20 74.1 Eastern 11.1 85.2
Southern Relative location 17 63.0     63.0
Central Relative location 13 48.1     48.1
Equatorial Physical 11 40.7     40.7
Northeast Relative location 7 25.9     25.9
South Africa Political 7 25.9     25.9
Nile Valley (or Basin, or Lands) Physical 5 18.5     18.5
Sahara Physical 5 18.5     18.5
Islands of the Indian Ocean Physical 4 14.8     14.8
North Relative location 4 14.8 Northern 14.8 29.6
13
Regions identified by lt10 of authors
Region name Region name
Central Africa and Southern Savanna Lands Congo Basin and Margins
Egypt and the Nile Congo, Angola, and Mozambique
Ethiopia and Somalia East and Islands
Ethiopia and the Red Sea Margins Eastern Islands
Horn Ethiopia and the Horn
Horn and Sudan Abyssinia and its Borderlands
Islands Former Belgian Africa
Madagascar Egypt and Sudan
Malagasy (or Malagasy Republic) Small Islands of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans
Nile Valley (or Basin) and the Horn Libya
Southwest Madagascar and Indian Ocean Isles
West Central Maghreb
Zambezi and Limpopo Lands Lower Nile
Angola and Mozambique North and the Sahara
Barbary States Northwest and Sahara
Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland Portuguese Angola and Mozambique
Central African Customs Union South Africa and South-West Africa
Chad Southern Central
Congo Basin Southern Sahara
Congo Basin and Cameroon Southern Sahara and its Borderlands
  Southern Tropical
14
Regionalizations 1953-1964
15
Regionalizations 1964-1967
16
Regionalizations 1967-1972
17
Regionalizations 1974-1988
18
Regionalizations 1990-2003
19
The regionalization concepts over time
20
Overview of regional texts
Suggate 1957
Stamp 1953
Harrison-Church 1964
Kimble 1960
Sillery 1961
Kingsnorth 1962
de Blij 1964
Mountjoy Embleton 1967
Hodder Harris 1967
Fordham 1965
Hance 1965
Fitzgerald 1967
Grove 1967
Hance 1967
Harrison-Church 1977
Coysh Tomlinson 1974
Stamp Morgan 1972
Best de Blij 1977
Prothero 1969
Pritchard 1971
Pollock 1968
Mountjoy Hilling 1988
Chapman Baker 1994
Aryeetey -Attoh 2003
Boateng 1978
Newman 1995
Udo 1982
Hickman 1990
21
ConclusionHeritage (1925) by Countee Cullen
(1903-1946)
What is Africa to me Copper sun or scarlet sea, Jungle star or jungle track, Strong bronzed men, or regal black Women from whose loins I sprang When the birds of Eden sang? One three centuries removed From the scenes his fathers loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me? Africa? A book one thumbs Listlessly, till slumber comes. Unremembered are her bats Circling through the night, her cats Crouching in the river reeds, Stalking gentle flesh that feeds By the river brink.... What is last years snow to me, Last years anything? The tree Budding yearly must forget How its past arose or set - Bough and blossom, flower, fruit, Even what shy bird with mute Wonder at her travail there, Meekly labored in its hair. One three centuries removed From the scenes his father loved, Spicy grove, cinnamon tree, What is Africa to me?
22
Conclusion
  • In the texts examined, four criteria, alone or in
    combination, seem to have been used to define
    regions.
  • Physical features and climate.
  • Human cultural geography.
  • The colonial legacy.
  • Relative location.

23
Conclusion
  • At the small scale, the regionalization of Africa
    has little empirical integrity especially when
    the country is used as the unit of
    regionalization.
  • The almost bewildering array of regionalization
    schemes, rationales, and changing components
    suggests that the complex physical,
    environmental, and cultural geographies of Africa
    make any regionalization of the continent
    inadequate even ideosyncratic using the
    country as the grouping unit.
  • At the small scale, regionalization should be
    used as a device to get us closer to the ground
    and nothing more.
  • Relative location might be the best way to define
    the regions of Africa.

24
An improved, single-assumption regionalization
based on relative location
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