A Brief Description on Africa's Geographic Features

Africa's geography is unsuited to trade and thus hampers its economy. The centre of the continent, at least on the western side, is an almost impenetrable rainforest that greatly impedes the transit of people and goods. Some of the wealthiest parts of South Africa are blocked from the rest of Africa by the Kalahari Desert, while the Sahara creates an obvious barrier to trade. While Africa has a number of great river systems such as those of the Nile, Niger, Congo, and Zambezi, it is not nearly as well-linked by rivers as are other areas, such as Europe and China. Moreover, many of the rivers are blocked by rapids and cataracts that require vast development projects if they are to be bypassed. The wetness of the interior also makes transport difficult. Few roads are paved and during the wet season many of the unpaved tracks become impassable mud.

Countries in Africa are also cut off from the sea to a greater extent than those on other continents. Africa has more landlocked nations than any other continent, and countries in the centre of Africa are more populous than those of other areas. By contrast, the centres of North America and Asia are composed of vast steppes or plains that can never support a high population density. Most notably, the ridge running from Zimbabwe to Ethiopia has superb volcanic soils and the higher altitude gives it a more temperate climate. The lack of access to the sea makes international trade far harder.

A satellite composite image of AfricaWithin Africa, the wealth of nations is highly correlated with changes in latitude. One potential explanation for this is that modern civilization originates and is possibly best suited for temperate climates, but fails in the tropics. The majority of the world's population and wealth is found in the temperate zone. Historically the vast expanse of Eurasia, almost entirely in the temperate zone, was linked by land routes, allowing technologies and ideas to spread from one area over time, aiding innovation. This expanse and spread of technologies among those in the temperate zones means that everything from agricultural techniques to medicines are more often made to address the concerns of the northern climes, and often fail when brought south. This theory could partly explain why temperate South Africa is by far the wealthiest part of Africa, and why other tropical areas in South America and Indonesia share in Africa's poverty. There are no tropical countries in the OECD, and only a handful have a GDP per capita above the world average. A tropical latitude is not a guarantee of poverty, but globally there is a definite correlation between wealth and climate. Variations of the theory of geographic determinism date back to Montesquieu but have recently been revived by academics such as William Masters and Jeffrey Sachs and popular writers such as Jared Diamond.

Africa is well-endowed with natural resources. The continent has the world's largest supplies of gold and diamonds and contains large reserves of oil both in the north and around the Gulf of Guinea. Some have suggested that, counterintuitively, these foster a resource curse which fosters poor governance, and few African countries seem to have materially benefited from their mineral wealth. It is as well suited to agriculture as any other continent; the volcanic soils of the Great Lakes region are—by some measures—the best in the world.

One resource that Sub-Saharan Africa has historically lacked is stone suitable for building. This meant that almost all pre-colonial civilizations built mainly out of mud brick, which leaves few lasting ruins. The only notable exception to this is Great Zimbabwe. For many years this led European explorers and historians to conclude that pre-colonial sub-Saharan Africa was devoid of civilization, as in Europe all great civilizations left an indelible mark in stone ruins.

AIDS has compounded already slow economic development in Africa.[edit]
Disease
Related article: AIDS in Africa

Closely linked to geography is the problem of disease in Africa. The tropics have been, and still are, more hospitable to disease than the colder climates. The most significant illness has long been malaria. A new problem, but one of vast magnitude, is the rise of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS, the spread of which to some degree correlates with that of poverty, has hit hardest in some of the wealthiest African countries, including Botswana, Swaziland, and South Africa. AIDS has decimated or will decimate the working-age population of many states.

The cost healthcare costs, including those of importing anti-retroviral AIDS drugs from the west is also a major new burden on many African states, leading to the challenging of drug prices and the manufacture of cheap generic alternatives. Tropical diseases are often just as expensive to cure, when cures exist. Since the tropical regions are far poorer, pharmaceutical companies are reluctant to invest in curing the diseases of the region. Disease not only reduces the work force and creates an extra burden on health care, but also has an important effect on agriculture and transportation, as most forms of livestock cannot survive the diseases of the region. Historically this meant that sub-Saharan Africans did not have the use of pack animals for trade or work horses for labour, hurting the continent's development.