1.
Koulikoro
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Koulikoro is a town and urban commune in Mali. The capital of the Koulikoro Region, Koulikoro is located on banks of the Niger River,59 kilometres downstream from Malis capital Bamako, Koulikoro is the terminus of the Dakar-Niger Railway which was completed in 1905. Between August and November, at the end of the season, goods are transported down the Niger River to Ségou, Mopti, Tombouctou. Navigation is not possible upstream of Koulikoro because of the Sotuba Rapids near Bamako, bous, Germany Quétigny, France Plan de Sécurité Alimentaire Commune Urbaine de Koulikoro 2008-2012, Commissariat à la Sécurité Alimentaire, République du Mali, USAID-Mali,2008
2.
Mali
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Mali, officially the Republic of Mali, is a landlocked country in West Africa. Mali is the eighth-largest country in Africa, with an area of just over 1,240,000 square kilometres, the population of Mali is 14.5 million. The countrys economy centers on agriculture and fishing, some of Malis prominent natural resources include gold, being the third largest producer of gold in the African continent, and salt. About half the population lives below the poverty line of $1.25 a day. A majority of the population are Muslims, present-day Mali was once part of three West African empires that controlled trans-Saharan trade, the Ghana Empire, the Mali Empire, and the Songhai Empire. During its golden age, there was a flourishing of mathematics, astronomy, literature, at its peak in 1300, the Mali Empire covered an area about twice the size of modern-day France and stretched to the west coast of Africa. In the late 19th century, during the Scramble for Africa, France seized control of Mali, French Sudan joined with Senegal in 1959, achieving independence in 1960 as the Mali Federation. Shortly thereafter, following Senegals withdrawal from the federation, the Sudanese Republic declared itself the independent Republic of Mali. After a long period of one-party rule, a coup in 1991 led to the writing of a new constitution and the establishment of Mali as a democratic, multi-party state. In January 2012, a conflict broke out in northern Mali, in which Tuareg rebels took control of by April and declared the secession of a new state. The conflict was complicated by a coup that took place in March. In response to Islamist territorial gains, the French military launched Opération Serval in January 2013, a month later, Malian and French forces recaptured most of the north. Presidential elections were held on 28 July 2013, with a second round held on 11 August. The name Mali is taken from the name of the Mali Empire, the name was originally derived from the Mandinka or Bambara word mali, meaning “hippopotamus”, but it eventually came to mean the place where the king lives. The word carries the connotation of strength, D. Niane suggests in Sundiata, An Epic of Old Mali that it is not impossible that Mali was the name given to one of the capitals of the emperors. 14th century Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta reported that the capital of the Mali Empire was indeed called Mali and this name could have formerly been that of a city. In old Mali there is one village called Malikoma which means “New Mali. ”Another theory suggests that Mali is a Fulani pronunciation of the name of the Mande peoples. It is suggested that a sound shift led to the change, whereby in Fulani the alveolar segment /nd/ shifts to /l/, Mali was once part of three famed West African empires which controlled trans-Saharan trade in gold, salt, slaves, and other precious commodities
3.
Berber language
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Berber or the Berber languages or the Amazigh language are a family of similar and closely related languages and dialects indigenous to North Africa. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities, numbering today about 4 million, have been living in Western Europe, about half of this population was born in Europe. Berber constitutes a branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and has been attested since ancient times, the number of Berbers is much higher than the number of Berber speakers. The bulk of the populations of the Maghreb countries are considered to have Berber ancestors, in Algeria, for example, a majority of the population consists of Arabized Berbers. There is a cultural and political movement among speakers of the closely related varieties of Northern Berber to promote and unify them under a standard language, called. The name Tamaziɣt is the current native name of the Berber language in the Moroccan Middle-Atlas region, the Rif regions, in other Berber-speaking area this name was lost. There is historical evidence, from medieval Berber manusctipts, that all native North Africans from Libya to Morocco have called their language, Tamaziɣt. The name Tamaziɣt is currently being used by educated Berbers to refer to the written Berber language. Around 90 percent of the Berber-speaking population speak one of six major varieties of Berber and they are, in the order of demographic weight, Tashelhit, Kabyle, Atlas Tamazight, Riffian, Shawi and Tuareg. The Berber languages and dialects have had a tradition, on and off, for about 2,500 years, although the tradition has been frequently disrupted by cultural shifts. They were first written in the Libyco-Berber and Tifinagh abjad, still used by the Tuareg, the oldest dated inscription is from about 200 BCE. The Berber Latin alphabet was used by most European and Berber linguists during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th and 20th century European and native Berber linguists, a modernized form of the Tifinagh alphabet, called Neo-Tifinagh, was adopted in Morocco in 2003 for writing Berber, but many Moroccan Berber publications still use the Berber Latin alphabet. Algerians mostly use the Berber Latin alphabet in Berber language education at public schools, Mali and Niger recognize a Tuareg-Berber Latin alphabet customized to the Tuareg phonological system. However, traditional Tifinagh is still used in those countries, the term Berber has been used in Europe since at least the 17th century, and is still used today. It was borrowed from Latin Barbari, the Latin word is also found in the Arabic designation for these populations, البربر, al-Barbar, see names of the Berber people. Etymologically, the Berber root Mazigh means free man, noble man, the feminine Tamazight traditionally referred specifically to the Riffian and Central Atlas Tamazight languages. European languages distinguish between the words Berber and barbaric, while Arabic has the same word al-barbari for both meanings, some other Berber writers, especially in Morocco, prefer to refer to Berber with Amazigh when writing about it in French or English
4.
Guinea
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Guinea /ˈɡɪni/, officially the Republic of Guinea, is a country on the West coast of Africa. Guinea has a population of 10.5 million and an area of 245,860 square kilometres, the president is directly elected by the people and is head of state and head of government. The unicameral Guinean National Assembly is the body of the country. The judicial branch is led by the Guinea Supreme Court, the highest, the country is named after the Guinea region. Guinea is a name for the region of Africa that lies along the Gulf of Guinea. It stretches north through the tropical regions and ends at the Sahel. Guinea is a predominantly Islamic country, with Muslims representing 85 percent of the population, Guineas people belong to twenty-four ethnic groups. French, the language of Guinea, is the main language of communication in schools, in government administration, and the media. Guineas economy is dependent on agriculture and mineral production. It is the second largest producer of bauxite, and has rich deposits of diamonds. The country was at the core of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, human rights in Guinea remain a controversial issue. In 2011 the United States government claimed that torture by security forces, the land that is now Guinea belonged to a series of African empires until France colonized it in the 1890s, and made it part of French West Africa. Guinea declared its independence from France on 2 October 1958, from independence until the presidential election of 2010, Guinea was governed by a number of autocratic rulers. What is now Guinea was on the fringes of the major West African empires, the Ghana Empire is believed to be the earliest of these which grew on trade but contracted and ultimately fell due to the hostile influence of the Almoravids. It was in period that Islam first arrived in the region. The Mali Empire was ruled by Mansa, the most famous being Kankou Moussa, shortly after his reign the Mali Empire began to decline and was ultimately supplanted by its vassal states in the 15th century. The most successful of these was the Songhai Empire, which expanded its power from about 1460 and it continued to prosper until a civil war over succession followed the death of Askia Daoud in 1582. The weakened empire fell to invaders from Morocco at the Battle of Tondibi just three years later, the Moroccans proved unable to rule the kingdom effectively, however, and it split into many small kingdoms
5.
Niger
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Niger, officially the Republic of Niger, is a landlocked country in Western Africa, named after the Niger River. Niger is bordered by Libya to the northeast, Chad to the east, Nigeria and Benin to the south, Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, and Algeria to the northwest. Niger covers a area of almost 1,270,000 km2, making it the largest country in West Africa. The countrys predominantly Islamic population of about 19 million is mostly clustered in the far south, the capital city is Niamey, located in the far-southwest corner of Niger. Niger is a country, and is consistently one of the lowest-ranked in the United Nations Human Development Index. Much of the portions of the country are threatened by periodic drought. The economy is concentrated around subsistence and some export agriculture clustered in the fertile south. Nigerien society reflects a diversity drawn from the long independent histories of its ethnic groups and regions. Historically, what is now Niger has been on the fringes of large states. Since independence, Nigeriens have lived under five constitutions and three periods of military rule, following a military coup in 2010, Niger has become a democratic, multi-party state. A majority live in areas, and have little access to advanced education. Early human settlement in Niger is evidenced by archaeological remains. In prehistoric times, the climate of the Sahara was wet and provided favorable conditions for agriculture, in 2005–06, a graveyard in the Tenere desert was discovered by Paul Sereno, a paleontologist from the University of Chicago. His team discovered 5, 000-year-old remains of a woman and two children in the Tenere Desert, the evidence along with remains of animals that do not typically live in desert are among the strongest evidence of the green Sahara in Niger. It is believed that progressive desertification around 5000 BCE pushed sedentary populations to the south and south-east. By at least the 5th century BCE, Niger became an area of trade, led by the Berber tribes from the north. This trade has made Agadez a pivotal place of the trans-Saharan trade and this mobility, which would continue in waves for several centuries, was accompanied with further migration to the south and interbreeding between southern black and northern white populations. It was also aided by the introduction of Islam to the region at the end of the 7th century, several empires and kingdoms also flourished during this era up to the beginning of colonization in Africa
6.
Benin
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Benin, officially the Republic of Benin and formerly Dahomey, is a country in West Africa. It is bordered by Togo to the west, Nigeria to the east, the majority of its population lives on the small southern coastline of the Bight of Benin, part of the Gulf of Guinea in the northernmost tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean. The capital of Benin is Porto-Novo, but the seat of government is in Cotonou, Benin covers an area of 114,763 square kilometers and its population in 2015 was estimated to be approximately 10.88 million. Benin is a nation, highly dependent on agriculture, with substantial employment. The official language of Benin is French, however, indigenous languages such as Fon and Yoruba are commonly spoken. The largest religious group in Benin is Roman Catholicism, followed closely by Islam, Vodun and this region was referred to as the Slave Coast from as early as the 17th century due to the large number of slaves shipped to the New World during the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. After slavery was abolished, France took over the country and renamed it French Dahomey, in 1960, Dahomey gained full independence from France, and had a tumultuous period with many different democratic governments, many military coups and military governments. A Marxist–Leninist state called the Peoples Republic of Benin existed between 1975 and 1990, in 1991, it was replaced by the current multi-party Republic of Benin. During the colonial period and at independence, the country was known as Dahomey, on 30 November 1975 it was renamed to Benin, after the body of water on which the country lies—the Bight of Benin—which, in turn, had been named after the Benin Empire. The country of Benin has no connection to Benin City in modern Nigeria, the form Benin is the result of a Portuguese corruption of the city of Ubinu. The new name, Benin, was chosen for its neutrality, the current country of Benin combines three areas which had different political and ethnic systems prior to French colonial control. Before 1700, there were a few important city states along the coast, the situation changed in the 1600s and early 1700s as the Kingdom of Dahomey, which was of Fon ethnicity, was founded on the Abomey plateau and began taking over areas along the coast. The Dahomey Kingdom was known for its culture and traditions, young boys were often apprenticed to older soldiers, and taught the kingdoms military customs until they were old enough to join the army. This emphasis on preparation and achievement earned Dahomey the nickname of black Sparta from European observers. The kings of Dahomey sold their war captives into transatlantic slavery, by about 1750, the King of Dahomey was earning an estimated £250,000 per year by selling Africans to the European slave-traders. Court protocols, which demanded that a portion of war captives from the many battles be decapitated, decreased the number of enslaved people exported from the area. The number went from 102,000 people per decade in the 1780s to 24,000 per decade by the 1860s, the decline was partly due to the banning of the trans-Atlantic slave trade by Britain and other countries. This decline continued until 1885, when the last slave ship departed from the coast of the present-day Benin Republic bound for Brazil, a former Portuguese colony, the capitals name Porto-Novo is of Portuguese origin, meaning New Port
7.
Nigeria
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Its coast in the south lies on the Gulf of Guinea in the Atlantic Ocean. It comprises 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, where the capital, Nigeria is officially a democratic secular country. Modern-day Nigeria has been the site of numerous kingdoms and tribal states over the millennia, the modern state originated from British colonial rule beginning in the 19th century, and the merging of the Southern Nigeria Protectorate and Northern Nigeria Protectorate in 1914. The British set up administrative and legal structures whilst practising indirect rule through traditional chiefdoms, Nigeria became a formally independent federation in 1960, and plunged into a civil war from 1967 to 1970. Nigeria is often referred to as the Giant of Africa, owing to its large population, with approximately 184 million inhabitants, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa and the seventh most populous country in the world. Nigeria has one of the largest populations of youth in the world, Nigeria is divided roughly in half between Christians, who live mostly in the southern part of the country, and Muslims in the northern part. A minority of the population practise religions indigenous to Nigeria, such as native to the Igbo. As of 2015, Nigeria is the worlds 20th largest economy, worth more than $500 billion and $1 trillion in terms of nominal GDP and it overtook South Africa to become Africas largest economy in 2014. The 2013 debt-to-GDP ratio was 11 percent, Nigeria is a member of the MINT group of countries, which are widely seen as the globes next BRIC-like economies. It is also listed among the Next Eleven economies set to become among the biggest in the world, Nigeria is a founding member of the African Union and a member of many other international organizations, including the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations and OPEC. The name Nigeria was taken from the Niger River running through the country and this name was coined in the late 19th century by British journalist Flora Shaw, who later married Lord Lugard, a British colonial administrator. The origin of the name Niger, which applied only to the middle reaches of the Niger River, is uncertain. The word is likely an alteration of the Tuareg name egerew n-igerewen used by inhabitants along the middle reaches of the river around Timbuktu prior to 19th-century European colonialism. The Nok civilisation of Northern Nigeria flourished between 500 BC and AD200, producing life-sized terracotta figures which are some of the earliest known sculptures in Sub-Saharan Africa, further north, the cities Kano and Katsina have a recorded history dating to around 999 AD. Hausa kingdoms and the Kanem-Bornu Empire prospered as trade posts between North and West Africa, the Kingdom of Nri of the Igbo people consolidated in the 10th century and continued until it lost its sovereignty to the British in 1911. Nri was ruled by the Eze Nri, and the city of Nri is considered to be the foundation of Igbo culture, Nri and Aguleri, where the Igbo creation myth originates, are in the territory of the Umeuri clan. Members of the clan trace their lineages back to the patriarchal king-figure Eri, in West Africa, the oldest bronzes made using the lost-wax process were from Igbo Ukwu, a city under Nri influence. The Yoruba kingdoms of Ife and Oyo in southwestern Nigeria became prominent in the 12th and 14th centuries, the oldest signs of human settlement at Ifes current site date back to the 9th century, and its material culture includes terracotta and bronze figures
8.
Sokoto River
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The Sokoto River is a river in north-west Nigeria and a tributary of the River Niger. The rivers source is near Funtua in the south of Katsina State and it flows north-west passing Gusau in Zamfara State, where the Gusau Dam forms a reservoir that supplies the city with water. Further downstream the river enters Sokoto State where it passes by Sokoto and is joined by the Rima River, then turning south, about 120 kilometres south of Birnin Kebbi, it reaches its confluence with the Niger River. The plains around the river are widely cultivated and the used as a source of irrigation. The river is also an important means of transport, the Bakolori Dam, about 100 kilometres upstream from Sokoto, is a major reservoir on the Sokoto River. It has had significant impact on downstream floodplain cultivation, the Hydrology and Plankton of the River Sokoto. Journal of Animal Ecology, Vol.29, No, isotope And Geochemical Characterization Of Surface And Subsurface Waters In The Semi-Arid Sokoto Basin, Nigeria, Adelana et al. African Journal of Science and Technology, Science and Engineering Series Vol.4, No
9.
Benue River
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The Benue River, previously known as the Chadda River or Tchadda, is the major tributary of the Niger River. The river is approximately 1,400 kilometres long and is almost entirely navigable during the summer months, as a result, it is an important transportation route in the regions through which it flows. Large tributaries are the Faro River, the Gongola River and the Mayo Kébbi, other tributaries are Taraba River and River Katsina Ala. At the point of confluence, the Benue exceeds the Niger by volume, the mean discharge before 1960 was 3,400 cubic metres per second for the Benue and 2,500 cubic metres per second for the Niger. During the following decades, the runoff of both rivers decreased markedly due to irrigation, the Benue River flooded in October 2012, resulting in a large increase in the population of venomous snakes in the Duguri District, Alkaleri Local Government Area, Bauchi State. A July 2013 report indicated that over 200 people in the district had died of snakebite. The General Hospital in Kaltungo, Gombe State is the nearest location for treatment of snakebite, whoever is lucky to make it to Kaltungo is treated in only two days and then they return home
10.
Bani River
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The Bani River is the principal tributary of the Niger River in Mali. The river is formed from the confluence of the Baoulé and Bagoé rivers some 160 km east of Bamako and its length is about 1,100 km. The drainage basin upstream of Douna has an area of 102,000 km2, 85% of which lies in southern Mali and 15% in northern Côte dIvoire. The annual rainfall varies across the catchment basin with the area in Côte dIvoire receiving 1,500 mm a year while the northern area around Douna receiving only 700 mm. For the period 1965-1995 the average rainfall for the basin was 1,100 mm. The rainfall is seasonal with most of the rain falling between May and October, the maximum rainfall occurs in August. The discharge of the Bani River is also seasonal, with the maximum flow occurring at the end of September. The river enters the Inland Niger Delta north of San and after the rains the river floods. There is a significant inter-annual variation in the rainfall and, as a consequence, the reduction in the flow of the river was much greater than the reduction in the rainfall. The average rainfall for 1981-1989 was 20% less than for 1961-1970 while the discharge of the river was reduced by 75%, the effect of the reduced rainfall was less extreme for other tributaries of the Niger. Because of the accumulated deficit, even in a year with high rainfall. In 2006 the Talo Dam was constructed to irrigate parts of the floodplain to the south of the river near the town of San. Prior to the construction of the dam, these areas were only fully flooded in wet years. The dam is located 43 km west of San,66 km downstream of Douna and 110 km upstream of Djenné, the dam acts as a weir in that water can flow over the top of the retaining wall. The construction of the dam was highly controversial, the environmental impact assessment commissioned by the African Development Bank was criticised for not fully taking into account the hydrological impact downstream of the dam. The retaining wall is 5 m high and 295 m in length and this volume represents 1. 3% of the average annual discharge of the river (over the period 1952-2002 the average discharge was 13.4 km3. A downstream flow of 10 m3 /s can be maintained during the dry season by opening a sluice gate. From the published information it is unclear how much of the discharge will be diverted for irrigation and, of the diverted water
11.
Bamako
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Bamako is the capital and largest city of Mali, with a population of 1.8 million. In 2006, it was estimated to be the fastest growing city in Africa and it is located on the Niger River, near the rapids that divide the upper and middle Niger valleys in the southwestern part of the country. Bamako is the administrative center. The city proper is a cercle in its own right, bamakos river port is located in nearby Koulikoro, along with a major regional trade and conference center. Bamako is the seventh-largest West African urban center after Lagos, Abidjan, Kano, Ibadan, Dakar, locally manufactured goods include textiles, processed meat, and metal goods. Commercial fishing occurs on the Niger River, the name Bamako comes from the Bambara word meaning crocodile tail. The area of the city has evidence of settlements since the Palaeolithic era, the early inhabitants traded gold, ivory, kola nuts, and salt. By the 11th century, the Empire of Ghana became the first kingdom to dominate the area, Bamako had become a major market town, and a centre for Islamic scholars, with the establishment of two universities and numerous mosques in medieval times. The Mali Empire grew during the early Middle Ages and replaced Ghana as the dominant kingdom in west Africa, dominating Senegal, Gambia, Guinea, in the 14th century, the Mali Empire became increasingly wealthy because of the trade of cotton, gold and salt. By the late 19th century, the French dominated much of western Africa, and in 1883, present-day Mali became part of the colony of French Sudan, cotton and rice farming was encouraged through large irrigation projects and a new railroad connected Mali to Dakar on the Atlantic coast. Mali was annexed then into French West Africa, a federation which lasted from 1895 to 1959, Mali gained independence from France in April 1960, and the Republic of Mali was later established. At this time, Bamako had a population of around 160,000, during the 1960s, the country became socialist and Bamako was subject to Soviet investment and influence. However, the economy declined as state enterprises collapsed and unrest was widespread, eventually, Moussa Traoré led a successful coup and ruled Mali for 23 years. However his rule was characterised by severe droughts and poor government management, in the late 1980s the people of Bamako and Mali campaigned for a free-market economy and multiparty democracy. In 1990, the National Congress for Democratic Initiative was set up by the lawyer Mountaga Tall, and these with the Association des élèves et étudiants du Mali and the Association Malienne des Droits de lHomme aimed to oust Moussa Traoré. Under the old constitution, all unions had to belong to one confederation. When the leadership of the UNTM broke from the government in 1990, students, even children, played an increasing role in the protest marches in Bamako, and homes and businesses of those associated with the regime were ransacked by crowds. On 22 March 1991, a large-scale protest march in central Bamako was violently suppressed, four days later, a military coup deposed Traoré
12.
Timbuktu
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The town is the capital of the Timbuktu Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali. It had a population of 54,453 in the 2009 census, starting out as a seasonal settlement, Timbuktu became a permanent settlement early in the 12th century. After a shift in trading routes, Timbuktu flourished from the trade in salt, gold, ivory and it became part of the Mali Empire early in the 14th century. In the first half of the 15th century the Tuareg tribes took control of the city for a period until the expanding Songhai Empire absorbed the city in 1468. A Moroccan army defeated the Songhai in 1591, and made Timbuktu, rather than Gao, the invaders established a new ruling class, the Arma, who after 1612 became virtually independent of Morocco. However, the age of the city, during which it was a major learning and cultural center of the Mali empire, was over. Different tribes governed until the French took over in 1893, a situation that lasted until it became part of the current Republic of Mali in 1960, presently, Timbuktu is impoverished and suffers from desertification. Several notable historic writers, such as Shabeni and Leo Africanus, have described Timbuktu and these stories fueled speculation in Europe, where the citys reputation shifted from being extremely rich to being mysterious. This reputation overshadows the town itself in times, to the point where it is best known in Western culture as an expression for a distant or outlandish place. French spelling often appears in reference as Tombouctou. As well as its spelling, Timbuktus toponymy is still open to discussion, the word itself consisted of two parts, tin and butu. Africanus did not explain the meaning of this Butu, Heinrich Barth wrote, The town was probably so called, because it was built originally in a hollow or cavity in the sand-hills. Tùmbutu means hole or womb in the Songhay language, if it were a Temáshight word, the name is generally interpreted by Europeans as well of Buktu, but tin has nothing to do with well. Hence, Timbuktu would mean place covered by small dunes, looking after their belongings was a slave woman of theirs called Tinbuktu, which in their language means lump. The blessed spot where she encamped was named after her, the French Orientalist René Basset forwarded another theory, the name derives from the Zenaga root b-k-t, meaning to be distant or hidden, and the feminine possessive particle tin. The meaning hidden could point to the location in a slight hollow. Without consensus, the etymology of Timbuktu remains unclear, like other important Medieval West African towns such as Djenné, Gao, and Dia, Iron Age settlements have been discovered near Timbuktu that predate the traditional foundation date of the town. A survey of the area by Susan and Roderick McIntosh in 1984 identified several Iron Age sites along the el-Ahmar, an ancient wadi system that passes a few kilometres to the east of the modern town
13.
Niamey
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Niamey is the capital and largest city of the West African country Niger. Niamey lies on the Niger River, primarily situated on the east bank and it is an administrative, cultural and economic centre. Niameys population, which was estimated at 774,235 in 2006, is now projected to be much higher, the city is located in a pearl millet growing region, while manufacturing industries include bricks, ceramic goods, cement and weaving. Niamey was probably founded in the century, but was of little importance to most of the country until the French developed a colonial post in the 1890s. This rapidly grew into an important centre, in 1926 it became the capital of Niger, and the population gradually increased, from about 3,000 in 1930 to around 30,000 in 1960. The period from 1970 to 1988 was one in which the economy of Niger boomed, in this period, the population of Niamey grew from 108,000 to 398,365 inhabitants. The city expanded from 1,367 hectares in 1970 to 4,400 hectares by 1977, by some estimates the population had reached 800,000 in 2000. In 2011, government press estimated the urban population at over 1.5 million. A major cause of the increase has been in migration for work and during droughts and this last factor means a majority of the citys citizens are youths. Covering an area of over 250 km2, the area sits atop two plateaus reaching 218 m in altitude, bisected by the Niger River. At Niamey, the river, running almost straight SSE from Gao, the city was founded on the east of the river as it meanders from a west to east flow to run almost directly south. A series of marshy islands begin at Niamey and extend south in the river, most of the rainfall is from late June to mid-August. There is practically no rain from mid-October to April, Niamey is remarkably hot throughout the year. In fact, it is one of the hottest major cities on the planet, average monthly high temperatures reach 38 °C four months out of the year and in no month do average high temperatures fall below 32 °C. During the dry season, particularly from November through February, nights are generally cool, average nighttime lows between November and February range from 14–18 °C. Under the military government of General Seyni Kountché, there were controls on residency. Noticeable in the centre since the 1980s are groups of poor, young. Within the richer or more trafficked neighbourhoods, these beggars have in fact formed a well-regulated hierarchical system in which beggars garner sadaka according to cultural and religious norms
14.
Onitsha
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Onitsha is a city located on the eastern bank of the Niger River, in Nigerias Anambra State. A metropolitan city, Onitsha, is known for its port, and as an economic hub for commerce, industry. In the 2006 Nigerian census, Onitsha had a city proper population of over quarter a million people. The indigenous people of Onitsha are Igbo and speak the Igbo language, the Onitsha people like to be referred to as Ndi Onicha. These migrants traveled eastward through what is now Western Igboland and various towns also called Onitsha, for example Onicha-Ugbo, folklore has it that, Onitsha was founded by one of the sons of Chima, the founder of Issele-Uku kingdom in western Igboland. Chima, a prince of the ancient Benin kingdom emigrated, settled and founded what is now known as Issele-Uku in Aniocha North Local Government Area, the eldest son of Chima eventually emigrated across the Niger River to establish the Onitsha community. Eze Aroli was apparently the first genuinely powerful Obi of Onitsha, some theories on the word Onicha point to the meanings despiser or arrogant, apparently the people of Onitsha were prone to look down upon the people of the towns adjacent to them. Onicha may be a contraction of either Ọnịsịlị-ncha, meaning too headstrong, Ọnyịsịlị-ncha, too headstrong, or Ani-Ocha, some claim that Onicha is a contraction of Igbo and Edo words, and perhaps from the word Orisha. Therefore, as a matter of fact, there are as well other communities east of the Niger River known as Onicha with differing appendages. The communities are as follows, Onicha Uburu, Onicha Uboma, Onicha Agu, Onicha Nwenkwo, Onicha Ngwa, Onicha Amagunze, etc. Trade in palm kernels, palm oil, and other crops on the coast of Bight of Biafra increased around this river port in the 19th century. In 1900 Onitsha became part of a British protectorate, the British colonial government and Christian missionaries penetrated most of Igboland to set up their administration, schools and churches through the river port at Onitsha. More immigrants from the hinterland of Igboland were drawn to the boom town as did the British traders who settled there in Onitsha. In 1965, the Niger River Bridge was built across the Niger River to replace the ferry crossing and this has helped to grow trade routes with western Nigeria and created significant economic linkages between Onitsha and Benin City and Lagos particularly. The Nigerian-Biafran war brought devastation to Onitsha as the city was a theatre of war for forces entering Biafra from the western front. The subsequent oil boom years of the 1970s and early 1980s witnessed an influx of immigrants into the city. The result has been constructed and haphazard building which has created a huge number of slums. Traditional Onitsha consists of nine villages, otherwise known as Ebo Itenani, within these groupings there are six administrative wards namely Okebunabo, Umuezearoli, Ogbeolu, Isiokwe na Ogboli Olosi, Obamkpa and Eke na Ubene
15.
Atlantic Ocean
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The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the worlds oceans with a total area of about 106,460,000 square kilometres. It covers approximately 20 percent of the Earths surface and about 29 percent of its surface area. It separates the Old World from the New World, the Atlantic Ocean occupies an elongated, S-shaped basin extending longitudinally between Eurasia and Africa to the east, and the Americas to the west. The Equatorial Counter Current subdivides it into the North Atlantic Ocean, in contrast, the term Atlantic originally referred specifically to the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and the sea off the Strait of Gibraltar and the North African coast. The Greek word thalassa has been reused by scientists for the huge Panthalassa ocean that surrounded the supercontinent Pangaea hundreds of years ago. The term Aethiopian Ocean, derived from Ancient Ethiopia, was applied to the Southern Atlantic as late as the mid-19th century, many Irish or British people refer to the United States and Canada as across the pond, and vice versa. The Black Atlantic refers to the role of ocean in shaping black peoples history. Irish migration to the US is meant when the term The Green Atlantic is used, the term Red Atlantic has been used in reference to the Marxian concept of an Atlantic working class, as well as to the Atlantic experience of indigenous Americans. Correspondingly, the extent and number of oceans and seas varies, the Atlantic Ocean is bounded on the west by North and South America. It connects to the Arctic Ocean through the Denmark Strait, Greenland Sea, Norwegian Sea, to the east, the boundaries of the ocean proper are Europe, the Strait of Gibraltar and Africa. In the southeast, the Atlantic merges into the Indian Ocean, the 20° East meridian, running south from Cape Agulhas to Antarctica defines its border. In the 1953 definition it extends south to Antarctica, while in later maps it is bounded at the 60° parallel by the Southern Ocean, the Atlantic has irregular coasts indented by numerous bays, gulfs, and seas. Including these marginal seas the coast line of the Atlantic measures 111,866 km compared to 135,663 km for the Pacific. Including its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers an area of 106,460,000 km2 or 23. 5% of the ocean and has a volume of 310,410,900 km3 or 23. 3%. Excluding its marginal seas, the Atlantic covers 81,760,000 km2 and has a volume of 305,811,900 km3, the North Atlantic covers 41,490,000 km2 and the South Atlantic 40,270,000 km2. The average depth is 3,646 m and the maximum depth, the bathymetry of the Atlantic is dominated by a submarine mountain range called the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It runs from 87°N or 300 km south of the North Pole to the subantarctic Bouvet Island at 42°S, the MAR divides the Atlantic longitudinally into two halves, in each of which a series of basins are delimited by secondary, transverse ridges. The MAR reaches above 2000 m along most of its length, the MAR is a barrier for bottom water, but at these two transform faults deep water currents can pass from one side to the other
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Niger Delta
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The Niger Delta is the delta of the Niger River sitting directly on the Gulf of Guinea on the Atlantic Ocean in Nigeria. Of all the states that the covers, only Cross River is not an oil-producing state. Niger Delta is a densely populated region sometimes called the Oil Rivers because it was once a major producer of palm oil. The area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, the delta is a petroleum-rich region, and has been the centre of international controversy over pollution, corruption, and human rights violations. The Niger Delta, as now defined officially by the Nigerian government, extends over about 70,000 km2, historically and cartographically, it consists of present-day Bayelsa, Delta, and Rivers States. In 2000, however, Obasanjos regime included Abia, Akwa-Ibom, Cross River State, Edo, Imo, the Niger Delta, and the South South geopolitical zone are two different entities. The Niger Delta separates the Bight of Benin from the Bight of Biafra within the larger Gulf of Guinea, the area was the British Oil Rivers Protectorate from 1885 until 1893, when it was expanded and became the Niger Coast Protectorate. The core Niger Delta later became a part of the region of Nigeria. The majority of the people were those from the colonial Calabar and Ogoja divisions, the present-day Ogoja, Annang, Ibibio, Oron, Efik, the National Council of Nigeria and Cameroon was the ruling political party of the region. The NCNC later became the National Convention of Nigerian Citizens, after western Cameroon decided to separate from Nigeria, the ruling party of eastern Nigeria did not seek to preclude the separation and even encouraged it. The then Eastern Region had the second, fourth and fifth largest ethnic groups in the country the Igbo, the Ijaw and the Ibibio after the Hausa-Fulani and the Yoruba. In 1953, the old eastern region had a crisis due to the expulsion of professor Eyo Ita from office by the majority Igbo tribe of the old eastern region. Ita, an Efik man from Calabar, was one of the nationalists for Nigerian independence. The struggle for the creation of the COR state continued and was an issue concerning the status of minorities in Nigeria during debates in Europe on Nigerian independence. The aftermath of the 1961 plebiscite has led to a dispute between Cameroon and Nigeria over the territory of Bakassi. A new phase of the saw the declaration of an Independent Niger Delta Republic by Isaac Adaka Boro during Nigerian president Ironsis administration. Also just before the Nigerian civil war, Southeastern State of Nigeria was created, which had the colonial Calabar division, and colonial Ogoja division. Southeastern state and River state became two states for the minorities of the old eastern region, and the majority Igbo of the old eastern region had a state called East Central state
17.
French language
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French is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages, French has evolved from Gallo-Romance, the spoken Latin in Gaul, and more specifically in Northern Gaul. Its closest relatives are the other langues doïl—languages historically spoken in northern France and in southern Belgium, French was also influenced by native Celtic languages of Northern Roman Gaul like Gallia Belgica and by the Frankish language of the post-Roman Frankish invaders. Today, owing to Frances past overseas expansion, there are numerous French-based creole languages, a French-speaking person or nation may be referred to as Francophone in both English and French. French is a language in 29 countries, most of which are members of la francophonie. As of 2015, 40% of the population is in Europe, 35% in sub-Saharan Africa, 15% in North Africa and the Middle East, 8% in the Americas. French is the fourth-most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union, 1/5 of Europeans who do not have French as a mother tongue speak French as a second language. As a result of French and Belgian colonialism from the 17th and 18th century onward, French was introduced to new territories in the Americas, Africa, most second-language speakers reside in Francophone Africa, in particular Gabon, Algeria, Mauritius, Senegal and Ivory Coast. In 2015, French was estimated to have 77 to 110 million native speakers, approximately 274 million people are able to speak the language. The Organisation internationale de la Francophonie estimates 700 million by 2050, in 2011, Bloomberg Businessweek ranked French the third most useful language for business, after English and Standard Mandarin Chinese. Under the Constitution of France, French has been the language of the Republic since 1992. France mandates the use of French in official government publications, public education except in specific cases, French is one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is spoken in the western part of Switzerland called Romandie, of which Geneva is the largest city. French is the language of about 23% of the Swiss population. French is also a language of Luxembourg, Monaco, and Aosta Valley, while French dialects remain spoken by minorities on the Channel Islands. A plurality of the worlds French-speaking population lives in Africa and this number does not include the people living in non-Francophone African countries who have learned French as a foreign language. Due to the rise of French in Africa, the total French-speaking population worldwide is expected to reach 700 million people in 2050, French is the fastest growing language on the continent. French is mostly a language in Africa, but it has become a first language in some urban areas, such as the region of Abidjan, Ivory Coast and in Libreville. There is not a single African French, but multiple forms that diverged through contact with various indigenous African languages, sub-Saharan Africa is the region where the French language is most likely to expand, because of the expansion of education and rapid population growth
18.
River
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A river is a natural flowing watercourse, usually freshwater, flowing towards an ocean, sea, lake or another river. In some cases a river flows into the ground and becomes dry at the end of its course without reaching another body of water, small rivers can be referred to using names such as stream, creek, brook, rivulet, and rill. There are no official definitions for the term river as applied to geographic features. Many names for small rivers are specific to geographic location, examples are run in parts of the United States, burn in Scotland and northeast England. Sometimes a river is defined as being larger than a creek, but not always, Rivers are part of the hydrological cycle. Potamology is the study of rivers while limnology is the study of inland waters in general. Extraterrestrial rivers of liquid hydrocarbons have recently found on Titan. Channels may indicate past rivers on other planets, specifically outflow channels on Mars and rivers are theorised to exist on planets, a river begins at a source, follows a path called a course, and ends at a mouth or mouths. The water in a river is confined to a channel. In larger rivers there is also a wider floodplain shaped by flood-waters over-topping the channel. Floodplains may be wide in relation to the size of the river channel. This distinction between river channel and floodplain can be blurred, especially in areas where the floodplain of a river channel can become greatly developed by housing. Rivers can flow down mountains, through valleys or along plains, the term upriver refers to the direction towards the source of the river, i. e. against the direction of flow. Likewise, the term describes the direction towards the mouth of the river. The term left bank refers to the bank in the direction of flow. The river channel typically contains a stream of water, but some rivers flow as several interconnecting streams of water. Extensive braided rivers are now found in only a few regions worldwide and they also occur on peneplains and some of the larger river deltas. Anastamosing rivers are similar to braided rivers and are quite rare
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West Africa
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West Africa, also called Western Africa and the West of Africa, is the westernmost subregion of Africa. Early human settlers from northern Holocene societies arrived in West Africa around 12,000 B. C, sedentary farming began in, or around the fifth millennium B. C, as well as the domestication of cattle. By 1500 B. C, ironworking technology allowed an expansion of productivity. Northern tribes developed walled settlements and non-walled settlements that numbered at 400, in the forest region, Iron Age cultures began to flourish, and an inter-region trade began to appear. The desertification of the Sahara and the change of the coast cause trade with upper Mediterranean peoples to be seen. Local leather, cloth, and gold also contributed to the abundance of prosperity for many of the following empires. Also, based on the archaeology of city of Kumbi Saleh in modern-day Mauritania, three great kingdoms were identified in Bilad al-Sudan by the ninth century. They included Ghana, Gao and Kanem, the Sosso Empire sought to fill the void, but was defeated by the Mandinka forces of Sundiata Keita, founder of the new Mali Empire. In the 15th century, the Songhai would form a new dominant state based on Gao, in the Songhai Empire, under the leadership of Sonni Ali, further east, Oyo arose as the dominant Yoruba state and the Aro Confederacy as a dominant Igbo state in modern-day Nigeria. The Kingdom of Nri was a West African medieval state in the present-day southeastern Nigeria, the Kingdom of Nri was unusual in the history of world government in that its leader exercised no military power over his subjects. The kingdom existed as a sphere of religious and political influence over a third of Igboland, the Eze Nri managed trade and diplomacy on behalf of the Nri people, and possessed divine authority in religious matters. The Oyo Empire was a Yoruba empire of what is today Western, established in the 15th century, the Oyo Empire grew to become one of the largest West African states. It rose through the organizational skills of the Yoruba, wealth gained from trade. The Benin Empire was an empire located in what is now southern Nigeria. Its capital was Edo, now known as Benin City, Edo and it should not be confused with the modern-day country called Benin, formerly called Dahomey. The Benin Empire was one of the oldest and most highly developed states in the hinterland of West Africa. Olfert Dapper, a Dutch writer, describing Benin in his book Description of Africa and its craft was the most adored and treasured bronze casting in the history of Africa. It was annexed by the British Empire in 1897 during the invasion, in the early 19th century, a series of Fulani reformist jihads swept across Western Africa
20.
Drainage basin
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A drainage basin or catchment area is any area of land where precipitation collects and drains off into a common outlet, such as into a river, bay, or other body of water. Drainage basins connect into other drainage basins at elevations in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins. Other terms used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment basin, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In closed drainage basins the water converges to a point inside the basin, known as a sink, which may be a permanent lake. The drainage basin acts as a funnel by collecting all the water within the covered by the basin. Each drainage basin is separated topographically from adjacent basins by a perimeter, drainage basins are similar but not identical to hydrologic units, which are drainage areas delineated so as to nest into a multi-level hierarchical drainage system. Hydrologic units are defined to allow multiple inlets, outlets, or sinks, in a strict sense, all drainage basins are hydrologic units but not all hydrologic units are drainage basins. Drainage basins of the oceans and seas of the world. Grey areas are endorheic basins that do not drain to the oceans, the following is a list of the major ocean basins, About 48. 7% of the worlds land drains to the Atlantic Ocean. The two major mediterranean seas of the world also flow to the Atlantic, The Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico basin includes most of the U. S. The Mediterranean Sea basin includes much of North Africa, east-central Africa, Southern, Central, and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and the areas of Israel, Lebanon. Just over 13% of the land in the world drains to the Pacific Ocean, the Indian Oceans drainage basin also comprises about 13% of Earths land. It drains the eastern coast of Africa, the coasts of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, Burma, antarctica comprises approximately eight percent of the Earths land. The five largest river basins, from largest to smallest, are the basins of the Amazon, the Río de la Plata, the Congo, the Nile, and the Mississippi. The three rivers that drain the most water, from most to least, are the Amazon, Ganga, endorheic drainage basins are inland basins that do not drain to an ocean. Around 18% of all land drains to endorheic lakes or seas or sinks, the largest of these consists of much of the interior of Asia, which drains into the Caspian Sea, the Aral Sea, and numerous smaller lakes. Some of these, such as the Great Basin, are not single drainage basins but collections of separate, in endorheic bodies of standing water where evaporation is the primary means of water loss, the water is typically more saline than the oceans. An extreme example of this is the Dead Sea, drainage basins have been historically important for determining territorial boundaries, particularly in regions where trade by water has been important
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River delta
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A river delta is a landform that forms from deposition of sediment carried by a river as the flow leaves its mouth and enters slower-moving or standing water. This occurs where a river enters an ocean, sea, estuary, lake, reservoir, River deltas are ecologically important as they provide coastline defense, are home to many species, and can impact drinking water supply. The tidal currents also cannot be too strong, as sediment would wash out into the body faster than the river deposits it. Of course, the river must carry enough sediment to layer into deltas over time, the rivers velocity decreases rapidly, causing it to deposit the majority, if not all, of its load. This alluvium builds up to form the river delta, when the flow enters the standing water, it is no longer confined to its channel and expands in width. This flow expansion results in a decrease in the flow velocity, as a result, sediment drops out of the flow and deposits. Over time, this single channel builds a deltaic lobe, pushing its mouth into the standing water, as the deltaic lobe advances, the gradient of the river channel becomes lower because the river channel is longer but has the same change in elevation. As the slope of the channel decreases, it becomes unstable for two reasons. First, gravity makes the flow in the most direct course down slope. If the river breaches its natural levees, it out onto a new course with a shorter route to the ocean. Second, as its slope gets lower, the amount of stress on the bed decreases, which results in deposition of sediment within the channel. This makes it easier for the river to breach its levees, often when the channel does this, some of its flow remains in the abandoned channel. When these channel-switching events occur, a mature delta develops a distributary network, another way these distributary networks form is from deposition of mouth bars. When this mid-channel bar is deposited at the mouth of a river and this results in additional deposition on the upstream end of the mouth-bar, which splits the river into two distributary channels. A good example of the result of this process is the Wax Lake Delta, in both of these cases, depositional processes force redistribution of deposition from areas of high deposition to areas of low deposition. This results in the smoothing of the shape of the delta as the channels move across its surface. Because the sediment is laid down in fashion, the shape of these deltas approximates a fan. The more often the flow changes course, the shape develops as closer to an ideal fan, the Mississippi and Ural River deltas, with their birds-feet, are examples of rivers that do not avulse often enough to form a symmetrical fan shape
22.
Gulf of Guinea
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The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean between Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf, among the many rivers that drain into the Gulf of Guinea are the Niger and the Volta. The coastline on the gulf includes the Bight of Benin and the Bight of Bonny, the Niger River in particular deposited organic sediments out to sea over millions of years which became crude oil. The origin of the name Guinea is thought to be an area in the region, bovill gives a thorough description, The name Guinea is usually said to have been a corrupt form of the name Ghana, picked up by the Portuguese in the Maghrib. The present writer finds this unacceptable, the name Guinea has been in use both in the Maghrib and in Europe long before Prince Henrys time. A passage in Leo points to Guinea having been a form of Jenne, less famous than Ghana but nevertheless for many centuries famed in the Maghrib as a great market. The relevant passage reads, The Kingdom of Ghinea. called by the merchants of our nation Gheneoa, by the inhabitants thereof Genni and by the Portugals. But it seems probable that Guinea derives from aguinaou, the Berber for Negro. Marrakech has a gate, built in the century, called the Bab Aguinaou. The modern application of the name Guinea to the coast dates only from 1481, the name Guinea is still attached to the names of three countries in Africa, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Equatorial Guinea, as well as New Guinea in Melanesia. The main river shedding its waters in the gulf is the Niger River, the Gulf of Guinea contains a number of islands, the largest of which are in a southwest-northeast chain, forming part of the Cameroon line of volcanoes. Annobón, also known as Pagalu or Pigalu, is an island that is part of Equatorial Guinea, bobowasi Island is an island off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea that is part of Western region Ghana. Bioko is an island off the west coast of Africa in the Gulf of Guinea that is part of Equatorial Guinea, corisco is an island belonging to Equatorial Guinea. Elobey Grande and Elobey Chico are two small islands belonging to Equatorial Guinea, São Tomé and Príncipe is a Portuguese-speaking island nation in the Gulf of Guinea that became independent from Portugal in 1975. It is located off the western equatorial coast of Africa and consists of two islands, São Tomé and Príncipe and they are located about 140 kilometres apart and about 250 and 225 kilometres, respectively, off the northwestern coast of Gabon. Both islands are part of a volcanic mountain range. São Tomé, the southern island, is situated just north of the Equator. Media related to Gulf of Guinea at Wikimedia Commons The Gulf of Guinea Commission - CGG - GGC
23.
Nile
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The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It is generally regarded as the longest river in the world, in particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Egypt and Sudan. The Nile has two tributaries, the White Nile and Blue Nile. The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of the Nile itself, the Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the water and silt. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa and it flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria, Uganda and South Sudan. The Blue Nile begins at Lake Tana in Ethiopia and flows into Sudan from the southeast, the two rivers meet just north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The northern section of the river flows north almost entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt, then ends in a large delta, Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, in the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥpī or Iteru, meaning river. In Coptic, the words piaro or phiaro meaning the river come from the ancient name. The English name Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl both derive from the Latin Nilus and the Ancient Greek Νεῖλος, beyond that, however, the etymology is disputed. One possible etymology derives it from a Semitic Nahal, meaning river, the standard English names White Nile and Blue Nile, to refer to the rivers source, derive from Arabic names formerly applied only to the Sudanese stretches which meet at Khartoum. Above Khartoum, the Nile is also known as the White Nile, at Khartoum the river is joined by the Blue Nile. The White Nile starts in equatorial East Africa, and the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia, both branches are on the western flanks of the East African Rift. The drainage basin of the Nile covers 3,254,555 square kilometers, the source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be Lake Victoria, but the lake has feeder rivers of considerable size. It is either the Ruvyironza, which emerges in Bururi Province, Burundi, or the Nyabarongo, the two feeder rivers meet near Rusumo Falls on the Rwanda-Tanzania border. Gish Abay is reportedly the place where the water of the first drops of the Blue Nile develop. The Nile leaves Lake Nyanza at Ripon Falls near Jinja, Uganda and it flows north for some 130 kilometers, to Lake Kyoga. For the remaining part it flows westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the very northern shores of Lake Albert where it forms a significant river delta
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Congo River
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The Congo River is a river in Africa. It is the second largest river in the world by discharge, the Congo-Chambeshi river has an overall length of 4,700 km, which makes it the ninth-longest river. Measured along the Lualaba, the Congo River has a length of 4,370 km. The Congo Basin has an area of about 4 million km2. The name River Congo originated from the Kingdom of Kongo which was located on the bank of the river. The kingdom in turn is named for the Bantu population, in the 17th century reported as Esikongo, South of the Kongo kingdom proper lay the similarly named Kakongo kingdom, mentioned in 1535. Abraham Ortelius in his map of 1564 labels as Manicongo the city at the mouth of the river. The tribal names in kongo possibly derive from a word for a gathering or tribal assembly. Little is known about the peoples of the inner Congo, but It is probable that the word Kongo itself implies a public gathering, the usual interpretations, admittedly unsatisfactory, make the mistake of being too concrete, for example, they may claim that Kongo comes from nkongo. The modern name of the Kongo people or Bakongo was introduced in the early 20th century, the name Zaire is from a Portuguese adaptation of a Kikongo word nzere, a truncation of nzadi o nzere. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo are named after it, the state of Zaire during 1971–1997 was also named after the river, after its name in French and Portuguese. The Congos drainage basin covers 4,014,500 square kilometres, the Congos discharge at its mouth ranges from 23,000 to 75,000 cubic metres per second, with an average of 41,000 cubic metres per second. The river and its tributaries flow through the Congo Rainforest, the second largest rain forest area in the world, second only to the Amazon Rainforest in South America. Because its drainage basin includes both north and south of the equator, its flow is stable, as there is always at least one part of the river experiencing a rainy season. The Chambeshi River in Zambia is generally taken as the source of the Congo in line with the accepted practice worldwide of using the longest tributary, as with the Nile River. The Congo River Basin is one of the distinct physiographic sections of the larger Mid-African province, sorted in order from the mouth heading upstream. Lower Congo Downstream of Kinshasa, there are no important tributaries, luvua Luapula Chambeshi Although the Livingstone Falls prevent access from the sea, nearly the entire Congo above them is readily navigable in sections, especially between Kinshasa and Kisangani. Large river steamers worked the river until quite recently, the Congo River still is a lifeline in a land with few roads or railways
25.
Tributary
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A tributary or affluent is a stream or river that flows into a larger stream or main stem river or a lake. A tributary does not flow directly into a sea or ocean, tributaries and the main stem river drain the surrounding drainage basin of its surface water and groundwater, leading the water out into an ocean. A confluence, where two or more bodies of water together, usually refers to the joining of tributaries. The opposite to a tributary is a distributary, a river or stream that branches off from, distributaries are most often found in river deltas. Right tributary and left tributary are terms stating the orientation of the relative to the flow of the main stem river. These terms are defined from the perspective of looking downstream, where tributaries have the same name as the river into which they feed, they are called forks. These are typically designated by compass direction, for example, the American River receives flow from its North, Middle, and South forks. The Chicago Rivers North Branch has the East, West, and Middle Fork, the South Branch has its South Fork, forks are sometimes designated as right or left. Here, the handedness is from the point of view of an observer facing upstream, for instance, Steer Creek has a left tributary which is called Right Fork Steer Creek. Tributaries are sometimes listed starting with those nearest to the source of the river, the Strahler Stream Order examines the arrangement of tributaries in a hierarchy of first, second, third, and higher orders, with the first-order tributary being typically the least in size. For example, a second-order tributary would be the result of two or more first-order tributaries combining to form the second-order tributary, another method is to list tributaries from mouth to source, in the form of a tree structure, stored as a tree data structure
26.
Manding languages
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The Manding languages are mutually intelligible dialects or languages in West Africa of the Mande family. The Manding languages, and what distinguishes one from the rest, in addition, the nomenclature - being a mixture of indigenous terms and words applied by English and French speakers since before colonization - makes the picture complex and even confusing. The Mandinka people speak varieties from the first two groups, the differences between the western and eastern branches manifest themselves primarily phonetically. The Manding languages have an oral tradition, but also have written forms - adaptations of Arabic and Latin alphabets. Arabic was introduced into the region with Islam, and the writing was adapted to write in the Manding languages, Arabic script or Ajami is still commonly used for Mandinka. The Latin alphabet was introduced into the region following European conquest and it is used fairly widely, with official versions in many countries, for teaching, literacy and publication. The NKo alphabet, developed in 1949 by Solomana Kante, is designed to write Manding using a common literary standard comprehensible to speakers of all these varieties, a lesser-known alphabet for Bambara was developed in the early 20th century but is not used. Mande languages NKo PanAfrican L10n page on Manding
27.
Igbo language
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Igbo (Igbo, English /ˈɪɡboʊ/, is the principal native language of the Igbo people, an ethnic group of southeastern Nigeria. There are approximately 24 million speakers, who live mostly in Nigeria and are primarily of Igbo descent, Igbo is written in the Latin script, which was introduced by British colonialists. There are over 20 Igbo dialects, there is apparently a degree of dialect levelling occurring. A standard literary language was developed in 1972 based on the Owerri and Umuahia dialects, there are related Igboid languages such as Ika, Ikwerre and Ogba that are sometimes considered dialects of Igbo, the most divergent being Ekpeye. Igbo is also a minority language of Equatorial Guinea. The first book to publish Igbo words was History of the Mission of the Evangelical Brothers in the Caribbean, published in 1777. Shortly afterwards in 1789, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was published in London, England, written by Olaudah Equiano, the narrative also illustrated various aspects of Igbo life based in detail, based on Olaudah Equianos experiences in his hometown of Essaka. From its proposal as a form in 1939 by Dr. Ida C. Ward, it was accepted by missionaries, writers. Standard Igbo aims to cross-pollinate Central Igbo with words from Igbo dialects from outside the Central areas, lexical categories in Igbo include nouns, pronouns, numerals, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, conjunctions, and a single preposition. The meaning of na, the preposition, is flexible. Examples from Emenanjo illustrate the range of meaning, O bì nEnugwū, 3sg live PREP Enugwū He lives in Enugwū. 3sg live here this PREP time war He lived here during the time of the war, ndị Fàda kwènyèrè natọ̀ nime otù. Those Catholic believe PREP three PREP inside one The Catholics believe in the Three-in-One, Igbo has an extremely limited number of adjectives in a closed class. Emenanjo counts just eight, which occur in pairs of opposites, ukwu big, nta small, oji dark, ọcha light, ọhụrụ new, ochie old, ọma good, adjectival meaning is otherwise conveyed through the use of stative verbs or abstract nouns. Many names in Igbo are actually fusions of older original words, for example, one Igbo word for vegetable leaves is akwụkwọ nri, which literally means leaves for eating or vegetables. Green leaves are called akwụkwọ ndụ, because ndụ means life. Another example is train, which comes from the words ụgbọ and igwe, thus a locomotive train is vehicle via iron, a car, ụgbọ ala, vehicle via land, words may also take on multiple meanings
28.
Tuareg languages
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Tuareg dialects belong to the South Berber group, and are commonly regarded as a single language. They are distinguished mainly by a few sound shifts, the Tuareg languages are traditionally written in the indigenous Tifinagh alphabet. However, the Arabic script is used in some areas, while the Latin script is official in Mali. In Morocco, of the three languages, Central Atlas Tamazight is the second Berber language. Northern Tamahaq – Language of the Kel Ahaggar, and Kel Ajjer spoken in Algeria, southern Tamasheq – Language of the Kel Adrar, spoken in Mali by approximately 270,000 people. Tayart Tamajaq language – Language of the Kel Ayer, spoken in Niger by approximately 250,000 people, Tawallammat Tamajaq – Language of the Iwellemmeden, spoken in Mali and Niger by approximately 870,000 people. The term Iwellemmeden is sometimes used to denote the language, the Tuareg languages may be written in the Latin script, the Arabic script, or Tifinagh. There is also variation in Tifinagh and in the Arabic script. The Arabic script is mostly in use by tribes more involved in Islamic learning, Tifinagh usage is restricted mainly to writing magical formulae, writing on palms when silence is required, and recently letter-writing. The DNAFLA system is a somewhat morphophonemic orthography, not indicating initial vowel shortening, always writing the directional particle as < dd⟩, in Burkina Faso the emphatics are denoted by hooked letters, as in Fula, e. g. ⟨ɗ ƭ⟩. The vowel system includes 5 long vowels, /a, e, i, o, u/, emphatic versions of /e, o/, Karl Prasse argued that /e/ goes back to Proto-Berber, while /o/ is derived from /u/. Comparative evidence shows that /ə/ derives from a merger of Proto-Berber */ĭ/ and */ŭ/. Sudlow classes the semivowels /w, j/ with the vowels, and notes the following diphthongs, /əw/, /ăw/, /aw/, /ew/, /iw/, /ow/, /uw/. Before emphatics, vowels lower, turning /ə/ into, /e, i/ into emphatic, /ŋ/ is rare, /ʒ/ is rare in Tadraq, and /ħ, ʕ/ are only used in Arabic words in the Tanəsləmt dialect. Phrase-final /a/ is also followed by a glottal stop. Normally /ɣɣ/ becomes, /ww/ becomes, and /dˤdˤ/ becomes, /q/ and /tˤ/ are predominantly geminate. In addition, in Tadraq /ɡ/ is usually geminate, but in Tudalt singleton /ɡ/ may occur, voicing assimilation occurs, with the first consonant taking the voicing of the second. Cluster reduction turns word/morpheme-final /-ɣt, -ɣk/ into and /-kt, -ɟt, syllable structure is CV, including glottal stops
29.
Hausa language
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Originally the language of the Hausa people stretching across southern Niger and northern Nigeria, it has developed into a lingua franca across much of western Africa for purposes of trade. In the 20th and 21st centuries, it has more commonly published in print. Hausa belongs to the West Chadic languages subgroup of the Chadic languages group, native speakers of Hausa, the Hausa people, are mostly found in Niger, in the north of Nigeria, and in Chad. Furthermore, the language is used as a trade language across a much larger swathe of West Africa, Central Africa and in northwestern Sudan and it is taught at universities in Africa and around the world. The language is the most commonly spoken language in Nigeria, but unlike Yoruba and Igbo, it is widely spoken outside Nigeria, especially in Niger, Ghana, Cameroon. Radio stations like BBC, Radio France Internationale, China Radio International, Voice of Russia, Voice of America, Arewa 24 Deutsche Welle, and IRIB broadcast in Hausa. Eastern Hausa dialects include Dauranchi in Daura, Kananci in Kano, Bausanchi in Bauchi, Gudduranci in Katagum Misau and part of Borno, and Hadejanci in Hadejiya. Western Hausa dialects include Sakkwatanci in Sokoto, Katsinanci in Katsina, Arewanci in Gobir, Adar, Kebbi, and Zamfara, Katsina is transitional between Eastern and Western dialects. Northern Hausa dialects include Arewa and Arawci, Zazzaganci in Zazzau is the major Southern dialect. The Daura and Kano dialect are the standard, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale and Voice of America offer Hausa services on their international news web sites using Dauranci and Kananci. In recent language development Zazzaganci took over the innovation of writing and speaking the current Hausa language use, the western to eastern Hausa dialects of Kurhwayanci, Daragaram and Aderawa, represent the traditional northernmost limit of native Hausa communities. These are spoken in the northernmost sahel and mid-Saharan regions in west and central Niger in the Tillaberi, Tahoua, Dosso, Maradi, Agadez and these dialects also have the quality of being non-tonal or pitch accent dialects. The Ghanaian Hausa dialect, spoken in Ghana, Togo, and western Ivory Coast, is a distinct western native Hausa dialect-bloc with adequate linguistic and media resources available. Gaananci forms a group from other Western Hausa dialects, as it now falls outside the contiguous Hausa-dominant area, and is usually identified by the use of c for ky. Because of this, and the presence of surrounding Akan, Gur and Mande languages, Hausa is also widely spoken by non-native Gur and Mande Ghanaian Muslims, but differs from Gaananci, and rather has features consistent with non-native Hausa dialects. Hausa is also various parts of Cameroon and Chad, which combined the mixed dialects of northern Nigeria. In addition, Arabic has had an influence in the way Hausa is spoken by the native Hausa speakers in these areas. This creates confusion among non-native and native Hausa speakers, as non-native pronunciation does not distinguish words like daidai and ɗaiɗai, another difference between native and non-native Hausa is the omission of vowel length in words and change in the standard tone of native Hausa dialects
30.
Yoruba language
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Yoruba is a language spoken in West Africa. The number of speakers of Yoruba is approaching 30 million and it is a pluricentric language spoken principally in Benin and Nigeria, with communities in other parts of Africa, the Americas, and Europe. A variety of the language, Lucumi, is the language of the Santería religion of the Caribbean. Many Yoruba words are used in the Afro-Brazilian religion known as Candomblé, Yoruba is most closely related to the Itsekiri language and to Igala. The linguistic unity of the Niger–Congo family dates to deep prehistory, main article, Yoruboid languages The Yoruba group is assumed to have developed out of undifferentiated Volta–Niger populations by the 1st millennium BC. Settlements of early Yoruba speakers are assumed to correspond to those found in the wider Niger area from about the 4th century BC, especially at Ife. According to the Kay Williamson Scale, the following is the degree of relationship between Itsekiri and other Yoruboid dialects, using a word list of the most common words. A similarity of 100% would mean a total overlap of two dialects, while a similarity of 0 would mean two speech areas that have no relationship. The result of the wordlist analysis shows that Itsekiri bears the strongest similarity to the SEY dialects and most especially Ilaje and Ikale, at 80. 4% and 82. 3% similarity. Thus while the shows that Igala, with an overlap of 60% is a completely different language. The Yoruba dialect continuum itself consists of several dialects, the various Yoruba dialects in the Yorubaland of Nigeria can be classified into Five major dialect areas, Northwest, Northeast, Central, Southwest and Southeast. Clear boundaries cannot be drawn, peripheral areas of dialectal regions often having some similarities to adjoining dialects, north-West Yoruba Egba, Ibadan, Egbado/Yewa, Ọyọ, Western Ogun, Lagos/Eko. North-East Yoruba Yagba, Owe, Ijumu, Oworo, Gbede, Central Yoruba Igbomina, Ijesha, Ifẹ, Ekiti, Akurẹ, Ẹfọn. South-East Yoruba Ikale, Ilaje, Ondo City, Ọwọ, Idanre, Akoko, Remo, south-West Yoruba Ketu, Awori, Sakété, Ifè, Idasha, Ipokia/Anago. North-West Yoruba is historically a part of the Ọyọ Empire, ethnographically, traditional government is based on a division of power between civil and war chiefs, lineage and descent are unilineal and agnatic. South-East Yoruba was probably associated with the expansion of the Benin Empire after c, in contrast to NWY, lineage and descent are largely multilineal and cognatic, and the division of titles into war and civil is unknown. Linguistically, SEY has retained the /gh/ and /gw/ contrast, while it has lowered the nasal vowels /ịn/ and /ụn/ to /ẹn/ and /ọn/, the emergence of a plural of respect may have prevented coalescence of the two in NWY dialects. Central Yoruba forms an area in that the lexicon has much in common with NWY
31.
Leo Africanus
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Joannes Leo Africanus, was a Berber Andalusi diplomat and author who is best known for his book Descrittione dell’Africa centered on the geography of the Maghreb and Nile Valley. The book was regarded among his peers in Europe as the most authoritative treatise on the subject until the modern exploration of Africa. For this work, Leo became a name among European geographers. Most of what is known about his life is gathered from autobiographical notes in his own work, Leo Africanus was born as al-Hasan, son of Muhammad in Granada, Islamic Spain, around the year 1494. The year of birth was estimated from his age at the time of various historical events. His family moved to Fez soon after his birth, in Fez he studied at the University of al-Qarawiyyin. As a young man he accompanied an uncle on a mission, reaching as far as the city of Timbuktu. In 1517 when returning from a mission to Constantinople on behalf of the Sultan of Fez Muhammad II he found himself in the port of Rosetta during the Ottoman conquest of Egypt. He continued with his journey through Cairo and Aswan and across the Red Sea to Arabia, on his way back to Tunis in 1518 he was captured by Spanish corsairs either near the island of Djerba or more probably near Crete. He was taken to Rome and initially imprisoned in Rhodes, the headquarters of the Knights Hospitaller and he was soon freed and given pension to persuade him to stay. He was baptized in the Basilica of Saint Peters in 1520 and he took the Latin name Johannes Leo de Medicis. In Arabic, he preferred to translate this name as Yuhanna al-Asad al-Gharnati, Leo Africanus left Rome and spent the next three or four years traveling in Italy. The death of his patron Leo X in 1521, and suspicions from the new Pope Adrian VI against a Moor in court, was likely the reason for his leaving Rome. While staying in Bologna he wrote an Arabic-Hebrew-Latin medical vocabulary, of only the Arabic part has survived. He returned to Rome in 1526 under the protection of the new Pope Clement VII, according to Leo, he completed his manuscript on African geography in the same year. The book proved to be popular and was reprinted five times. It was also translated into other languages, french and Latin editions were published in 1556 while an English version was published in 1600 with the title A Geographical Historie of Africa. The Latin edition, which contained errors and mistranslations, was used as the source for the English translation
32.
Description of Africa (1550 book)
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The book was dictated in Arabic by Leo Africanus, the famed Moorish traveler and merchant who had been captured by pirates and sold as a slave. Presented, along with his book, to Pope Leo X, Leo, whose name he took in baptism, suggested that he recast his Arabic work in Italian, it was completed in 1526. It was republished repeatedly by Ramusio in his Delle navigationi e viaggi, translated into French and into Latin for the erudite, the work circulated in manuscript form for decades. The book was a success in Europe, and was translated into many other languages. In English it was served by John Pory, whose translation appeared in 1600 under the title A Geographical Historie of Africa, Written in Arabicke, in which form Shakespeare may have seen it and reworked hints in creating the title character of his Othello. Modern translations which incorporate this manuscript are thus more true to the original, hunwick, John O. Leo Africanuss description of the Middle Niger, Hausland and Bornu. Timbuktu and the Songhay Empire, Al-Sadis Tarikh al-Sudan down to 1613, contain a translation into English of Leo Africanuss descriptions of the Middle Niger, Hausaland and Bornu. Corresponds to Épaulard 1956 Vol II pages 463-481, a Geographical Historie of Africa, written in Arabicke and Italian. Before which is prefixed a generall description of Africa, and a treatise of all the lands undescribed. Translated and collected by John Pory, scans from the Internet Archive, Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Index. Leo Africanus, the man with many names, johannes Leo der Afrikaner, seine Beschreibung des Raumes zwischen Nil und Niger nach dem Urtext. Description de lAfrique, Nouvelle édition traduite de litalien par Alexis Épaulard et annotée par Alexis Épaulard, Théodore Monod, scholarly translation into French with extensive notes
33.
Berber languages
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Berber or the Berber languages or the Amazigh language are a family of similar and closely related languages and dialects indigenous to North Africa. Large Berber-speaking migrant communities, numbering today about 4 million, have been living in Western Europe, about half of this population was born in Europe. Berber constitutes a branch of the Afroasiatic language family, and has been attested since ancient times, the number of Berbers is much higher than the number of Berber speakers. The bulk of the populations of the Maghreb countries are considered to have Berber ancestors, in Algeria, for example, a majority of the population consists of Arabized Berbers. There is a cultural and political movement among speakers of the closely related varieties of Northern Berber to promote and unify them under a standard language, called. The name Tamaziɣt is the current native name of the Berber language in the Moroccan Middle-Atlas region, the Rif regions, in other Berber-speaking area this name was lost. There is historical evidence, from medieval Berber manusctipts, that all native North Africans from Libya to Morocco have called their language, Tamaziɣt. The name Tamaziɣt is currently being used by educated Berbers to refer to the written Berber language. Around 90 percent of the Berber-speaking population speak one of six major varieties of Berber and they are, in the order of demographic weight, Tashelhit, Kabyle, Atlas Tamazight, Riffian, Shawi and Tuareg. The Berber languages and dialects have had a tradition, on and off, for about 2,500 years, although the tradition has been frequently disrupted by cultural shifts. They were first written in the Libyco-Berber and Tifinagh abjad, still used by the Tuareg, the oldest dated inscription is from about 200 BCE. The Berber Latin alphabet was used by most European and Berber linguists during the 19th and 20th centuries. In the 19th and 20th century European and native Berber linguists, a modernized form of the Tifinagh alphabet, called Neo-Tifinagh, was adopted in Morocco in 2003 for writing Berber, but many Moroccan Berber publications still use the Berber Latin alphabet. Algerians mostly use the Berber Latin alphabet in Berber language education at public schools, Mali and Niger recognize a Tuareg-Berber Latin alphabet customized to the Tuareg phonological system. However, traditional Tifinagh is still used in those countries, the term Berber has been used in Europe since at least the 17th century, and is still used today. It was borrowed from Latin Barbari, the Latin word is also found in the Arabic designation for these populations, البربر, al-Barbar, see names of the Berber people. Etymologically, the Berber root Mazigh means free man, noble man, the feminine Tamazight traditionally referred specifically to the Riffian and Central Atlas Tamazight languages. European languages distinguish between the words Berber and barbaric, while Arabic has the same word al-barbari for both meanings, some other Berber writers, especially in Morocco, prefer to refer to Berber with Amazigh when writing about it in French or English
34.
Trans-Saharan trade
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Trans-Saharan trade requires travel across the Sahara to reach sub-Saharan Africa from the North African coast, Europe, to the Levant. While existing from prehistoric times, the peak of trade extended from the 8th century until the early 17th century, the Sahara once had a very different environment. In Libya and Algeria, from at least 7000 BC, there was pastoralism, herding of sheep and goats, large settlements, cattle were introduced to the Central Sahara from 4000 to 3500 BC. Remarkable rock paintings, in places which are very dry, portray vegetation. As a desert, Sahara is now a hostile expanse that separates the Mediterranean economy from the economy of the Niger basin, as Fernand Braudel points out that crossing such a zone is worthwhile only when exceptional circumstances cause the expected gain to outweigh the cost and danger. The Sahara has always been home to groups of people practicing trade on a regular, Trade, beginning around 300 CE, was conducted by caravans of camels. These camels would be fattened for a number of months on the plains of either the Maghreb or the Sahel before being assembled into a caravan. According to Ibn Battuta, the explorer who accompanied one of the caravans, the caravans would be guided by highly paid Berbers who knew the desert and could ensure safe passage from their fellow desert nomads. The survival of a caravan was precarious and would rely on careful coordination, in the middle of the 14th century Ibn Battuta crossed the desert from Sijilmasa via the salt mines at Taghaza to the oasis of Oualata. A guide was sent ahead and water was brought on a journey of four days from Oualata to meet the caravan, Ancient trade spanned the northeastern corner of the Sahara in the Naqadan era. Predynastic Egyptians in the Naqada I period traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the Western Desert to the west, many trading routes went from oasis to oasis to resupply on both food and water. They also imported obsidian from Ethiopia to shape blades and other objects, Ancient cities dating to the First Dynasty of Egypt arose along both its Nile and Red Sea junctions, testifying to the routes ancient popularity. It became a route from Thebes to the Red Sea port of Elim. Records exist documenting knowledge of the route among Senusret I, Seti, Ramesses IV and also, later, later, Ancient Romans would protect the route by lining it with varied forts and small outposts, some guarding large settlements complete with cultivation. Described by Herodotus as a road traversed, in forty days, it became by his time an important land route facilitating trade between Nubia and Egypt, and subsequently became known as the Forty Days Road. From Kobbei,40 kilometres north of al-Fashir, the route passed through the desert to Bir Natrum, another oasis and salt mine, the Darb el-Arbain trade route was the easternmost of the central routes. The westernmost of the three routes was the Ghadames Road, which ran from the Niger River at Gao north to Ghat. Next was the easiest of the three routes, the Garamantean Road, named after the rulers of the land it passed through
35.
Europe
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Europe is a continent that comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Europe is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, yet the non-oceanic borders of Europe—a concept dating back to classical antiquity—are arbitrary. Europe covers about 10,180,000 square kilometres, or 2% of the Earths surface, politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a population of about 740 million as of 2015. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast, Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization. The fall of the Western Roman Empire, during the period, marked the end of ancient history. Renaissance humanism, exploration, art, and science led to the modern era, from the Age of Discovery onwards, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at times the Americas, most of Africa, Oceania. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to economic, cultural, and social change in Western Europe. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the west and the Warsaw Pact in the east, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1955, the Council of Europe was formed following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill and it includes all states except for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, the EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The European Anthem is Ode to Joy and states celebrate peace, in classical Greek mythology, Europa is the name of either a Phoenician princess or of a queen of Crete. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, wide, broad and ὤψ eye, broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. For the second part also the divine attributes of grey-eyed Athena or ox-eyed Hera. The same naming motive according to cartographic convention appears in Greek Ανατολή, Martin Litchfield West stated that phonologically, the match between Europas name and any form of the Semitic word is very poor. Next to these there is also a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning darkness. Most major world languages use words derived from Eurṓpē or Europa to refer to the continent, in some Turkic languages the originally Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa
36.
Map
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A map is a symbolic depiction emphasizing relationships between elements of some space, such as objects, regions, or themes. Many maps are static, fixed to paper or some other durable medium, although the earliest maps known are of the heavens, geographic maps of territory have a very long tradition and exist from ancient times. The word map comes from the medieval Latin Mappa mundi, wherein mappa meant napkin or cloth, thus, map became the shortened term referring to a two-dimensional representation of the surface of the world. Cartography or map-making is the study and practice of crafting representations of the Earth upon a flat surface, in addition to location information maps may also be used to portray contour lines indicating constant values of elevation, temperature, rainfall, etc. The orientation of a map is the relationship between the directions on the map and the compass directions in reality. The word orient is derived from Latin oriens, meaning East, in the Middle Ages many maps, including the T and O maps, were drawn with East at the top. Today, the most common – but far from universal – cartographic convention is that North is at the top of a map, several kinds of maps are often traditionally not oriented with North at the top, Maps from non-Western traditions are oriented a variety of ways. Old maps of Edo show the Japanese imperial palace as the top, labels on the map are oriented in such a way that you cannot read them properly unless you put the imperial palace above your head. Medieval European T and O maps such as the Hereford Mappa Mundi were centred on Jerusalem with East at the top, indeed, prior to the reintroduction of Ptolemys Geography to Europe around 1400, there was no single convention in the West. Portolan charts, for example, are oriented to the shores they describe, Maps of cities bordering a sea are often conventionally oriented with the sea at the top. Route and channel maps have traditionally been oriented to the road or waterway they describe, polar maps of the Arctic or Antarctic regions are conventionally centred on the pole, the direction North would be towards or away from the centre of the map, respectively. Typical maps of the Arctic have 0° meridian towards the bottom of the page, reversed maps, also known as Upside-Down maps or South-Up maps, reverse the North is up convention and have south at the top. Buckminster Fullers Dymaxion maps are based on a projection of the Earths sphere onto an icosahedron, the resulting triangular pieces may be arranged in any order or orientation. Modern digital GIS maps such as ArcMap typically project north at the top of the map, compass decimal degrees can be converted to math degrees by subtracting them from 450, if the answer is greater than 360, subtract 360. The scale statement may be taken as exact when the region mapped is small enough for the curvature of the Earth to be neglected, over larger regions where the curvature cannot be ignored we must use map projections from the curved surface of the Earth to the plane. Thus for map projections we must introduce the concept of point scale, which is a function of position, although the scale statement is nominal it is usually accurate enough for all but the most precise of measurements. Large scale maps, say 1,10,000, cover relatively small regions in detail and small scale maps, say 1,10,000,000, cover large regions such as nations, continents. The large/small terminology arose from the practice of writing scales as numerical fractions, there is no exact dividing line between large and small but 1/100,000 might well be considered as a medium scale
37.
Senegal River
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The Senegal River is a 1,086 km long river in West Africa that forms the border between Senegal and Mauritania. The Senegals headwaters are the Semefé and Bafing rivers which originate in Guinea, they form a small part of the Guinean-Malian border before coming together at Bafoulabé in Mali. From there, the Senegal river flows west and then north through Talari Gorges near Galougo and over the Gouina Falls, then more gently past Kayes. The Senegal further flows through semi-arid land in the north of Senegal, forming the border with Mauritania, in Kaedi it accepts the Gorgol from Mauritania. Flowing through Bogué it reaches Richard Toll where it is joined by the Ferlo coming from inland Senegals Lac de Guiers and it passes through Rosso and, approaching its mouth, around the Senegalese island on which the city of Saint-Louis is located, to then turn south. It is separated from the Atlantic Ocean by a strip of sand called the Langue de Barbarie before it pours into the ocean itself. In between Manantali and Maka-Diama is the Félou Hydroelectric Plant which was completed in 1927 and uses a weir. The power station was replaced in 2014, in 2013, construction of the Gouina Hydroelectric Plant upstream of Felou at Gouina Falls began. The Senegal River has a basin of 270,000 km2, a mean flow of 680 m3/s. Important tributaries are the Falémé River, Karakoro River, and the Gorgol River, downstream of Kaédi the river divides into two branches. The left branch called the Doué runs parallel to the river to the north. After 200 km the two branches rejoin a few kilometres downstream of Pondor, the long strip of land between the two branches is called the Île á Morfil. In 1972 Mali, Mauritania and Senegal founded the Organisation pour la mise en valeur du fleuve Sénégal to manage the river basin, at the present time, only very limited use is made of the river for the transport of goods and passengers. The OMVS have looked at the feasibility of creating a navigable channel 55 m in width between the town of Ambidédi in Mali and Saint-Louis, a distance of 905 km. It would give landlocked Mali a direct route to the Atlantic Ocean, although the species richness is moderately high, only three species of frogs and one fish are endemic to this ecoregion. The existence of the Senegal River was known to the early Mediterranean civilizations and it was called Bambotus by Pliny the Elder and Nias by Claudius Ptolemy. It was visited by Hanno the Carthaginian around 450 BCE at his navigation from Carthage through the pillars of Herakles to Theon Ochema in the Gulf of Guinea. There was trade from here to the Mediterranean World, until the destruction of Carthage, in the Early Middle Ages, the Senegal River restored contact with the Mediterranean world with the establishment of the Trans-Saharan trade route between Morocco and the Ghana Empire
38.
Distributary
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A distributary, or a distributary channel, is a stream that branches off and flows away from a main stream channel. They are a feature of river deltas. The phenomenon is known as river bifurcation, the opposite of a distributary is a tributary. In some cases, a minor distributary can divert so much water from the channel that it can become the main route. Common terms to name individual river distributaries in English-speaking countries are arm and they may refer to a distributary that does not rejoin the channel it has branched from, or one that does. In Australia, the term anabranch is used to refer to a distributary that diverts from the course of the river. In North America an anabranch is called a braided stream, in Louisiana, the Atchafalaya River is an important distributary of the Mississippi River. Examples of inland distributaries, Teton River—a tributary of Henrys Fork in Idaho—splits into two channels, the North Fork and South Fork, which join Henrys Fork miles apart. Kings River has deposited an alluvial fan at the transition from its canyon in the Sierra Nevada mountains to the flat Central Valley. Distributaries flow north into the Pacific Ocean via San Joaquin River, the QuAppelle River, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, is a distributary of the South Saskatchewan River. Its flow is controlled by the QuAppelle River Dam and this dam forms the southern arm of Lake Diefenbaker. The Casiquiare is a distributary of the upper Orinoco, which flows southward into the Rio Negro. It is the largest river on the planet that links two major river systems, the IJssel, the Waal and the Nederrijn are the three principal distributaries of the Rhine. These are formed by two separate bifurcations within the Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta, the Akhtuba River is a major distributary of the Volga. The bifurcation occurs close to, but before, the Volga Delta, the Tärendö River in northern Sweden is an inland distributary, far from the mouth of the river. It begins at the Torne River and ends at the Kalix River, the Little Danube in Slovakia branches off from the Danube near Bratislava, and flows into the Vah before rejoining the main river near Komárno. The area in the middle is the largest freshwater island in Europe, kollidam River is a distributary of the Kaveri River. These areas are highly flood-prone, for example the 2008 Bihar flood on the Kosi River, hoogli River is a Ganges distributary that flows through India, whereas most of the Ganges-Brahmaputra complex enters the sea through Bangladesh
39.
Mungo Park (explorer)
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Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of West Africa. He was the first Westerner known to have travelled to the portion of the Niger River. Mungo Park was born in Selkirkshire, Scotland, at Foulshiels on the Yarrow Water, near Selkirk and he was the seventh in a family of thirteen. Although tenant farmers, the Parks were relatively well-off and they were able to pay for Park to receive a good education, and Parks father died leaving property valued at £3,000. His parents had intended him for the Church of Scotland. He was educated at home before attending Selkirk grammar school, at the age of fourteen, he was apprenticed to Thomas Anderson, a surgeon in Selkirk. During his apprenticeship, Park became friends with Andersons son Alexander and was introduced to Andersons daughter Allison, in October 1788, Park enrolled at the University of Edinburgh, attending for four sessions studying medicine and botany. Notably, during his time at university, he spent a year in the history course taught by Professor John Walker. After completing his studies, he spent a summer in the Scottish Highlands, engaged in fieldwork with his brother-in-law, James Dickson. In 1788 Dickson and Sir Joseph Banks had founded the London Linnean Society, in 1792 Park completed his medical studies at University of Edinburgh. Through a recommendation by Banks, he obtained the post of assistant surgeon on board the East India Companys ship Worcester, in February 1793 the Worcester sailed to Benkulen in Sumatra. Before departing, Park wrote his friend Alexander Anderson in terms that reflect his Calvinist upbringing, if I be deceived, may God alone put me right, for I would rather die in the delusion than wake to all the joys of earth. May the Holy Spirit dwell in your heart, my dear friend, on his return in 1794, Park gave a lecture to the Linnaean Society, describing eight new Sumatran fish. The paper was not published until three years later and he also presented Banks with various rare Sumatran plants. Supported by Sir Joseph Banks, Park was selected, on 22 May 1795, Park left Portsmouth, England, on the brig Endeavour, a vessel trading to the Gambia for beeswax and ivory. On 21 June 1795, he reached the Gambia River and ascended it 200 miles to a British trading station named Pisania, on 2 December, accompanied by two local guides, he started for the unknown interior. He chose the route crossing the upper Senegal basin and through the region of Kaarta. The journey was full of difficulties, and at Ludamar he was imprisoned by a Moorish chief for four months
40.
Sahelian kingdoms
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The Sahelian kingdoms were a series of kingdoms or empires that were centered on the Sahel, the area of grasslands south of the Sahara. The wealth of the came from controlling the trade routes across the desert. Their power came from having large pack animals like camels and horses that were fast enough to keep a large empire under central control and were useful in battle. All of these empires were quite decentralized with member cities having a great deal of autonomy. There were integrated kingdoms and empires, with cities and significant towns. People practised agriculture, stock-rearing, hunting, fishing, and crafts and they navigated along rivers and across lakes, trading over short and long distances, using their own currencies. At Taghaza, for example, salt was exchanged, at Takedda, copper. The first major state to rise in this region was the Kingdom of Ghana, established in c. the 8th century, it was centered in what is today Senegal and Mauritania, it was the first to benefit from the introduction of pack animals by Wolof traders. Ghana dominated the region between about 750 and 1078, smaller states in the region at this time included Takrur to the west, the Malinke kingdom of Mali to the south, and the Songhai centred on Gao to the east. When Ghana collapsed in the face of invasion from the Almoravids, a series of brief kingdoms followed, notably that of the Sosso, after 1235, the Mali Empire rose to dominate the region. Located on the Niger River to the west of Ghana in what is today Niger and Mali, it reached its peak in the 1350s, the most powerful of these states was the Songhai Empire, which expanded rapidly beginning with king Sonni Ali in the 1460s. By 1500, it had risen to stretch from Cameroon to the Maghreb and it too was quite short-lived and collapsed in 1591 as a result of Moroccan musketry. Far to the east, on Lake Chad, the state of Kanem-Bornu, founded as Kanem in the 9th century, to their west, the loosely united Hausa city-states became dominant. These two states coexisted uneasily, but were quite stable, in 1810 the Fulani Empire rose and conquered the Hausa, creating a more centralized state. It and Kanem-Bornu would continue to exist
41.
Scramble for Africa
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The Scramble for Africa was the invasion, occupation, division, colonization and annexation of African territory by European powers during the period of New Imperialism, between 1881 and 1914. It is also called the Partition of Africa and the Conquest of Africa, in 1870, only 10 percent of Africa was under European control, by 1914 it had increased to 90 percent of the continent, with only Ethiopia, the Dervish state and Liberia still being independent. The Berlin Conference of 1884, which regulated European colonization and trade in Africa, is referred to as the starting point of the scramble for Africa. The latter years of the 19th century saw the transition from informal imperialism, by influence and economic dominance, to direct rule. But Europeans showed comparatively little interest in the interior for some two centuries thereafter, European exploration of the African interior began in earnest at the end of the 18th century. By 1835, Europeans had mapped most of northwestern Africa, in the middle decades of the 19th century, famous European explorers included David Livingstone and H. M. Stanley, each of whom mapped vast areas of Southern Africa and Central Africa. Arduous expeditions in the 1850s and 1860s by Richard Burton, John Speke and James Grant located the central lakes. By the end of the 19th century Europeans had charted the Nile from its source, traced the courses of the Niger, Congo and Zambezi Rivers, and realized the vast resources of Africa. Even as late as the 1870s, European states still controlled only ten percent of the African continent, the most important holdings were Angola and Mozambique, held by Portugal, the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom, and Algeria, held by France. By 1914, only Ethiopia and Liberia remained independent of European control, technological advances facilitated European expansion overseas. Industrialisation brought about rapid advancements in transportation and communication, especially in the forms of navigation, railways. Medical advances also played an important role, especially medicines for tropical diseases, the development of quinine, an effective treatment for malaria, made vast expanses of the tropics more accessible for Europeans. Sub-Saharan Africa, one of the last regions of the largely untouched by informal imperialism, was also attractive to Europes ruling elites for economic. In addition, surplus capital was more profitably invested overseas, where cheap materials, limited competition. Additionally, Britain wanted the southern and eastern coasts of Africa for stopover ports on the route to Asia and its empire in India. However, in Africa – excluding the area became the Union of South Africa in 1910 – the amount of capital investment by Europeans was relatively small. Consequently, the involved in tropical African commerce were relatively small. Rhodes had carved out Rhodesia for himself, Léopold II of Belgium later, John A. Hobson argued in Imperialism that this shrinking of continental markets was a key factor of the global New Imperialism period
42.
Sahel
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The Sahel is the ecoclimatic and biogeographic zone of transition in Africa between the Sahara to the north and the Sudanian Savanna to the south. Having a semi-arid climate, it stretches across the south-central latitudes of Northern Africa between the Atlantic Ocean and the Red Sea, the Arabic word sāḥil literally means shore, coast, while the word Sahara is derived from the Arabic word for desert. Together, these names evoke an image of the Sahels vegetation as a coastline on the Saharas ocean of sand, historically, the western part of the Sahel was sometimes known as the Sudan region. This belt was roughly located between the Sahara and the areas of West Africa. It is an ecoregion of semi-arid grasslands, savannas, steppes. The topography of the Sahel is mainly flat, most of the region lies between 200 and 400 meters in elevation, several isolated plateaus and mountain ranges rise from the Sahel, but are designated as separate ecoregions because their flora and fauna are distinct from the surrounding lowlands. Annual rainfall varies from around 100–200 mm in the north of the Sahel to around 600 mm in the south, the Sahel is mostly covered in grassland and savanna, with areas of woodland and shrubland. Grass cover is continuous across the region, dominated by annual grass species such as Cenchrus biflorus, Schoenefeldia gracilis. Species of acacia are the dominant trees, with Acacia tortilis the most common, along with Acacia senegal, other tree species include Commiphora africana, Balanites aegyptiaca, Faidherbia albida, and Boscia senegalensis. In the northern part of the Sahel, areas of shrub, including Panicum turgidum and Aristida sieberana, alternate with areas of grassland. During the long dry season, many lose their leaves. The larger species have greatly reduced in number by over-hunting and competition with livestock. The seasonal wetlands of the Sahel are important for birds moving within Africa. The Sahel has a tropical, hot steppe climate, the climate is typically hot, sunny, dry and somewhat windy all year long. The Sahels climate is similar to, but less extreme than, the Sahel mainly receives a low to a very low amount of precipitation annually. The steppe has a long, prevailing dry season and a short rainy season. The precipitation is extremely irregular, and varies considerably from season to season. Most of the rain falls during only one or two months, while the other months may remain absolutely dry
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