Question

What were the most important economic, political, and cultural aspects of West African society? In what ways did geography impact cultural differences among West African civilizations?

Answer 1

West Africa is Europe's closest tropical area, from which it is divided by North African and Middle East Arab civilisations. Much of the history of its peoples depends on that fact; but the origin of the tripartite relationship between the regions bordering the North-East Atlantic and Mediterranean seas remains mysterious. For modern Europeans, West Africa's history goes back just half a millennium to the time when the Portuguese started discovering an African path eastward along Islam's flanks. It started in the 11th century for the Arabs, with the temporary expansion of Almoravid conquerors beyond the Maghreb down the coast towards the Senegal River.

Following independence, the many peoples of West Africa now live in a balkanized cluster of some 16 English- and French-speaking states. These are dwarfed by Nigeria, which is half the region's total with a population of over 160 million and a sixth of sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. Its economy accounts for over two-thirds of the West African States' (ECOWAS) Economic Community. Despite their leaders' efforts to promote a sense of national identity, these are not nation-states within the meaning of a single people formed by owning a state. Only Burkina Faso and Mali can aspire to build nations on a firm ethnic foundation, and that in the latter case has been dramatically reversed.

Abnormally the regional economy is geared towards foreign trade West African countries' internal trade accounts for around 3 per cent of the total. In an age when a large part of the world 's population enjoys significantly increased prosperity, better health and collective security, the majority of West Africans are still very poor, they die relatively young, and their states are vulnerable to greater power manipulation. Some of this may be attributed to geography, but there is much that has a more recent political cause.

Coastline and rivers in the region were not conducive to navigation and low-cost water-borne transport. Transport on the countryside is slow and difficult. The soils are dark, and the forest is light. Traditionally, neither the plowing nor the irrigation were used to intensify production. Attempts toward political centralisation were constrained by a low-productivity population's sparse density, as were division of labor and economic growth. Social organisation, performed by relatives and slaves, placed a premium on human labor. Economy rested upon the efficient use of that labor through extensive agricultural land farming. For several millennia, those conditions were roughly the same.

Tax collection in Africa never attained the regularity it has long achieved in Europe and Asia. Traditional states are basing their economies on seizing long-distance trade revenues rather than producing for local consumption. But of most pre-industrial states this could be said; and governments still rely on whatever money they can obtain from the import-export trade. The new states and class structures of the urban revolution in Africa are enmeshed in kinship systems that remain essential to any understanding of how the informal economy functions as a social organization.