Yesterday’s GeoNote introduced this Sub-Saharan Africa GeoQuiz. This page shows the answers in bold, so if you would like to first take the quiz without seeing the answers, see yesterday’s post before scrolling down.
1. The island marked A:
b. has a unique mixture of Southeast Asian and African cultural influences; all of its closely related indigenous dialects are Austronesian, linked to those of Insular Southeast Asia.
(Madagascar was first settled by people from what is now Indonesia a little more than a 1,000 years ago)
2. The green coastal strip labeled B:
d. is mostly Muslim, and is noted for the fact that most of its people speak Swahili as their first language.
The coastal strip of Kenya and Tanzania is sometimes called the Swahili Coast; although the Swahili language is used over much of East Africa, it is the dominant first language only on the coast, a strongly Muslim area.
3. The yellow area marked C:
d. was the historical core of a series of Abyssinian (Ethiopian) kingdoms; this largely malaria-free region has been mostly Christian for some 1,700 years.
North-central Ethiopia and much or Eritrea formed the core area of historical Abyssinia, long a largely Christian area, its faith linked to the Coptic Christianity of Egypt.
4. The country marked D:
b. is noted for its well-run government, relatively high social indicators, and political stability – as well as for its high rate of HIV-AIDs.
Botswana is well known in development studies for its well-run government and low levels of corruption, which have allowed resource wealth (diamonds especially) to be translated into broad social gains. AIDs is a huge problem, however.
5. The blue area marked E is:
b. demographically dominated by the so-called Coloured population – a people of mixed ancestry (largely Khoi [Hottentot] and European, but with some Indonesian and Bantu) who speak Afrikaans (a Dutch-derived language).
Most people in western South Africa belong to the mixed-race Coloured population, which is generally Afrikaans speaking. Much of this area, however, is quite sparsely populated.
6. The orange area marked F:
b. is mostly Yoruba-speaking, but is religiously divided among Muslims, Christians, and practitioners of the traditional Yoruba faith.
Southwestern Nigeria is the heart of Yorubaland, a culturally distinctive although religiously mixed area.
7. The purple country (including the island) marked G:
b. is one of Africa’s richest countries on a per capita GDP basis, but most of its people are poor, owing in part to high levels of governmental corruption.
The term “kleptocracy,” or “government by thieves,” was probably coined in reference to Equatorial Guinea, sub-Saharan Africa’s richest state on the basis of per capita GDP.