by Jishi Santos

Created on: May 22, 2009   Last Updated: May 25, 2009

You could pick out any country in the world and talk about its problems, and maybe as Africa has been so tragically ravaged by AIDS in the last 30 years or so, it stands out on a world scale. Africa is a large continent with many countries making up its bulk. They are many and varied, from the bushmen of the Kalahari Desert, to the Zulus of Kwazi Natal, to the wandering nomads of the Sahara. Geographically, the continent runs from this large expanse of desert through to equatorial jungle in the Congo, and down the rift valley of Ethiopia past the 'mountains of the moon', the source of the mightiest river, the Nile, running through Sudan and Egypt, perhaps Africa's greatest tourist draw card apart from the safaris.

So, although varied and vibrant, a native of Mombasa is going to experience totally different problems to one of the Kalahari Desert. Piracy has been round for many years off the coast of Somalia and many of the eastern African countries are Muslim. Now one of the real problems in Sudan is religion, for it is fueling a war between Muslims and the rest of the country. Even one of Africa's greatest tragedies, the genocide in Rwanda, was ignited by old religious conversions. So, yes, missionary work has added in part ot Africa's problems, just as it has elsewhere around the world, by imposing a set of western beliefs over traditional ones and in Africa these would be many and varied .Witchdoctors still hold power today. Also bad medicine like childhood Muti practices are are problem from within.

But the problems from without began to arrive with the onset of colonialism and the likes of Van Ree burg who set up the Cape Colony and David Livingstone, who trekked through what was then Rhodesia. A steady flow of foreigners came to the continent to seek their fortune. De Beers is known all over the world for diamonds taken out of African soil. Of course this sort of exploitation is going to cause problems, especially if the assumption is the black man is inferior and can work for peanuts. The advent of slavery where people were taken from the west coast to America did not help this prejudice.

For years in the recored history of Africa, there had been tribal invasions running the entire length of the continent. In the history of Botswana, it is recorded that the vultures flew constantly over the Kalahari as the peaceful bushmen were no match for the tribes from the north. So like any tribal nation, as Australia was, there were going to be

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