Useful Notes / Africans

Africa, the origin of mankind and second largest continent on planet earth. Africa is home to between 1,000 and 2,000 distinct languages, in addition to around 3000 ethnic groups. 16% of the world population lives in Africa, and that figure is projected to swell to 40% by the year 2100 per the UN. In spite of these factors the peoples, cultures, and histories of Africa are scarcely understood or even recognizable to many non-Africans.

Contrary to popular belief, Africa has not been as severely isolated from the rest of the world as commonly thought. Despite having the shortest coastline of any continent, few natural harbors, sheer cliffs to the sea, and many deserts humans have been migrating into and away from Africa for hundreds of thousands of years. With each great migration Africans have touched the rest of the world and have been touched themselves culturally. Many misconceptions about African peoples find their origin in a historical combination of general ignorance and malicious actors.

The intent of this page is to provide a relatively concise overview of African peoples for both creators and enjoyers of storytelling.

---

Culture Areas

Cataloguing every distinct African ethnic group in-depth would turn this from a Useful Notes page to an award-winning academic treatise, so for the sake of brevity we will cover broader groups based on shared cultural characteristics and geography.

The Nile Valley (from the Sixth cataract to the Mediterranean Sea)

• Home to civilization over 5,000 years old, the Nile remains a precious gift for the people of Egypt and Sudan. Though heavily Arabized now, Egyptians and Sudanese people remain very proud of the achievements of their ancestors from antiquity to medieval times to now. Egyptian Arabic is the lingua franca of the Arabic speaking world owning to Egypt's status as the entertainment heartland. The dominant ethnic groups are the largely Sunni-Muslim Egyptian Arabs and Sudanese Arabs.

• Prominent minority groups include the Oriental Orthodox Christians known as "Copts" or "Coptic" people. Copts speak Arabic as their first language but do not identify as Arab, instead identifying with the Ancient Egyptians who converted to Christianity under the Roman empire. The late-stage Egyptian language called Coptic is spoken by the clergy for religious purposes.

• Another notable minority are the Nubian people. Like the Copts they have avoided Arabization and identify more strongly with the Ancient Nubian civilization. Unlike the Copts they have largely converted from Oriental Orthodox Christianity to Islam yet retain their traditional Nubian languages in everyday life.

• The Beja people formerly known as "Blemmyes" to the Ancient Greco-Romans and "Fuzzy-Wuzzy" to Rudyard Kipling for their great crowns of frizzy hair live in the Eastern Desert between the Nile and the Red Sea. They are descendants of the famous Medjay warriors featured in works such as Assassin's Creed and The Mummy Trilogy. The Beja are largely nomadic pastoralists.

• The oasis of Siwa in the western desert of Egypt is inhabited by a Berber people called the Siwi or Siwan. They are largely farmers and fine craftsmen with a unique way of life distinct from the people who live along the Nile river itself. In ancient times they were famed for their oracle and devotion to the god Amun. The land of the Siwi was an important stop on the journey between the Maghreb and Egypt. For this reason it was valued by travelers like merchants, pilgrims, armies, and Bedouin herdsmen.

The Maghreb and Sahara

• The Maghreb is the western limit of the Greater Middle East. For the most part this mountainous region is Arab with a very noticeable substrate of Berber peoples and cultures. It has been called "Libya" by the ancient Greeks, "Africa" by the ancient Romans, and "Barbary" by early modern Europeans. During and after colonial times there was a resurgence of pride in the Amazigh or Berber identity after centuries of Arab dominance. Even so, the distance between the Maghreb with the eastern Arab world (called the Mashriq) has led to cultural and linguistic innovations that make Maghrebi Arabs quite distinct from other Arabs. Known as "Darija", Maghrebi Arabic is almost completely incomprehensible to other Arabic speakers to the point where it is considered an entirely different language by many. This linguistic evolution has been aggravated by influences from Amazigh languages, French, and even Spanish.

• South of the mild Mediterranean climate of the Maghreb is the sparsely inhabited Sahara Desert. Despite making up an area the size of the continental United States, it is home to only about 2.5 million people. The Sahara Desert has functioned as barrier between the cultural regions of Sub-Saharan or "Black" Africa with the Maghreb and the Lower Nile. Black in quotation marks as this is not a strict rule by any stretch of the imagination. Caucasian, Black, and mixed peoples have occupied both sides of the Sahara throughout history. However, culturally it is possible to delineate the Greater Middle Eastern culture sphere which includes the Sahara on northwards.

• Maghrebi Arabs have long stood at a crossroads of cultural influences from France in the north to Turkey in the East to the Sahel in the south. Unlike Mashriqi Arabs who largely subsist on rice as a culinary staple, Maghrebi Arabs prefer to eat couscous. The tradition of Islamic sages known as Marabouts finds its classic form in North Africa. These spiritual leaders were renowned as wisemen and even wizards as far south as what is now modern Ghana in West Africa. Like their Berber counterparts, Maghrebi Arabs are for the most part agriculturalists rather than pastoralists. In fact, the Fatimid caliphs unleashed the great Bedouin Banu Hilal tribe on the Maghreb as punishment against the rebellious Amazigh Zirid dynasty. The Banu Hilal ravaged previously fragile agricultural lands with overgrazing of their herds and contributed wittingly and unwittingly to the Arabization of the Maghreb. In modern times the Banu Hilal are remembered in heroic epics like Al-Sirah al-Hilaliyyah as proud warriors and devout Muslims who laid the foundation of Maghrebi Arab identity.

• In antiquity the Amazigh were part of the great Roman and Carthaginian empires, with a few notable emperors and theologians having been Amazigh like Saint Augustine. In medieval times, the Maghreb was ruled over primarily by Amazigh dynasties until the 16th century despite the increase of Arabization. Even the Arab conquest of Iberia in Europe was spearheaded by Muslim Amazigh lords under the caliph. As their endonym indicates, Amazigh people have historically been proud and stubborn in the face of foreign attempts to dominate or control them. This can been seen in the widespread success of the great Berber Revolt in the 8th century. Among the northern Amazigh, groups like the Kabyles, Rifians, Shilhas, and Chaoui stand out most prominently in numbers. Traditionally women in Amazigh society were accorded more freedom and status than in neighboring ethnic groups.

• The Tuareg people are the most prominent ethnicity in the western Sahara Desert. They live a nomadic life wandering between oases with their trains of livestock animals. It is thought that they are descended at least in part from the great Garamante civilization in the northern reaches of the Sahara. Unlike many fellow Muslims it is the men who must veil their faces in modesty rather than the women. The Tuareg are famous for their striking blue robes and warrior tradition. Like the Bedouin Arabs, the Tuareg lifestyle depended on trading, raiding, and livestock herding. With the introduction of the camel from West Asia, the Tuareg quickly became the ultimate middlemen between Northern Africa with Western Africa. The power and role of the Tuaregs waxed and waned with the ages, feared as lighting-fast desert bandits and slavers as well as respected in their position as wealthy merchants and protectors of caravans. The famed city of Timbuktu was originally a seasonal Tuareg camp.

• Another group of note in the western Sahara are the Sahrawi people. The Sahrawi are an Arab ethnic group which developed over centuries of Arabization among the local Amazigh tribes and the descendants of Black slaves collectively called the Haratin. A minority retain the knowledge of their original Amazigh language.

• The central Sahara is dominated by the Toubou people, a Black ethnic group belonging to the Tebu family of the proposed Nilo-Saharan grouping. Like the Tuaregs and Arab Bedouins, they are also nomadic pastoralists. Like the former two groups trade and (formerly) raiding were the great source of wealth for their people.

The Horn of Africa

• The people of the Horn of Africa are geographically Sub-Saharan African, but primarily belong to the cultural world of the Middle East and North Africa. The climate of the region is cooler and drier than regions at a similar latitude owning to the mighty highlands of Ethiopia and Eritrea and from their accompanying rain shadow to the east. Interactions with the non-African world were much more frequent than in West or Central Africa due to the proximity of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean. The Horn of Africa has provided the world with some of the oldest human remains we have on record.

• The deep intercourse between the Horn of Africa and Western Asia since prehistoric times has produced an extension of the Semitic speaking world in the form of the Habesha peoples or "Abyssinians" as they were once called. Habesha people once practiced Semitic paganism like their counterparts across the Red Sea prior to conversions to Islam, Judaism in the case of what would become the Beta Israelis, and Ethiopian Oriental Orthodoxy in the case of the majority. The Habesha peoples largely occupy the highlands of the Horn of Africa in contrast to the Cushitic speakers who largely occupy the lowlands. Habesha cuisine is often the best-known or only known African cuisine to most non-Africans. The unique Ge'ez script is primarily used to write Habesha languages like Amhara, Tigrayan, or Tigrinya, but also has been used to write Omotic, Nilotic, and Cushitic languages. The Habesha have a rich Abrahamic heritage which has inspired monumental churches hewed from mountainsides, and are thought to possess relics from the age of the prophets such as the Ark of the Covenant. The mighty empire of Askum would pave the way for later Ethiopian empires.

• Though foreign interest in the Horn of Africa is dominated by attention for the Habesha, other remarkable groups such as the Cushitic peoples have played an important role in the region. The Horn of Africa is likely the original homeland of the Cushitic languages, and there is strong evidence that the highland Habesha were once Cushitic speakers themselves. The Cushitic peoples were likely among the earliest pastoralists in Africa and livestock play an important role in the lives of rural people to this day. Notable Cushitic groups include the Sidama, Agaw, Afar, Oromo, and Somali. The Somali stand out in particular for their city states which at times dominated the sea trade in Eastern Africa as far south as what is now Zimbabwe. The Oromo would eventually become the ruling ethnic group of the Ethiopian empire in the early modern period.

• Lesser known in western circles are the Omotic-speaking peoples of western Ethiopia. Situated between Nilotic-speaking and Cushitic-speaking peoples has led to cultural diffusion from both sides. The medieval kingdom of Damot in western Ethiopia was ruled over by the Omotic Welatya people. The Omotic peoples held out against conversion to Christianity and Islam by their neighbors for over 1000 years, remaining almost entirely pagan up until interaction with western missionaries in the 19th century onward. The Hamar people practice a unique rite of passage wherein a male youth must leap over a bull in order to be considered a true man of marrying age.

The Sahel

• "Sahel" is an Arabic term meaning coast or shore. The belt of hot steppe stretching 5,900 km (3,670 mi) from the Atlantic Ocean coast of northern Senegambia and southern Mauretania in the west to the Red Sea coast of Sudan in the east has been named the Sahel for its relative position to the vast "ocean" of desert that is the Sahara. The Sahel designates the northernmost region of Sub-Saharan or "black" Africa proper. The wider region including the humid savanna to the south has also called Sudan or "Bilad As-Sudan" meaning "Land of the Blacks" in Arabic. The modern North African country of Sudan and East African country of South Sudan (once part of the former) are also confusingly enough named for this too owning to their black populations.

• The Sahel region can be subdivided into three smaller regions: west, central, and eastern. The eastern Sahel is most closely tied to the societies of the Nile Valley, considering the bulk of the subregion is comprised of the modern territory of Sudan. The Sahel region is limited to the south by the rainforests of Guinea and Congo in addition to the thick and nigh-impassable swamp known as the Sudd in what's now South Sudan along the White Nile river.

• The western portion of the Sahel commonly called the Western Sudan is the most populous section of the region. This is a product of the mighty Niger river which flows from the highlands of Upper Guinea in a meandering inverted "V" shape across the western Sahel down to Lower Guinea where it finally terminates in the Gulf of Guinea in Nigeria. The character of the Niger River was more like the irregular Tigris and Euphrates of Mesopotamia or Yellow River of China than the tranquil and predictable flow of the Nile in Northeast Africa. The Niger is far more unpredictable, however. So much so that the six smaller basins of the river have their own unique local weather patterns and flood dynamics. To cope with this phenomenon, the people of the Upper and Middle Niger often developed into professional occupational groups to compensate one another. A fantastic year for fishermen might be a horrible year for sorghum farmers, and a great year for cattle herders might be a terrible year for rice farmers. This cultural pattern exists across linguistic and religious lines.

• The cultural heart of the Western Sudan would be the civilizations founded by the Mande peoples such as Ghana and Mali. Neighboring ethnolinguistic groups such as the Songhai, Gur, Senegambian/Atlantic, Dogon, and even Tuareg Berbers have been impacted by Mande and especially the Manding subgroup culture. The reach of Mande culture spreads as far south as Kru country in Upper Guinea. The majority of Western Sudanese people are agriculturalists and pastoralists with a minority of various specialist ethnic groups or castes focused on hunting wild game or fishing. The region was primarily pagan and nominally Muslim until the Fulani Jihads of the early modern era, though there does exist a small Christian minority from the colonial age. Groups of note aside from the Mande include the Songhai who built the largest of the pre-colonial West African empires and are famed for their powerful Sohanci wizards, the Fulani cattle herders who are known for the male beauty pageants of the Wodaabe subgroup, the cliff-dwelling Dogon who possess a rich and extensive cosmology in addition to astronomical knowledge, and the Hausa who are the largest Sub-Saharan ethnic group on earth.

• The Central Sahel is dominated by Lake Chad straddling part of Cameroon, Niger, Chad, and Nigeria. This region is less densely populated compared to the Western Sahel. The more powerful ethnic groups historically included the Kanembu/Kanuri and Bilala who built the empire of Kanem-Bornu along the shores of Lake Chad, the Maba of the former Wadai sultanate, the Fur of Darfur, and other Islamized ethnic groups. More numerous however were the pagan and now-often Christian ethnic groups such as the Sara, Azande, Ngbandi, Banda, Gbaya, who occupy the humid savannas to the south of the drier band of steppe. Pagan southerners were frequently prey for the Trans-Saharan slave trade owning to their less centralized societies and more isolated settlements. The people of the Lake Chad and Chari River basin frequently claim ancestry from the semi-legendary Sao civilization. The Sao were said to be mighty giants responsible for building the ruins found in the area.

Upper Guinea

Lower Guinea

Equatorial Africa

African Great Lakes

East African Interior

Swahili Coast

Zambezi-Limpopo

Southern Africa

Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands

History

Prehistory

Ancient Africa

The Rise of Islam and the Bantu migrations

The Golden Age of Trade

The Columbian Exchange

Revolutions in Africa

The Scramble for Africa

Colonial Africa

Independence

Notable Africans

See also: Algerian Media, Egyptian Media, Kenyan Media, Nigerian Media, Senegalese Media, South African Media, and Ugandan Media, which include creators from those countries in Africa.