Talk:Africa/Archive 1

message: The lack of statistics and examples in the History and Politics sections is discomforting.
* Which European countries were dominant in the slave trade?
* How many coups and/or military dictatorships were there, in the time period we're talking about?
* Which were the most recent famines?
* Are dangerous diseases other than AIDS really "rampant"?
* "Some signs the continent has hope for the future"? Hope of what?
-- mpt, 17 May 2003
:Glad you've volunteered to find out thje relevant information and add it to the site, User:mpt. It's user's like you, who add info rather than just whining, who make Wikipedia what it is -- Cabalamat 02:09, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Lack of Specifics

message: As for independence it just seems a move to neo-colonialism with members opf the local elite drawn in to manage the local state. As these states often restate 'national' boundaries drawn upon maps by European rather than anything rooted in African culture it seems like there needs to worked upon. Harry Potter
:I think you might have been right a generation or so ago, but I get the impression these days most Africans increasingly feel alliegence to the states they are part of, e.g. Zimbabweans feel they are Zimbabweans rather than Shona or Ndebele. Urbanisation can only increase this process. -- Cabalamat 02:09, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Independence or Neo-Colonialism?

message: Hmm. The map of Africa seems hopelesly out of date. Doesn't anyone really have a more up to date copyfree map? Even the boundaries between countries, nevermind their names are wrong. -- Cimon Avaro on a pogostick
:I can't see any obviously-wrong boundaries. Can you elucidate? -- Cabalamat 02:09, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)
replies: text: Either he/she's talking about the colonial map (which is clearly titled so) or the CIA map, which to my knowledge is completely up-to-date. I think this person is mistaken on this issue. Polocrunch
What about the picture?
** 
How old is that satellite picture? It looks old, because in recent ones I've seen, the coast along southern Ghana (etc) is much less green, because the rainforest is mostly deforested in southern Ghana -- or so its been explained to me. Dishalein 06:42, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Map

message: I can't understand why this information is found under "demographics"! Afrika is Article of the Week on the Swedish Wikipedia, and this section doesn't fit nicely into any regular article layout! Shouldn't this section be moved to another place and some information on demographics take its place? (My shortage in the English language keeps me from doing it myself!) / Mats
: I attempted to rewrite this section with some useful information. I took out some of the stuff on whether race exists since that is already covered in the "Race" article and doesn't really have much to do with the demographics of Africa.   -AndyCapp 04:09, 26 Apr 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The Tutsi people were considered giants by the Europeans in centuries gone past, I've read, but, I don't think the Falani (Fulani? I don't know how to spell it) are tall, and surely peoples such as the Mbuti are famous -- at least to fans of PBS etc -- for exactly the converse :) Dishalein 06:51, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)

text: (re: written language) Surely, the Rosetta stone is one of the most famous works of written language in history? Dishalein 06:55, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Demographics" 

message: This article is so infuriatingly racist that it should be rewritten from scratch. As others have noted, it consists mostly of stereotypes and contains blatant factual errors like there was no written African language before the 20th century (see ancientscripts) or that the "Demographics" section doesn't mention the large number of Arabs at all.
--Loikb 21:04, 3 Jun 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: It's misleading to state that Africans have faced racism without explaining why people harbored racist beliefs against them.AndyCapp 00:01, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Racist?

message: The rewrite of the article yesterday was hardly perfect, but the version that stands now is utter garbage.
(Over 85% of the African people belong to the Black race and exhibit several physical characteristics that distinguish them from peoples of other continents.)
What of the Melanesians, the Negritos of SE Asia, and some Australian Aborigines? 
(Dark skin is the most noticeable, and scientists believe that Homo sapiens lost this coloration when it emigrated to the outlying continents in response to lower levels of ultraviolet radiation.)
Every serious article on this subject states that the need for Vitamin D absorption form sunlight caused people's skin to lighten. Anyway, none of the other continent or country articles delve into this topic. This should simply be hyperlinked to race.
(Tall height and muscular builds are other common characteristics, with the exception of some pygmy tribes.)
Most East African and Southern African Negroids are similar in height to Caucasoids. Cattle herding peoples such as the Masai and Tutsi do tend to be taller. 
(White Africans have descended mainly from the Middle East in prehistoric periods and today form about 95% of the North African population like Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.)
Many north Africans, such as Berbers, are indigenous to North Africa. Also the populations of these countries are frankly too mixed to be categorized as "white" - or "black".
(Despite several shared characteristics, Africans also exhibit linguistic and cultural diversity, with different languages and religions occurring throughout the continent.) 
True...
(Very small numbers of Caucasians exist throughout Africa, with the exception of South Africa, which is approximately 10% Caucasian.)
Do the North Africans count as Caucasian?
I think it can be noted that there is a semantic difference in everyday usage between Caucasian and "white". North Africans are mostly Caucasoid  but only a minority would readily identify themselves as "white" in Western countries.
(Much of the African continent continues to suffer from severe poverty, famine, disease, and war. In recent times AIDS has become a particularly widespread and damaging problem, with over 30% of some African populations infected.)
North Africa, to my knowledge, has not experienced a famine in recent history. It also has not been affected by AIDS to the degree other parts of the continent have. Some African nations (Gabon, Libya) are, in relative terms, not poor nations and have standards of living that are comparable to middle income nations. There is no denying that the majority of vast Africans are poor.
: (North Africa not having famine in recent history) Surely this depends on how you define "recent". Isn't famine in Egypt, due to poor Nile flooding season, nearly invariably mentioned in historical discussions of Egypt? Dishalein 07:00, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Utter garbage"?...Race Demographics

message: An automated Wikipedia link suggester has some possible wiki link suggestions for the Africa article:
* Can link 14th century: ... effectively nation-state-less until quite recently. In the 14th century European explorers arrived in Africa. By bargaining wit... (link to section)
* Can link political corruption: ...d through armed conflicts.   Failed government policies and political corruption have also resulted in many widespread famines, and sign... (link to section)
* Can link zero growth: ...entional economic measurements after decades of negative or zero growth. It remains to be seen if such developments will be able to... (link to section)
* Can link death toll: ...lf-a-dozen neighbouring African countries got involved. The death toll, estimated by some to be 3.5 million over five years, was v... (link to section)
* Can link indigenous peoples: ...ly 80% of Africans live south of the Sahara Desert. The indigenous peoples of sub-Saharan Africa are generally referred to as either [... (link to section)
* Can link skin color: ...ply blacks, due to the generally dark brown skin color of these peoples.  However, there is a wide variety of phys... (link to section)
* Can link ancient times: ...ubians]] who developed civilizations in North Africa during ancient times. The Semitic Phoenicians, and the European Greeks and Roman... (link to section)
* Can link out of Africa: ... resulted in the mass exodus of European-descended settlers out of Africa, especially in Algeria, Kenya, and Rhodesia (now [[Zimbabwe... (link to section)
* Can link mixed-race: ...hite rule in 1994. South Africa also has a community of mixed-race people (Coloured people).... (link to section)
* Can link British colonies: ...ns, particularly people from the Indian subcontinent to British colonies.  Large Indo-African communities are found in South Africa,... (link to section)
* Can link Southwest Asia: ...oups of Africa, Christianity and Islam, have their roots in Southwest Asia. Approximately 40% of all Africans are Christians and anoth... (link to section)
* Can link Christian Era: ...d Egypt) adopted Christianity in the early centuries of the Christian Era - before most of Europe. However, Christianity was introduc... (link to section)
* Can link colonial period: ...hern Africa by European missionaries or settlers during the colonial period. ... (link to section)
* Can link official languages: ...|English]] and French, for example, are official languages in several countries.... (link to section)
Notes: The article text has not been changed in any way; Some of these suggestions may be wrong, some may be right.
Feedback: I like it, I hate it, Please don't link to — LinkBot 11:27, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Suggest 14 possible wiki links for [[Africa]]. 

message: This is listed on the page List of oil-producing states, but it does not include any discussion of oil production.  It would be good to add this. JesseW 03:32, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Oil? 

message: The collection of external links is poor ...
* Two links to articles by a postgraduate student, Franklyne Ogbunwezeh ( http://www.globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=186 and http://www.globalpolitician.com/articles.asp?ID=195 ) -- neither of them appropriate to thhis Africa article.
* http://www.francewatcher.org/ -- should be in an article about French postcolonial politics.
* http://www.zabalaza.net/texts/african_anarchism/contents.htm -- might be appropriate in an article about African Anarchism.
* http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/africa/accounts/chekov.html -- might be appropriate in an article about travel and tourism in Africa.
* http://www.takesomeaction.co.uk/safari.html and http://wikitravel.org/en/article/Africa -- would also be more appropriate in an article about travel and tourism in Africa.
--Mount Pleasant 08:03, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  External Links 

message: This is a "of concern" list to give some hints on what might help.  Feel free to add, comment or alter this list.  - BanyanTree 18:14, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  CSB Collaboration 

message: I checked several interwiki-versions of this article. Almost all are worse than we (even the French one — unbelievable). :de:Afrika contains some usable text on history and some pictures.  — mark ✎ 21:27, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Interwiki 

message: Just after "The Ethiopian Orthodox Church dates from the fourth century CE and was thus one of the first Christian churches. ", would it be appropriate to mention the role of Alexandria as one of the main bastions of Christianity in the 2nd - 4th centuries CE? Some might argue it had a preeminent role, at least in the sense that the primary bible canons of our time might be argued to have been created primarily by Alexandrian bishops? Dishalein 07:17, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Sure.  It can't hurt. - BanyanTree 14:12, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Religion 

message: Recently, the following bit was added to the article by .
:Karl Ploetz, theorized (circa 1870) that the evolution of agricultural pursuit was introduced among the Pygmies by the "Bantú people, who arrived to Central Africa from the Indian Ocean (30,000 years ago.)"
I'm going to pull it out pending citation and evidence of notability. Even if it turns out to be true that Ploetz theorized this, I don't think it is particularly notable. At least the part about the Bantu coming from the Indian Ocean has never been a well-known hypothesis (it's the first time I hear about this; instead, see Bantu expansion for better known ideas about where the Bantu came from). Besides, the 30,000 years is a number that needs something to back it up, especially when talking about the whereabouts of ethno-linguistic groups. — mark ✎ 13:45, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ploetz and recent additions 

message: I'm translating this article into korean, and I came upon this line at the bottom of the history section:
:Migration from Africa continues to this day.
what's that? Is this the remains of some debate that took place about the slave trade? Or is this a reference to the contemporary brain drain phenomenon, or a reference back to how patterns of slavery (from Africa to the U.S.) resemble modern immigration from Africa to the developed nations, driven by the violence of structural adjustment? I need to contextualize that line. Pleae give me some guidance. Thanks. --Yonghokim 02:25, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  confused by "Migration from Africa continues to this day."