It is not just a question of physical geography
NINE THOUSAND years ago the Sahara desert was a grassland, inhabited by hunters who made rock paintings of hippos and giraffes. For a millennium before the 16th century a flourishing trade carried salt, gold and slaves across the dunes, until Moroccan invasions and Atlantic shipping drove it into decline. Yet today the Sahara is more often seen as a barrier, cutting Africa in two. Academics, policymakers and newspapers—including—routinely refer to part of the continent as “sub-Saharan Africa”.
The answer might seem obvious. Anywhere south of the desert is, geographically, “sub-Saharan”. The first problem is that some countries, like Mauritania, are mostly in the desert itself. And the confusion runs deeper. Consider Somalia and Djibouti, both in the Horn of Africa. They are south of the Sahara, but the IMF oversees them from its Middle East and Central Asia department.
Many in Africa reject regional labels altogether. African-led institutions, such as the African Union and the African Development Bank, encompass the whole continent, up to the Red Sea. They stand in a tradition stretching back to the 1960s, when pan-Africanism was at its peak. Ali Mazrui, a Kenyan intellectual, later wrote about “Afrabia”, arguing that Africa and the Arab world “are in the slow historic process of becoming one”.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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