Introduction
Africa is a mosaic of peoples, cultures, ecological settings and history. The continent has an area of 11,677,240 square miles (30,244,050 square Kilometers), stretching from the Mediterranean in the north to the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian oceans in the south (Chazan 1999: 5). It has the highest arable land per capita in the world; its landmass of 2.1 million hectars with 32% of forest and woodland and 6.2% arable land is twice its share of world population (Mosha 1981) Africa has a population of some 730 million (roughly 10 percent of the world’s population) who speak more than eight hundred languages. Seventy percent of the population lives in the rural areas who earn their living either through farming or animal rearing (Chazan 1999: 5). Africa is also rich in minerals and other resources. It has one quarter of the world’s hydroelectric power and only 3% is presently utilized. The continent contains the largest reserves of metallic ores (top producer of cobalt and nickel), non-ferrous base metals (top producer of copper, lead and zinc); precious metals (top producer of gold and diamond) and non-metallic deposits (a leading producer of phosphates) (Mosha 1998).
Africa’s international contact in the 16th century and afterwards, was to its disadvantage. European merchants shipped millions of Africans, to work on their plantations in the Americas. In the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, more than 30 million Africans were transported to America from 1500 to 1890, leaving the continent with out young cultivators.