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West Africa is the westernmost region of the African continent. Countries in West Africa are; Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone and Togo. These 16 Western Africa countries are distributed over an area of approximately 5 million sq km.
With the exception of Mauritania, the rest of these countries are members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). The UN region also includes the island of Saint Helena, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic Ocean.
West Africa is oriented west of an imagined north-south axis lying close to 10° east longitude. The Atlantic Ocean forms the western and southern borders of the region. The northern border is the Sahara Desert, with the Niger Bend generally considered the northernmost part of the region. The eastern border is less precise, with some placing it at the Benue Trough, and others on a line running from Mount Cameroon to Lake Chad.
Colonial boundaries are reflected in the modern boundaries between contemporary West African nations, cutting across ethnic and cultural lines, often dividing single ethnic groups between two or more countries.
The inhabitants of West Africa are, in contrast to most of Sub-Saharan Africa, non-Bantu speaking peoples.
West Africa, with the western portion of the Maghreb inclusive, occupies an area in surplus of 6,140,000 sq km. That is approximately one-fifth of the African continent. The vast majority of this land is plains lying less than 300 meters above sea level, though isolated high points exist in numerous countries along the southern shore of the region.
The northern section of West Africa is composed of semi-arid terrain known as the Sahel, a transitional zone between the Sahara desert and the savannahs of the western Sudan forests form a third belt between the savannas and the southern coast, ranging from 160 km to 240 km in width.
Despite the wide variety of cultures in West Africa, from Nigeria through to Senegal, there are general similarities in dress, cuisine, music and culture that are not shared extensively with groups outside the geographic region.
Islam is the predominant historical religion of the West African interior and the far west coast of the continent; Christianity is the predominant religion in coastal regions of Nigeria, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire; and elements of indigenous religions are practised throughout.
The history of West Africa can be divided into five major periods: i.e.
1. Prehistory – in which the first human settlers arrived, developed agriculture and made contact with peoples to the north.
2. The Empires -The Iron Age empires that consolidated both intra-African and extra-African trade, and developed centralized states. The development of the region’s economy allowed more centralized states and civilizations to form, beginning with the Nok civilization which began 500 B.C. and the Ghana Empire in the 8th century AD which stretched to the Mali Empire. Based around the city of Kumbi Saleh in modern-day Mauritania, the empire came to dominate much of the region until its defeat by Almoravid invaders in 1052. Many Communities organized themselves into chiefdoms.
3. Slavery and European invention, Major polities flourished, which would undergo an extensive history of contact with non-Africans.
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4. The colonial period, the period in which Great Britain and France controlled nearly the whole of the region.
5. The post-independence era, Following the Second World War, nationalist movements arose across West Africa. In 1957, Ghana, under Kwame Nkrumah, became the first sub-Saharan colony to achieve its independence, followed the next year by France’s colonies (Guinea in 1958 under the leadership of President Ahmed Sekou Touré); by 1974, West Africa’s nations were entirely autonomous
Since independence, many West African nations have been plagued by corruption and instability, with notable civil wars in Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Côte d’Ivoire, and a succession of military coups in Ghana and Burkina Faso. Many states have failed to develop their economies despite enviable natural resources, and political instability is often accompanied by the undemocratic government.
Until recently, most governments in West Africa were illiberal and corrupt and several countries have been plagued with political coups, ethnic violence and oppressive dictators. Since the end of colonialism, the region has been the stage for some of the most brutal conflicts ever to erupt. Among the latter are:
• Nigerian Civil War
• First Liberian Civil War
• Second Liberian Civil War
• Guinea-Bissau Civil War
• Ivorian Civil War
• Sierra Leone Civil War
Though a few countries like Ghana and Senegal have enjoyed relative stability and have even seen some growth, all progress in the region is contingent on the efficacy and justness of governance and the fair allocation of resources which, for the moment, both leave much to be desired.
• The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), founded by the 1975 Treaty of Lagos, is an organization of West African states which aims to promote the region’s economy.
• The West African Monetary Union (or UEMOA it’s limited to the eight, mostly Francophone countries that employ the CFA franc as their common currency.
• The Liptako-Gourma Authority of Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso seeks to jointly develop the contiguous areas of the three countries.
