ABSTRACT
Africa, the world’s second largest continent, lies astride the equator surrounded by the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north. Largely ruled by Europeans until the 1960s—who did little to develop the continent except in areas that benefited the colonizers directly—independent Africa emerged onto the world scene burdened by a host of problems unfamiliar to other regions. First, its national borders had little correspondence to ethnicity, so that many different peoples were forced to live under one government. Second, much of its infrastructure was designed to serve foreign exploiters.
