ABSTRACT
Sub-Saharan Africa is undeniably the most severely poverty-stricken of all the regions of the Other World despite abundant natural resources and hard-working populations. This chapter probes the multiple causes of sub-Saharan Africa's despair and the hopeful developments for a brighter future. It includes geography, people and culture, history, economics, and government of the region; case studies of South Africa, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe; and flashpoints on the effects of civil wars and communal violence on national sovereignty, the impacts on sustainable development arising from decades of foreign aid, and the interplay of cultures of traditional consensus decision-making, fatalism, and corruption. The chapter attempts to shed light on sustainable development, sovereignty, and cultural homogenization—from the vantage point of sub-Saharan Africa. In the accounting of damage to national sovereignty from armed conflicts, some sub-Saharan nations have clearly fared worse than others, usually those with the most severe conflicts and the largest obstacles to sovereignty at the outset.
