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Public Relations and Communication Management in Africa
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Politics
The African Union (AU) is a federation consisting of all of Africa's states except
Morocco. The union was formed, with Addis Ababa as its headquarters,on June 26,
2001. In July 2004, the African Union's Pan-African Parliament (PAP) was relocated to
Midrand, in South Africa, but the African Commission on Human and Peoples' Rights
remained in Addis Ababa. There is a policy in effect to decentralise the African
Federation's institutions so that they are shared by all the states.
The African Union, not to be confused with the AU Commission, is formed by an Act
of Union which aims to transform the African Economic Community, a federated
commonwealth, into a state, under established international conventions. The African
Union has a parliamentary government, known as the Assembly of the African Union,
consisting of legislative, judicial and executive organs, and led by the African Union
President and Head of State, who is also the President of the Pan African Parliament. A
person becomes AU President by being elected to the PAP, and subsequently gaining
majority support in the PAP.
Economy
Although it has abundant Natural resource, Africa remains the world's Poverty and most
human development continent, due largely to the effects of: tropical diseases, the
African slave trade, Corruption Perceptions, failed Central planning, the international
trade regime and geopolitics; as well as widespread human rigth violations, the negative
effects of history of colonialism,depotism,illiteracy, superstition, tribal savagery and
military conflict (ranging from civil war and guerilla warfare to genocide). According to
the UN's Human Development Report in 2003, the bottom 25 ranked nations (151st to
175th) were all African nations.
Widespread poverty,illiteracy,malnutrition and inadequate water supply and sanitation,
as well as poor health, affect a large majority of the people who reside in the African
continent, where 36.2% of the population is living on under $1 per day. Africa is by far
the world's poorest inhabited continent, and on average, in 2003 it was poorer than it
was in 1973.
Some areas, notably Botswana and South Africa, have experienced economic success.
The latter has a wealth of natural resources, being the world's leading producer of both
gold and diamond, and having a well-established legal system. South Africa also has
access to financial capital, numerous markets, skilled labor, and first world
infrastructure in much of the country and has one of the major stock exchange of the
continent, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
Over a quarter of Botswana's budget (also a major diamond producer) goes toward
improving the infrastructure of Gaborone, the nation's capital, largest city, and one of
the world's fastest growing cities. Other African countries are making comparable
progress, such as Ghana, Cameroon and Egypt.
On the other hand, 80% of Zimbabwe are unemployed. Two million of the country's
residents have fled to Botswana and South Africa. Inflation rates, which fluctuate
wildly, average out to more than 1000% a year, and the Zimbabwean dollar has
depreciated against the U.S. dollar from 38 to 1 in 1999 to more than 5,000 to 1. Hunger
and starvation are widespread, and consumer shortages abound. Since 1998,
Zimbabwe's per capita gross domestic product has slid from about $700 to less than
$200. Death rates have skyrocketed, and school attendance has plummeted. Once a
country with a strong economy for Sub- Saharan Africa standards, natural resources
and a tolerant society, Zimbabwe is now one of the poorest and most bitterly divided
countries in the continent, brought to ruin in less than two decades.
Nigeria sits on one of the largest proven oil reserves in the world and has the highest
population among nations in Africa, with one of the fastest-growing economies in the
world.
From 1995 to 2005, economic growth picked up, averaging 5% in 2005. However, some
countries experienced much higher growth (10+%) in particular, Angola, Sudan and
Equatorial Guinea, all three of which have recently begun extracting their petroleum
reserves or have expanded their oil extraction capacity.
Culture
African culture is characterised by a vastly diverse patchwork of social values, ranging
from extreme patriarchy to extreme matriarchy, sometimes in tribes existing side by
side.
Modern African culture is characterised by conflicted responses to Arab nationalism
and European imperialism. Increasingly, beginning in the late 1990s, Africans are
reasserting their identity. In North Africa especially the rejection of the label Arab or
Europe has resulted in an upsurge of demands for special protection of indigenous
amazigh languages and culture in Morocco, Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia. The reemergence
of pan- Africanism since the fall of apartheid has heightened calls for a
renewed sense of African identity. In South Africa, intellectuals from settler
communities of European descent increasingly identify as African for cultural rather
than geographical or racial reasons. Famously, some have undergone ritual ceremonies
to become members of the Zulu or other community.
Much of the traditional African cultures have become impoverished as a result of years
of neglect and suppression by colonial and neo-colonial regimes. There is now a
resurgence in the attempts to rediscover and revalourise African traditional cultures,
under such movements as the African Renaissance led by Thabo Mbeki, Afrocentrism
led by an influential group of scholars including Molefi Asante, as well as the
increasing recognition of traditional spiritualism through decriminalization of vodou
and other forms of spirituality. In recent years African traditional culture has become
synonymous with rural poverty and subsistence farming.
Urban culture in Africa, now associated with Western values, is a great contrast from
traditional African urban culture which was once rich and enviable even by modern
Western standards. African cities such as loango, m’banza Congo, timbuktu, thebes,
Egypt, meroe, and others had served as the world's most affluent urban and industrial
centers, clean, well-laid out, and full of universities, libraries, and temples.
The main and most enduring cultural fault-line in Africa is the divide between
traditional pastoralism and agriculture. The divide is not, and never was based on
economic competition, but rather on the colonial racial policy that identified pastoralists
as constituting a different race from agriculturalists, and enforcing a form of apartheid
between the two cultures beginning in the 1880s and lasting until the 1960s. Although
European colonial powers were largely industrial, many of the administrators and
philosophers, whose writings provided rationale for colonialism, applied quasi-scientific
eugenics policies and racist politics on Africans in experiments of misguided social
engineering.
Most of the racial recategorisation of Africans to fit European stereotypes was
contradictory and incoherent. However, because their legalism and laws that emanated
from these policies were backed by police force, the scientific establishment and
economic power, Africans reacted by either conforming to the new rules, or rejecting
them in favour of Pan-Africanism. All across Africa communities and individuals were
measured by colonial eugenics boards and reassigned identities and ethnicities based on
pseudo-science. The schools taught that in general Africans who resembled Europeans
in some physical or cultural aspect were superior to other Africans and deserved more
privileges.
The easiest way to divide Africans was along economic lines. Pastoralists,
agriculturalists, hunter-gatherers and Westernised Africans, all formed distinctly
identifiable cultures each of which came to play a different and disfiguring role in
Africa's modern politics. The Westernised Africans, specifically Senegal and Sudanese
Nubians from urban centers such as Dakar and Khartoum, were used to serve as the
bulk of colonial troops against the rural Africans. Pastoralists were radicalised by the
wholesale confiscation of grazing lands in favour of plantations. Agriculturalists came
into conflict for land and water with pastoralists after the traditional sharing
arrangements had been destroyed by colonial policies
Religion
Africans profess a wide variety of religious beliefs and it is difficult to compile accurate
statistics about religious demography in Africa as a whole. Estimations from World
Book Encyclopedia claim that there are 150 million African Muslims and 130 million
African Christians, while Encyclopedia Britannica estimates that approximately 46.5%
of all Africans are Christians and another 40.5% are Muslims with roughly 11.8% of
Africans following indigenous. A small number of Africans are hindu, bahai faith, or
have beliefs from the judaism. Examples of are the beta Israel, lemba peoples and the
abayudaya of Eastern Uganda.
Indigenous Sub-Saharan African religions tend to revolve around a pantheon (gods)" of
deities, and often involve animism and ancestor worship. A common thread in
traditional belief systems was the division of the spirit world into "helpful" and
"harmful" spiritual beings. Helpful , include ancestor spirits who can be called upon to
help their descendants, and more powerful spirits that protect entire communities from
natural disaster or attacks from enemies. Harmful spirits include the soul of murdered
victims who were buried without the proper funeral, and spirits used by hostile spirit
medium to cause illness among their enemies. While the effect of these early forms of
worship continues to have a profound influence, belief systems have evolved as they
interact with other religions.
The formation of the old kingdom of Egypt in 3000 BC marked the earliest known
complex religious system on the continent, and one of the earliest in the world. Around
the ninth century, carthage in Tunisia was founded by the Phoenicians, and went on to
become a major cosmopolitan center where deity from neighboring Egypt, ancient
Rome and the etruscan civilization were worshipped. Today, many Jewish peoples also
live in North Africa, particularly in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco.
The founding of the orthodox church of Alexandria is traditionally dated to the mid-first
century, while the orthodox church of Ethiopia and the orthodox church of Eritrea
officially date from the fourth century. These are thus some of the first established
churches in the world. At first, Christian Orthodoxy made gains in modern-day Sudan
and other neighbouring regions. However, after the spread of Islam, growth was slow
and restricted to the highlands.
Many Sub-Saharan Africans were converted to western christianity during the colonial
period. In the last decades of the twentieth century, various sects of charistimatic
movements rapidly grew. A number of Roman Catholic African bishops were
mentioned as possible pope candidates in 2005, the most prominent of those being
Nigerian Francis Arinze