Are they insignificant?
Or are we overlooking simple things that could be not so simple but when realized change a picture of Africa that might heal some of it's ills.
Let's take a look at language.
Africa has 10% of the total world population but 20% of the total land mass. Realizing there are two regions of Africa in that Subsahara Africa is seen as unique in it's needs, there is still a growth rate on this continent of approximately 3% per year with the concentration primarily increasing in ages below 15 years old. That speaks to several social issues including the devastation of HIV/AIDS leaving large populations of orphans and also the Arabian culture has issues of martyrdom and self sacrifice of their own lives causing the average age in those nations to fall to about age 16 or 17. Either way Africa has serious concerns regarding the competency of it's populations, educational levels, government stability and their brain trusts for leadership, business and research as well as a work force including farming. Many areas of Africa farming when not a drought is a high percentage of the occupation of the populous.
The geography of languages in Africa is remarkably complex. If people aren't able to communicate will they remain tolerant of each other? Many of the 'violent conflicts' occurring in Africa is related to the control of natural resources. The violence usually falls between ethnicities rather than nations. If violence existed between sovereign countries it would be easier to control by bringing parties before The United Nations Security Council to settle disputes. But the violence in Africa goes beyond the definition of sovereign state.
There are currently 800 living languages in Africa. 40 are spoken by more than one million people. The dominant indigenous languages spoken by 10 million people or more are Hausa (the Sahel), Lingala (Central Africa), Swahili (East Africa) and Tswana-Sotho and Zulu (Southern Africa. Hausa and Swahili are spoken by many as a second language for Trade. Complicated by all this is the fact recent colonial control has brought in English, French and Portugese. Arabic is most common in Northern Africa which also has a strong influence in Swahili.
The indigenous languages of Africa can be grouped into 'families' if you will. Afro-Asiatic of Northern Africa to include Somalia, Amharic and Tuareg. There is the Nilo-Saharan languages of Dinka, Turkana and Nuer of East Africa. The Niger-Congo group is the largest including Hausa, Yoruba, Zulu, Swahili and Kikuyu. A much smaller family of languages are spoken by the Bushmen of Southern Africa. It's distinguishing characteristic is a "click" when vocalized.
Currently I believe there are about 55 countries and 11 provinces in Africa. There is no dominant indigenous language in most African countries and while efficent to some degree sadly they have established Eurpoean languages for trade, school and government. Mind you this is for those that live in conditions that allow trade, school and government. There are three countries that have enough dominant overlap to allow an ethnic language to be the majority language and those are Somalia with the Somalia language, Botswana with the Tswana language and Ethiopia with Amharic as their dominant language.
To understand this better I'll look at the way the populations arrange themselves on this continent with vast deavastation of human life. Next discussion in a minute.
