Comments on Essay 1

Your essays were, by and large, on the mark. So far, there has been very little for me to complain about!

To varying degrees, quite a few among you omitted stepping outside the Nigerian story per se, even though the task I gave you was to link it up to the Sahel and Sub-Saharan Africa.

I chose this article because, as I mentioned in my comments on Map Work 1, Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa, with tremendous internal diversity—in terms of religion, ethnicities, languages, geography, and economic conditions. So, Nigeria is a heavyweight within Africa, and definitely in the majority of the continent south of the Sahara.

There are two tensions discussed in the article, and they are kind of inter-related as well: religion and resources. Many of you pointed out that even though it plays out as religious conflicts, maybe it is really triggered by scarcity of resources; if they weren’t poor and starved for resources, will the religious differences matter this much? Overlay this with corrupt and inefficient government and political leaders, well, you have a formula that is pretty much repeated with variations almost all across Sub-Saharan Africa.

North of the Sahara is a different story because the Sahel demarcates the Muslim-dominant Africa from the Christian south. The physical geographic differences also are plenty—as you found out in your earlier map assignment, other than the Nile, there is very little that northern Africa offers in terms of water and, therefore, greenery. Of course, you are exploring some of that this week, right?

I have updated the grades webpage. In the individual emails to you, I will include the Word document in which I will have comments along the right margin or at the end, and will also include in the email your ID#.

Questions/comments?