The Abé, numbering around 200,000, mostly live in the Agboville region of Côte d’Ivoire. One of some five dozen ethnic groups in the region, the Abé speak a Niger-Congo language. Linguistically and culturally, they belong to the Akan group.
See alsoLanguages, African: An Overview.
The Abron inhabit the borderlands of Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Burkina Faso. They speak a Niger-Congo language and are part of the larger Akan cultural and linguistic group. Their ancestors, the Bono, founded the first known Akan kingdom during the fourteenth century. As of 2003 some 1 181 ...
The Acholi people live mostly in the Acholi district of Uganda, an 18,000-sq-km (11,000-sq-mi) savanna plateau. While 43 percent of Acholi clans trace descent from Nilo-Saharan-speaking Luo groups that migrated from present-day Sudan during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, others trace descent from the Lango, Karamojong, Mandi, and Bari ethnic groups. Thus the Acholi represent an emergent ethnic identity, forged among a number of distinct groups who have come to share a homeland as well as a language and certain cultural traditions. Recent census figures put the number of Acholi in Uganda at nearly 750,000, with another 45,000 living in Sudan.
Most Acholi live in small hamlets organized into patrilineal clans Several clans make up a chiefdom or kaka mandit The Acholi distinguish between royal lineages most of which claim to be of Luo origin and commoners but they have not historically recognized a centralized political authority Like many ...
The Adangbe live primarily along Ghana's coast and in the hills of the Accra Plain. They speak a Niger-Congo language closely related to Ga. Approximately 600,000 people identify themselves as Adangbe.
See alsoLanguages, African: An Overview.
The Adja primarily inhabit southern Benin and Togo. They speak a Niger-Congo language. The western Adja belong to the Ewe cultural and linguistic group. Approximately 740,000 people identify themselves Adja Ewe. “Adja” is sometimes also used as an umbrella term to include all Ewe- and Fon-speaking peoples.
See ...
Adoption traditionally refers to the legal act of permanently placing a child under the age of eighteen with a family other than the child's birth parents. Often, in the United States, these children are taken from the foster care system. There are various obstacles to the adoption of foster children, specifically black children. Among them is the lack of communication between foster care and adoption agencies, the fact that there are fewer black social workers than there are black foster children, and the understaffing of foster care agencies.
Difficulties in the foster care system affect the growth and decline of adoption rates. For example, in 1967 a study conducted in Washington, D.C., concluded that it was harder for black women to give their children up for adoption than white women because many of the women were young and lived in low-income neighborhoods. Between 1969 and 1971 the United Black ...
Approximately 1.5 million people belong to the Afar ethnic group, mostly in the Denakil plain, which includes parts of northern Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti Apart from the Aussa oasis and the Djibouti coastline the territory of the Afar is among the most arid on the continent The Afar speak Safo an Afro Asiatic language part of the Eastern Cushitic language group The first known written references to the Afar appeared in the 13th century in the work of Arabic geographer Ibn Said He called them the Danakil a name that the Afar now consider offensive but one that is still used widely by neighboring Arab groups The Somali people mostly use the term Adal or Udali The Afar have traditionally lived as pastoral nomads raising sheep goats camels and cattle Some work as salt miners on the Denakil plain where temperatures regularly reach 50° C 120° F ...
The Afikpo are a small subgroup of the Igbo, the largest ethnic group in southeastern Nigeria. The Afikpo account for around 672,000 of the approximately 25 million Igbo in Nigeria and are best known for their mask making, masked performances, and associated secret societies, and their unique legal system.
Archaeological findings suggest that the Afikpo Ehugbo civilization existed in Neolithic times when humans were just transitioning from hunting and gathering to farming The early Afikpo cultivated yams coco yams rice palm oil palm kernels and vegetables and fished the rivers in their forested lands Yams were for a long time central to food security and male Afikpo identity and achievement Afikpo society like Igbo societies in general was highly competitive and individualistic an Afikpo male s status was related to his age group and the number of yams in his barn which reflected the size of his extended family and ...
Africa has meant many different things to many different people. The word “Africa” may have come from a Greek word meaning “without cold” or from a Latin reference to the “land of the Afri,” probably a Berber tribe. There is also a similar Latin word meaning “warm.” Whatever the origin of the word itself, “Africa” has certain meanings for African Americans and other meanings for white Americans. Within each of these groups, of course, there are many subdivisions, ranging along the entire spectrum of political and cultural opinions.
For some time, it was common for Europeans and white Americans to refer to Africa as the Dark Continent, with a derogatory connotation. The word “Africa” carried with it the meaning of lack of civilization, intellect, and sophistication. As Dorothy Hammond and Alta Jablow observe in The Myth of Africa the West defined Africa as that which the West was not ...
This entry includes two subentries:
To the Civil War
Since Emancipation
In 1652 the Dutch East India Company established a colony on the Cape of Good Hope, intended primarily to provision company ships sailing between Europe and Asia. The colony's first Dutch settlers built Cape Town and farmed in the surrounding countryside. Over the next several decades Germans and Huguenots arrived—many of them fleeing religious persecution in Europe—and intermarried with the Dutch settlers. The descendants of this population forged the Afrikaner ethnic identity, characterized by adherence to Calvinism and the Afrikaans language, which is closely related to Dutch.
From its early years the Cape Colony relied on slaves imported from India, Indonesia, Madagascar, and later, Mozambique. The colonialists imported slaves largely because they considered the local Khoikhoi pastoralists an unsuitable labor force. Attempts of Afrikaner farmers (also known as Boers) to take over land occupied by the Khoikhoi led to two wars (1659–1660 and 1673–1677 The Boers ...
In revisiting the history of Belize, Shoman observes that on the commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of emancipation of 1888, White-Creoles chose to reenact the battle of St. George's Caye. While condemning the African slave workers’ riot of 1894, which attempted to disrupt the order of things in the settlement, Woods had surmised in his Clarion tabloid that:
What a lesson in loyalty and confidence it would constantly be to those very people if their minds turned back vividly to that September day (of 1798) at St. George's Caye when the sturdy Baymen masters and slaves (emphasis added) willingly stood forth shoulder to shoulder to shed their blood to defend the government and protect those they served
(Shoman: 120).
Present day Belize is bounded on the north by Mexico the west and south by Guatemala and on the east by the Caribbean Sea An ongoing border ...Afro-Cuban denotes images and expression of African identity in Cuban culture. It reinforces the historical, cultural, and ideological link of the Spanish Caribbean with Africa. The cultural ramifications of Afro-Cuba symbolize the trajectory of the Cuban nation. As a cultural expression from a marginal space and victimhood, Afro-Cuban has been transformed into a national icon. Many Cubans claim African ancestry. Some have claimed ethnic affinity with the Yoruba, while others claim to be descendants of the Madinga, Fula, or Makua. Afro-Cuban cultural norms and religious practices survived the cruelty of slavery and colonial regimes to emerge as national culture. Havana and Mantanza plantations had a large concentration of the Yoruba slaves who were transported to Cuba between 1817 and 1860 With their tenacity for cultural integrity religiosity and autonomous spaces they established Regla de Ocha a system of beliefs rites and practices derived from a mixture of Roman Catholicism ...
The Afusari, an ethnic group of Nigeria, are also known as Afusare, Izere, Jari, Jarawa, Feserek, Afizarek, Fezere, Jarawan Dutse and Fizere. The Afusari primarily inhabit the Kadima, Plateau, and Bauchi States of Nigeria. They speak a Niger-Congo language. Approximately 275,000 people consider themselves Afusari.
The Agaw primarily inhabit central and northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. They speak an Afro-Asiatic language in the Cushitic cluster, suggesting that their ancestors lived in the region for thousands of years before the arrival of speakers of Semitic languages, such as the Amhara and Tigre Approximately 200 000 ...
The Ahanta primarily inhabit the coast of western Ghana. They speak a Niger-Congo language and are considered part of the larger Akan ethnolinguistic group. Some 160,000 people identify themselves as Ahanta.
Somali politicomilitary leader who played a central role in the collapse of the state and the large-scale violence against civilians that accompanied it, was born in the Mudug region of Somalia, into the Habr Gidir clan. His name is also spelled Maxamed Faarax Caydiid. Little is known about his early life, other than that he served with the Italian colonial police force and in the 1950s received some training in Italy and in the Soviet Union. He served under Somalian president Mohamed Siyad Barre, rising to the rank of general. He was involved in the Ogaden War of 1977–1978, in which Somalia tried and failed to take over what is now Ethiopia’s Region Five and is largely populated by Somalis.
In the 1980s Aidid began to turn against Siyad Barre and when the president suspected him of plotting against him he imprisoned Aidid for six years As ...
The broad Akan grouping includes a number of separate ethnic groups. The Akan speak a group of closely related languages belonging to the Kwa branch of the Niger-Congo family. The Akan peoples share several cultural traits, but each has its own history and customs. In modern Ghana, the term Akan also refers to the country's most widely spoken indigenous language—also known as Twi—which is shared by the Asante, the Fante, and several other Ghanaian peoples. However, the “Akan” language of Ghana is but one of several languages in the larger Akan grouping. The main Akan ethnicities include the Akyem, Akwamu, Asante, Brong, Denkyira, Fante, Nzima, Sefwi, and Wassa of Ghana, and the Baule and Anyi of Côte d’Ivoire Linguistic and archaeological evidence suggests that ancestors of the Akan have inhabited a heartland in south central Ghana for at least 2 000 years However migrants from the north ...
The Akposo primarily inhabit central Togo and adjacent eastern Ghana. They speak a Niger-Congo language and are believed to have been among the indigenous population of Togo before Ewe speakers migrated into the area from the east Approximately 184 000 people living in Togo consider themselves Akposo though ...
The Akuapem inhabit primarily the eastern region of Ghana. They speak a Niger-Congo language and belong to the larger Akan cultural and linguistic group. According to a 2004 population estimate, some 555,000 people consider themselves Akuapem.
