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West Africa

West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo, as well as Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom Overseas Territory).[8][9] The population of West Africa is estimated at 419 million[1][2] people as of 2021, and at 381,981,000 as of 2017, of which 189,672,000 were female and 192,309,000 male.[3] The region is demographically[10] and economically[11] one of the fastest growing on the African continent.

For the region of the African Union, see Regions of the African Union § West.

West Africa

5,112,903 km2 (1,974,103 sq mi) (7th)

418,544,337 (2021 est.) (3rd)[1][2]
381,981,000 (female: 189,672,000; male: 192,309,000 (2017 est.[3])

49.2/km2 (127.5/sq mi)

West African

Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS; established 1975)

US$2.091 trillion (2022) (23rd)[4]

$2,500 (2013)[5]

$810 billion (2023)[6][7]

$1,937 (2023)[6]

List

011 – West Africa
202 – Sub-Saharan Africa
002 – Africa
001 – World

Early history in West Africa included a number of prominent regional powers that dominated different parts of both the coastal and internal trade networks, such as the Mali and Gao Empires. West Africa sat at the intersection of trade routes between Arab-dominated North Africa and further south on the continent, the source of specialized goods such as gold, advanced iron-working, and ivory. After European exploration encountered rich local economies and kingdoms, the Atlantic slave trade built on already existing slave systems to provide labor for colonies in the Americas. After the end of the slave trade in the early 19th century, European nations, especially France and Britain, continued to exploit the region through colonial relationships. For example, they continued exporting a number of extractive goods, including labor-intensive agricultural crops like cocoa and coffee, forestry products like tropical timber, and mineral resources like gold. Since independence, many West African countries, like Ivory Coast, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal, have played important roles in the regional and global economies.


West Africa has a rich ecology, with strong biodiversity and several distinct regions. The area's climate and ecology are heavily influenced by the dry Sahara to the north and east, which provides dry winds during the Harmattan, as well as the Atlantic Ocean to the south and west, which provides seasonal monsoons. This mixture of climates gives West Africa a rich array of biomes, from biodiversity-rich tropical forests to drylands supporting rare and endangered fauna such as pangolins, rhinoceros, and elephants. Because of the pressure for economic development, many of these ecologies are threatened by processes like deforestation, biodiversity loss, overfishing, pollution from mining, plastics and other industries, and extreme changes resulting from climate change in West Africa.

Nigerian Civil War

First Liberian Civil War

Second Liberian Civil War

Guinea-Bissau Civil War

Ivorian Civil War

Sierra Leone Rebel War

Mali War

 

Benin

 

Burkina Faso

 

Cape Verde

 

Ivory Coast

 

The Gambia

 

Ghana

 

Guinea

 

Guinea-Bissau

 

Liberia

 

Mali

 

Niger

 

Nigeria

 

Senegal

 

Sierra Leone

 

Togo

 

Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

The Bandia Nature Reserve in Senegal (French: Réserve de Bandia), animal life includes: , zebras, rhinos, a variety of antelopes, buffaloes, monkeys, crocodiles, tortoises. apes and a variety of exotic birds.[56]

giraffes

Nouakchott–Lagos Highway

Lagos–Nouakchott Highway

Dakar–Lagos Highway

Lagos–Dakar Highway

Trans-African Highway 7 in the network

Trans-African Highway

Prehistoric West African Architecture

Ancient West African Architecture

Medieval West African Architecture

Further information in the sections of Architecture of Africa:

Capital cities of West Africa

Praia, Cape Verde

Praia, Cape Verde

Dakar, Senegal

Dakar, Senegal

Lomé, Togo

Lomé, Togo

Porto-Novo, Benin

Porto-Novo, Benin

Niamey, Niger

Niamey, Niger

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso

Freetown, Sierra Leone

Freetown, Sierra Leone

Banjul, Gambia

Banjul, Gambia

Conakry, Guinea

Conakry, Guinea

Bissau, Guinea-Bissau

Bissau, Guinea-Bissau

Monrovia, Liberia

Monrovia, Liberia

Bamako, Mali

Bamako, Mali

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Nouakchott, Mauritania

Abuja, Nigeria

Abuja, Nigeria

Accra, Ghana

Accra, Ghana

Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Abidjan, Ivory Coast

Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast

Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast

Jamestown, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

Jamestown, Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

African historiography

Agroecology in West Africa

 â€“ Arabic word referring to people whose first language is not Arabic

Ajami

 â€“ 2013–2016 major disease outbreak

Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa

List of regions of Africa

 â€“ West African money, a form of archaic money unique to West Africa

Manillas

 â€“ Alphabet for the Manding languages of West Africa

N'Ko script

 â€“ Northernmost region of Africa

North Africa

 â€“ Ancient writing system, an indigenously developed West African writing system

Nsibidi Script

Sub-Saharan Africa

Central Africa

 â€“ Writing system

Vai syllabary

 â€“ One of the five cratons of the Precambrian basement rock of Africa that make up the African Plate

West African Craton

 â€“ Disputed territory in North-western Africa

Western Sahara

Akyeampong, Emmanuel Kwaku. Themes in West Africa's History (2006).

Brydon, Lynne. "Constructing Avatime: questions of history and identity in a West African polity, c. 1690s to the twentieth century." Journal of African History 49.1 (2008): 23–42.

online

Collins, Robert O. African History: Western African History (1990).

Davidson, Basil. A History of West Africa, 1000–1800 (1978), numerous editions

Delavignette, Robert. Freedom and Authority in French West Africa (Routledge, 2018).

Dueppen, Stephen A. "The archaeology of West Africa, ca. 800 BCE to 1500 CE." History Compass 14.6 (2016): 247–263.

Edgerton, Robert B. The Fall of the Asante Empire: The Hundred-Year War For Africa'S Gold Coast (2002).

Fage, J. D. A Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa Published in European Languages (2nd ed. 1994); updated in Stanley B. Alpern, ed. Guide to Original Sources for Precolonial Western Africa (2006).

Festus, Jacob et al. eds. History of West Africa (Vol. 1, 1989).

Greene, S. E. Sacred Sites and the Colonial Encounter: A History of Meaning and Memory in Ghana (2002).

Griswold, Wendy. Writing African women: Gender, popular culture and literature in West Africa (Zed Books Ltd., 2017).

Ham, Anthony. West Africa (2013) .

online

Hayward, Derek F., and Julius Oguntoyinbo. Climatology of West Africa (Routledge, 2019).

Hopkins, Antony Gerald. An economic history of West Africa (2014) .

online

Huber, Caroline, Lyn Finelli, and Warren Stevens. "The economic and social burden of the 2014 Ebola outbreak in West Africa." Journal of infectious diseases 218.Supplement_5 (2018): S698–S704.

Kane, Ousmane Oumar, Beyond Timbuktu: An Intellectual History of Muslim West Africa (2016).

Lavallée, Emmanuelle; Roubaud, François (3 June 2019). . The Journal of Development Studies. 55 (6): 1067–1080. doi:10.1080/00220388.2018.1438597. S2CID 158886041.

"Corruption in the Informal Sector: Evidence from West Africa"

Law, Robin (1985). "Human Sacrifice in Pre-Colonial West Africa". African Affairs. 84 (334): 53–87. :10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a097676. JSTOR 722523.

doi

Mann, Gregory (2005). "Locating Colonial Histories: Between France and West Africa". The American Historical Review. 110 (2): 409–434. :10.1086/ahr/110.2.409. JSTOR 10.1086/531320.

doi

Martinez-Alvarez, Melisa; Jarde, Alexander; Usuf, Effua; Brotherton, Helen; Bittaye, Mustapha; Samateh, Ahmadou L; Antonio, Martin; Vives-Tomas, Joan; D'Alessandro, Umberto; Roca, Anna (May 2020). "COVID-19 pandemic in west Africa". The Lancet Global Health. 8 (5): e631–e632. :10.1016/S2214-109X(20)30123-6. PMID 32246918.

doi

Mazrui, Ali A. Islam and the English language in East and West Africa (Routledge, 2017).

Meillassoux, Claude, ed. The development of indigenous trade and markets in West Africa: studies presented and discussed at the tenth International African seminar at Fourah Bay college, Freetown, December 1969 (Routledge, 2018).

Mendonsa, Eugene L. West Africa: An Introduction to Its History (2002)

O'Brien, Donal Cruise, Richard Rathbone, John Dunn, eds. Contemporary West African States (2002)

online free to borrow

Soares, Benjamin (March 2014). "The Historiography of Islam in West Africa: An Anthropologist's View". The Journal of African History. 55 (1): 27–36. :10.1017/S0021853713000819. hdl:1887/25369. S2CID 162823960.

doi

Tonkin, Elizabeth. Narrating our pasts: The social construction of oral history (Cambridge university press, 1995), on West Africa

Westermann, Diedrich, and Margaret Arminel Bryan. The Languages of West Africa: Handbook of African Languages (Routledge, 2017).

– African Studies at Columbia University

West Africa by Region and Country

– Ouestaf, a West African online newspaper (in French)

ouestaf.com

Archived 7 March 2006 at the Wayback Machine – An online West African newspaper (in French)

Loccidental

– An e-journal on West Africa research and scholarship (in English)

West Africa Review

is the first published writing about Western Africa, dating from 1695 (in English)

The Voyage of the Sieur Le Maire, to the Canary Islands, Cape-Verde, Senegal, and Gambia