A.T. Grove and F.M.G. Klein, Rural Africa (1979), studies the rural environments in which most Africans live; and Kenneth Swindell and David J. Siddle, Rural Change in Tropical Africa (1990), looks at the nature of rural change and the problems of African rural development. Josef Gugler and William G. Flanagan, Urbanization and Social Change in West Africa (1978), analyzes the process of increasing urbanization in West Africa and the related social changes; and Margaret Peil and Pius O. Sada, African Urban Society (1984), views changing urban society in West Africa. Anthony O’Connor, The African City (1983, reissued 2007), examines the forms, functions, and patterns of growth of African cities, especially in the postindependence period; as does Richard E. Stren and Rodney R. White, African Cities in Crisis: Managing Rapid Urban Growth (1989). John Innes Clarke The economy
The general economic situation is explored in P. Robson and D.A. Lury (eds.), The Economies of Africa (1969, reprinted 2013); Michael Hodd, African Economic Handbook (1986); Melville J. Herskovitz and Mitchell Harwitz (eds.), Economic Transition in Africa (1964); A.M. O’Connor, The Geography of Tropical African Development, 2nd ed. (1978); Andrew M. Kamarck, The Economics of African Development, rev. ed. (1971); Ralph A. Austen, African Economic History: Internal Development and External Dependency (1987, reprinted 1996); Wilfrid Knapp, North West Africa: A Political and Economic Survey (1977); D. Hobart Houghton, The South African Economy, 4th ed. (1976); and O. Aboyade, Issues in the Development of Tropical Africa (1976). The problems of regional economic integration are treated by Adebayo Adedeji and Timothy M. Shaw, Economic Crisis in Africa (1985); Carol Lancaster and John Williamson (eds.), African Debt and Financing (1986, reissued 1996); Arthur Hazlewood (ed.), African Integration and Disintegration: Case Studies in Economic and Political Union (1967); and B.W.T. Mutharika, Toward Multinational Economic Cooperation in Africa (1972). Useful books on mineral resources and industrialization include Oye Ogunbadejo, The International Politics of Africa’s Strategic Minerals (1985); and A.F. Ewing, Industry in Africa (1968). Natural resources and environmental problems are covered by Neville Rubin and William M. Warren (eds.), Dams in Africa: An Inter-disciplinary Study of Man-Made Lakes in Africa (1968); D.F. Owen, Man in Tropical Africa: The Environmental Predicament (1973); David Dalby, R.J. Harrison Church, and Fatima Bezzaz (eds.), Drought in Africa 2, rev. and expanded ed. (1977); and Bonaya Adhi Godana, Africa’s Shared Water Resources: Legal and Institutional Aspects of the Nile, Niger, and Senegal River Systems (1985). Agricultural development and the agrarian crisis are presented by William Allan, The African Husbandman (1965, reissued 2004); Prabhu Pingali, Yves Bigot, and Hans Binswanger, Agricultural Mechanization and the Evolution of Farming Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa (1987); John W. Mellor, Christopher L. Delgado, and Malcolm J. Blackie (eds.), Accelerating Food Production in Sub-Saharan Africa (1987); Paul Harrison, The Greening of Africa: Breaking Through in the Battle for Land and Food, 2nd ed. (1996); Stephen K. Commins, Michael F. Lofchie, and Rhys Payne (eds.), Africa’s Agrarian Crisis: The Roots of Famine (1986); and Robert H. Bates and Michael F. Lofchie (eds.), Agricultural Development in Africa: Issues of Public Policy (1980). Akinlawon Ladipo Mabogunje
Africa
Roman territory, North Africa
Africa, in ancient Roman history, the first North African territory of Rome, at times roughly corresponding to modern Tunisia. It was acquired in 146 bc after the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War.
Initially, the province comprised the territory that had been subject to Carthage in 149 bc; this was an area of about 5,000 square miles (13,000 square km), divided from the kingdom of Numidia in the west by a ditch and embankment running southeast from Thabraca (modern Ṭabarqah) to Thaenae (modern Thīnah). About 100 bc the province’s boundary was extended farther westward, almost as far as the present Algerian-Tunisian border.
The province grew in importance during the 1st century bc, when Julius Caesar and, later, the emperor Augustus founded a total of 19 colonies in it. Most notable among these was the new Carthage, which the Romans called Colonia Julia Carthago; it rapidly became the second city in the Western Roman Empire. Augustus extended Africa’s borders southward as far as the Sahara and eastward to include Arae Philaenorum, at the southernmost point of the Gulf of Sidra. In the west he combined the old province of Africa Vetus (“Old Africa”) with what Caesar had designated as Africa Nova (“New Africa”)—the old kingdoms of Numidia and Mauretania—so that the province’s western boundary was the Ampsaga (modern Rhumel) River in modern northeastern Algeria. The province generally retained those dimensions until the late 2nd century ad, when a new province of Numidia, created in the western end of Africa, was formally constituted under the emperor Septimius Severus. A century later Diocletian, in his reorganization of the empire, formed two provinces, Byzacena and Tripolitania, from the southern and eastern parts of the old province.
The original territory annexed by Rome was populated by indigenous Libyans who lived in small villages and had a relatively simple culture. In 122 bc, however, an abortive attempt by Gaius Sempronius Gracchus to colonize Africa aroused the interest of Roman farmers and investors. In the 1st century bc Roman colonization, coupled with Augustus’ successful quieting of hostile nomadic movements in the area, created conditions that led to four centuries of prosperity. Between the 1st and 3rd century ad, private estates of considerable size appeared, many public buildings were erected, and an export industry in cereals, olives, fruit, and hides flourished. Substantial elements of the urban Libyan population became Romanized, and many communities received Roman citizenship long before it was extended to the whole empire (ad 212). Africans increasingly entered the imperial administration, and the area even produced an emperor, Septimius Severus (reigned ad 193–211). The province also claimed an important Christian church, which had more than 100 bishops by ad 256 and produced such luminaries as the Church Fathers Tertullian, Cyprian, and St. Augustine of Hippo. The numerous and magnificent Roman ruins at various sites in Tunisia and Libya bear witness to the region’s prosperity under Roman rule.
By the end of the 4th century, however, city life had decayed. The Germanic Vandals under Gaiseric reached the province in 430 and soon made Carthage their capital. Roman civilization in Africa entered a state of irreversible decline, despite the numerical inferiority of the Vandals and their subsequent destruction by the Byzantine general Belisarius in 533. When Arab invaders took Carthage in 697, the Roman province of Africa offered little resistance.