Africa is a huge continent, the main inhabitants of which are people of the Negroid race, which is why it is called "black". Tropical Africa (about 20 million km 2) covers the vast territory of the continent, and divides it with North Africa into two unequal areas. Despite the importance and vastness of tropical Africa, there are the least developed countries of this continent, the main occupation of which is agriculture. Some countries are so poor that they do not have railways, and movement on them is carried out only by means of cars, trucks, while residents move on foot, carrying goods on their heads, sometimes overcoming considerable distances.
Tropical Africa is a collective image. The most paradoxical ideas about this land fit into it. These are humid equatorial forests, and tropical deserts of Africa, and huge wide rivers, and wild tribes. For the latter, the main occupation so far is fishing and gathering. All this is tropical Africa, the characteristic of which would be incomplete without its unique animal and plant world.
Rainforests occupy a solid territory, which, however, is decreasing every year due to the felling of this precious pearl of nature. The reasons for deforestation are prosaic: the local population needs new areas for arable land, in addition, valuable species of trees are found in forests, the wood of which brings good profit in the market in developed countries.
Impenetrable forests twined with vines, with dense lush vegetation and unique endemic flora and fauna, are reduced under the onslaught of a rational man and turn into tropical deserts. The local population, mainly engaged in tillage and animal husbandry, does not even think about high technologies - it is not for nothing that the coat of arms of many countries still has an image of a hoe as the main tool of labor. All residents of large and small villages, except men, are engaged in agriculture.
The entire female population, children and the elderly, grow crops that serve as the main food (sorghum, corn, rice), as well as tubers (cassava, sweet potato), from which they make flour and cereals, bake flat cakes. In more developed areas, more expensive crops are cultivated for export: coffee, cocoa, which is sold to developed countries as whole beans and squeezed butter, oil palm, peanuts, as well as spices and sisal. Carpets are woven from the latter, strong ropes, ropes and even clothes are made.
And if in humid equatorial forests it is so difficult to breathe due to the constant evaporation of large-leaved plants and the mass of water and air moisture, the tropical deserts of Africa are practically devoid of water. The main territory, which eventually turns into a desert, is the Sahel, which stretches across the territory of 10 countries. For several years, not a single rain fell there, soil erosion and deforestation, as well as the natural dying of the vegetation cover, led to the fact that this territory turned into barren wasteland almost burnt by winds and covered with cracks. Residents of these places lost their basic means of subsistence, and are forced to move to other places, leaving these territories as zones of ecological disaster.
Tropical Africa is a unique part, which includes a huge territory, unique and original. It is polar different from North Africa. Tropical Africa is still a territory full of secrets and mysteries, a place that, once seen, you can not help but fall in love.
