Abstract
In this chapter, we trace the well-being of people living in the sub-Saharan region of Africa over time, focusing on what are universally considered to be main ingredients of the good life in modern times: health, education, and the income and resources needed to meet basic needs and to prosper. The people of sub-Saharan Africa do not have a common identity, but we have isolated some of the experiences and commonalities that bind the people of the region. The glory of earlier civilizations and of traditional religious beliefs and rituals that cemented the social order and the disruption of African society by foreign incursions during the period of discovery and the Atlantic slave trade and colonialism all had their impact on the African imagination. Well-being in Africa south of the Sahara suffered when people living in Africa were oppressed and exploited between the fifteenth and early twentieth centuries. The winds of change in the 1960s brought freedom and a new sense of dignity. Since independence, there are signs of improvements in key domains of life, but the modern states of sub-Saharan Africa are still addressing the many political and development challenges they face. Optimism and resilience are characteristic of the people living south of the Sahara who have faith that their dreams of a better life will come true.
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Notes
- 1.
Reader (1997) is one of the main sources used in this section.
- 2.
The title of Jared Diamond’s (2012) work on traditional societies.
- 3.
Timbuktu was to become famous for its ancient manuscripts written in Arabic in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.
- 4.
Referring to British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan’s milestone “wind of change” address to the South African parliament in 1960.
- 5.
- 6.
Attributed to Plinus the Elder, the connotation has shifted over time. The saying is thought to have referred to the novel and exotic in earlier times but has also been associated with the unexpected, harmful, or deadly.
- 7.
Ebola was identified by Belgium scientist Peter Piot in 1976. The virus was first detected in a Belgian mission hospital in the Congo, where expectant mothers had been injected with vitamins using the same needle. The research team gave the virus the name of the river Ebola to avoid attaching stigma to the hospital and the region it served (Was zum Teufel ist das? Der Spiegel 2014).
- 8.
Evident in the more than threefold increase in the number of years lost to premature death and disability between 1990 and 2010.
- 9.
Some caution needs to be taken in directly comparing enrollment patterns in the 1870–1930 period to those in the 1990–2012 interval, especially because of the different types of enrollment measures used. If gross rather than net enrollment ratios are used for recent trends, the impression of convergence is even more apparent.
- 10.
More information on the Freedom House methodology can be found at freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2014/methodology.
- 11.
The expectation is that the survey will increase to 35 countries by the completion of the survey round.
- 12.
Iraq has the lowest affect balance score of 148 countries in the 2011 Gallup World Poll and is the only country with a negative overall score. This result is attributable to an exceptionally high level of negative affect (59) in contrast with a relatively low experience of positive emotion (50).
- 13.
More than 25,000 face-to-face interviews were conducted across Botswana, Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti, DR Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zambia. Collectively, these countries account for about three quarters of the region’s population.
- 14.
These scores were obtained by means of an index created from 11 indicators: These indicators included belief in (i) the protective power of certain spiritual people; (ii) the power of juju and other sacred objects; (iii) the evil eye; (iv) witchcraft; (v) evil spirits; (vi) the protective power of sacrificial offerings to ancestors; and (vii) reincarnation. Traditional religious practices were captured by four items asking about (viii) visiting traditional healers; (ix) owning sacred objects; (x) participating in ceremonies to honor ancestors; and (xi) participating in traditional puberty rituals. Those saying they believed or did six of these things were classified by Pew as having high levels of traditional beliefs and practices.
- 15.
Only three countries had figures exceeding 10 %, namely Mauritius (29 %), Seychelles (23 %), and Cabo Verde (13 %).
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Møller, V., Roberts, B. (2017). New Beginnings in an Ancient Region: Well-Being in Sub-Saharan Africa. In: Estes, R., Sirgy, M. (eds) The Pursuit of Human Well-Being. International Handbooks of Quality-of-Life. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39101-4_7
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