Week 3 Plan of Action

PLAN OF ACTION

This week the focus is on gaining a closer understanding of the multitude of ways in which Africans used their environment focusing especially on processes of production in agriculture, and also in manufacturing. A key point to stress here is that people throughout Africa and on a regular basis produced items for consumption and trade that were surplus to their needs; that is, they were not "subsistence" societies -- what are subsistence societies? Why is it important to understand that they were not subsistence producers? One issue that we will discuss in particular in relation to the idea of subsistence and surplus is African demography and our understanding of population numbers over time. We will discuss why population estimates mattered in the past and how they influence contemporary understanding of Africa and international policies towards Africa. In the required reading, I want you to consider the multitude of ways, including intellectual, by which Africans interacted among their own societies, and with Europeans entering the continent.