While physically one landmass, Africa is historically and culturally divided. It might be useful to think of Africa as two continents. The Sahara Desert effectively divides the North from the South. In the past and in the present, interaction between these two parts of Africa is limited.
Civilizations developed rather differently. In the North, there were interactions with Asia and Europe over the millennia and centuries. The South was largely isolated. The gene pools are different — the usual markers of skin color, facial features, and hair types distinguish the North African from the Subsaharan African.
The Sahara Desert divides Africa as effectively as the Atlantic or the Pacific divides the Americas from the rest of the world, as historian Tim Marshall writes:
The top third begins on the Mediterranean coastlines of the North African Arabic-speaking countries. The coastal plains quickly become the Sahara, the world’s largest dry desert, which is almost as big as the USA. Directly below the Sahara is the Sahel region, a semi-arid, rock-strewn, sandy strip of land measuring more than 3,000 miles at its widest points and stretching from Gambia on the Atlantic coast through Niger, Chad and right across to Eritrea on the Red Sea. The word Sahel comes from the Arabic sahil, which means coast, and is how the people living in the region think of it — as the shoreline of the vast sand sea of the Sahara. It is another sort of shore, one where the influence of Islam diminishes. From the Sahel to the Mediterranean the vast majority of people are Muslims. South of it there is far more diversity in religion.
Prior to the appearance of Islam, North Africa was as religiously diverse as Subsaharan Africa. Jews, Christians, and animists lived in a peaceful coexistence along with a variety of other tribal belief systems. In the late 600s, the Islamic conquest of North Africa changed the spiritual landscape.
By around 700 A.D., Muslim armies converted large numbers of North Africans to Islam. Those who didn’t convert were sometimes allowed to retain their native religions as they lived in various forms of servitude or slavery. Some clung too fiercely to their beliefs and were killed for that reason. Synagogues and churches were often destroyed and replaced by mosques.
By contrast, Subsaharan Africa retains a more balanced menu of religions. Although Muslim invaders made some progress there, they did not dominate the region as they had in the North. In the Sub-Saharan region, native religions have survived, whereas they were largely exterminated in North Africa. Likewise, Christianity has persisted in the South, but is nearly extinct in the North.
Subsaharan Africa hosts a diversity of climates and correspondingly a diversity of agriculture. A larger variety of crops is grown there than in the North. Agricultural products are a major export for Sub-Saharan nations, as are a variety of ores from the area’s mines. Exports include: uranium, copper, bauxite, and gold.
