One of the reasons why Africa was and is so highly appealing to outsiders is because it is amongst the world’s greatest water and mineral resources(381). The modern European colonization of Africa was begun by the Portuguese. They established trading stations on the coast in the 15th and 16th centuries. The interior of what Europeans called "the Dark Continent", however, was not explored or colonized until the 19th century. By the early 20th century nearly all of Africa had been subjected to European rule. During early explorations Europeans, the Portuguese to be specific, took immediate notice to the wealth of the African continent by building forts at coastal trading posts in Western Africa, where ships could be loaded with the local slaves, gold, ivory, and palm products in exchange for alcohol, guns, and sugar; the vast wealth of certain areas in the Western African coast were given nicknames such as, Ivory Coast, Gold Coast, and Slave Coast for their chief products. Portuguese ships took gold from Eastern Africa to pay for the silks and spices of Asia(389). This world region has clear, mainly coastal, boundaries. In the colonial late 1800s and early 1900s, trade routes and connections moved away from the land crossing of the Sahara that connected northernmost Africa with the rest of the continent and toward the ocean routes linked with the expanding European global economy(380). Africa has a wealth of natural resources. Overall, however, Africa's potential mineral resources are underused, and the economic benefits from their exploitation seldom return to Africans. Some large deposits, such as the iron ores of Equatorial Guinea, remain unused at present because of internal political strife or the lack of internal transportation. Until the 1990s, many African countries possessed few sources of fossil fuels. In the 1990s, evolving offshore oil exploration technology identified major oil fields along the Atlantic coast of Africa. Gabon and Angola became important producers based on multinational oil corporation investments in areas judged to be safe from internal conflicts. The tropical climates make it possible to grow a variety of crops, including yams, rice, cassava, corn, millet, and sorghum that are the basis of life for most Africans, who also sell them in the growing urban markets. Commercial crops for export to countries include bananas, cocoa, coffee, tea, palm oil, rubber, cotton, tropical fruits, and peanuts. Forest resources are extensive in the equatorial countries, and plentiful fish resources occur in the major rivers and in the areas of cold ocean currents off northwestern and southwestern Africa. Both forests and fisheries are experiencing increased rates of exploitation and depletion because of demand from the world's wealthier countries. Africa also possesses the natural resources for tourism. These include sunshine, coastal beaches, and large numbers of big animals that can be viewed in the protected national parks of countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia, and the Republic of South Africa(385). Indigenous African groups, particularly in Western Africa, established empires based on the wealth created by trade in salt, gold, ivory, and slaves(387).
Contemporary World Regional Geography Connect Plus. (2015). McGraw-Hill Science Engineering