WHEN WOMEN COUNT

Plus Other Needed Adjustments To National Economic Equations 

Television footage from the early 1970s shows the first women elected to New Zealand’s Parliament as she was escorted with all due pomp and ceremony into the royal chamber. Some very attentive men joined an entire nation watching  Marilyn Waring swear with uncommon vigor to serve her country and constituency. 

She was 22.

More sheep farmer than the flower child many mistook her for, Waring’s short speech signaled to approving women across the land that their concerns would no longer be ignored. In this moment of emancipation, everything seemed possible. 

Fast-forward two years. As head of the Public Expenditures committee, Waring found herself putting together the national budget. It was almost as if she was being guided. Running her finger down columns of figures measuring the nation’s transactions, she was surprised to find not a single line item for women’s work at home. It should have taken up pages of accounting. But New Zealand’s single biggest occupation wasn’t listed at all.

This is bizarre, Waring thought. As she pointed out to her male colleagues, no one puts in longer hours than women raising children. While "on call" to their round-the-clock needs, mothers acting as principle teacher, nurturer, nurse and lifeguard also attend to the most or all of the maintenance, accounts and logistics for households as complex as small businesses. Yet this huge labor sector is completely missing from the national budget. 

WOMEN’S WORK
No one could argue the facts. But sheep farming had taught Waring that when nature’s cooperative yin/yang survival strategy gets this far out of balance, any economic system that so thoroughly excludes the mothers on whom it depends must eventually collapse. 

Along the way, she knew, the feminine side of human nature and entire populations invariably suffers the most. Sure enough, when she superimposed a graph showing a mother’s typical daily chores over a similar graph of a man working a salaried job, most of the empty "time off" blocks in the male chart were filled in on the mom’s.  

When census takers finally tallied the toil of Aeotearoa’s huge lost tribe of unpaid women workers, they found that the hours put into raising children and managing household tasks exceeded the value of all mining in this Maori country by a multiple of three, and all manufacturing by 1000%. Across the Tasman Sea, based on equivalent wages for people paid to provide child and senior care, janitorial and maintenance work, taxi and delivery services, all this unpaid work was worth 571,000 full-time jobs in Australia alone. 

Most North American households still cannot afford the cost of replacing a mother’s tasks with paid hands. Penney Kome, author of Somebody Has To Do It: Whose Work Is Housework? calls this "invisible national treasure" an "enormous pool of unpaid workers who can be forgotten when it’s time to draw up national policies such as childcare, elder care, health care, unemployment insurance, pensions, or social assistance." [Ottawa Citizen May 9/97] 

It was no coincidence that the first women in New Zealand’s parliament was the first to notice that women who often toiled like sharecroppers taking care of their families received almost nothing from governments busy shoveling public tax dollars into the maws of corporations that sponsored their elections, but paid little or no taxes themselves. 

"The question arises," said Waring, "which is the biggest industry? Which is the biggest productive and service sector…and why can’t those allowances be extended to that sector?" 

FREE AT LAST
It wasn’t just women put at risk by a skewed economics that counts all monetary transactions as a "plus", without ever debiting the downside. The young parliamentarian soon joined her neighbors in opposing a proposed a mountaintop mine that would have destroyed their centuries-old way of life by poisoning the abundant croplands below. 

Their campaign was successful. And in 1975, Waring became an international celebrity after forcing a "non-confidence" vote against her own party for failing to uphold New Zealand’s status as a Nuclear Free Zone against visiting US warships. When Waring "crossed the floor" of parliament to join the opposition, Kiwis cheered, the government collapsed—and the bullying boats had to take their radioactive mischief elsewhere. 

Why is it that peace has no market value, while the terrible waste and destruction of war drives the world’s biggest economies, Waring wondered? Surely, any national economy based on building and buying weapons can only lead to constant war. 

On the other hand, how much is the serenity of not living near nuclear weapons or a nuclear reactor worth? How does the fluctuating "value" of digital dollars equate with happy children, abundant crops and undisturbed wildlife? 

It doesn’t, she saw. A global accounting system that counts monetary exchange as the sole yardstick of "value" must be deeply flawed. The more she looked, the more it seemed to Waring that national accounting practices "had been co-opted by a pathological value system." What else could you call a system that counts making, storing and using nuclear bombs as "good" for national and global economies? 

HIDDEN CODES
Marilyn Waring traveled to more than 35 countries searching for a different budgetary model. Everywhere she went, she was startled to find that national budgets never accounted for women’s worth outside the paid workforce. Nor did their accounting practices ever consider many other values most people consider vitally important.

Where did the notion of "Gross National Product" come from? Waring wondered. And why are monetary transactions so universally applied as the sole measure of national worth in countries where relatively little cash changes hands? 

The secret, someone told her, is that all UN member nations must use the same accounting procedures. This system of National Accounting was first set forth in the 1940s by two men as a way for Britain to pay for the Second World War. They had no idea that their short-term economic equations would become the price of UN admission for member states that today governs the lives of nearly everyone on Earth. 

On learning that the only set of National Accounting available for public purview is kept at the UN, Marilyn Waring flew to New York, where she spent weeks poring over this arcane accounting lore. The more she read, the more she was appalled. 

Said to be "Applicable to economies around the world," formulas that were nothing of the sort simply ignored such key cultural and economic contributions as small scale farming, and women’s unpaid work. Waring concluded that the worldwide economic system was rigged against nearly everyone who participated in it. 

She started asking how such disastrous distortions could override national sovereignty and self-determination to favor a few rich folks over seven billion other wild and human lives? And how is it, she wondered, that a woman hired for housekeeping counts as a contributor to the GNP—but if she marries her employer and continues doing the same work without pay, her labor is seen as a "loss" by the same system of measurement? 

None of the economists she talked to had ever heard of National Accounting. 

PAY UP
The enthusiastic participation of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank in this global "pyramid scheme" raised another flag. As Kome pointed out, most projects implemented by those organizations "have tended to overlook women’s struggles to feed and support their families. Instead, foreign agencies consulted with the local men, and imposed expensive and ill-fated projects, directed at bringing developing nations into the monetary economy. Somehow the profit never seemed to stay in the community."

Because subsistence agriculture is specifically excluded from their calculations, Kome continued, "IMF and World Bank projects often evict mothers and their families from small patches of arable land—where they are, at least, reasonably well nourished—to create huge plantations with cash crops. The nation’s GDP flourishes, but the local children go hungry." [Ottawa Citizen May 9/97]

The world’s accounting system is all wrong, Waring revealed to audiences attracted by her insights, because "national accounting only recognizes currency changing hands." Raising children, growing food, supporting partners, protecting the environment on which all depend—these and many related activities are accorded no value at all unless money is involved. 

For this Kiwi sheep farmer, it all came down to a fundamental question about what we really cherish. "Ask people what they value most in life, they will say my children, my partner, my health, my religion," she told an interviewer. "Usually, it’s something that can’t be bought." 

SPEAK ENGLISH 
But the economists she talked to seemed to be coming from other planets, considering their profound ignorance of the one they were actually on. Perfecting "the art of the dumb question," Waring kept asking them to translate their jargon into recognizable English that made some practical sense. 

The learned ones patiently explained that her concerns were irrelevant. Filling the air with poison gases, lacing food and water with pesticides, stripping the planet’s solar radiation shielding, and hastening climate collapse are all "externalities" that can be ignored they said. Until people get sick. Or start dying. That’s always counted as a plus, because money invariably changes hands.  

"Is any activity that make the Gross National Product (GNP) of countries go up, considered good?" Waring asked. 

"Absolutely," replied academics poring over abstractions that had little to do with real lives. "Money paid for goods and services always adds to the economy," they chanted.  

"But what about the Exxon Valdez oil spill that devastated Alaska wildlife and shorelines?" Waring wanted to know. Very profitable, she was told, with millions of cleanup and salvage dollars pumped into corporate coffers and the local economy.

"What about the white slave trade in Eastern Europe, the sex industry in Indonesia and Thailand, prostitution in central and eastern Europe?" she asked. These activities, too, are "an important part of the Gross National Product in those countries." 

Deeply troubled by these revelations, Waring returned to farming after her term in office. She also took the time to earn a PhD in political economy, before returning in 1988 to rock the mostly male world of economics with a book on all those missing women.

Counting for Nothing: What Men Value And What Women Are Worth was an eye-opening exposé of women’s productive and reproductive work missing from the National Accounting of more than 140 nations.

It received some serious attention. John Kenneth Galbraith praised her contribution as an overdue antidote to badly flawed assumptions. Gloria Steinem called Waring "a populist and an excellent explainer [who] puts human beings and human values into economics." 

For example, everyone talks about the importance of "community", Waring liked to say. But community "is usually mom or daughter or aunty or neighbor or some other woman who already works 16 to 18 hours a day."

Waring thought that if she and her cohorts "could demonstrate overwhelmingly that women’s unpaid household work could be defined as servitude," then the countries that stood for human rights—places like Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Scandinavia—would be in breach of their fundamental obligations and "would have to start practicing what they were legally bound to do."  

She was right. In 1993 the system of National Accounting were expanded to include all of women’s subsistence agriculture, including activities such as carrying water and collecting fuel wood. 

Four years later, Saskatchewan homemaker Carol Lees gave this process another shove when she refused to fill out her census form. Lees told the media she was willing to risk jail rather than list her many work hours at home as "zero" just because she wasn’t being paid for them. She had a point. The UN had just found that women do two-thirds of the world’s work, while receiving less than 5% of its income, and owning less than 1% of all assets. The United Nations further calculated that if women’s work were counted worldwide, their unpaid labor would be worth $11 trillion a year. [Ottawa Citizen May 9/97]

Mothers Are Women teamed up with Lees to win three new questions about caregiving hours in the next Canadian census. But Statistics Canada already knew that unpaid women were doing work equivalent to more than third of the country’s GNP.

1997 turned out to be a banner year for women. A "Platform for Action" adopted at a World Conference on Women in Beijing enjoined governments to start counting women’s unremunerated work. Caregiving for dependents and elderly family members, subsistence farming, and women’s self-employment or small businesses were to be included in these reckonings. [Ottawa Citizen May 9/97]

Seven countries did just that.

HAZEL HENDERSON
On the other side of the globe, Hazel Henderson was also looking at an economic system blind to billions of women workers. A self-described "housewife" in New York City, Henderson found a new calling after leading a successful campaign to enact groundbreaking air pollution laws during the 1960s. Like Waring, she would soon became a frequent consultant to governments, as well as an international speaker on a "new economics" that was newly inclusive.

"I realize that I’m operating in a patriarchy, but then every other country in the world is a patriarchy," Henderson told Wired’s Kevin Kelly. "The UN is the biggest patriarchy of all. I feel like Virginia Woolf. I have no country. I’m a woman. I have no country. That means my country is my planet," [Wired Feb/97]

Describing her mission as "just to weigh in on the side of life in human evolution—that’s all," Hazel Henderson proposed to the first Earth Summit that economists go back and take all the important courses they’d missed—subjects like "ecology, cultural anthropology, social psychology, thermodynamics, and every other discipline concerned with human development." 

Calling such a broadened economic perspective "the politics of reconceptualization," Henderson described a more harmonious economic vision in her books, Politics of the Solar Age and Building A Win-Win World.

Was anybody listening? Opinion-shaping "news" anchors kept reciting government and corporate press releases, cheering each upsurge in consumer spending without ever mentioning the toll all this extra consumption, debt and pollution is placing on this wounded world—and generations of finned, feathered, furred and two-leggeds to come. 

But then, denial is the strongest human propensity. 

"For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves," lawyer and lecturer Bill Reese pointed out. "The lies are necessary because, without them, the truth would stop us from doing stupid things. Economic growth is one of those stupid things, because if we really thought about its impact, we would have to change our entire worldview." 

INSTRUMENT FLYING
After all, "Money is not wealth," Hazel Henderson kept insisting. "I have been going around these past twenty years giving thousands of speeches about how ridiculous it is to measure a country’s progress using GNP. I always like to compare it to flying a Boeing 747 with nothing on the instrument panel except an oil pressure gauge." [Sustainability Spring 1990]

For a more accurate measure of planetary progress, she suggested, "Newscasters and policy-makers should look to the Genuine Progress Indicator to provide a more balanced measure of the economy." 

Unlike GNP, the GPI assigns value to leisure time, unpaid housework and volunteerism. Genuine Progress indicators also subtract crime and family breakdown, resource depletion, traffic accidents, and other social debits counted as "pluses" in the global system of National Accounting. 

"The GPI recognizes the importance families, communities and nature play in economic well-being," Henderson told her audiences. "Under the current national accounts system, these factors are ignored." [adbusters.org] 

Next to the faulty GNP gauge and a wildly spinning compass, a dozen "Quality of Life" instruments Hazel Henderson helped duct-tape to our spaceship’s instrument panel can help us gauge how well we’re really doing with regard to what matters most. 

How does your neighborhood and nation measure up in terms of:

Income distribution: Is the poverty gap widening or narrowing? 

Social and environmental costs: Depletion of nonrenewable resources.

Ratio of energy input for goods produced: Measures efficiency and recycling. 

Military/civilian budget ratio: Effectiveness of government/diplomatic skills. 

Education: Literacy levels, school dropout and repetition rates. 

Health: Infant mortality, birth weights, weight/height/age ratio. 

Nutrition, shelter, availability and costs of medical care.

Basic services: water purity, sanitation, telephones, electrification. 

Political participation and democratic process.

Status of minority and ethnic populations and women.

Water, soil and food qualities, air pollution in urban areas. 

Environmental depletion: Hectares of agricultural lands and forests lost annually.

Bio-diversity and species loss.

Child development. 

While Marilyn Waring was rousing people Down Under, Hazel Henderson went to work with Germany’s Green Party, and Soviet economists at the USSR Academy of Sciences to pitch the adoption of a new "national report card" that would enable real comparisons between nations "based on genuine progress and genuinely sustainable development." [Whole Earth Review Fall/95] 

The idea took hold in South America, where Henderson next joined a group of experts from five continents in advising Venezuelan President Perez on an economic framework that looked at new ways of measuring development. At a meeting of non-aligned nations, 15 countries—Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Jamaica, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, Peru, Senegal, Venezuela, Yugoslavia, and Zimbabwe—formally accepted the new Quality of Life guidelines, creating their own economic summit for the southern hemisphere. 

The "G-15" will first meet in Kuala Lumpur for the June 2005 South Economic Summit. The G-15 represents 30% of the world’s population; the G-7 13%. 

FULL COST PRICING
Here was real progress. But the overdeveloped nations in the North remain in urgent need of a similar overhaul never mentioned on the nightly news. 

"You cannot have a system where a few people are accumulating an enormous amount of material wealth and power and still have an ecologically sane and peaceful society," Henderson points out today. Especially when most of the destructive accoutrements of our fast-paced high-tech lifestyles—are not being charged at their full health and maintenance costs. [Red Herring Apr/98]

The solution, say new economists like Waring and Henderson, is to move immediately to "full cost pricing" that accurately transfers the costs of producing, using and recycling products onto the balance sheets of producers and buyers. Once gasoline is priced at its true "cost" at the pumps, for example, a wheezing planet might have a chance to catch her breath.

When we insist on full-cost pricing, and turn away from warehouses jammed with products so cheap they can only be made in child sweatshops and forced labor camps, we will begin to see more durable and efficiently made goods that benefit everyone involved. We will also experience "a greatly enhanced quality of life" as the pace of our pathologies slows down, Hazel Henderson believes. 

Until then, she plans to stay busy "designing new cultural DNA and splicing it into cultural codes, as well as identifying malfunctioning DNA strands, such as GNP, which generate pathological patterns in the body politic."

THE NEW WORLD ORDER IS US
With the entire planet creaking under the press of populations striving for survival and more stuff, we are at a bifurcation point, Henderson believes. "We need to pull back and take a wide shot and see what the whole thing looks like." 

Bifurcation occurs when whatever comes afterwards radically diverges from what came before A sharp turn away from monetary exchange is already seeing countries and corporations using computer networks to swap billions of dollars of services and goods—without exchanging a single dollar, dinar or dinero. 

This is huge, Henderson says. This changes every economic equation. 

"When you tell economists we are going to a new system that doesn’t use money, they get very upset," she laughs. But bartering over electronic trading systems is already weakening the money monopoly, she points out. Local currencies are also springing up everywhere, "raising consciousness, building community, and restructuring our economies in a sustainable direction." [Red Herring Apr/98]

Ignored by a $24 trillion global economy that is largely a digital mirage, today’s "hidden economy" is forging ahead, Henderson says, with person-to-person barter, reciprocity, sharing and cooperation carrying out an estimated $16 trillion worth of trades every year –without exchanging a single cent. [Wired Feb/97]

Now add another annual $12 trillion or so of uncounted women’s work, and the picture that emerges is quite unlike the economic picture lauded on the virtual "news".  

Which is more real to you? Which would you rather support? And what does it all mean? As Hazel Henderson says, "Things are getting a lot better and a lot worse, at the same time." 

And the things that really matter aren’t for sale at all.

# # #

ACCESS

MARILYN WARING AUDIO
http://aurora.icaap.org/talks/waring.htm#audio1
rtsp://chinstrap.cs.athabascau.ca:8080/mmserv/au/journal/aurora/waring.ra

MARILYN WARING TALK (Transcript)
http://aurora.icaap.org/talks/waring.htm

About the Author

WHO IS WILLIAM THOMAS?

I am an award-winning Canadian author, reporter, photographer and filmmaker. A former Vancouver Sun “photog” – his feature writing and accompanying photographs subsequently appeared in more than 50 publications in eight countries, including translations into French, Dutch and Japanese.

My 30-minute video documentary Eco War won the 1991 US Environmental Film Festival award for “Best Documentary Short”. Excerpts from this “front-lines” chronicle of a three-man environmental emergency response team in Kuwait aired in an eight-part CBC Gulf War mini-series, and have been shown on CNN and NBC television, as well as Noam Chomsky’s feature film, “The Corporation”.

During and immediately after the Gulf War, I served five months in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as a member of a three-man environmental emergency response team.

Winner of four Canadian feature-writing awards, I am the author of Days Of Deception: Ground Zero and Beyond; All Fall Down: The Politics of Terror and Mass Persuasion, Scorched Earth, Bringing The War Home, Alt Health, Stand Down, Dialing Our Cells: Cell Phone Health Hazards and the recently updated Chemtrails Confirmed.

A former pilot, ocean sailing master and frequent radio talk-show guest, I currently live and work in the Gulf Islands off Canada’s west coast.

Visit my investigative reporting website: willthomasonline.net

Visit my photography website: willthomasphotography.com

Central African Republic

History

Main article: History of the Central African Republic

Pre-history

Between about 1000 BC and 1000 AD, Adamawa-Eastern-speaking peoples spread eastward from Cameroon to Sudan and settled in most of the territory of the CAR. During the same period, a much smaller number of Bantu-speaking immigrants settled in Southwestern CAR and some Central Sudanic-speaking populations settled along the Oubangi.

The majority of the CAR's inhabitants thus speak Adamawa-Eastern languages or Bantu languages belonging to the Niger-Congo family. A minority speak Central Sudanic languages of the Nilo-Saharan family. More recent immigrants include many Muslim merchants who most often speak Arabic or Hausa.

Exposure to the outside world

Until the early 1800s, the peoples of the CAR lived beyond the expanding Islamic frontier in the Sudanic zone of Africa and thus had relatively little contact with Abrahamic religions or northern economies. During the first decades of the nineteenth century, however, Muslim traders began increasingly to penetrate the region of the CAR and to cultivate special relations with local leaders in order to facilitate their trade and settlement in the region.

The initial arrival of Muslim traders in the early 1800s was relatively peaceful and depended upon the support of local peoples, but after about 1850, slave traders with well-armed soldiers began to penetrate the region. Between c. 1860 and 1910, slave traders from Sudan, Chad, Cameroon, Dar al-Kuti in Northern CAR and Nzakara and Zande states in Southeastern CAR exported much of the population of Eastern CAR, a region with very few inhabitants today.

French colonialism

Main article: Ubangi-Shari

Oubangui-Chari in 1910

European penetration of Central African territory began in the late nineteenth century during the so-called Scramble for Africa (c. 18751900). Count Savorgnan de Brazza took the lead in establishing the French Congo with headquarters in the city named after him, Brazzaville, and sent expeditions up the Ubangi River in an effort to expand France's claims to territory in Central Africa. King Leopold II of Belgium, Germany and the United Kingdom also competed to establish their claims to territory in the Central African region.

In 1889 the French established a post on the Ubangi River at Bangui, the future capital of Ubangi-Shari and the CAR. De Brazza then sent expeditions in 189091 up the Sangha River in what is now Southwestern CAR, up the center of the Ubangi basin toward Lake Chad, and eastward along the Ubangi River toward the Nile. De Brazza and the procolonial in France wished to expand the borders of the French Congo to link up with French territories in West Africa, North Africa and East Africa.

In 1894, the French Congo's borders with Leopold II's Congo Free State and German Cameroon were fixed by diplomatic agreements. Then, in 1899, the French Congo's border with Sudan was fixed along the Congo-Nile watershed, leaving France without her much coveted outlet on the Nile and turning Southeastern Ubangi-Shari into a cul-de-sac.

Once European negotiators agreed upon the borders of the French Congo, France had to decide how to pay for the costly occupation, administration, and development of the territory. The reported financial successes of Leopold II's concessionary companies in the Congo Free State convinced the French government in 1899 to grant 17 private companies large concessions in the Ubangi-Shari region. In return for the right to exploit these lands by buying local products and selling European goods, the companies promised to pay rent to the colonial state and to promote the development of their concessions. The companies employed European and African agents who frequently used extremely brutal and atrocious methods to force Central Africans to work for them. At the same time, the French colonial administration began to force Central Africans to pay taxes and to provide the state with free labor. The companies and French administration often collaborated in their efforts to force Central Africans to work for their benefit, but they also often found themselves at odds.

Some French officials reported abuses committed by private company militias and even by their own colonial colleagues and troops, but efforts to bring these criminals to justice almost always failed. When news of atrocities committed against Central Africans by concessionary company employees and colonial officials or troops reached France and caused an outcry, there were investigations and some feeble attempts at reform, but the situation on the ground in Ubangi-Shari remained essentially the same.

Stamp from 1924

In the meantime, during the first decade of French colonial rule (c. 19001910), the rulers of African states in the Ubangi-Shari region increased their slave raiding activities and also their sale of local products to European companies and the colonial state. They took advantage of their treaties with the French to procure more weapons which were used to capture more slaves and so much of the eastern half of Ubangi-Shari was depopulated as a result of the export of Central Africans by local rulers during the first decade of colonial rule. Those who had power, Africans and Europeans, often made life miserable for those who did not have the power to resist.

During the second decade of colonial rule (c. 19101920), armed employees of private companies and the colonial state continued to use brutal methods to deal with local populations who resisted forced labor but the power of local African rulers was destroyed and so slave raiding was greatly diminished. In 1911, the Sangha and Lobaye basins were ceded to Germany as part of an agreement which gave France a free-hand in Morocco and so Western Ubangi-Shari came under German rule until World War I, during which France reconquered this territory by using Central African troops.

The third decade of colonial rule (19201930) was a period of transition during which a network of roads was built, cash crops were promoted, mobile health services were formed to combat sleeping sickness, and Protestant missions established stations in different parts of the country. New forms of forced labor were also introduced, however, as the French conscripted large numbers of Ubangians to work on the Congo-Ocean Railway and many of these recruits died of exhaustion and illness.

In 1925 the French writer Andr Gide published Voyage au Congo in which he described the alarming consequences of conscription for the Congo-Ocean railroad and exposed the continuing atrocities committed against Central Africans in Western Ubangi-Shari by employees of the Forestry Company of Sangha-Ubangi, for example. In 1928 a major insurrection, the Kongo-Wara 'war of the hoe handle' broke out in Western Ubangi-Shari and continued for several years. The extent of this insurrection, perhaps the largest anticolonial rebellion in Africa during the interwar years, was carefully hidden from the French public because it provided evidence, once again, of strong opposition to French colonial rule and forced labor.

During the fourth decade of colonial rule (c. 19301940), cotton, tea, and coffee emerged as important cash crops in Ubangi-Shari and the mining of diamonds and gold began in earnest. Several cotton companies were granted purchasing monopolies over large areas of cotton production and were thus able to fix the prices paid to cultivators in order to assure profits for their shareholders. Europeans established coffee plantations and Central Africans also began to cultivate coffee.

The fifth decade of colonial rule (c. 19401950) was shaped by the Second World War and the political reforms which followed in its wake. In September 1940 pro-Gaullist French officers took control of Ubangi-Shari.

Independence

On 1 December 1958 the colony of Ubangi-Shari became an autonomous territory within the French Community and took the name Central African Republic. The founding father and president of the Conseil de Gouvernement, Barthlmy Boganda, died in a mysterious plane accident in 1959, just eight days before the last elections of the colonial era. On 13 August 1960 the Central African Republic gained its independence and two of Boganda's closest aides, Abel Goumba and David Dacko, became involved in a power struggle. With the backing of the French, Dacko took power and soon had Goumba arrested. By 1962 President Dacko had established a one-party state.

On 31 December 1965 Dacko was overthrown in the Saint-Sylvestre coup d'tat by Colonel Jean-Bdel Bokassa, who suspended the constitution and dissolved the National Assembly. President Bokassa declared himself President for life in 1972, and named himself Emperor Bokassa I of the Central African Empire on 4 December 1976. A year later, Emperor Bokassa crowned himself in a lavish and expensive ceremony that was ridiculed by much of the world. In 1979 France carried out a coup against Bokassa and "restored" Dacko to power. Dacko, in turn, was overthrown in a coup by General Andr Kolingba on 1 September 1981.

Kolingba suspended the constitution and ruled with a military junta until 1985. He introduced a new constitution in 1986 which was adopted by a nationwide referendum. Membership in his new party, the Rassemblement Dmocratique Centrafricain (RDC) was voluntary. In 1987, semi-competitive elections to parliament were held and municipal elections were held in 1988. Kolingba's two major political opponents, Abel Goumba and Ange-Flix Patass, boycotted these elections because their parties were not allowed to compete.

By 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a pro-democracy movement became very active. In May 1990 a letter signed by 253 prominent citizens asked for the convocation of a National Conference but Kolingba refused this request and detained several opponents. Pressure from the United States, more reluctantly from France, and from a group of locally represented countries and agencies called GIBAFOR (France, USA, Germany, Japan, EU, World Bank and UN) finally led Kolingba to agree, in principle, to hold free elections in October 1992, with help from the UN Office of Electoral Affairs. After using the excuse of alleged irregularities to suspend the results of the elections as a pretext for holding on to power, President Kolingba came under intense pressure from GIBAFOR to establish a "Conseil National Politique Provisoire de la Rpublique" (Provisional National Political Council) (CNPPR) and to set up a "Mixed Electoral Commission" which included representatives from all political parties.

When elections were finally held in 1993, again with the help of the international community, Ange-Flix Patass came in first in the first round and Kolingba came in fourth after Abel Goumba and David Dacko. In the second round, Patass won 53 percent of the vote while Goumba won 45.6 percent. Most of Patass's support came from Gbaya, Kare and Kaba voters in seven heavily populated prefectures in the northwest while Goumba's support came largely from ten less-populated prefectures in the south and east. Furthermore, Patass's party, the Mouvement pour la Libration du Peuple Centrafricain (MLPC) or Movement for the Liberation of the Central African People gained a simple but not an absolute majority of seats in parliament, which meant Patass needed coalition partners.

Patass relieved former President Kolingba of his military rank of general in March 1994 and then charged several former ministers with various crimes. Patass also removed many Yakoma from important, lucrative posts in the government. Two hundred mostly Yakoma members of the presidential guard were also dismissed or reassigned to the army. Kolingba's RDC loudly proclaimed that Patass's government was conducting a "witch hunt" against the Yakoma.

A new constitution was approved on 28 December 1994 and promulgated on 14 January 1995, but this constitution, like those before it, did not have much impact on the practice of politics. In 19961997, reflecting steadily decreasing public confidence in its erratic behaviour, three mutinies against Patass's government were accompanied by widespread destruction of property and heightened ethnic tension. On 25 January 1997, the Bangui Peace Accords were signed which provided for the deployment of an inter-African military mission, the Mission Interafricaine de Surveillance des Accords de Bangui (MISAB). Mali's former president, Amadou Tour, served as chief mediator and brokered the entry of ex-mutineers into the government on 7 April 1997. The MISAB mission was later replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping force, the Mission des Nations Unies en RCA (MINURCA).

In 1998 parliamentary elections resulted in Kolingba' RDC winning 20 out of 109 seats, which constituted a comeback, but in 1999, notwithstanding widespread public anger in urban centers with his corrupt rule, Patass won free elections to become president for a second term. On 28 May 2001 rebels stormed strategic buildings in Bangui in an unsuccessful coup attempt. The army chief of staff, Abel Abrou, and General Francois N'Djadder Bedaya were shot, but Patass regained the upper hand by bringing in at least 300 troops of the rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba from over the river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and by Libyan soldiers.

In the aftermath of this failed coup, militias loyal to Patass sought revenge against rebels in many neighborhoods of the capital, Bangui, that resulted in the destruction of many homes as well as the torture and murder of many opponents. Eventually Patass came to suspect that General Franois Boziz was involved in another coup attempt against him and so Boziz fled with loyal troops to Chad. In March 2003, Boziz launched a surprise attack against Patass, who was out of the country. Libyan troops and some 1,000 soldiers of Bemba's Congolese rebel organization failed to stop the rebels, who took control of the country and thus succeeded in overthrowing Patass.

Franois Boziz suspended the constitution and named a new cabinet which included most opposition parties. Abel Goumba, "Mr. Clean", was named vice-president, which gave Boziz's new government a positive image. Boziz established a broad-based National Transition Council to draft a new constitution and announced that he would step down and run for office once the new constitution was approved. A national dialogue was held from 15 September to 27 October 2003, and Boziz won a fair election that excluded Patass, to be elected president on a second ballot, in May 2005.

Humanitarian situation, peacebuilding, and development

The Central African Republic is heavily dependent upon multilateral foreign aid and the presence of numerous NGOs which provide services which the government fails to provide. As one UNDP official put it, the CAR is a country "sous serum," or a country metaphorically hooked up to an IV. (Mehler 2005:150). The very presence of numerous foreign personnel and organizations in the country, including peacekeepers and even refugee camps, provides an important source of revenue for many Central Africans.

The country is self-sufficient in food crops, but much of the population lives at a subsistence level. Livestock development is hindered by the presence of the tsetse fly.

In 2006 due to ongoing violence, over 50,000 in the country's north-west were at risk of starvation, and this was only averted thanks to United Nations support.[citation needed]

Peacebuilding Commission places Central African Republic on agenda On 12 June 2008, the Central African Republic became the fourth country to be placed on the agenda of the UN Peacebuilding Commission, which was set up in 2005 to help countries emerging from conflict avoid the slide back into war or chaos. The 31-member body agreed to take up the situation after a request from the government.

Peacebuilding Fund The Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon declared on 8 January 2008 that the Central African Republic was eligible to receive assistance from the Peacebuilding Fund. Three priority areas were identified: 1) Security sector reform 2) Promotion of good governance and the rule of law and 3) Revitalization of communities affected by conflicts.

Politics

Main article: Politics of the Central African Republic

Franois Boziz is President of the country. A new constitution was approved by voters in a referendum held on December 5, 2004. Full multiparty presidential and parliamentary elections were held in March 2005, with a second round in May. Boziz was declared the winner after a run-off vote.

In February 2006, there were reports of widespread violence in the northern part of the CAR. Thousands of refugees fled their homes, caught in the crossfire of battles between government troops and rebel forces. More than 7,000 people fled to neighboring Chad. Those who remained in the CAR told of government troops systematically killing men and boys suspected of cooperating with rebels.

Prefectures and sub-prefectures

Prefectures of the Central African Republic

Main articles: Prefectures of the Central African Republic and Sub-prefectures of the Central African Republic

The Central African Republic is divided into 14 administrative prefectures (prfectures), along with 2 economic prefectures (prfectures economiques) and one autonomous commune. The prefectures are further divided into 71 sub-prefectures (sous-prfectures).

The prefectures include:

Bamingui-Bangoran

Basse-Kotto

Haute-Kotto

Haut-Mbomou

Kmo

Lobaye

Mambr-Kad

Mbomou

Nana-Mambr

Ombella-M'Poko

Ouaka

Ouham

Ouham-Pend

Vakaga

the two economic prefectures are Nana-Grbizi and Sangha-Mbar; the commune is Bangui.

Geography

Main article: Geography of the Central African Republic

Satellite image of Central African Republic, generated from raster graphics data supplied by The Map Library

Map of the Central African Republic

Ubangi River on the outskirts of Bangui.

The Central African Republic is a land-locked nation within the interior of the African continent. It is bordered by the countries of Cameroon, Chad, Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Republic of the Congo.

Much of the country consists of flat, or rolling plateau savanna, typically about 1,640 feet (500 m) above sea level, of which most of the northern half lies within the World Wildlife Fund's East Sudanian savanna ecoregion. In the northeast are the Fertit Hills, and there are scattered hills in southwest part of the country. To the northwest is the Yade Massif, a granite plateau with an altitude of 3,750 feet (1,143 m).

At 240,519 square miles (622,941 km2), the Central African Republic is the world's 42nd-largest country. It is comparable in size to the Ukraine, and is somewhat smaller than the US state of Texas.

Much of the southern border is formed by tributaries of the Congo River, with the Mbomou River in the east merging with the Uele River to form the Ubangi River. In the west, the Sangha River flows through part of the country. The eastern border lies along the edge of the Nile river watershed.

Estimates of the amount of the country covered by forest ranges up to 8%, with the densest parts in the south. The forest is highly diverse, and includes commercially important species of Ayous, Sapelli and Sipo. The deforestation rate is 0.4% per annum, and lumber poaching is commonplace.

The climate of the C.A.R. is generally tropical. The northern areas are subject to harmattan winds, which are hot, dry, and carry dust. The northern regions have been subject to desertification, and the northeast is desert. The remainder of the country is prone to flooding from nearby rivers.

In the November 2008 issue of National Geographic, the Central African Republic was named the country least affected by light pollution.

Economy

Main article: Economy of the Central African Republic

A boy playing with a burnt kerosene lamp in the city of Birao, Central African Republic. The town was almost completely burnt down in March 2007 during fighting between rebels and government troops.

The economy of the CAR is dominated by the cultivation and sale of food crops such as cassava, peanuts, maize, sorghum, millet, sesame, plantain and sara[disambiguation needed]. The annual real GDP growth rate is just above 3%. The importance of foodcrops over exported cash crops is indicated by the fact that the total production of cassava, the staple food of most Central Africans, ranges between 200,000 and 300,000 tons a year, while the production of cotton, the principal exported cash crop, ranges from 25,000 to 45,000 tons a year. Foodcrops are not exported in large quantities but they still constitute the principal cash crops of the country because Central Africans derive far more income from the periodic sale of surplus foodcrops than from exported cash crops such as cotton or coffee.

The CAR's largest import partner is South Korea (20.2%), followed by France (13.6%) and Cameroon (7.7%), while its largest export partner is Japan (40.4%), followed by Belgium (9.8%) and China (8.2%).

Many rural and urban women also transform foodcrops into alcoholic drinks such as sorghum beer or hard liquor and derive considerable income from the sale of these drinks. Much of the income derived from the sale of foods and alcohol is not "on the books" and thus is not considered in calculating per capita income, which is one reason why official figures for per capita income are not accurate in the case of the CAR.

The per capita income of the CAR is often listed as being around $300 a year, said to be one of the lowest in the world, but this figure is based mostly on reported sales of exports and largely ignores the more important but unregistered sale of foods, locally produced alcohol, diamonds, ivory, bushmeat, and traditional medicine, for example. The informal economy of the CAR is more important than the formal economy for most Central Africans.

Diamonds constitute the most important export of the CAR, accounting for 4055% of export revenues, but an estimated 3050% of the diamonds produced each year leave the country clandestinely. Export trade is hindered by poor economic development, and the location of this country far from the coast.

The wilderness regions of this country have potential as ecotourist destinations. The country is noted for its population of forest elephants. In the southwest, the Dzanga-Sangha National Park is a rain forest area. To the north, the Manovo-Gounda St Floris National Park has been well-populated with wildlife, including leopards, lions, and rhinos. To the northeast the Bamingui-Bangoran National Park. However the population of wildlife in these parks has severely diminished over the past 20 years due to poaching, particularly from the neighboring Sudan.

The CAR is a member of the Organization for the Harmonization of Business Law in Africa (OHADA).

The CAR is ranked 180 out of 181 on 'ease of business' in the 2009 Doing Business Report of the World Bank Group. The 'ease of business' ranking uses a composite index on regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it.

Demographics

Main article: Demographics of the Central African Republic

A village in the Central African Republic

The population has almost quadrupled since independence. In 1960 the population was 1,232,000. Now the population is 4,422,000. (2009 UN est.) Note: estimates for this country take into account the effects of excess mortality due to AIDS; this can result in lower life expectancy, higher infant mortality and death rates, lower population and growth rates, and changes in the distribution of population by age and sex than would otherwise be expected.

The United Nations estimates that approximately 11% of the population aged 15 49 is HIV positive. Only 3% of the country has antiretroviral therapy available, compared to 17% coverage in neighbouring countries of Chad and the Republic of the Congo.

The nation is divided into over 80 ethnic groups, each having its own language. The largest ethnic groups are the Baya 33%, Banda 27%, Mandjia 13%, Sara 10%, Mboum 7%, M'Baka 4%, and Yakoma 4%, with 2% others, including Europeans of mostly French descent.

Health

Main article: Health in the Central African Republic

Female life expectancy at birth was 48.2 and male life expectancy at birth was at 45.1 in 2007. The fertility rate is at about five births per woman. Government expenditure on health was at US$ 20 (PPP) per person in 2006. There were 8 physicians per 100,000 people in 2004. Government expenditure on health was at 10.9 % of total government expenditure in 2006.

Religion

Main article: Religion in the Central African Republic

Religion in the Central African Republic

religion

percent

Christian

 

50%

Indigenous

 

35%

Islam

 

15%

Christians form 50 percent of the population, while 35 percent of the population maintain Indigenous beliefs, and Islam is practiced by approximately 15 percent of the country's population.

There are many missionary groups operating in the country, including Lutherans, Baptists, Catholics, Grace Brethren, and Jehovah's Witnesses. While these missionaries are predominantly from the United States, France, Italy, and Spain, many are also from Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and other African countries. Many missionaries left the country due to fighting between rebel and government forces in 2002 and 2003. Many have now returned to the country and resumed their activities.

Culture

Music

Main article: Music of the Central African Republic

Education

Main article: Education in the Central African Republic

Public education in the Central African Republic is free, and education is compulsory from ages 6 to 14. About half the adult population of the country is illiterate. The country has the University of Bangui.

See also

List of writers from the Central African Republic

See also

Africa portal

Main article: Outline of the Central African Republic

List of Central African Republic-related topics

Transport in the Central African Republic

References

^ Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division (2009) (.PDF). World Population Prospects, Table A.1. 2008 revision. United Nations. http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/wpp2008/wpp2008_text_tables.pdf. Retrieved 2009-03-12. 

^ a b c d "Central African Republic". International Monetary Fund. http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/02/weodata/weorept.aspx?sy=2006&ey=2009&scsm=1&ssd=1&sort=country&ds=.&br=1&c=626&s=NGDPD,NGDPDPC,PPPGDP,PPPPC,LP&grp=0&a=&pr.x=53&pr.y=9. Retrieved 2009-10-01. 

^ Which side of the road do they drive on? Brian Lucas. August 2005. Retrieved 2009-01-28

^ List of countries by Human Development Index

^ HS Foreign 24.4.2001 Did the Central African Republic surpass Finland in environmental affairs?

^ "Thousands could die of starvation, says United Nations spokesperson Maurizio Giuliano". http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=58581. 

^ http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2008/pbc39.doc.htm

^ http://www.unpbf.org/CAR.shtml

^ Reuters AlertNet CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC: Polls results to be announced on 22 May, official says

^ BBC NEWS World | Africa | Country profiles | Timeline: Central African Republic

^ BBC NEWS Africa | Thousands flee new CAR 'rebels'

^ BBC NEWS Africa | Thousands flee from CAR violence

^ Sold Down the River (English) March 2001, Forests Monitor

^ The Forests of the Congo Basin: State of the Forest 2006. CARPE 13-Jul-07

^ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2050.html?countryName=China&countryCode=ch&regionCode=eas&#ch

^ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2061.html?countryName=China&countryCode=ch&regionCode=eas&#ch

^ OHADA.com: The business law portal in Africa, http://www.ohada.com/index.php, retrieved 2009-03-22 

^ http://www.doingbusiness.org/Documents/CountryProfiles/CAF.pdf

^ Countries

^ http://data.unaids.org/pub/GlobalReport/2006/2006_GR_ANN3_en.pdf

^ a b c d http://hdrstats.undp.org/en/countries/data_sheets/cty_ds_CAF.html

^ http://www.afro.who.int/home/countries/fact_sheets/car.pdf

^ the World Factbook

^ U.S. Department of State

^ "Central African Republic". Findings on the Worst Forms of Child Labor (2001). Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor (2002). ^ http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/car_statistics.html

Further reading

Kalck, Pierre, Historical Dictionary of the Central African Republic, 2004

Petringa, Maria, Brazza, A Life for Africa (2006) ISBN 978-1-4259-1198-0

Titley, Brian, Dark Age: The Political Odyssey of Emperor Bokassa, 2002

External links

Find more about Central African Republic on Wikipedia's sister projects:

Definitions from Wiktionary

Textbooks from Wikibooks

Quotations from Wikiquote

Source texts from Wikisource

Images and media from Commons

News stories from Wikinews

Learning resources from Wikiversity

Government

Central African Republic Online

Chief of State and Cabinet Members

Overviews

Country Profile from BBC News

Central African Republic entry at The World Factbook

Central African Republic from UCB Libraries GovPubs

Central African Republic at the Open Directory Project

Wikimedia Atlas of the Central African Republic

News

Humanitarian news and analysis from IRIN Central African Republic

Central African Republic news headline links from AllAfrica.com

(French) RCA Info

Cultural

Baka Pygmies Culture and music of the first inhabitants of the Central African Republic, with photos and ethnographic notes

Tourism

Central African Republic travel guide from Wikitravel

Other

Central African Republic Pictures

location of Central African Republic on a 3D globe (Java)

Central African Republic at Humanitarian and Development Partnership Team (HDPT)

Central African Republic reports from Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers

Johann Hari in Birao, Central African Republic Inside France's Secret War from The Independent, October 5, 2007

v  d  e

 Central African Republic topics

Politics and government

Coat of Arms  Constitution  Corruption  Elections  Flag  Foreign relations  Human rights (GLBT  Women)  Law enforcement  Military  Ministers  National Assembly  Political parties  Politics  President  Prime Minister

History

Precolonial history  Oubangui-Chari (part of French Equatorial Africa)  Central African Empire  Patass presidency  Boziz coup

Geography and environment

Cities  Ecoregions  National Parks  Prefectures  Rivers  Sub-prefectures  Wildlife

Economy and infrastructure

Agriculture  Airports  Banks  Communications  Companies  Mining  Tourism  Trade unions  Transport

Culture and society

Demographics  Education  Films  Football (National team)  Holidays  Languages  Literature  Music  Religion (Catholicism  Islam)

Miscellany

Personalities on stamps  Public Holidays  Scouting

See also: List of Central African Republic-related topics

v  d  e

Former French colonies in Africa and the Indian Ocean

Mahgreb

Algeria  Morocco (Arguin Island)  Tunisia

French West Africa

Cte d'Ivoire  Dahomey  French Sudan  Guinea  Mauritania  Niger  Senegal  Upper Volta

 

French Togoland  James Island  Albreda

French Equatorial Africa

Chad  Gabon  Middle Congo  Oubangui-Chari

Comoros

Anjouan  Grande Comore  Mohli

 

French Somaliland (Djibouti)  Madagascar  Ile de France  Seychelles

 

Geographic locale

v  d  e

Countries and territories of Africa

West Africa

Benin  Burkina Faso  Cape Verde  Cte d'Ivoire  The Gambia  Ghana  Guinea  Guinea-Bissau  Liberia  Mali  Mauritania  Niger  Nigeria  Senegal  Sierra Leone  Togo

North Africa

Algeria  Egypt  Libya  Mauritania  Morocco  Sudan  Tunisia

Central Africa

Angola  Burundi  Cameroon  Central African Republic  Chad  Democratic Republic of the Congo  Republic of the Congo  Equatorial Guinea  Gabon  Rwanda  So Tom and Prncipe

East Africa

Burundi  Comoros  Djibouti  Eritrea  Ethiopia  Kenya  Madagascar  Malawi  Mauritius  Mozambique  Seychelles  Somalia  Tanzania  Uganda  Zambia  Zimbabwe

Southern Africa

Botswana  Lesotho  Namibia  South Africa  Swaziland

 States with

limited recognition

Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic  Somaliland

 Partially in Africa

France (Runion)  Italy (Pantelleria)  Portugal (Madeira)  Spain (Canary Islands / Ceuta / Melilla / Plazas de soberana)  Yemen (Socotra)

 Dependencies

Iles Eparses (France)  Mayotte (France)  Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha (United Kingdom)

 Disputed areas

Western Sahara

 

International membership

v  d  e

African Union (AU)

Algeria  Angola  Benin  Botswana  Burkina Faso  Burundi  Cameroon  Cape Verde  Central African Republic  Chad  Comoros  Democratic Republic of the Congo  Republic of the Congo  Cte d'Ivoire  Djibouti  Egypt  Eritrea  Ethiopia  Equatorial Guinea  Gabon  The Gambia  Ghana  Guinea  Guinea-Bissau  Kenya  Lesotho  Liberia  Libya  Madagascar  Malawi  Mali  Mauritania  Mauritius  Mozambique  Namibia  Niger  Nigeria  Rwanda  Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic  So Tom and Prncipe  Senegal  Seychelles  Sierra Leone  Somalia  South Africa  Sudan  Swaziland  Tanzania  Togo  Tunisia  Uganda  Zambia  Zimbabwe

v  d  e

Community of Sahel-Saharan States

Benin  Burkina Faso  Central African Republic  Chad  Comoros  Cte d'Ivoire  Djibouti  Egypt  Eritrea  The Gambia  Ghana  Guinea  Guinea-Bissau  Liberia  Libya  Mali  Morocco  Niger  Nigeria  Senegal  Sierra Leone  Somalia  Sudan  Togo  Tunisia 

v  d  e

Member states and observers of the Francophonie

Members

Albania  Andorra  Armenia  Belgium (French Community)  Benin  Bulgaria  Burkina Faso  Burundi  Cambodia  Cameroon  Canada (New Brunswick  Quebec)  Cape Verde  Central African Republic  Chad  Comoros  Cyprus1  Democratic Republic of the Congo  Republic of the Congo  Cte d'Ivoire  Djibouti  Dominica  Egypt  Equatorial Guinea  France (French Guiana  Guadeloupe  Martinique  St. Pierre and Miquelon)  Gabon  Ghana1  Greece  Guinea  Guinea-Bissau  Haiti  Laos  Luxembourg  Lebanon  Macedonia2  Madagascar  Mali  Mauritania  Mauritius  Moldova  Monaco  Morocco  Niger  Romania  Rwanda  St. Lucia  So Tom and Prncipe  Senegal  Seychelles  Switzerland  Togo  Tunisia  Vanuatu  Vietnam

Observers

Austria  Croatia  Czech Republic  Georgia  Hungary  Latvia  Lithuania  Mozambique  Poland  Serbia  Slovakia  Slovenia  Thailand  Ukraine

1 Associate member. 2 Provisionally referred to by the Francophonie as the "former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia"; see Macedonia naming dispute.

v  d  e

Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC)

Members

Afghanistan  Albania  Algeria  Azerbaijan  Bahrain  Bangladesh  Benin  Burkina Faso  Brunei  Cameroon  Chad  Comoros  Cte d'Ivoire  Djibouti  Egypt  Gabon  Gambia  Guinea  Guinea-Bissau  Guyana  Indonesia  Iran  Iraq  Jordan  Kuwait  Kazakhstan  Kyrgyzstan  Lebanon  Libya  Maldives  Malaysia  Mali  Mauritania  Morocco  Mozambique  Niger  Nigeria  Oman  Pakistan  Palestine  Qatar  Saudi Arabia  Senegal  Sierra Leone  Somalia  Sudan  Suriname  Syria  Tajikistan  Turkey  Tunisia  Togo  Turkmenistan  Uganda  Uzbekistan  United Arab Emirates  Yemen

Observers

Countries and territories

Bosnia and Herzegovina  Central African Republic  Russia  Thailand  Northern Cyprus (as Turkish Cypriot State)

Muslim communities

Moro National Liberation Front

International organizations

Economic Cooperation Organization  African Union  Arab League  Non-Aligned Movement  United Nations

 

Languages

v  d  e

Niger-Congo-speaking nations

 

Kordofanian

 Sudan

 

Mande

   

 Gambia

 Guinea

 Guinea-Bissau

 Mali

 Mauritania

 Senegal

 Sierra Leone

 Liberia

 Cte d'Ivoire

 Nigeria

 Burkina Faso

 Benin

 Togo

 

Atlantic-Congo

   

Atlantic

 Benin

 Burkina Faso

 Cameroon

 CAR

Ijoid

 Nigeria

 Chad

 Cte d'Ivoire

 Gambia

 Guinea

Dogon

 Mali

 Guinea-Bissau

 Liberia

 Mali

 Mauritania

 Niger

 Senegal

 Sierra Leone

 Sudan

 Togo

 

Volta-Congo

   

Senufo

 Benin

 Cte d'Ivoire

 Mali

Gur

 Benin

 Burkina Faso

 Cte d'Ivoire

 Ghana

 Mali

 Nigeria

 Togo

Adamawa-Ubangi

 Cameroon

 CAR

 Chad

 Nigeria

Kru

 Burkina Faso

 Cte d'Ivoire

 Liberia

Kwa

 Benin

 Cte d'Ivoire

 Ghana

 Nigeria

 Togo

 

Benue-Congo

   

Bantu

 Angola

 Botswana

 Burundi

 Cameroon

 DRC

Yoruba and Igbo

 Nigeria

 Rep. of the Congo

 Equatorial Guinea

 Gabon

 Kenya

 Lesotho

 Nigeria

 Malawi

 Mozambique

 Namibia

 Rwanda

 South Africa

 Swaziland

 Tanzania

 Uganda

 Zambia

 Zimbabwe

CAR = Central African Republic  DRC = Democratic Republic of the Congo

Categories: Central African Republic | African countries | African Union member states | Least Developed Countries | French-speaking countries | Landlocked countries | Member states of La Francophonie | States and territories established in 1960Hidden categories: Wikipedia pages move-protected due to vandalism | Articles containing French language text | All articles with unsourced statements | Articles with unsourced statements from December 2007 | Articles with links needing disambiguation
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