e. I need a well written 3 paragraph (each paragraph 5 – 7 sentences) on the following.

Though Africa is a single continent, both the Physical and Cultural Geography of Northern Africa are different from Sub-Saharan (Southern) Africa in many ways.  Look on the map of Africa on p. 224.  Note that there are three color-coded areas: Afro-Asiatic (Northern) Africa, Niger-Congo (Southern) Africa, and between these two regions, what our textbook authors refer to as a Transition zone. The Transition provides a demarcation between the two African regions in terms of both Physical and Cultural Geography. The further you get away, either north or south, from this zone, the more different one area gets from the other area.As you can see, the difference in Physical Geography is striking and obvious.  North of this Transition zone is not very diversified, consisting mainly of sandy desert with limited trees and plants.  Africa south of this zone is quite lush and diversified, including tropical rain forest and moist savanna (see map on p. 221). The difference in Cultural Geography, on the other hand, also is striking but much less obvious.

The major cultural difference is the extent to which the Muslim religion has spread to the people of Sub-Saharan Africa.  As a result of Islamic traders and warriors spreading across Northern Africa centuries ago, most of the inhabitants are Muslim, where only very small percentages of Africans south of the Transition zone are Muslim. This is mainly because that historically, Arab Muslim merchants did not travel into the Sub-Saharan region, but traded with African merchants in the Transition zone, who brought trade items up from the south.

You have seen that Africa is a very large continent, which can be understood in terms of two distinct regions: Northern Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. Please respond to the following questions. In what ways, other than religion, is the Cultural Geography of Sub-Saharan Africa different from that of Northern Africa, mainly in economic and social terms?  In what ways might differences in Physical Geography be responsible for differences in social, economic, political, and cultural institutions?

Then i need another well written 3 paragraph (5 – 7 sentences) reply to another students paper.  Below is the students paper that needs to be responded to (this was there paper that answered the above questions).

Africa is a very vast place with very diverse societies. Differences in geography, language, religion, politics, and other aspects of life contributed to Africa’s lack of political unity over long periods of time. Unlike in many parts of Asia, Europe, and North Africa, neither universal states nor universal religions characterized the history of sub-Saharan Africa. Yet universal religions, first Christianity and later Islam, did find adherents in Africa and sometimes contributed to the formation of large estates and empires .

One of the main focuses on the geographic study of interrelated economic, social, political, and cultural processes. Geographers have sought a synthetic understanding of such processes through attention to two types of questions: (1) the ways in which those processes affect the evolution of particular places and (2) the influence of spatial arrangements and our understanding on those processes. Much of the early geographical work in this area emphasized locational decision making; spatial patterns and their evolution were explained largely in terms of the rational spatial choices of individual actors.

Beginning in 1973, a new cohort of scholars began raising questions about the ways in which social structures condition individual behavior and, more recently, about the importance of political and cultural factors in social change. This has matured as an influential body of work founded in social theory, which has devoted considerable effort to understanding how space and place mediate the interrelations between individual actions and evolving economic, political, social, and cultural patterns and arrangements and how spatial configurations are themselves constructed through such processes.

This research has gained wide recognition both inside and outside the discipline of geography; as a result, issues of space and place are now increasingly seen as central to social research. Indeed, one of the principal journals for interdisciplinary research in social theory, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, was founded by geographers. The nature and impact of research that has sought to bridge the gap between social theory and conceptualizations of space and place are evident in recent studies of both the evolution of places and the interconnections among places.

So i will need a 3 paragraph for the first post, then a second 3 paragraph replying to the students post listed above.  Please let me know if you will be able to get this done by Friday noon Alaska time or if you have any further questions.