Africa Map!

The three different parameters I chose were social conflicts, ethnicity, and population density. I wanted to explore the relationship between social conflicts and the latter two. When I think of social conflicts in African countries, I think a lot about ethnicity. So the first thing I wanted to explore was the relationship between the multiplicity of ethnicities and its correlation with social conflicts (at least visual correlation). However, conflicts do not only relate to ethnicities. I tried to think from my own personal experience where a lot of my conflicts derive from. I realized that if one lives closely with other people, conflicts can often arise. So translating that to population density, I wanted to see if the density also visually correlates with social conflicts.

Now here are my three maps. So the four different countries I looked at were Senegal, Nigeria, Somalia, and Zimbabwe. The four have a very high concentration of social conflicts, evident from the third map. Now comparatively, we can see the population density in quite concentrated in Senegal and Nigeria. However, Somalia and Zimbabwe are not as concentrated, though still more so than many other regions in Africa. This suggests that perhaps there is a slight relationship with social conflicts and population density. One can also notice that overall, looking at the entire map of Africa, there does seem to be a relationship with population density and social conflicts. It does follow a slight pattern. Though I cannot say so quantitatively, simply looking at the two maps raises further questions about the relationship.

As I continue to look at social conflicts, I noticed that ethnically, there does not seem to be as large of a correlation as I thought there would be. First, looking at the maps as a whole, I see that there is a lot more ethnic variability in Central Africa. But then looking at the social conflicts map, one would think that there would be a huge concentration of social conflicts in Central Africa, which I don't think is the case. Now looking at the individual con tries I chose, Senegal, Nigeria, Somalia, and Zimbabwe all have very high concentrations of social conflicts, but the only country that really has ethnic variability is Nigeria (according to the map). Senegal, Somalia, and Zimbabwe really do not have as many ethnicities as compared to Nigeria. Though Nigeria clearly has an incredibly high concentration of social conflicts, one cannot say that is due to the ethnic differences. In fact, simply from paying attention to the news, one knows that many of Nigeria's conflicts come from religious and resource disparities.

However, I do want to point of a flaw of the ethnicity map. It is slightly arbitrary and unfair to group ethnicities in enclaves like they do in the map. Ethnicity is more of a gradient than islands. People live together, and from my experiences in Senegal, they live together quite harmoniously. So I do want to say that the ethnicity map, though has many advantages in visualizing ethnic boundaries, also has a big disadvantage when considering how people actually live in country.