The Shaping of Social and Cultural Diversity

One of the most salient features of the human geography of East Africa is the extreme cultural diversity of its populations. If we consider only the linguistic landscape of the region, it is remarkable that some 120 different languages are spoken in Sudan, another 120 in Tanzania, 80 in Ethiopia, 60 in Kenya and Tanzania and 10 in Eritrea. In this regard, the nearly complete monolingualism of Somalia and the adjacent, virtually independent, Somaliland, as well as the bilingualism of Djibouti, are exceptional. This linguistic diversity is compounded by the fact that all four African languages families (i.e., Nilo-Saharan, Afroasiatic, Niger-Congo and Khoisan) are encountered in the region, making it a probable point of convergence for groups with various ethnic backgrounds over the last several thousand years. A similar observation can be made regarding the diverse forms of social organisation that exist: despite the highly centralised Christian “empire” that has flourished in the Ethiopian highlands over the last centuries, many social groups have retained forms of social and political organisation often labelled as “tribal” – a vague term that encompasses large or petty chiefdoms, groups organised in clans and lineages, or even age-set societies. In a sense, this diversity can be viewed as a long-term phenomenon reflecting the intricacy of a millennia-long peopling pattern that superimposed peoples over peoples. But it can also be seen as the outcome of an intense process of interactions among groups, as well as among people and their environments. Here an overview of the natural landscape is not simply an exercise in style; it is a necessary prerequisite to understanding the factors that contributed to the shaping of this social diversity.