Following our region-by-region survey of events in the 1990s, it seems appropriate to conclude with an overview of general factors concerning the African continent as a whole, as they appeared to stand at the end of that decade. First, despite the toll taken by the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other killer diseases, Africa's population continued to rise by 2.4 percent a year. Whereas in 1900 Africa comprised 4.5 percent of the world's total population, by 2000 this figure had risen to 10 percent of a world total of 6 billion. Largely for this reason, the people of Africa had become, statistically, the poorest in the world. Whereas the gross national per capita income of the United States stood at $34,100 and that of the UK at $24,430, Africa's richest country, Libya, thanks to its oil and its barely habitable deserts, hovered around $7,640. South Africa had $2,620 and Egypt $1,490. But, at the lowest end of the scale, almost nine people out of every ten in Africa's poorest countries were living on less than $2 a day; of these, two-thirds struggled to survive on less than $1 a day.

The urbanization of Africa during the 1990s had altered the whole pattern of government and society in most African countries. Although the poorer quarters of African towns might seem squalid to the passing traveller, life in them was regarded by their inhabitants as a considerable improvement over rural areas still lacking electricity, piped water, and drainage, and with most effective activity confined to the daylight hours.