Planner Warm-up

CW: Chapter 14 Section 1 Notes

CW: Group Discussion on Notes

Reminder: Chapter 14 Section 1 quiz Sept. 24th

Chapter 14

Section 1

Has one of the world’s largest rain forests that covers the center of this country.

Lake Tanganyika is largest man made lake in the world.

Use to be called Ziare. The treetops form a canopy, or an

umbrella-like forest covering, so thick that sunlight rarely reaches the forest floor.

-The rain forests are rapidly being destroyed as they are cleared for timber and farmland.

The Congo River and its tributaries, such as the Kasai River, provide hydroelectric power, or electricity generated by flowing water.

The country exports gold, petroleum, diamonds, and copper.

More than 75 percent of Congolese are Christians.

They grow crops, most of which go to feed the family.

A blood or conflict diamond is one that is mined in a war zone

Warlords in African vie for control of diamond fields

They exchange the diamond to fund their need for weapons to fight the civil wars against their own citizens

Blood diamonds have been linked to Al Queda

Millions of Africans have suffered from the wars funded by diamonds

Millions more are working in terrible conditions to produce diamonds that support civil wars in their own countries

The Bantu people moved here from Nigeria around the A.D. 600s and 700s.

For hundreds of years, Europeans and Africans enslaved many people from the Congo region.

In 1997 the government of the harsh dictator Mobutu Sese Seko was overthrown and the country was renamed the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

• The bite of the tsetse fly causes a deadly disease called sleeping sickness.

• The Central African Republic can claim only diamond mining as an important industry.

• The Central African Republic’s national language is French but most people speak Sango.

• Cameroon was divided between the British and the French until 1960.

Congo and Gabon both won their independence from France in 1960.

Both countries’ economies rely on sales of lumber, although they increasingly depend on rich offshore oil fields.

Congo also exports diamonds. Gabon suffers from deforestation.

You and a partner will pretend to be news paper reporters from America. You will report on the crisis of Blood Diamonds in Central Africa. Tell me what is going on. Who is involved. How it affects the country. ETC… Your story needs to be 2 paragraphs long at least. You can decorate your newspaper any way you like using construction paper and markers. Your paper must have a Title and picture. Use your book (pg. 404-409) and what we talked about in class.