Africa has always been mysterious to the rest of the world. The Greeks and Romans traded with the people of North Africa. However, they believed that the landmass extended no further south than present-day Somalia. In fact, Alexander the Great even considered shipping supplies for his armies around this little Africa to India. This same idea continued into the 15th and 16th centuries until it was discovered that Africa had an extremely large southern protrusion, making it the second largest continent in the world after Asia. These vast areas brought wealth to Africa until the 18th and 19th centuries, thanks to the trade of gold, salt and also people. Their greatest wealth actually came from this slave trade; they would not exchange their friends and brothers but the enemies they had captured in their intertribal wars. As the slave trade declined after the 1880s, Europeans began to take over large tracts of land. As in Arabia, the strongest European countries came together with a map and a few rules and divided the continent between them. Soon, countries set up provisional governments and wrote constitutions in French and English and left them in their relative solitude. Most of the problems associated with Africa are caused by the misconception that Africa has become poor but the rest of the world has become richer. What is commonly misunderstood about Africa is the wealth available within its borders and the misconception of the world's middle class. The United States and other countries with a similar economic orientation. Although nine of the ten poorest countries are in Africa and all but three of the top twenty, the homeless rate is almost zero and everyone seems to be doing just fine. However, it was the same in every place...... middle of paper ...... parliament had no real majority, so the prime minister or president had to fight their way to the top, often using military might to maintain power. There would then be dissension among other groups who would be angry at the government's use of money from the wealthy outside world that would supposedly give to AIDS prevention in Africa or some other good cause while they were only adding to the government's wallet. As stated earlier, when people see that there is something better, they try to get it. Some of this brutal destruction is seen in Rwanda, although it is considered more of a genocide, and the apparent stability of countries like the DRC is the antithesis of this idea, mainly supported by extreme militarism. Thus, the relative wealth of the world has caused the many uprisings, revolutions and coups that have taken place over the last fifty years in Africa..