ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE This book represents the first attempt in three decades to marshall out available information on the regional geology of Africa for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. Geologic education in African universities is severely hampered by the lack of a textbook on African regional geology. This situation is greatly exacerbated by the inability of most African universities to purchase reference books and maintain journal subscriptions. Besides, geologic information about Africa is so widely dispersed that a balanced and comprehensive course content on Africa is beyond the routine preparation of lecture notes by university teachers. Since geology is a universal subject and Africa is one of the largest landmasses on Earth with one of the longest continuous records of Earth history, there is no doubt that geologic education in other parts of the world will benefit from a comprehensive presentation of African geologic case histories. The scope of this text also addresses the need of the professional geologist, who may require some general or background information about an unfamiliar African geologic region or age interval. Africa occupies a central position in the world's mineral raw materials trade. Because of its enormous extent and great geologic age, the diversity and size of Africa's mineral endowment is unparalleled. Africa is the leading source of gold, diamond, uranium, and dominates the world's supply of strategic minerals such as chromium, manganese, cobalt, and platinum. Consequently, African nations from Algeria to Zimbabwe depend solely on mineral exports for economic survival. The geologic factors which govern economic mineral deposits are stressed in this text. The geological history of Africa spans 3.8 billion years, a record that is unique both in duration and continuity. Few other parts of our planet match the plethora of geologic phenomena and processes that are displayed in the African continent. From the various stages of crustal evolution decipherable from the Archean of southern Africa, through the plate tectonics scenarios in the ubiquitous Late Proterozoic-Early Paleozoic Pan-African mobile belts and in the Hercynian and Alpine orogenies of northwest Africa, to the East African Rift Valley, Africa is replete with excellent examples and problems for a course on regional tectonics. Teachers of igneous and metamorphic petrology can hardly ignore Africa's anorogenic magmatism (e.g.. layered ultramafic intrusives such as the Great Dyke and the Bushveld Complex; the Tete gabbro-anorthosite pluton; alkaline complexes; basaltic volcanism), or tantalizing highgrade metamorphic terranes such as the Limpopo belt, the Namaqua mobile belt, and the Mozambique belt. From the extensive Precambrian supracrustal sequences throughout the continent with enormous thicknesses of sedimentary rocks that have hardly been deformed or metamorphosed, to the stratigraphic evolution of Africa's present-day passive continental margin, there is a complete spectrum of facies models upon which to base a course on basin analysis and stratigraphy. To maintain its integrity a course on historical geology anywhere in the world must address the theory of Continental Drift beyond invoking past continuities between West Africa and South America. Past connections between West Africa and eastern North America must equally be explored, so also connections between northeast Africa and Arabia, and the paleogeography of southern Gondwana where Africa occupied centre stage. The Precambrian fossil record, the transitions from reptiles to the earliest mammals and dinosaurs, and the evolution of Man are among Africa's unique contributions to the history of life and the story of organic evolution. Although it lies today in the tropics Africa was the theatre of the Earth's most-spectacular glaciations. Even after the scene of continental glaciation had shifted to the northern continents only lately during the Pleistocene, Africa still witnessed spectacular climatic fluctuations during the Quaternary. Certainly students of archeology and paleoanthropology cannot overlook the Quaternary paleoenvironmental record of the Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, the Lake Turkana basin in Kenya, the Nile valley, the Sahara, and southern Africa. But since African examples have already been cited in standard geologic textbook, I have often been asked why it has become necessary to revive the idea of a full-length textbook on African geology, 30 years after this idea was abandoned by the geologic community. My simple answer, as already stated, is that the wealth of available geologic information about Africa is so enormous and fascinating, but so diffuse, that an attempt must be made to assemble and pass on this knowledge.