GEOGRAPHY - PAPER ABOUT SOUTH AFRICA - Essay Example

Population distribution is following: 0-14 years: 38% (female 8,842,764; male 9,091,722), 15-64 years: 56% (female 12,825,617; male 12,508,039), more than 65 years: 6 % (female 1,047, 285; male 780, 032). Total population growth rate is 2,02%. Birth rate is 31, 34/1000 population and death rate is about 7,02/1000 population. Infant mortality rate is 36,2 deaths/1000 live births, and it decreases annually for about 2 per cent. Life expectancy is following: for total population – 67,42 years, for males – 64,68 years; for females -69,54 years, and it tends to increase from year to yer.

Total fertility rate is about 3,4 children born/woman. Ethnic divisions are following: black – 75,2%, white -13,6%, colored- 8,6%, Indians – 2,6 %. The most widespread religions are: Christianity (the majority of colored and whites and approximately 60% of blacks), Islam – 2 %, Hinduism – about 60% of Indians. There are 11 official languages in South Africa, which include English, Ndebele, Pedi, Afrikaans, Swazi, Tsonga, Xhosa, Zulu and others, as the Figure 1 shows. Literacy rates are following: total population – 86 per cent, males – 90 %, females – 83%.

There are about 16 million economically active people, occupied in following areas: agriculture -30%, services -35%, industry -28%, mining-14%, other -4%. One of the acutest demographic problems is spreading of HIV/AIDS (Figure 2), and about 22% of adults are HIV/positive. Thus, the many medical anti-AIDS campaigns, which propagate safe and healthy life, have already been realized. 2) The most widespread resources of South Africa are following: renewable natural resources: water, agricultural resources (such as soil), air, forests (about 3% of the whole area).

Non-renewable resources: chromium, coal, gold, antimony, nickel, tin, diamonds, natural gas, nickel, platinum, copper, vanadium, phosphates, uranium. Political resources are