West Africa comprises 16 countries, and all of them belong to the poorest countries of the world, so the society of the region has a lot of social problems which have to be solved. The most striking fact about the region is that in spite of the fact that some countries of West Africa have oil sources, they belong to the countries of the world with the problems of acute poverty, illiteracy, social inequality, and lack of provision, drinking water, unemployment and others. The main reasons of these problems are historical outcomes of colonial countries development and poor attention of West Africa countries to the social infrastructue development.One more surprising thing is medicine level. There are a lot of traditional African medicine practitioners who claim they can cure various diseases like cancer, asthma, fever, cholera, blood pressure, and different types of disorders.
Tribalism (Elliott P. Skinner, 1963, p. 307) in many areas leads to the lack of educational institutions and poor communication network. Being unaware of modern medicine or just having no opportunity to get there, local people have no choice except appealing to such practitioners. Indigenous people feel immense lack of hospitals and qualified doctors, which causes high death level.
Tribalism is also the source of problems such as conflicts among indigenous tribes. It is hard to believe, but such intricate conflicts which are multifaceted cannot be prevented or anyhow resolved by the state. In West African countries, social inequality is present in all spheres of life. Inequality means that they live in conditions where they have unequal access to limited resources of materials and spiritual life.Living in a developed society, it is hard to imagine the life of West African society; their problems may seem to be tiny to average people from the USA or European countries, but they still remain immense for West African Society.
