Question 9: According to the author, traditional portrayals of Africa…

Read the passage and answer the given subquestions
Africa, south of the Sahara is often said to be the limbo of the international system, existing only at the outer limits of the planet which we inhabit. But, again according to a widespread opinion, it is unlikely that Africa is a limbo in the sense of Roman Catholic theology—that is to say, a place where souls are prepared for redemption. 'Africa has remained cut off from all contact with the rest of the world; it is the land of gold, forever pressing in upon itself, and the land of childhood, removed from the light of self-conscious history and wrapped in the dark mantle of night', wrote Hegel. The vast literature produced by journalists and academics which refers ad nauseam to the marginalisation of the sub-continent, or to its 'disconnection', even if it is only 'by default', does no more than reproduce Hegel's idea that this part of the globe is an 'enclave', existing in 'isolation' on account of its deserts, its forests and its alleged primitiveness. For those who subscribe to this school of thought, the spread of war as a mode of political regulation over the last decade or so is a sign that the day of salvation is yet far off. Evidence is offered by those terrible messengers, the handless amputees produced by war in Sierra Leone, the Danteesque inferno of the genocide of Rwandan Tutsis in 1994, or the spread of the AIDS pandemic, a sinister companion of conflict, which decimates those populations which war has spared.
Nevertheless, if we are to stay with the metaphor of limbo, it is above all in a limbo of the intellect that such a simplistic view of the relation of Africa with the rest of the world is conceived. For the sub-continent is neither more nor less than a part of the planet, and it is pointless to pretend that, to quote one French former colonial governor, it leads a 'traditional existence shielded from the outside world, as though it were another planet', which passively absorbs the shock of having been made dependent on other parts of the world.
- Africa in the World: A History of Extraversion, Jean-François Bayart and Stephen Ellis in “African Affairs” journal.

According to the author, traditional portrayals of Africa are