If you’ve spent a lot of time reading about Africa, a thought may have occurred to you as it did to me: how are there no successful post-colonial African countries? By “successful,” I mean consistent strong economic growth, political stability, and a reasonable income distribution so the new oil/gold/mineral wealth isn’t all held by the dictator and his friends. For awhile, you could say South Africa or Rhodesia, but only if you ignored the apartheid. It feels like one of the other 50+ African countries should have achieved success, even if just by chance.
Botswana and Namibia? I have clients operating in both countries and they seem to be doing pretty well. You’d certainly rather be there than South Africa, Zimbabwe, DRC or Sierra Leone.
There was no apartheid in Rhodesia. A million years ago one of my best friends as a fresher was an Indian chap from Southern Rhodesia. After school his white classmates would invite him home for tea (though he did remark that the invitations became more frequent once he’d been selected for the national schoolboys cricket side.)
A family of my kin went to live in Zambia (formerly Northern Rhodesia). They left when the wife declared “I can bring children up without butter but not without soap.”
“Botswana and Namibia? … You’d certainly rather be there than South Africa”
Globe-trotting members of my family strongly agree.
I am told by people who have worked there that Botswana is well run, but that is a relatively recent phenomenon. The president has quite a good sense of humour – he is taking Germany and Britain to task about calls to ban trophy hunting and asking the Jerries if they’d like to take 20,000 elephants off his hands.
I haven’t time now to read the whole thing but one thing caught my eye. IC had a military ” consisting of only a 3,100-man army, a 100 man navy, a 300 man airforce…”
That’s about the same size as ours today.
Most post-colonial African countries have spent their independence pursuing Marxist economic policies which have all failed. They then compounded the problem by blaming colonials for their own failures 🙁
“ he is taking Germany and Britain to task about calls to ban trophy hunting and asking the Jerries if they’d like to take 20,000 elephants off his hands.”
The article I read said that he’d be sending them to Germany without being asked because they’ve banned trophy hunting. He has a point, the elephant population has grown to the point where it’s a danger to life and economy and needs managing so if it can’t be culled send them to where they’re demanding they be protected.
I occasionally read articles about Kenya and they seem to be making slow, but steady progress.
If you’ve spent a lot of time reading about Africa, a thought may have occurred to you as it did to me: how are there no successful post-colonial African countries
Yes, but then I found out science is racist, so I stopped wondering.
Rupert: I suspect that a lot of that was a side-effect of the cold war. Lots of future African rulers & ministers were invited to that Patrice Lumumba place in Moscow.
They may not have been hard Marxist to start with, just anti-colonial, but PL would have laid it on thickly.
Kleptocrat marxism in a low-trust tribal society might not be the best formula for success. But enough about the 21st century UK.
Have there ever been successful African countries?
@Emil: Carthage, Egypt. But that’s not what you meant.
Given that most African countries aren’t natural formations just created by drawing straight lines on maps, perhaps the question out to be asking about successful tribes?
You can be ostensibly Marxist but still twig a lot of the obvious stuff through trial and error. I guess that’s how China, Vietnam took off (albeit with a hell of a lot of error). Keeping power within the party is usually more important than pure dogma. So there’s some other factors there in Africa for sure.
And if anyone’s looking for a good read. I give a hearty recommendation for this memoir centred on a girl growing up in 70s and 80s Rhodesia. Don’t let’s go to the dogs tonight. Alexandra Fuller.
Botswana seems to be doing OK but I notice that, like Namibia (somewhere I’ve always wanted to visit) it has a high murder rate. I have a friend from Ghana; she claims it’s heading in the right direction and it certainly has a much lower murder rate than Botswana, Namibia or indeed the USA.
This is a good article by Theodore Dalrymple about his time in Rhodesia: https://www.city-journal.org/article/after-empire
I was struck by him recounting that equal pay for black and white doctors was actually a cause for discontent amongst the blacks, because their network of family obligations swallowed up their wealth, while whites on the same pay could live very comfortably. I think those obligations hamper Africa. Why get on when the fruits of your progress must be shared with the laziest idiots in your extended family?
I remember someone saying that when viewing Africa its like looking at Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire
Lots of warring tribes, oases of good government regularly destroyed by competing states or tribes, religious extremism, periodic famines and plagues
It took Europe 300-400 years to sort itself out
Most of the problem is about that resource curse thing, and more specifically lack of industrialisation. If the money is in owning land, people are going to get some Toyota Landcruisers and AK-47s and start shooting people to get their land. Same as how back in the 14th century we were all riding into each others countries in Europe doing the same.
This pattern is everywhere. Like I said, 14th century Europe. Also Venezuela, Russia, most of the Middle East. Afghanistan can’t easily ship goods out, so it can’t have sweatshops, so it’s opium poppies, which means it’s about land, which means it’s about warlords. Britain basically got democracy in the late 19th century after the industrial revolution and has generally had stable government for 100 years since.
The Nazis were more popular in the East, where people were peasants, and saw owning more land in the East as a good thing, than in the West, who were more into industrialisation. Russia did the people in Hamburg and Stuttgart a huge favour after the war by removing the peasants and making West Germany considerably more industrialised (as a percentage) than when it was Germany.
But I think some parts of Africa are getting there. GDP growth is pretty huge in some places. 6-10% per annum. Rwandans are still dirt poor by western standards but GDP/capita has doubled in the past decade. Fibre optic cables and satellite internet mean that companies can hire people almost anywhere with power to do internet work.
Namibia is reasonably successful, though you can’t erect any power lines to outlying areas because they’re immediately stolen, and farmers still live with guns by their sides in compounds with razor wire surrounding them.
Mate of mine is from Namibia – his elderly folks still live there on a ‘small’ farm of about 40,000 acres which barely produces an income, so barren is it.
Back in the old days, his older brother was recruited into the SA Army and was part of the fight against SWAPO.
Their guerrillas would come over the Angolan border, on foot, and walk 150 klicks to carry out an attack, and then leg it back, amped up on cocaine to keep them going.
The Saffas and Namibs used indigenous bushmen to track them and would regularly find them dead, from exhaustion, 100km back towards the border.
He has lots of fascinating stories of that sort, and of the driving predatory prides of lion back to the reserve after they’ve wiped out half your cattle, shooting rogue elephants, getting your water from muddy holes variety.
Much as he loves his homeland and goes back with relish to see his folks every couple of years, he has very little time indeed for anyone moaning about life in the UK.
My business was almost entirely Africa focussed from 2005-15. For most of Africa you would struggle to see how they could build a stable and successful economy without a few centuries of buggering it up. Crap infrastructure; limited pan-African logistical support; vicious climate and physical conditions in many places; extended family obligations removing incentives; no history of cooperation or trust outside of the immediate clan, etc., etc..
Botswana, Namibia and Ghana might just about make it, although the first two have resource issues in spades. Countries like Malawi, who are landlocked and aren’t endowed with the brightest sparks (Rwanda has an advantage in that department) are f#*ked.
The winner, though, will probably be Morocco, but I magine that you were really talking about sub-Saharan(Black) Africa.
– Why get on when the fruits of your progress must be shared with the laziest idiots in your extended family?
The “anglo-saxon” way of not giving much of a shit about your cousins is a probably a major factor in the relative success of northwest Europe. Mostly England, obvs.
Reversion to the Mean. There were no successful pre-colonial African countries, either. Tribal societies are not good at sustaining the sort of structures and working routines necessary to maintain the sort of successful modern economy that lifts the vast majority of its population out of poverty. Hence…
PJF
That’s why the Catholic church’s prohibition of cousin marriage was such a far reaching success: it stymied the growth of clans.
“ There were no successful pre-colonial African countries, either.”
A few did quite well out of capturing and selling slaves and not just to the Atlantic Slave Trade.
“how are there no successful post-colonial African countries”
This is probably why (its in SA, not the UK as listed, but to be honest it could easily be the UK these days):
https://twitter.com/BBlues100/status/1777666956847386918?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1777666956847386918%7Ctwgr%5Ed2ed92e5bf9a900fc2fea3c000098be339ca7957%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthefarmingforum.co.uk%2Findex.php%3Fthreads%2Fw-t-f.11626%2Fpage-1180
There were no successful pre-colonial African countries, either.
Absolute bullshit.
Apparently Egypt doesn’t count — even before it was Arab, strangely — but the Nubians were successful enough to take it over for centuries. Does Nubia count as African?
Mali Empire, Songhay Empire, Ghana Empire. Just off the top of my head. All at least the match for the European “nations” at the time.
Africa was ruined not by being African, but by being a land-based society, and when naval power was what mattered it couldn’t compete. The same happened in China and the east too — solid nation states could not compete because they were land based. Thus colonialisation, as the European powers dominated all trade.
So unless you want to say that China has never been successful, you have to admit that Africa has had stable, prosperous nations too. A few minutes look on-line, rather than rather tired racism is all it takes.
Ethiopia managed to stay stable for a thousand years until the Marxists took over. They defeated Italian attempts at colonisation, for a start.
The five races evolved different average IQs: Africa 71, Eurasia 100, Oceania 62, East Asia 105, America 86.
Ethiopia of the 19th Century was a very successful state. It was rich and regarded enough to buy arms and support from Europe and dealt with the Italians at Adowa. It was also Christian, which to the Victorian mind was a huge factor in its independence.
One point for Chester: China was very much a maritime power and traded with India and Africa, but it couldn’t project this power. It never developed the fast(er), stable, ocean going gun platform that the Europeans had .
Africa was ruined not by being African, but by being a land-based society, and when naval power was what mattered it couldn’t compete.
Plenty of coastline in Africa. Plenty of empires too, but none of them (except Ethiopia) were around by colonial times and what replaced them was a backwards step.
Anyway, the real point is not that there is or was something uniquely wrong with Africa, but rather that there was something uniquely right with European civilisation which allowed it to dominate globally.
IQ is a bit of a red herring. “Eurasians” presumably includes the ethnic groups which make up Switzerland and also Pakistan. If they are all of similar intelligence, then there must be other factors making Switzerland a fantastic place to live and Pakistan an utter dump.
In the UK, educational performance difference between black and white pupils is insignificant. The big gap is between girls and boys.
If I were to research why there is such a large performance gap between girls and boys, I’d start by looking at the feminisation of primary education.