I've always wondered why there's no black-majority country that's prosperous...it's always the same story of corruption, incompetence, and/or infighting.
Now, before anyone brings out the pitchforks, I'm a black African residing in Nigeria...I'm just saying that we really have to do better than this.
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Where the heck did you get the idea this is restricted to black majority countries? Like, check out the history of Poland some time.
The European powers generally conquered, colonised or bullied wherever they could. Some countries like Vietnam recovered well, others like Ethiopia did not.
> Europeans have a nasty habit of ravaging any black-majority country that tries to build anything.
"Where the heck" did you see the above poster mention restricted?
It’s historically not a concept without merit. The needlessly cruel treatment of Haiti is probably the canonical example.
I’d suggest reading about General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas. The book “Black Count” is worth reading.
This is such a "history started in 1900" take, it's weird that people love to publicly display their ignorance.
The idea that it's related to the colour of skin, is flawed. Any one really knowing anything about European history, knows that the history is full of surprisingly local examples like this: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144039X.2020.1816101 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0144039X.2020.18...
Isn't Nigeria one of the fastest growing countries in the world right now? I haven't visited but I often watch videos about it (and other upcoming African nations) and it seems like Nigeria is on the path to greatness!
It was doing well until 2015, then per capita gdp seems to have gone down again to 2010 levels.
It also has the issue that its going to hit 600 million people this century with no way to feed them.
We were up until one former military dictator assumed Presidency in a democratic election in 2015, and all the progress has been erased, plus more.
It's useful to have a long unbroken cultural history passing down a set of habits, norms and social institutions useful for highly complex large scale agricultural/industrial society.
Building cultural capital is hard.
That's probably the biggest factor.
There's also the possibility (I don't know of much evidence either way) of differences in mental traits, not necessarily in a less intelligent sense, but in an adapted to a particular way of life sense. Individual humans aren't fully general intelligences and some of us have more skills in some areas than others, this may also apply across people's groups that diverged in lifestyle a hundred generations ago, leading to slightly different specializations that nonethless make it slightly harder to function in an environment made for another group.
Brain drain is another huge factor.
If opportunities within a country are exceptionally poor, and opportunities outside are both more remunerative and reasonably accessible, talent will flee.
You see this within countries as well (generally migration from poorer / inland parts of the US toward the coasts, though housing unaffordability has somewhat put a damper on this in the past decade), but it's especially pronounced between poorer and wealthier nations of the world.
This tends also to continue to depress opportunities within poorer countries: talent migrates elsewhere, institutions tend to be less capable / more corrupt, etc. It's a vicious cycle.
My guess is that it's old tribal alliances vs what is best for a country.
... which is not special to Africa particularly. But Western Europe went through this centuries ago. It is said that the past is another country. The reverse is true.
There are other factors like fewer geographical separations. Lesotho and Namibia are more stable now because they are enclosed by mountains and separated from others by desert respectively.
Imagine if there was no water separating England and the European continent. There probably would not be an England. Or rather, no UK.
"Africa time" was prevalent when I lived there. I also saw recently that critical race theory considers being on time to be characteristic of white supremacy, but I know nothing of CRT so I'm not getting into a discussion on that; just seemed a connection.
Botswana and Rwanda seems to be countries with lower levels of corruption and reasonably good or improving public services.
Ghana too was doing well in the last decade, but now has taken a turn for the worse since the current government took over. I live in Ghana, and the level of corruption now, and the neglect of a proper development agenda, is unbelievable.
So, I don’t think there is necessarily anything that makes black-majority countries incapable of curbing corruption.
Paul Rusesabagina could not be reached for comment.
Context, for the curious: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rusesabagina https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Rusesabagina>
Not sure what this has to do with Rwanda having low corruption. The kinds of countries in the 3rd world that are sufficiently "liberal" to the liking of the west are usually cesspools of corruption and poverty.
I should know, because I have experienced it myself. In Ghana set up stalls for trade on the sides of major roads, at considerable risk to their safety. Successive governments have tried to force them away for a while, only for people to denounce those actions as heartless. Invariably, they slowly creep back. Imagine those who promote this situation are fined or jailed. Is that a case of being authoritarian, or a case of robust enforcement of safety rules?
Here you have an African country enforcing the rule of law and a strong national identity, and with actual results to back it up. Of course mistakes can be made, and I'm not holding up the Rwandan regime as blameless in terms of human rights. But if you you focus on quality of life of the average citizen, they have improved a great deal.
I feel like if it can all turn bad just from one election to the next, then it was never really good. I wonder if Botswana and Rwanda are just as vulnerable as Ghana was.
I think it takes generations for the right culture to develop.
If you look back at early Western large-scale democracies (as opposed to the historic smaller scale Greek ones), most of them weren't all roses for the first couple of generations.
Perhaps one thing to say is that not that many countries developed in general in the last hundred years or so, depending on how you count them. It seems there isn’t really an easy path to development and many African countries started a very poor quite recently without the smoothest transition out of colonialism.
You might count a few Caribbean countries for your initial question, eg the Bahamas is 90% black and has similar per-capita gdp to Poland (a lower hdi though). But maybe it’s easier to be this developed if you’re a small country (population 400k).
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I'm one that believes that without a common point of unity groups can not prosper. It's easier to break apart than to stay together. Large established countries have a long enough background that they can count on national patriotism or a Royal or something similar to unite on. Unfortunately, all(i think) black majority countries have been created from areas that were formerly part of another state that dominated it and the last thing they want to do is follow the practices of the domineering state. Yet, they don't have the history and myths that can bring them together as one group to succeed as a nation. They don't even have the family history to count on since whole cultures have been destroyed and they can't count on their culture to unite on.
In time, these nations will find a single point of unity but it will take generations and strong leaders.
Take a look at the white-majority countries that are in a similar boat. You're different from Russia only in that one global power didn't seize control of your continent a few centuries ago.
From my perspective it looks like you're speed-running a continental democracy.
Africans don't worship the state, so the state cannot find a stable footing, and the void left gets filled with anarchy.
The reason all major nations are the way they are is the cult of the state: it combines the selfish ambition of the people and brings it to the altar of the war machine demon, quite literally. This manifests in earnest worship of the law and order for its own sake, the greatness of empire, the national security and the faceless economy as the highest idol. The war machine lives only to fight other war machines, it wants to keep everyone in its iron fist, including its own people, and make them worship its greatness. It's a dumb and selfish ruler, so all empires whither and die in its "caring" hands, and with it dies the demon. Then anarchy fills the void to multiply sufferings, until another war machine rises and gets the people under its thumb. Balancing between the two evils is the doom of every advanced nation. Prosperity is a transient and almost incidental property here.
On Twitter recently a Nigerian business man shared some of his frustrations which I found insightful.
He started a bar. Yet later discovered that his business partner was reselling booze via the back door, pocketing this money for himself. Next, the business man started a transport business. Every driver he hired mysteriously got "robbed", which means they resold the fuel. They are just anecdotes, but if widespread, it must be near impossible to get any development going. It's constantly sabotaged by your peers.
On a TV program, I saw a Nigerian woman complaining how the city fails to maintain drinking water infrastructure, specifically pointing to a broken pipe. It was in this broken state for 13 years and as a result she had to walk an additional 30 mins for her water, every day. It's bad that government is this careless but looking at the broken pipe, I'd say its 1 hour of work to repair for a pro. So maybe crowd fund that pro with some locals and get it done?
One of my friends has a construction company that infrequently does some jobs in Africa. He really wants to do things right so exclusively hires local people and offers them double the usual pay. Guess what happens? They don't show up the next day. Literally living life by the day.
I personally visited Madagascar a few times. All over the country you see structures crumbling. You can tell somebody had the right idea and built something of value, but not even minor cheap repairs are carried out. So it's all falling apart from pure indifference.
Our guide, a local, explained how there was a tree planting project where people are literally paid per tree. Most planted a handful and went home.
I tried to help out in ecotourism by explaining how they're drastically undercharging. Make little booklets and sell them. Charge 5 times more for your drinks, they'd still be cheap by western standards.
Nobody cared. It's just baffling, this widespread apathy. Simple and effortless opportunities presented on a silver platter, and it's just met with complete indifference.
There's different ways to frame the issue. You could say they underperform by the standards of global capitalism. Another way to look at it is that some/many reject performance culture altogether.
For sure there are also other factors at play, historical, geopolitical, but a culture that "doesn't even try" is quite self-defeating.
I gotta be honest, this post reads like "just driving by I knew how to fix all these peolles' problems but they seem too lazy to care". Is it possible there's something you don't know about each of these scenarios? It's easy to construct some self congratulatory narrative when you're visiting a poor country, but it's also a trap. In the past, these narratives tended to be biological. Now they're "cultural" but the effect is often similar.
Take the pipe example. Maybe the police don't let people just "crowd fund" repairs to public infrastructure and perform them themselves. Maybe what you saw on the video isn't representative of the whole problem, or your assessment of the repair difficulty isn't accurate.
Perhaps your brilliant idea about pricing and selling ecotourism booklets isn't such a great idea after all. Maybe they already tried it and tried different price points and were too polite to tell you. That's common in "development" projects where there's a power/wealth imbalance between the person giving well meaning advice and the folks receiving it.
Speaking of which, maybe home repairs that look cheap when you're driving by aren't actually cheap by local standards. Perhaps the materials aren't affordable or people have absentee landlords that don't take care of the place because it's not in their interest to do so. There are plenty of buildings like this in SF but the reason is economic incentives, not a culture of apathy.
Who knows what's going on with your friend's construction business. As an absentee foreigner they may rely on a foreman who pockets a bunch of the workers' pay, making it a shitty deal for the workers.
Because Africans had to make a huge leap from primitive way of life to the modern one unlike Europeans or Asians which developed gradually over the last 3000 years or so. Some people might think it is a genetic gap that will never change but I think it can be done, it is just a long process of hundred years at best.
There is also the issue of many African countries being a mix of more than one nation. It causes a lot of tribalism and favouritism and corruption. Uganda is a good example of how they got over it but still, diversity is a problem when there is more than one major group which sets the tone. Some western countries are going down this path thinking it will benefit them but it just makes things worst.
No. Plenty of white majority countries face the same problems.
Corruption, incompetence and infighting are weapons disguised to look like "human nature" while someone else is sucking your blood.
How many majority black countries were afforded the opportunity to grow up unmolested by great powers during their formative post colonial years?
How many once in a generation leaders were assassinated or deposed in favor of brutal yet capital friendly regimes?
America, with all its cultural heritage of Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson and Lincoln barely survived the 1960’s due to political assassinations. It’s hard to expect younger nations to fair better.
Isn’t Senegal in a much better state than your example? Asking because I don’t know enough to be sure.
Also, they have other common aspects - apart from being in Africa and having black population.
Decades of colonialism, constant disruption and malicious interference from multiple powerful governments ought to count for something.
Remember, Russia single handedly influenced culture, politics, and elections in the US, just with the means of social media.
How many black-majority countries were or are imperialist? External Imperialism does wonders for the prosperity of the home country.
I ought to ask this on /r/AskHistorians
> External Imperialism does wonders for the prosperity of the home country.
Does it last though? The UK doesn't seem to be bursting at the seams with prosperity these days. Switzerland does much better yet never had any colonies. Portugal had lots, just as Spain, and look at them. Germany had few because they started late and they're doing much better. The Ottoman empire was huge but Turkey isn't doing too good, despite its strategic geopolitical location that pays lots of dividend.
Correlation doesn't imply causation, but does lack of correlation?
And yes, of course there were African empires, but they didn't nicely map to countries (but then again, did European empires? The Habsburgers would say otherwise) and didn't leave a lasting imprint of prosperity.
> The UK doesn't seem to be bursting at the seams with prosperity these days. Switzerland does much better yet never had any colonies.
I dunno - Northern Ireland seems to be doing alright, current woes affecting the rest of the Kingdom (Britain) appear to be self-inflicted.
More seriously: I never claimed imperialism led to eternal prosperity. Pax Britania led to a very prosperous Britain - it is undeniable that imperialism is beneficial while it's happening: captive markets abroad support broader industrialization than just a single home market[1], and externalization of costs makes it cheaper/more "efficient".
1. Which Britain is relearning - as you noted, they are not exactly bursting at the seams with prosperity, post-Brexit
I mean, arguably Ethiopia comes to mind with the expansion into ethnic Somali territories in the 19th century, but does invading adjacent countries and ethnic groups count as imperialism?
I feel its because there are so many different tribes/groups, each fighting for power with others. The old tribalism never went away, its just reflected in the government now.
because when you adopt an abusive system and the only change is the abusers
the abuse will continue.
modern african governments adopted extractive colonial gvts - so the extraction shifts from 'white' man to the 'black' man.
with SA all that changed was who was in power. But the fucked up apartheid economy exists. BEE won't change anything.
btw: i'm also a black southern african
As a fellow Nigerian also residing in Nigeria, I must add that things are even more nuanced than they seem.
- We’ve had an ugly history of military rule, post-colonization.
- During the colonial period a specific region of the country[1] produced quite a number of leaders, both colonial and post-colonial era; it’s almost 63 years of independence and that region now has the highest population, higher unemployment, child illiteracy, and poverty rates in the country[2].
Thanks to this massive population and frequent election racketeering, immense political power seemingly resides with people from that region and nepotism has become the order of the day.
So we now have a case of leaders who care less about establishing functional institutions or a sustainable culture and are much more concerned with maintaining power. It’s depressing.
- [1] https://www.icirnigeria.org/2023-north-has-the-numbers-to-continue-ruling-nigeria-nef/ https://www.icirnigeria.org/2023-north-has-the-numbers-to-co...
- [2] https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/53569/northern-nigeria-has-world-highest-illiterate-world-bank.html https://www.thenigerianvoice.com/news/53569/northern-nigeria..., https://www.cgdev.org/blog/poverty-nigeria-understanding-and-bridging-divide-between-north-and-south https://www.cgdev.org/blog/poverty-nigeria-understanding-and...