I understand the fact that the slave trade and colonisation highly affected the continent, but fact is African countries weren’t the only ones affected by that so it still puzzles me as to why African nations have failed to spring up like the Super power nations we have today
In: Economics
Aside what others said, most of the environment in Africa is quite hostile.
Let’s say you want to build a railroad, you have to cut trough a jungle which is already hard and even when you are done building it, the humid and hot weather all year around means plants will grow very fast, greatly raising the maintenance needs.
Want to trade by ship? Well lot of Africa is landlocked and lot of its coasts are high and rocky, making docking hard.
The hostile environment makes it harder for large amounts of people to gather and cooperate. In other nations you could have a city that specializes in making iron tools, another that makes pots and another that grows lot of food, with all three cooperating and exchanging goods so that in the end they all have access to everything, but since the environment is so hostile, this cooperation is impossible so all three cities are stuck doing all three things in unspecialized, less efficent ways.
Then an external power comes in, takes the raw resources, brings them home and gives you the refined resources and high level craft, you end up developing and growing, but you are dependant on the colonizator. Once he is gone, you are back to your lower level of tech.
Latest Answers