Why is Africa not developing today, a brief history, and whats to come.

On social media, I keep seeing a suggestion that Africans and Black people are genetically hindered when it comes to intellectual capacities. I know this to be untrue, but I wanted to debase what they said with logical arguments. They use logic and data skewed and leaned to elicit a response in the reader to agree that the Black race is incapacitated intellectually, so I too will use simple logic to disprove their claim and shed light on more of the context. There is no such thing as genetic racial differences determining one racial group's superiority over another. The rise and fall of any empire or race is based on access and diffusion of information. There is a lot of prejudice around the world, where people are raised to believe with certainty that just because of how this person was born, they are less intellectual and less capable in matters of the heart. So, to get to my point…

Why Africa is not developing-Corruption

When a country undergoes heavy strife and they are unable to get out of their circumstances, they reach out to the IMF or like organization for a loan for redevelopment. The IMF agrees to give aid and then seeks to solve their issues systematically. This comes in the form of contractual demands by the IMF, such as privatizing the public sector and offering public utilities to be sold to the highest bidder. This is to create immediate cash flow for the governments but, more importantly, to make these industries more efficient. The philosophy is that it is known the most efficient systems are never under the domain of bureaucrats or government. Upon accepting the loan conditions, the companies are then privatized and sold to usually outside investors. The government, in return, gets in-kind aid (non-financial aid) and financial loans. The territory now becomes stimulated, and it becomes more stable. With stimulation, there is now an increased amount of foreigners (aid workers, diplomats, and businessmen) bringing high-value currencies and living standards that boost the immediate local economy and commerce. The countries are now on track for long-term stabilization and modernization in the next 20–30 years. This is one observed outcome from this system; success stories of this include Rwanda, India, Israel, and Vietnam—countries where aid was used in a diligent and intended way to integrate with the global economy.

This is great and all, but then, after this cycle has completed some phases and foreigners begin to make money, the local businessmen who were making more money when the country was near failure are not making nearly as much now, or they are becoming increasingly more jealous—not making as much as the international businessmen within the country. This greed begins to grow, and they begin to plot. They find actors within the government that are disgruntled with the current standard of things (mainly due to their power and influence being diminished or their pride not being stroked enough). They begin to seed a message of contempt throughout their communities under the disguise of 'African nationalism,' usually under the banner of "these people are not Africans, and they are taking everything from us... We could do just the same thing or better; this is just a new form of colonialism." People agree, and they then incite a revolution, coup, or pressure the government to kick out the foreign aid and foreign investment. The foreigners leave, and so does their money, resulting in a massive high-paying job loss. The locals then also kick out sympathizers or remove them from any position of power. These "sympathizers" are the foreign-trained Africans who know how to maintain the equipment and systems. Forcefully, they take over these companies and systems and continue operating them. Since they don’t know how to operate these systems, they overload them with no maintenance, innovation, or proper investment, and they begin to degrade drastically. Now, these once-functioning sectors begin to start having blackouts. These look like water and power outages, school strikes, hydro dams breaking, etc. This degrades the local quality of life and potential internal investment. This ruins one’s ability to bet on anything to happen so that they can make a committed plan. For example, when someone is able to study under light, the fridge is working, or sleep under a fan every night, they begin to rely on it. When inconsistent blackouts begin every day, they can no longer rely on the previous amenities; they are unable to sleep through the night, only study when it’s light outside, and the food spoils. This disrupts the days of individuals and disallows them from having a routine in their day that they rely on while making plans to better their situation. These system degradations are primarily due to the now domestic business owners not making the proper investment into the maintenance of these systems.

Anyways, the country begins to degrade at a quick rate, and the social systems are overloaded due to lack of funding, leading to more and more weak links for when an environmental or social catalyst arrives. The weak links break, causing a crisis. When a crisis happens, the infrastructure, already not being repaired, exacerbates the issues due to the slow movement of people out and the slow movement of aid and repair products in. In short, people die while people wait. They brought a system to move, but weakly, and the people suffer. The rich of the nation make their cut; the poor get poorer, and when times get bad, the rich leave the country. Then, the national cry for help strengthens, and the cycle begins again for external and IMF help. Examples of such failed recurring cases are Mali, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, and D.R. Congo.

Also, to note, when these nations kick out foreign investment and aid, it lowers the possibility and likelihood of future investment because companies do not want to keep putting money into something that can be forcibly taken away. That is why governments like America have a clause in the power of the military and intelligence agencies to protect the American people, government, and the interests of America. This, therefore, opens the powers to ensure that their companies are paid back. This is not a policy that is only Western; it is very common among any powerful government for risk mitigation.

Now, I was taught in uni during my sustainable development capstone class that this IMF system was hawkish in favor of the West to keep the rule of America over these poor countries in the form of USAID, which sure is true to a degree but not as much as was propagated to me and my peers. I was taught that the IMF used unfavorable loan conditions to further stomp on these poor countries and flooded their markets with subsidized grain and food from USAID, further collapsing the local economy. This puts the blame of African underdevelopment into Western hands when that is simply not true or plausible.

On average, the countries' leaders are incredibly corrupt and profit from these deals, and they don’t share the wealth in intended ways with other people. It is not foreign aid but domestic corruption that causes these issues. But at the same time, can you blame them? This is what they have been taught and know, and if one were to jump off and abandon it, they risk everything.

Author's Note

I was taught that America and the West are bad actors that destroy the world; it's simply not true or possible. This being taught to me did not take into account domestic ownership or responsibility, and I think it lacked on-the-ground experience and unbiased observation to find out the root causes of the problem by interviewing every kind of stakeholder and making a good conclusion. I believe this opinion was propagated for an agenda for something somewhere, and that was not stated to us, so we just believed it unequivocally. This is a failure in the educational system and curriculum of that class at my uni in Colorado and perhaps other places and states too.

So-Why else aren't they modernizing like the rest of the world like Europe and South East Asia?

The biggest explainer for one group's development compared to another is central planning. A group's development is dependent on education, infrastructure, and innovation. I do not know of any times when a lack of central planning allowed these three ideals to be prolific in a given society. With sufficient education, new innovation can take place to solve issues from their environment. With sufficient infrastructure, commerce and new innovations can flow more easily. And with new innovations, the current problems of life are solved. All of this causes the local people to build and adapt to the inflow and outflow of information and resources. This creates better societies. That is it; this is why some areas of the world are better than others: they have a high input of foreign ideals and have a need for strong central governance.

The big question now is: Why don’t some cultures value central planning? I have no idea. I remember back in university during my African studies class, my professor—a long-time African researcher—said: "Many Africans do not like centralized power due to the propensity for corruption, so it is an observed practice to see empires or governments get to a certain level of power before people begin to leave and create smaller cities and villages." This poses more questions, such as: Why don’t they have a sufficient justice system for checks and balances from the governing to the governed? I believe this level of social institution development is stunted due to disease, which also prevented cities from getting too big.

I think the lack of central planning does not fully align with what my old professor was saying. I would like to show a major point: When central planning becomes a thing, it means a mass of people are gathered in one area and somewhat moving towards a goal together. This goal could be anything. However, when you have a large number of people gathered together, disease and death spread fast. This prevalence of death also encourages the people within the cities to move back to their villages or start their own villages, where they know how to manage it and protect themselves from illness. I also believe the greatest tool that is used to fight against illness is water. Water is entrenched in the cultures of sub-Saharan Africa, and it must always be clean. Water is seen as a very clean agent for health. But it is known that when water is contaminated, it brings illness. Could it be that improper water management techniques were not allowing cities to become empires due to disease? The only way to learn better water management techniques and diffuse them is through an agora and information diffusion, which again, the environment did not afford this luxury of mass information movement and gathering of people to establish an agora—because of disease.

When water is being used or polluted faster than it can clean itself, it becomes contaminated and harbors death.

Due to fewer major agoras, foreign tourism and trade are hindered. When these new minds and ideals come into an environment, they become intertwined with the local environment and create new structures and growth. This is very easy in moderate climates but extremely hard in climates where the guest will die. This also adds to an issue for education and information diffusion, preventing them from taking root through foreigners in this area. Education for a long time has come in the form of people or missionaries; these individuals would die of yellow fever, dengue, or malaria before they could make a notable change beyond conversion, and another would be sent where they would have to start over.

This leads into my major point and history lesson on Central Africa's colonization. It was never like what happened in other parts of the world, and we must explore why and what that means.

Why Africa was never colonized like the rest of the world

Points to know

• Africa exports disease; it does not import it. There are very few diseases born outside the continent that ever come into Africa and cause harm. On the contrary, numerous diseases from Africa are exported and cause global harm, such as yellow fever, dengue, the Black Plague, Ebola, meningitis, leprosy, and AIDS. The reason disease is exported and not imported is due to the complex and harsh environments of Africa. If something can evolve and survive there, it can evolve and live anywhere. It is highly competitive in the biological landscape, which prevents less procreative and aggressive diseases from gaining a foothold in the continent.

• Africa is rich in water, land, resource-rich mud and dirt, diverse animal life, and severe weather patterns. It is also highly biodiverse. This makes it a great environment for life to experiment and evolve, producing some of the most beautiful, grand, lethal, dangerous, intelligent, and intricate species known to man. This also holds true for the bacterial landscape, which makes it difficult for foreign immune systems to thrive in the central continent.

• Horses could not survive in sub-Saharan Africa due to the tsetse fly. This fly would bite and embed its eggs into horses, causing them to fall ill and die. This stunted the flow of commerce, information, and building capabilities. While the rest of the world was using horses as beasts of burden for construction and development, in central and sub-Saharan Africa, men had to do all the work themselves. This led to a stereotype, reinforced for hundreds of years, which I will discuss later.

• Most of North Africa is Muslim because the Arabs could not penetrate sub-Saharan, Central, and East Africa. As mentioned earlier, Africa was colonized by Europe, but not in the same manner as places like Afghanistan, India, Australia, China, Southeast Asia, the Americas, or even South Africa. In those places, Western governments ruled with an iron fist and exerted direct dominion over the people, living among them. In Africa, however, it was not uncommon for those who came to govern, teach, or conquer to die from disease. Africans had to fight for Europeans in their quest for conquest, as few Europeans who stepped foot on the continent in pre-modern times survived to fight multiple campaigns. Due to the limited interaction with foreign powers, African military innovation was stunted because they lacked access to the same technology. This division is marked by the barrier of the rainforest, which was too formidable for any pre-modern army or philosophy to overcome.

• When it comes to the actual colonization of Africa, Europeans were largely unable to settle, except in North and South Africa, where the climates are moderate, there are fewer complex diseases, and farming is possible in familiar ways. Africa was still largely untouched by European hands before, during, and after the colonization period.

• This does, however, raise an interesting point. How was Christianity spread throughout Sub-Saharan Africa when nothing else could penetrate the rainforest? Well, I think it is interesting to consider for sure. In the north, the continent was conquered by Arabs and then Islamized. The people conquered by Arabs shared a similar terrain to that of the Gulf states—a big desert with similar living standards. It was easy to fight there as an Arab because they were used to it; they knew what to expect. But when they tried to push south, their immune systems were compromised. (By the way, if anyone ever finds any historical records on Islamic generals and military leaders trying to spread south into Sub-Saharan Africa and the troubles they had conquering through the jungle, I would love to hear their accounts of their trials and tribulations.)

• So how did Christianity spread? Well, I think it is because one of Christianity’s highest ideals is martyrdom. As Jesus said, "There is no greater love than laying down your life for your brother." As its leader perished in spreading his Word, Christianity also emphasizes that one must be willing to die for the teachings if the context demands it. In the face of sword or disease, one must go forth and preach the teachings to the world. With this value in mind and a Bible in hand, missionaries would go where no others from the north or the east would venture, facing certain death, to teach again and again. They kept dying but would establish a church before they died, then send another who would teach ten, then die, then another who would teach fifty, then die. This instruction to die for teaching is one of the highest honors in Christianity. This led many to march to their deaths in the rainforests and Sub-Saharan Africa, hoping for heaven. Locals, amazed by their courage, differences, message, and new technologies, would convert. Christian missionaries were able to convert an untouched population through fire or grace, creating a self-perpetuating system.

• Africa was colonized after India and America, even though Africa is a whole lot closer to Europe than India or America. Europeans cannot claim ignorance of its existence. Why did they not move south sooner? I believe it was because they knew they stood no chance against the diseases and the environment present, which put them at too great a disadvantage. The ones who went often died.

• The Timeline does not make sense of Europes imperialism period from 1402-1900s: 

  • 16th century: European colonization of North and South America begins

  • 17th century: European colonization of India starts

  • 17th-19th Century: Colonization of South Africa, finally getting control of South Africa after 1879

  • 1788: European colonization of Australia begins

  • Late 19th century to early 20th century: European conquest of Africa "Scramble for Africa"

    • Even during the colonization period Europeans controlled only 10% of Africa and that being the coast lines and North and South Africa, again more temperate climates, unable to penetrate deep into Africa.

  • Europeans then were leaving 1940-1990. A noticeably short colonization period.

    
    

I am not taking away from the empires of Africa such as Botswana, Mali, Songhai, and Lingalas. But I am saying there growth was stunted from environmental factors.

The rise of stereotypes

All of this gave rise to long-held beliefs from Western and Eastern thinking dynamics towards Africa. The foreigners started seeing Africans as physically superior to them because they could survive the environment that Europeans couldn't. When some of the Europeans were able to slip through the wall that the great rainforest had established, they were greeted with untold riches such as gold, diamonds, gems, now petroleum, uranium, rare earth metals—things that bring great upward influence to any economy.

These riches, being unexplored, and the Europeans wanting them, led to a mindset where Westerners and Easterners would say something to the effect of, “We don’t want to get sick, but we do want to gain from this environment, so let’s have them do the work for us since they don’t die.” Then, how would they make them do this? By convincing one another to enslave each other. They did this by offering innovation. They would trade guns and some jewelry here and there to convince one African to enslave another and mine raw materials, where the Africans had previously seen little use for them. Whatever use they had found before was simply not as good as what a gun brought. A gun represents an immediate threat and danger to anyone on the other side of the barrel—a power that humans have long desired and cherished: the subjugation of their brother, neighbor, and enemy, all equally.

This was the raping of Africa and the fuel behind the transatlantic slave trade. This is what I believe to be the starting point of stereotypes that are still held today—that Africans are valued only for physical labor.

It is good to note that Europeans were probably not willing to teach advanced blacksmithing techniques and mining of black powder so they could hold their grip on trade. It's also good to note that Africa, specifically Western Africa, has a long history of blacksmithing, particularly in the Benin and Mali area. New blacksmithing techniques also allowed the use of the ax to cut down previously unmoved trees, allowing new city and village development to happen.

War- Africa has a lot of them

The borders dating back to the colonies do not take into account differing cultures and tribes—tribes that speak such distinctly different languages, where they don’t even have the same word for shared items such as water, sky, blue, and food. Even though these cultures are within 50-75 miles of each other for the past thousands of years, they don’t share the same language at all; yet they were grouped together diplomatically as if they were. So, when the colonizing parties left Africa with arbitrary lines left over from “the scramble for Africa,” they put in power a couple or just one group(s). These ruling groups made decisions taking into account their language and culture, which did not consider those living in different environmental and cultural zones. Naturally, unrest and prejudice rose up, and strife started. Coups began to happen; this left the military in control and power, and the countries began to degenerate. It is not well known, but Africa in the 1960s–1980s was operating very well—nice and clean streets, good globalized trade, and good education. This ended when internal jealousy and strife started to grow from one tribe to another. Foreign actors, such as the US and USSR, used this for their benefit in the Cold War and would sponsor coup after coup or different military groups to ensure capitalism or communism wouldn’t spread. And now, the common and very true conception of Africa being war-torn and unrest-prone was created and is sustained.

Opportunity in Africa-Today, tomorrow, and forever and ever

Africa has a lot of raw materials; historically, they would get refined in the West or in China. Now, with the trade war, the West is no longer accepting goods from China at ease. This is causing a dash in capital to build refining and logistics capabilities within Africa. China has responded with the Belt and Road Initiative, where they finance factories for refinement and mining to be built in Africa, staffed and managed mostly by Chinese nationals to circumnavigate around trade tariffs. It's genius because they keep all of the wealth and employment in Chinese hands. This is exactly where America failed when they sent the factory jobs to China in the 1980s. America responded under the Biden administration with the IRA and the BBB; these plans included capital for foreign investment in these "critical" sectors. Both countries have a lot of money directed towards this, and if you are a national of either and want to get involved, I am sure it is yours for the taking if you meet the right people. Where the money is today, and still is, is in refining and shipping raw materials within Africa. Rockefeller, Dangote, Carnegie—all made money not from mining, but from refining and shipping. These areas are extremely undeveloped within Africa. If you are interested, go there and do this to make a whole lot of money, haha. Also, strong centralized sustainable planning is in need and would be warmly welcomed; i.e., creating bio-cities where plants and animals are ingrained into the infrastructure.

Logical proof of everyones abilities:

Here is my logical proof in everyone's abilities: If someone can learn one language, they can learn two. If someone can take one thing and put it somewhere else, they can work in a factory. If they can mix cement with a shovel, they can mix it with a machine. If they can learn simple math, they can learn advanced math. It is simple: if one can learn basic principles, they can learn advanced principles applied in different areas. These things, and other basic patterns and behaviors, are what build empires; empires are not anomalies; they are repeated progressive behaviors that are learned through an education system and maintained through central planning and tax workers. This right here disproves racism at its core because I have seen with my very eyes every single race with many different ethnicities doing these very things. If something can happen once, it can happen twice. The reason it has not happened once in some areas is not due to genetic deficiency but due to lack of centralized planning, which is due to the extremities of environments.

This goes into a separate but related topic of cultural influence. Cultural influence, much like environmental influence, are things you can change to a degree but are constantly inputting information into you, and you ultimately are a part of. Cultural influence may be the, or one of the, most powerful things humans have when curating change, status quo, or destruction. Shift a culture, shift a person, then shift the trajectory of mankind. I hope that problem-solving becomes one of the highest cultural ideals we start to teach across the world—both problem-solving to perfect and problem-solving to repair—for we need both of them to truly succeed and flourish.

Race being a factor outside of cultural influences as a determining factor of one's intellect is asinine and not real.

Cultural influence is by far one of the most powerful things humans have when curating change, status quo, or destruction.

“Much of 'common sense' will answer the plight of today's problems,” but common sense is subjective and dependent on one's awareness and education. In the example of hygiene: if one is never taught that standing water harbors disease, how can there be common sense to drain the water?

Some cultures do not teach nor have ever learned practices that will benefit them that are ingrained in others. So the proper way of teaching is to show the issues and the outcomes from the current actions, and then to provide a superior method with the outcomes, doing it in front of them to prove it.

I hope this better creates an understanding of Africa and where it is coming from.