Time to display my Ignorance.

[Sythe]

A bit recently at school during history class we were studying ancient civilizations. We just did African civilizations like Ghana and Songhai and I was just like WOW! However I just look at the Africa today and am just sad. How is it is the poorest contient, when there is such abundant resources? I cannot really find a clear and direct answer. All I hear is something that it has some kind of debt and result of Euro colinization in the 1800's. I know this is a bit common knowledge but can you guys please enlighten me?

[Azred]

That is because there is no clear and direct answer.

You know those sections of your home city of which everyone is aware but no one ever goes? The section where the homes/buildings are a little run-down (or a lot run-down) and many businesses have long since been closed? Well, Africa is to the world what that section is to your city--a place that has been ignored for a long time.
Even most people on this board, clearly a slice of the general population that is considerably more well-informed than the average citizen, could not name all the countries in Africa, nor could board members here give a synopsis of current events in Africa. Don't lie, either--you know you can't. Even I can't! [img]graemlins/saywhat.gif[/img]

Africa has enormous potential, but one would have to be careful in trying to develop Africa because who would want to disrupt so much natural splendor?

[johnny]

Africa is there for us westerners to exploit. The western world has nothing to gain from a well developed African civilisation, therefore they give no more aid then necessary for them to sustain. We kinda keep em systematically stupid and let warlords roam free to do whatever they see fit, so African resources remain easy pickings.

Good enough conspiracy theory ?

[shamrock_uk]

Only time for a very quick response here, but I'll try to cover a few of the points raised so far.

Re. the failure of natural resources to lead to prosperity: exploitation, lack of distribution & accountability, corruption. If you're a student, then you might want to look up Rentier State Theory - you'll most commonly find it applied to Middle-East countries and oil, but I think there are applications for some African states. Basically, countries rich in natural resources use them to finance government (rather than taxation) - this raises all sorts of interesting questions...the old saying "no taxation without representation" can be turned around to "no representation if no taxation"...the government simply doesn't need a political base for survival and therefore has no obligation to improve the lot of the average person in society. The worker base used in resource industries is usually small, highly skilled and thus the majority of the population has no part in the primary wealth-generating industry. Its a really interesting way of looking at the impact on a countries political structure of its economic endowment. I've written an essay on this if it would prove useful.

Re. the colonial period. The main impact this has had is to impose the Western state structure on the continent (look at those nice straight 'drawn with a ruler' borders on the map) - tribal loyalties still dominate in most of Africa and thus development of the state is something of an alien idea to many people.

I often think that urbanisation has been the greatest curse we've brought to Africa, but then again, we have to ask whether the old tribal system was 'better'. Its a difficult and subjective question to answer really. Colonialization in Africa was also rather different depending on the power. The Germans are largely inconsequential here (Tanganika...anywhere else?) - the British & French are the major players. The British generally adopted a laissez-faire approach to Africa whereas the French were much more ready to create institutions and change cultures but at the same time favoured greater integration with the 'mother' country - witness Algerians being given French citizenship. Basis for the French approach and the license to alter societies comes from French political philosophy (think Rousseau and Voltaire) and the discovery of so-called 'universal' political laws.

Re. the idea of exploitation (eg. by paying low wages) - this is largely discredited by trade theory (and seems to be supported by empirical evidence too). Workers are paid a wage commensurate with their productivity, and countries benefit from trade even if they lack any absolute advantage.

Hope that helps

[Djinn Raffo]

Originally posted by shamrock_uk: Re. the colonial period. The main impact this has had is to impose the Western state structure on the continent (look at those nice straight 'drawn with a ruler' borders on the map) - tribal loyalties still dominate in most of Africa and thus development of the state is something of an alien idea to many people.

Would you consider Ethiopia a successful African state? It has never been colonized after all (unless you count a very brief period under the Italians during the Second World War).

[shamrock_uk]

I'm tempted to be flippant and say that a successful African state would be a contradiction in terms, but then there are exceptions.

I don't necessarily believe that colonialism automatically leads to the failure of a country - quite the opposite sometimes. For instance Egypt has done alright for itself despite British occupation.

I don't know too much about Ethiopia, but I have a mental image of Haile Sallasie being an enlightened leader. Having said that he was deposed in a military coup which seemed to have popular support so presumably he wasn't as great as I thought.

As for why its failed, I think this is due to

1) Crappy military dictatorship
2) Massive refugee problem
3) Almost continual war. The Italians, the Somalians and many more skirmishes don't do much to improve living stanfards raelly.

As for Ethiopia developing the state structure all by itself I'm not entirely sure why. The Wikipedia says that

it must be borne in mind that from 1600, and perhaps back to an even earlier period, the country has been merely a conglomeration of provinces and districts, ill-defined, loosely connected and generally at war with each other.

so perhaps Ethiopia simply just stopped being at war with itself and then the regions were forced to cooperate following their surrounding by hostile Muslim states.

Edit: Fixed horrible spelling

[ 02-16-2005, 03:16 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Lucern]

I agree with Shamrock that Western colonialism forced arbitrary nationalistic divisions on Africa - making some horrible corrollary between straight borders and awful socioeconomic conditions.

An Indian friend of a British prof that I had said that the best thing that ever happened to India was gaining independence from British rule. The second best thing that ever happened was getting British railroads.

Colonialism was about exploitation. I can think of cases of cultural (religious) and economic exploitation, and some mixtures of the two, but economic exploitation seems to be the pattern in Africa through much of the last 500 years. There may have been some development benefits, but at the cost of lasting social and economic disadvantage - especially if the colonizers took the hands-on approach like France did. That's in the not-too-distant past, mind you.

It's an interesting concept that Shamrock brought up about Trade theory, but I'd have to see some of that empirical evidence. Even if colonizer and colonized are in some sort of mutualistic economic relationship, there's a vast inequality that, even if it's not quantitatively significant, would be hard to call beneficial in the light of the degrading cultural hegemony suffered by the colonized. Cultures are routinely devalued and crippled in colonial systems, and the colonized are lumped in with peoples that formerly had nothing to do with them. Being compensated for my productivity in that system and calling the overall situation anything other than exploitation would be hard for me to swallow.

[shamrock_uk]

One interesting thing about India is that it never existed before the British and was always made up of these autonomous regions. This persisted throughout Islamic control and through the Moghul empire and right up until the East India Company handed over power to Britain.

I would argue that Indian nationalism began under the British - that their sense of national identity was forged during this period - and the introduction of railroads, post etc allowed for the first time politicians to reach the whole country.

There's been a bit of historical revisionism by Indian nationalists unfortunately, but one oft forgotten fact is that the Indian National Congress (which proved so crucial as a focus for nationalism) was actually founded by a white British man. Not to take away the undeniably skillful and sophisticated way that the Indians went about making the case for decolonization, but it certainly illustrates the extent to which the British were responsible for 'creating' the modern state of India.

Re. the trade theory, sorry you'll have to wait until maybe tonight for a better explanation. Ricardo first thought up the basic model of comparative advantage which showed that countries always gain from trade because both sides are made better off (the amount of goods produced in total increases)

More sophisticated and modern theories expand on this by dealing with the distribution of income and how its affected by trade - ie. just because a country benefits doesn't mean the individual does. They're much more ambiguous about the benefits. There's a whole chapter in one of my textbooks devoted to debunking free trade myths like outsourcing & exploitation and I'll have a look at that more critically later on. The only empirical evidence that springs to mind (and not strictly relevent to exploitation) are studies done on the likes of South Korea and similar countries from the beginning (poor, backwards) to now (much better) and showing that real wages in these countries tend to increase with productivity increases. Thus fears about the famous "sucking sound" as industry moves from the US to Mexico are largely unfounded - wages will increase as labour gets more productive.

I think you're right about the cultural loss under colonization, but I'm not sure whether trade theory can apply here - its usually used in the context of free trade between autonomous nations. If the trade takes place under colonialism then I guess its quite possible this would distort the benefits and lead to a much more one-sided situation. I'll think about that over breakfast [img]smile.gif[/img]

[ 02-16-2005, 03:31 AM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]

[Lucern]

I think you're right about the cultural loss under colonization, but I'm not sure whether trade theory can apply here - its usually used in the context of free trade between autonomous nations. If the trade takes place under colonialism then I guess its quite possible this would distort the benefits and lead to a much more one-sided situation. I'll think about that over breakfast

Right on. It was essentially my point that the effects of colonialism are broader than can be conceived by economics and nationalist politics, and that the accompanied exploitation is always more than financial (and thereby outside of what little I know of trade theory). I already know which side generally comes out on bottom in the clash of cultures, but I'd still be interested in the extent and quality of economic benefit as predicted by trade theory.

(And I'd be happy to fill anyone in on cultural hegemonic domination in colonialism if that's not an assumption you're comfortable with)