WI: The Four Lions and the Booming African Economy

A lot has been said about the Four Dragons in Asia, those tiny Asian states with the booming economies. And then there is the talk about how in the future most of the trade in the world will be going on in the Pacific Ocean between America and Asia. And so forth and what not. It is clear to see that the Asian states have done a very good job in the Post-WWII world, but we are going to change that in this WI.
Africa is very rich in natural resources, and at first it appeared that Africa could have a booming economy after gaining independence. Suppose that the African states were able to make the transition to independence in a more peaceful fashion, so that the new governments were stable. One of the first thoughts is to do away with WWII, and have a more gradual approach to independence. Or do we need an earlier POD? Thoughts?
Could we get away with a post WWII POD?

Instead of the Four Dragons, we could have the Four Lions. Or any other number. South Africa's economy would be even stronger in this AH. Other areas such as Kenya could also have booming economies. Nigeria could supply a large amount of cheap labor to help with industrialization. And the fourth? Who knows, perhaps one of the West African nations such as Senegal. IIRC, they are doing better than most
other states.
One of the challenges is to get this done in sub-Saharan Africa, to have Africa's economy driven not by the Muslim states who are exporting fossil fuels but on the sub-Saharan states focusing on diverse goods including agricultural products like coffee, industrial goods for America and other nations, and a growing service industry for their own people. This is a problem with many WIs that try to improve Africa, even pre-colonization. One of the easiest ways to help Africa is to increase the power of the Muslims in Africa, instead of finding ways to increase the power of the sub-Saharan peoples. Can it be done?

It's a difficult scenario to arrange. For a modern economy, you need a few things;

1) workforce, preferably skilled.
2) technology
3) infrastructure
4) stable society

Now, the places like Taiwan, basically they've got hundreds of years of more or less stable society. So, they're able to use that stability to build the other three aspects. But a place like Congo, with no kind of ethnic, religious, political or historical uniformity and stability, that's difficult for them to achieve.

Societies tend to arrange their economies to produce whatever it's easiest for them to produce. So, Britain and Belgium, with heaps of coal and iron, they industrialised first. Whereas in Zaire, with tantalum and so on, they just mine that. Historically, nations with only raw materials, and no finished products, they become poorer as those with the finished products become richer.

Sure, they can diversify, but why do they bother? They have a local perspective. Would you plant cocoa plants next to a tantalum mine?

Another difficulty is that when some local growth does occur, a few people become rich, and most of the rest remain as they were - dirt poor. The rich ones look down on the poor ones, and can't see why they should help them develop, be educated, etc. The racism of the colonial countries' expatriats living in the colonies and running them is echoed by similar attitudes by the native elites.

You need quite an early PoD to get a modern, diversified economy in such places. In my "Abyssinia Triumphant," I chose one of about 1785, but still the best Ethiopia was able to manage in that was to be at about the wealth and development of Argentina.

You'd need to focus more European attention on China to get this to work. Abyssinia and Sokoto could had some serious potential to modernize due to their natural resources. One major problem was that Africa was right on Europe's doorstep and thus, easier to reach (coastline wise, not the interior).

A colonial scramble for Asia could change all this. Let's supposed we have some POD where the Dutch conquer Japan and Formosa, setting themselves up as a major trading power in East Asia (let's forget butterflies and problems with colonization for now). If the Dutch experiment is successful, goods from the Far East will be extremely coveted. Depending on the timing of the POD, you could have three nations scrambling for control of East Asia: Britain, France and Russia.

Seeing as how East Asia is hell on administration, most of Africa may escape colonization to some extent, which could prove beneficial for the modernization of Sokoto, Abyssinia and possibly even Liberia.