Africa with more variety of countries

Jonathan Edelstein

Jonathan Edelstein

Derek Pullem said:
Seeing how the traditional power structures cope post independence could be a very informative response to the off raised complaint that the African states were artificial European constructs and therefore doomed to fail.
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The available evidence IOTL - Rwanda, Burundi, Lesotho, Swaziland, and to an extent Uganda - isn't very promising.
 
Derek Pullem

Derek Pullem

Donor
Jonathan Edelstein said:
The available evidence IOTL - Rwanda, Burundi, Lesotho, Swaziland, and to an extent Uganda - isn't very promising.
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I know - which is why I referred to it as dystopic.

Even absent the colonial powers an "Africa modernises and consolidates" timeline in the 19th and 20th centuries is likely to be as bloody and as fraught with human rights abuses as our timeline (but would be interesting in the same way as the development of Mao's China is interesting)
 

Strategos' Risk

I don't really have an actual POD or theme for this other than "different for the sake of variety", so I'm going to catalog the ideas in this thread as a grab bag of ideas for people to use in the future, and so someone can make a map for me.
 

Vespasian

Jonathan Edelstein said:
That was under the original constitution. Currently, the traditional rulers in Uganda have had their properties restored, and they and their kingdoms have certain officially-recognized cultural roles (see Traditional Rulers (Restitution of Assets and Properties) Act 1993 and Institution of Traditional Cultural Leaders Act 2011), but they are no longer the titular rulers of provinces and the administrative divisions of the country don't follow traditional boundaries.

That said, I agree that monarchies within republics might be the most viable way to have more of them in modern Africa. We would need two factors: (a) more countries being treated like Uganda during the colonial period - i.e., the traditional kingdoms being treated like Indian princely states rather than like precolonial states elsewhere in Africa - and (b) no socialist rule or rule by an Idi Amin-type nihilist after independence. Nigeria might have ended up this way if colonial rule had been even slightly different, as might Ghana.
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On that note, the original constitutions of some African countries created unique features like Nigeria's three regions prior to 1966-67.
 

Marius

Jonathan Edelstein said:
For a form of government which is more "alternative," consider Samoa IOTL as a model. Since the death of Tupua Tamasese Mea'ole, the Samoan head of state is elected every five years, but (a) he has always been one of the four paramount chiefs, and (b) he is referred to by a royal title - "His Highness" - rather than a republican one.

This kind of royal republic could work very well with West African elective monarchy. Most of the traditional Nigerian kings, for instance, are selected by a college of "kingmakers" from a pool of several royal families: the Ooni of Ife, for instance, can come from any of four houses. It's possible to imagine this system writ large as a form of national government - in addition to its parliament, a country could have a house of kingmakers with no other function than to elect a ceremonial head of state, and the head of state would be called by a royal title during his term of office.

One problem, of course, could be that many modern African states have a multiplicity of traditional kings - Nigeria has more than 70 - so which one would get to be head of state? OTOH, Malaysia has solved that problem pretty well IOTL, and a national college of kingmakers that rotates the position between the traditional monarchs could work. What we'd need, probably, is for this form of government to be set up during the later colonial period, for instance if the British try to balance out an expansion of the franchise by giving more power to traditional rulers who support their interests.
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A South Africa that takes a different path could also have this happen.

Traditional leaders and kings are recognised in SA today, but there are enough of them to possibly have the Malaysian idea work. We have the king of the Zulus, the Bafokeng, the Xhosas, the Pondo, the Balobedu etc.
 

Arkenfolm

Marius said:
Off the top of my head, Cape Town, Zanzibar, and Cabinda could all become African Singapores, depending on the POD etc.
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A lot of East African coastal cities could fit the role, although the one best suited would be Zanzibar because of the administration structures in place.

I think Cabinda's dependence on oil might make it instead more of a Qatar or Bahrain than a Singapore.
 

wtw

or have every African nation collapse into ethnic/tribal states
upload_2017-2-17_8-37-18.png
 

Arkenfolm

Implausible.

Either would be a complete mess (obviously). Warlords would undo those ethnic divisions sooner or later, aside from the fact that some aren't even viable as states. Some might federate peacefully, considering that as far as I know, what you have for the Yoruba, Igbo, and Malagasy seem to be able to work together more or less peaceably without creating their own countries. North Africa is obviously very viable without breaking it into those components. And how would that work with groups like the Fulani, who are spread from Mauritania to Cameroon? Many of regions of Africa are very ethnically mixed, preventing the emergence of ethnic states.
 

Strategos' Risk

Strategos' Risk said:
Finally, how about more African countries that managed to escape colonialism, with a POD as close to 1900 as possible? In this case it would clearly be Madagascar, made into a French protectorate in 1864. So let's say they, like Liberia and almost-Ethiopia, had an unbroken continuous independence.
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Were there any other contenders for almost avoiding colonization?
 
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