A/H Challenge: A more democratic Africa?

Lets image the following: Insteed of constant Civil War which has plague many Africa States after they gained Independence from the their Collonial Master of the Portugal, UK and Netherlands. In this Timeline we see an Africa in post WW2 which develops more peacefully and where the natural resources of the lands are used to improve social inferstructur and build Colleges, University's, Hospitals and democratic Institutions.

How would Africa be today?
 
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I don't think it's ASB at all. But it requires a POD right after WWII.

After the UN is formed in 1945, they create a program to promote greater development of colonies of the former powers, with the goal of introducing prosperity to as much of the world as possible. Since India became independent in 1947 and most colonies were long gone in most other places by then, the majority of this money went to Africa. The 1950s and 1960s see massive development programs, largely funded by the USA as part of the Marshall Plan and its successors and also by the colonial powers. Britain, France, Portugal and others benefit from this as well. The Red influence that caused so much problems in Africa as a result is curtailed.

Problems still exist in many places of Africa, particularly in the Congo and Rhodesia. Congo's 1960 independence still rapidly sinks into civil war, but this time the world, led by Britain, gets involved. The Belgians let the troublesome colony go, and things have settled into stability by the late '60s.

Rhodesia is more troublesome. More than half a million whites live in Rhodesia by 1960, and the "Winds of Change" speech by MacMillan causes more problems, as apartheid South Africa stokes the problems in Rhodesia. Progressives like Garfield Todd shoot the gap between the Rhodesian whites and others, helped by socialist leaders like Kenneth Kaunda and Herbert Chitepo lead. Rhodesia declares independence on its own in 1964, and the white-led government of Ian Smith immediately consolidates white rule. But with Britain in the Congo, Smith's government is immediately in trouble.

In 1965, US President Lyndon Johnson, seeing the increasing problems of communism both in Vietnam and Africa, starts funneling aid to African nations. Better governed ones like Botswana and Tanzania get the aid first.

Rhodesia's white government by 1970 is under political pressure. South Africa's help is only able to help so much. By this time, Mugabe has declared war on Smith's government, but Chitepo, Nkomo and Kaunda kept the protests peaceful. The loss of cheap black labor ended the possibility of Smith's government surviving, and he backed down and accepted all-race elections in 1972. Kaunda handily won, but the Rhodesian constitution limited a Prime Minister to ten years in power, and Kaunda respected the rule, leaving power in 1982.

In 1975, Africa's leaders, led by Kaunda, Joseph Kasa-Vubu, Julius Nyerere, Jomo Kenyatta and Egypt's Anwar Sadat, who was trying to distance himself from the often extreme Arab states, set up the African Union, an organization designed to help the continent itself. It's first objective was destroying apartheid, but that plan got sidetracked quickly.

Angola and Mozambique became independent in 1975, which almost immediately sent mineral-rich Angola into civil warfare. The repeated failures of Soviet and Chinese attempts to take over or influence the new countries in the 1950s and 1960s leads to a determined attempt to consolidate power in the hands of the MPLA. The USA however, having seen Britain and its European allies succeed in the Congo, was not willing to let the Russians win in Angola.

The American war in Angola became infamous for its length, but most military experts and historians say the US military's crumbling after Vietnam was stopped dead in Angola. The US first landed troops in 1976, and the last US soldiers did not leave until 1988. But during that time, the US' view in Africa was changed forever.

The MPLA and UNITA fought numerous times, but when the US showed up the communist nations stepped up the offensive and sent tons of equipment to the conflict, helped quite openly by South Africa, seeing the war as a possibility to help save the fading apartheid state. The US, whose forces never numbered more than 135,000, came with the latest firepower. Better still, almost 60,000 engineers followed them. Angola came out of the war with an almost first-world infrastructure, virtually all of it built with US money.

The other African nations focused their attention on South Africa. But the US armed and built infrastructure for much of these nations too. From Zambia's incredible new University of Zambia campus in Lusaka to more than 60,000 miles of roads and 5,000 primary schools, the US forces found themselves making life much easier for the civilians.

South Africa intervened directly in 1980, but their attempts found themselves shooting at US Marines and their Mirage jets found themselves being smoked by American F-14 Tomcats. After five months the SADF withdrew, bloodied badly.

The MPLA's popular support lost ground rather rapidly over time. Savimbi rode victorious into Lusaka in May 1978, but the insurgency in Angola lasted well into the 1990s. As with ZANLA in Rhodesia, the MPLA just would not give up no matter how long the odds.

The US by the 1980s under Jimmy Carter (1977-1981), Ronald Reagan (1981-1985) and Henry M. Jackson (1985-1991) provided lavish aid to Africa, and only demanded that Washington's requests be listened to. The African leaders were only too happy to do this, having not forgot who built their nations.

With several prospering African nations on their borders, South Africa's infamous apartheid crumbled. Jackson in particular devoutly supported the idea that if the US built the infrastructure and trained the people, that the good deeds would not be forgotten and that would work better than constant aid. He turned out to be more right than he ever imagined. Carter's disgust towards apartheid was not quite matched by Reagan and Jackson, but all of them universally derided.

By 1990, apartheid was still alive - barely. But Botswana, Rhodesia and Mozambique were prospering, and sub-Sarahan African was a place that started to attract serious investment and massive numbers of tourists. A measure of the prosperity was a 1991 study of the best places to live in the world ranked Rhodesia 28th and six African nations made the top 40.

1991 saw Scoop Jackson die from an Aortic Aineurysm in office at 79, and his funeral was attended by 46 African leaders, and just about every leader of the free world. USSR Premier Gorbachev too came to pay his respects. His vice-president, Bill Clinton, continued his legacy. Clinton was elected in his own right in November 1992.

In 1991, Apartheid finally crashed hard. ANC Youth League boss Chris Hani, who had spent years on the run, was arrested by police outside Johannesburg, and died two weeks later, tortured to death by South African police. South Africa promptly blew up, and the SADF was soon forced to fight for its own nation, and divide and conquer violence amongst tribes erupted simultaneously. By mid-1992, South Africa was a mess. The ANC led by Jacob Zuma had engaged in massive violence in the highveld, and the white regime had consolidated its control over the Cape Province and was returning the favor.

Clinton rammed the white government into talking with the moderate ANC, led by Nelson Mandela and Steve Biko, who returned from Rhodesia to be part of the negotiations. The white government was cornered, but the clincher was put forward by Europe. In a repeat of Europe's 1960s intervention in Congo, the newly-formed European Union offered to put a force between the Republic-controlled area and the US offered to not only provide security but provide money to fix the country. African nations backed this up in no uncertain terms, offering everything from dirt cheap oil (Angola) and coal (Rhodesia) supplies to exclusive access to industrial minerals. But all of the nations demanded the end of apartheid, and all of the nations demanded the reunification of the country.

President FW de Klerk relented and quickly dismantled apartheid laws. South African whites, remembering having abandon half the country, saw the chance to save the other half and jumped at it. Zuma on the other hand would not accept it at all, and demanded the total destruction of the Republican government now in Cape Town.

The US and the EU chose the side of South Africa, particularly after the November 1993 elections, in which the National Party after 45 years handed the government to the ANC, led by Mandela. The remaining Republic of South Africa was a very racially mixed state - 6.7 million whites, 2.5 million coloreds, 875,000 Indians and 8.9 million black Africans.

Zuma formally established his republic of Azania in November 1992, but the collapsing Soviet Union wasn't able to provide much in the way of support, but the Chinese government provided enough that Zuma stayed afloat, despite his neighbors hating his guts.

By 2008, South Africa is the wealthiest country on the continent, an associate of the European Union and has a per capita income on par with countries such as Argentina and eastern Europe. Mineral-rich Rhodesia and Botswana and oil-rich Angola are not far behind. The Congo is the breadbasket of Africa and much of the west. The port at Matadi, Congo, is the world's busiest commodities port. It became possible for the first time in 1992 to drive from Cairo to Cape Town, and train travel between the two distant African nation became possible in 1997.

Literacy rates on the continent range from 98% in South Africa to just below 50% in much of West Africa. Life expectancy ranges from 47 years (Azania) to 81 years (South Africa). AIDS is a scourge in Africa, but it is only out of control in certain parts of it.

Dictatorships exist in a few nations - Azania, Malawi, Zanzibar, Somalia, Sudan - but democracy is the rule rather than the exception in Africa.
 
Could most African countries copy India's 'green revolution' and eliminate food scarcity? Or are they structurally screwed by an inability to reliably produce agricultural surpluses even in bad years?
 
Hey TheMann, I like. Nice timeline.

I just don't know if Zuma would be in charge of the radical wing of the ANC, he's only really risen to prominence in the late '90s. Maybe somebody like Peter Mokaba (he of the "one settler, one bullet" fame), an "inzile" and popular among the youth, would be a more likely candidate.

Did you used to live in SA, or Zim?
 
one of the basic reasons why africa is as messed up as it is today is constant cia and kgb fuckups and interference during the cold war as well as today, and a general lack of suport for positive change when it actualy hapens especially if its not in a form that is directly recognised in the west, like tribal rule, it alwais seems some superpower has a problem whit it

just take somalia for example, after decades of chaos the people finaly have enough and organise themselves into religious-court based autonomus organisations wich interlink to form a kind of federation of autonomus political entities simillar to the soviets in Bakunjin anarhist texts, in an armed strugle they get rid of the warlords and provclaim soverenity
and as brutal and midlleage stile as their solutions were, it works wonders, theres peace, theres securty, theres trade, hospitals work, children go to school, people can go out at night

but NO NO NO says the U S A (who by the way funded the warlords who riped the place apart for decades) oh no thats all islamic terrorism is what that is al-qaeda an all that
better launch misile strikes against them and give the etiopian army the green light to go there and genocide the place into submision yes? lets go and have a nother 20 years of civil war yes?

and this sort of thing hapened again and again one way or the other since the begfining of the cold war, not to mention all the asasinations and coups organised by the us or rusia or the french or any other ex colonial or cold war power

if you want a AH like that to work yud first have to get rid of russia nad the us, as

a thing that would of helped such an outcome would of been less atempts to force democracy in certain parts, but more support of pre existant functional local forms of goverment, be it tribal or monarchic, with an emfasis on financial and tehnological aid in exchange for more consideration of human rights
if this resulted in a stabile political and economic situation, democracy would come sooner or later when the people would demand it, even if after some fighting, but definily less than the generation long etnic wars that actualy hapened and are hapening

also the favoring of the formation of more smaller more realistic and etnicly homogenous states could of made a difference,
rather than the huge colonialist chunks of territory that puts dosens of nation at a time under one gowerment, almost alwais of an etnic majority

@TheMann
the basic problem with hipotesis like that is the historicaly prowen tendency to funnel arms instead of aid 9 times out of 10
 
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How do we eliminate corruption (e.g. needing to pay bribes to government officials) in Africa?

Without redrawing borders to match ethnic groups, how do we get Africans to act first as citizens of their nation, not as members of a tribe or ethnic group?

How do we stop African leaders from funnelling money into Swiss bank accounts?
 
Africa was ratshit long before the KGB and CIA were even thought of. Ancient Egypt gouged Nubia for gold and slaves thousands of years ago, and this trend has continued uninterrupted since then.

Without the CIA and KGB, with democracy, little internal strife and perhaps a re-drawing the borders Africa would still not be rich. They just don't have the ability to produce surpluses, starting with agriculture, to create a rich society.
 
Hey TheMann, I like. Nice timeline.

I just don't know if Zuma would be in charge of the radical wing of the ANC, he's only really risen to prominence in the late '90s. Maybe somebody like Peter Mokaba (he of the "one settler, one bullet" fame), an "inzile" and popular among the youth, would be a more likely candidate.

Did you used to live in SA, or Zim?

Nope, I haven't lived there. But my family has many roots in ZimRho.

My father was born in Wankie and spent his childhood in Salisbury though. Dad left in 1969, but Grandpa wouldn't leave. He stayed into Zimbabwe, but his farm was in Matabeleland. Which means he got to see Gukurahindi first hand. That made him finally pack up and leave, which he did in 1984.
 
After World War I, Woodrow Wilson manages to get his principles of national self-determination applied to African nations, but that would take a point of divergence earlier than 1900 perhaps. The borders are redrawn to recognise peoples, not zones of control. Certainly would eliminate the intra-state ethnic violence and coups, but wouldn't necessarily eliminate a new inter-state conflict.

Course not post World War II. I don't know if a peaceful Africa is really possible in a post-colonial environment. When you cut borders through hundreds of cultural and ethnic groups, you are asking for trouble.
 
The solution to Africa's problems is not much more aid; it's mostly thanks to all aid and support that the situation looks like it does today. It only made corrupt leaders complacent and worked against the build-up of infrastructure, encouraging corruption and short-term gains for long-term losses. Intsead, we should have seen a slower, more responsible decolonisation. If the US had funded the colonial empires, they could've held on to Africa a bit longer, giving it independence at some point in the '80s. By thewn, they'd hopefully had time to build up an infrastructure and taught the blacks how to operate a country.

Instead, IOTL, the African countries were left alone at a stage when they weren't ready for freedom. Of course it went to Chaos then.
 
^ I wouldn't have advocated the throwing money problem. But I don't think slower decolonization would help, either. You'd just have more Rhodesias - an oppressor that the blacks comprehensively hate. You'll note that Britain got out of the colonies on a high after intervening successfully in the Congo. The USA here provided what essentially amounts to a Marshall Plan in Africa - provide the tools and infrastructure to run the country successfully. Here as well we don't get one party states as often as in OTL. Guys like Kaunda, Nyerere et al see things a little differently, and the Americans get Africa firmly on their side.
 
^ I wouldn't have advocated the throwing money problem. But I don't think slower decolonization would help, either. You'd just have more Rhodesias - an oppressor that the blacks comprehensively hate. You'll note that Britain got out of the colonies on a high after intervening successfully in the Congo. The USA here provided what essentially amounts to a Marshall Plan in Africa - provide the tools and infrastructure to run the country successfully. Here as well we don't get one party states as often as in OTL. Guys like Kaunda, Nyerere et al see things a little differently, and the Americans get Africa firmly on their side.

Slower decolonization? :eek: That would be worse - the anti-colonial wars were tearing up the place.

Some type of more organized decolonization would have been better - the empires sort of just evaporated in a couple of years as the powers dumped them as fast as possible.

Maybe some UN program to draw logical borders? The problem is I don't think the Powers really saw the end of the empires as immanent.
 
Slower decolonization? :eek: That would be worse - the anti-colonial wars were tearing up the place.

Some type of more organized decolonization would have been better - the empires sort of just evaporated in a couple of years as the powers dumped them as fast as possible.

Maybe some UN program to draw logical borders? The problem is I don't think the Powers really saw the end of the empires as immanent.

The problem with logical borders is that you'd inevitably end up with hundreds if not thousands of various little countries. I think the best option would be making sure each nation has not got one dominant tribe, because that seems to cause issues in lots of places, from Namibia and Zimbabwe to Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.

That in a few cases would have worked better. I've always wondered why South Africa never annexed Namibia, got knows after 70 years, they had the chances. They even enfranchised the whites there in 1960. Rhodesia probably would have worked better post-independence if it was not split in half - that may have also had the ability to butterfly away Ian Smith, van der Byl and the bigots of the UDI era, by simply working a way to get the country independent in 1964 in its entirety.
 
That's a little patronizing. Africa had much larger state structures than tribes before colonialism, and some are suitable for federation. You wouldn't have that many more countries than there are now.

Examples, Bornu, Sokoto, Zanzibar...

The problem with logical borders is that you'd inevitably end up with hundreds if not thousands of various little countries. I think the best option would be making sure each nation has not got one dominant tribe, because that seems to cause issues in lots of places, from Namibia and Zimbabwe to Sierra Leone and Ethiopia.

That in a few cases would have worked better. I've always wondered why South Africa never annexed Namibia, got knows after 70 years, they had the chances. They even enfranchised the whites there in 1960. Rhodesia probably would have worked better post-independence if it was not split in half - that may have also had the ability to butterfly away Ian Smith, van der Byl and the bigots of the UDI era, by simply working a way to get the country independent in 1964 in its entirety.
 
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