Africa with a higher Human Development Index score than in OTL

The problem, as noted by others, is that while it's easy to imagine nation-specific PODs those probably wouldn't do much to uplift the other countries on the continent.

Perhaps if AIDS hadn't made the jump to humans? I'm not well versed in the origins of HIV/AIDS, but according to Wikipedia it first spread to humans in the early 20th century, and grew better adapted over the century. Might be that a single(un)fortunate mutation not taking place would be enough to prevent AIDS. Or delay it by a couple of decades?

Besides the obvious decrease in human suffering, this may also lead to better economic performance: labour supply not being culled, less burden on the health system. OTOH it likely means a larger population(in the short term, increased odds of survival are associated with declining birthrates so it may mean a smaller population in the long term), which means greater strain on the food supply. Although for a counterargument see this, which argues that the spread of AIDS was associated with a seriously diminished agricultural production due to culling the agricultural labour force.

Certainly it is unrealistic to expect that all of Africa will be a perfect paradise, but organically developing states would probably do a better job because they would make their decisions locally - and there's nothing to prevent (indeed, it would be quite inevitable) that European influence would be imposed on them anyway, even if colonialism didn't occur.
There's at least one possible problem with organically developing states- they mean organically developing borders. I know that the artificial imposition of borders on Africa is typically held up as a Bad Thing Because It Divided Ethnic Groups, but this critique ignores that organically developing borders aren't determined by censuses. They're determined by war.

If there's one positive thing that colonialism can be credited with, it's the imposition of clearly defined borders. Credit also goes to the postcolonial African governments for treating those borders as sacrosanct.

With the scramble for Africa absent or restrained, is it likely that we'd see emerging native state borders mediated in a Treaty of Berlin fashion? Doubtful- more likely we'd see borders determined by conquest, young empires fracturing again in civil wars, all sponsored by Western arms dealers looking to sell their merchandise, and corporations/governments aiding their favoured proxies in exchange for most favoured nation status. The endless territorial wars in Eurasia ended because of... well, we could debate whether it had more to do with economics, cultural change, MAD, the establishment of international organizations. But whichever of those explanations you credit, it's likely they'd be slower to stabilize Africa- poorer, less able to afford nukes, little in the way of natural Schelling points when it comes to borders and state legitimacy.

I suppose there's a credible argument that this might actually be a good thing- that it would lead to patriotic ideologies subsuming tribal identities, that it would favour those states that did a better job of modernizing and industrializing as they would be more likely to survive and conquer weaker/less efficient states. Survival of the fittest, if you will. Though this assumes that those factors that make a country successful in war correlate with those factors that make it successful in economic/human development.
 
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Post-1900 we have colonialism in place and our only independent African state is Abyssinia. Most ATLs alter the Great War, alter WW2 or alter the post-WW2 worlds, and most of these equal surviving European empires and lingering colonialism, so the discussion here is how to avoid the rise of thieving dictators, civil war or inner violence, horrid economic choices and failure to build the institutions/infrastructure that promotes sustained development, rather then mere growth or boom cycles. For me the easier variable is revolutionary communism. And I realize that plays to the trope of longer serving colonialism is better, it isn't, but it is the alternative that fits the groundwork that is in place.

Since I am toying with the Great War, the only change is a surviving German Empire, if it retains any of its colonies then it is the best place for me to consider departures. First it has a smaller Empire, next it has to rebuild, it has to change, it has the most to gain from innovating how it ruled the colonies. Britain as little incentive to change what works, especially if it is a lesser belligerent or neutral, France already pursued its vision of leveraging the empire to bolster its defense, something it will likely pursue stronger, Spain or Portugal likely do nothing different. So it is left to an alternative Imperial Germany to push ideas on how to transition from exploit the colonies to build better partners. So that is why it seats the Germans as the do it different this time guys.

First I think we want better governance. We want to see some democracy, local autonomy, authority in the natives over the taxation and its use. We want education, housing, sanitation and health to get investment along with communications that link these peoples into their states, facilitate governance and trade, and lastly promote local industry that adds value rather than merely rely on cheap labor or cheap export commodities. And I think I can get at least one imperial power to do better at it, if only for realpolitik, and if that shift occurs it might improve the path to independence for more than a handful of countries. Taking out the revolutionary wars is not 100% certain, we still can have Mau Mau style rebellion that is not simply Soviet sponsored disruption, indeed these sort of native uprisings in response to bad colonial rule are more likely in especially the outwardly successful British or French colonies because real reform is potentially slower in the victors camp. If I am to track more of Africa to stability, good governance, rising incomes, education and health levels then I need a rationale to govern rather than rule, invest rather than exploit and partner rather than repress.
 
They were unable to make the colonies economically viable and put minimal to no investment on the right kind of infastructure and education. They refused to build viable political institutions and were completly reliant on local chiefs for administration.
Why should a colonial power invest in infrastructure and education of it's colonies?

If not relying on the local chiefs and previous administration, then how should the colonies be administrered?
 
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Certainly it is unrealistic to expect that all of Africa will be a perfect paradise, but organically developing states would probably do a better job because they would make their decisions locally - and there's nothing to prevent (indeed, it would be quite inevitable) that European influence would be imposed on them anyway, even if colonialism didn't occur. I would suggest that a parallel could be drawn to Thailand: Thailand is no paradise, but it is better off than most of its neighbors who were colonized, except for Malaysia -a state whose economic miracle occurred after independence anyway.
If some countries become more developed then this will to a degree spillover into it's neighbours and partners. Development may likely start in coastal resource rich states, from there it can spillover.
 
South Africa has the second-highest HDI in mainland sub-Saharan Africa after Botswana so using your logic one of the best ways for an African country to have a high HDI is to be a settler colony with a fairly high proportion of whites in the country.
Whites did have more rights and avenues for expressing themselfes than others in colonial Africa, this makes it more expensive to "combat" them. Therefore whites would likely continue to have higher HDI than others as long as this regime was preserved.
 
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Indeed.

It comes down to economic policies, really.

Botswana has been pretty free market, and where the state has been involved (like in Debswana) it has been sensible, and hasn't nationalised everything, like what happened in Zambia in 1970 for example. Botswana has also been a pretty free democracy since independence, which has also played a role - although they aren't exactly the democratic beacon they're often perceived to be. There are some authoritarian skeletons in the Motswana government closet, but it goes without saying they've been better on this score than just about every other African country.
The free market is necessary but not sufficient in of itself. Côté d'Ivoire was the most successful nation in all of Black sub-Saharan Africa for the non-oil producing nations. But when commodity prices crashed and political stability evaporated, this economic prosperity evaporated, and they are only just regaining it. Development and growth are different things.

There's at least one possible problem with organically developing states- they mean organically developing borders. I know that the artificial imposition of borders on Africa is typically held up as a Bad Thing Because It Divided Ethnic Groups, but this critique ignores that organically developing borders aren't determined by censuses. They're determined by war.

If there's one positive thing that colonialism can be credited with, it's the imposition of clearly defined borders. Credit also goes to the postcolonial African governments for treating those borders as sacrosanct.

With the scramble for Africa absent or restrained, is it likely that we'd see emerging native state borders mediated in a Treaty of Berlin fashion? Doubtful- more likely we'd see borders determined by conquest, young empires fracturing again in civil wars, all sponsored by Western arms dealers looking to sell their merchandise, and corporations/governments aiding their favoured proxies in exchange for most favoured nation status. The endless territorial wars in Eurasia ended because of... well, we could debate whether it had more to do with economics, cultural change, MAD, the establishment of international organizations. But whichever of those explanations you credit, it's likely they'd be slower to stabilize Africa- poorer, less able to afford nukes, little in the way of natural Schelling points when it comes to borders and state legitimacy.

I suppose there's a credible argument that this might actually be a good thing- that it would lead to patriotic ideologies subsuming tribal identities, that it would favour those states that did a better job of modernizing and industrializing as they would be more likely to survive and conquer weaker/less efficient states. Survival of the fittest, if you will. Though this assumes that those factors that make a country successful in war correlate with those factors that make it successful in economic/human development.
Certainly, but it has taken a long time for those African states's borders to stabilize with internal nationalism and state structures anyway. Europe took its own time to go through that transition. Left to its own devices, the transition would still occur.

South Africa has the second-highest HDI in mainland sub-Saharan Africa after Botswana so using your logic one of the best ways for an African country to have a high HDI is to be a settler colony with a fairly high proportion of whites in the country.
Leaving besides any moral qualms about that, concerning forcibly replacing African populations with European ones, its also an entirely irrelevant contribution to the discussion. There is no possibility in the vast majority of Africa to develop white settler colonies, because the local population was already large, militarized, and diseases were extremely dangerous.

Post-1900 we have colonialism in place and our only independent African state is Abyssinia. Most ATLs alter the Great War, alter WW2 or alter the post-WW2 worlds, and most of these equal surviving European empires and lingering colonialism, so the discussion here is how to avoid the rise of thieving dictators, civil war or inner violence, horrid economic choices and failure to build the institutions/infrastructure that promotes sustained development, rather then mere growth or boom cycles. For me the easier variable is revolutionary communism. And I realize that plays to the trope of longer serving colonialism is better, it isn't, but it is the alternative that fits the groundwork that is in place.

Since I am toying with the Great War, the only change is a surviving German Empire, if it retains any of its colonies then it is the best place for me to consider departures. First it has a smaller Empire, next it has to rebuild, it has to change, it has the most to gain from innovating how it ruled the colonies. Britain as little incentive to change what works, especially if it is a lesser belligerent or neutral, France already pursued its vision of leveraging the empire to bolster its defense, something it will likely pursue stronger, Spain or Portugal likely do nothing different. So it is left to an alternative Imperial Germany to push ideas on how to transition from exploit the colonies to build better partners. So that is why it seats the Germans as the do it different this time guys.

First I think we want better governance. We want to see some democracy, local autonomy, authority in the natives over the taxation and its use. We want education, housing, sanitation and health to get investment along with communications that link these peoples into their states, facilitate governance and trade, and lastly promote local industry that adds value rather than merely rely on cheap labor or cheap export commodities. And I think I can get at least one imperial power to do better at it, if only for realpolitik, and if that shift occurs it might improve the path to independence for more than a handful of countries. Taking out the revolutionary wars is not 100% certain, we still can have Mau Mau style rebellion that is not simply Soviet sponsored disruption, indeed these sort of native uprisings in response to bad colonial rule are more likely in especially the outwardly successful British or French colonies because real reform is potentially slower in the victors camp. If I am to track more of Africa to stability, good governance, rising incomes, education and health levels then I need a rationale to govern rather than rule, invest rather than exploit and partner rather than repress.
The problem is that your approach is fundamentally a flawed concept. Nobody develops a state in the interest of the state which is being developed, unless if there is some sort of pressing strategic reason which requires that. They develop it in their own interest. Beyond Germany's extremely dubious colonial record in Africa with at least one genocide and extreme butchery and barbarism in German East Africa, I have no doubt that just as happened OTL, they will prove effective at providing railroads, plantations, basic infrastructure, and extraction resource production such as mines. None of that makes a country developed, instead it just makes it into a resource extraction colony. There's no reason for Germany to promote democracy, local autonomy, local government, and local industry, just as there's no reason for the British to do so (I might argue that the French actually had reasons otherwise for industry if not the others - to my knowledge they had some abortive ideas about developing textile industries in West Africa for strategic reasons, which is the difference for the French Empire as compared to the German or British one, since it is much more potentially united than its other equivalents). Its fundamentally the same model as the French or British, at most with the most "optimistic" view of German colonialism as a more "efficient" version of British or French colonialism (which I haven't studied enough of German colonial history to discuss) you can view it as being an intensification. The basic problems will remain, and German colonialism will not produce stable countries with good governance and diversified economies.
 
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The problem is that your approach is fundamentally a flawed concept. Nobody develops a state in the interest of the state which is being developed, unless if there is some sort of pressing strategic reason which requires that. They develop it in their own interest. Beyond Germany's extremely dubious colonial record in Africa with at least one genocide and extreme butchery and barbarism in German East Africa, I have no doubt that just as happened OTL, they will prove effective at providing railroads, plantations, basic infrastructure, and extraction resource production such as mines. None of that makes a country developed, instead it just makes it into a resource extraction colony. There's no reason for Germany to promote democracy, local autonomy, local government, and local industry, just as there's no reason for the British to do so (I might argue that the French actually had reasons otherwise for industry if not the others - to my knowledge they had some abortive ideas about developing textile industries in West Africa for strategic reasons, which is the difference for the French Empire as compared to the German or British one, since it is much more potentially united than its other equivalents). Its fundamentally the same model as the French or British, at most with the most "optimistic" view of German colonialism as a more "efficient" version of British or French colonialism (which I haven't studied enough of German colonial history to discuss) you can view it as being an intensification. The basic problems will remain, and German colonialism will not produce stable countries with good governance and diversified economies.

Then we give up and wash our hands of it.
 
The free market is necessary but not sufficient in of itself. Côté d'Ivoire was the most successful nation in all of Black sub-Saharan Africa for the non-oil producing nations. But when commodity prices crashed and political stability evaporated, this economic prosperity evaporated, and they are only just regaining it. Development and growth are different things.

Leaving besides any moral qualms about that, concerning forcibly replacing African populations with European ones, its also an entirely irrelevant contribution to the discussion. There is no possibility in the vast majority of Africa to develop white settler colonies, because the local population was already large, militarized, and diseases were extremely dangerous.

To your first point I'm not sure where I said that economic growth was the only thing we should worry about. Of course development is more than just economic growth, and your example of Cote d'Ivoire is instructive. They never diversified away from cocoa and were not a democracy - whereas Botswana tried as much as possible to diversify away from diamonds (not always successfully) and were a democracy since independence. If Cote d'Ivoire had diversified and been a democracy they probably would have weathered the commodities crash a lot better.

To the second point, I was pointing out that what makes one African country fairly developed won't work in another, your example was Ethiopia, I used South Africa.
 
To your first point I'm not sure where I said that economic growth was the only thing we should worry about. Of course development is more than just economic growth, and your example of Cote d'Ivoire is instructive. They never diversified away from cocoa and were not a democracy - whereas Botswana tried as much as possible to diversify away from diamonds (not always successfully) and were a democracy since independence. If Cote d'Ivoire had diversified and been a democracy they probably would have weathered the commodities crash a lot better.

Then probably it is a quibble, it just has to be constantly emphasized how hard it is for the various African countries to economically make the leap.

To the second point, I was pointing out that what makes one African country fairly developed won't work in another, your example was Ethiopia, I used South Africa.

Well yes, it is true to an extent that every African country is different. Solutions that work in one will not work in another. But saying "no-colonialism" is a variable which one can repeat essentially across the continent. White settler colonialism, regardless of whether it is moral or not, is something which cannot be.
 

Deleted member 67076

WW1 ends with a Central Powers victory that bankrupts Britain and France to the point where decolonization is started decades earlier.

ISI policies then occur during a time of cheap oil, avoiding a debt crisis.
 

Deleted member 67076

Doubtful- more likely we'd see borders determined by conquest, young empires fracturing again in civil wars, all sponsored by Western arms dealers looking to sell their merchandise, and corporations/governments aiding their favoured proxies in exchange for most favoured nation status
This is better than the alternative since it creates powerful statebuilding apparati in the form of armies, institutions, educational systems- which in turn lead to economic dividends later along as investment increases. Such was the case right before the Scramble.

Colonialism purposefully destroyed native economic systems and withheld education and experience, creating entire lost generations. Furthermore, border controls imposed by colonialism impeded labor and capital mobility, which in turn also hinders economic expansion over time. Fluid, pre and post westphalian models work best for Africa anyway.
 
I can't disagree with your premise - I'm just not seeing an absence of colonialism and reliance on independent rule by chiefs as a sure way forward towards the level of development the OP was aiming for. Comparing Ethiopia (174) with South Sudan (181) is not really moving the Development Index up very much compared to Botswana (108). In fact Rwanda (159)Uganda (163) and Sudan (165) are all higher than Ethiopia

As they all made different choices in the 20th c. from a similar baseline, I think comparing Seychelles, Comoros, Mayotte and Mauritius is as close as we can get to an actual real-life case study about how post-Colonial (or in Mayotte's case, continued association with the colonial power) development could really play out from highly comparable starts (and also shed some light on how an indigenised society might look vs. a diverse settler-heavy one). Comoros vs. Mayotte is an especially stark difference since they were about as comparable as any two societies can get during the colonial period.
 
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As they all made different choices in the 20th c. from a similar baseline, I think comparing Seychelles, Comoros, Mayotte and Mauritius is as close as we can get to an actual real-life case study about how post-Colonial (or in Mayotte's case, continued association with the colonial power) development could really play out from highly comparable starts (and also shed some light on how an indigenised society might look vs. a diverse settler-heavy one). Comoros vs. Mayotte is an especially stark difference since they were about as comparable as any two societies can get during the colonial period.
Mayotte is much better in terms of development and prosperity than Comoros, but its difficult, impossible even, to apply its model to the rest of the continent. Mayotte is very heavily reliant on continued French financial aid, which according to wikipedia was 100 million euros, or then 1/5 of their GDP in 1995 (it doesn't have more recent statistics) and according to one French think-tank that I read, Fondation Ifrap, it rises up to up to 900 million euros more recently. Le Monde also has some extremely high figures, although it doesn't state how much is paid for locally, but personally I'm doubtful that there is much : Mayotte's economy is poor and its GDP figures are heavily dependent on consumption and public investment, taxation revenue is probably limited. Which works for Mayotte, provided that France is willing to foot the bill, its the same problem with islands the world over, and one can see the normal destitute island situation in Comoros. The same thing has repeated in plenty of Micronesia islands. But it isn't something that could be repeated on the mainland: there isn't the money to pay for something on that scale on the continent with their huge populations. Colonies were expected to be budget neutral, and while there were some limited investment schemes set up at the end, but they never had anything approaching Mayotte's degree of spending and subsidies by the French state. Mayotte's relative success isn't one which can be easily repeated on the rest of the African continent.
 
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