Different decolonization of Africa

ninebucks

Banned
Infrastructure in some of the former settler colonies was pretty good, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia come to mind.

Well, the motivations behind running settler colonies and other kinds of colonies are significantly different.

You can't sell natural rescourses after independence?

Sure, it keeps those nations vulnerable for every global change in the price of those recourses but that's better then the state of continued poverty it's in now.

The fact that those nations are vulnerable to the price-fixing of Western commodity-merchants is the reason why poverty continues. Without an appropriate infrastructure, developing nations aren't able to diversify, instead just sticking to the same extractive industries. Diverse economies are less vulnerable, and thus more powerful; and countries that rely entirely on only a handful of industries are weaker, and ripe for exploitation.

Being able to sell your natural resources is no power at all, not when the same people who once occupied your nation control the prices.
 

HJ Tulp

Donor
The fact that those nations are vulnerable to the price-fixing of Western commodity-merchants is the reason why poverty continues. Without an appropriate infrastructure, developing nations aren't able to diversify, instead just sticking to the same extractive industries. Diverse economies are less vulnerable, and thus more powerful; and countries that rely entirely on only a handful of industries are weaker, and ripe for exploitation.

Being able to sell your natural resources is no power at all, not when the same people who once occupied your nation control the prices.


To give an example: the Congo. Indeed, the whole economy was based around the export of raw materials. However, it was highly profitable. The Belgians didn't have any reasons to use that profit to industrialise the Congo. The Congolese did. Why didn't they do it? Because their first priority was to kick out all the Belgians.
 
Every time I hear about AH in Africa, I always think that the contienent is doomed. :(If there is no colonization, then warlords get high tech European weapons and take tribe wars to a genocidal level. If they do colonise, it's oppresive. If they colonise, then uncolonise, we get failed nations. Is there no hope!
 

The Sandman

Banned
To give an example: the Congo. Indeed, the whole economy was based around the export of raw materials. However, it was highly profitable. The Belgians didn't have any reasons to use that profit to industrialise the Congo. The Congolese did. Why didn't they do it? Because their first priority was to kick out all the Belgians.

And the second priority was to skim off as much money as possible for the personal use of the governing elites and then use most of what was left on expensive and unnecessary military hardware.

As far as the priorities of most African leaders went, giving a shit about their country and its citizens came in somewhere before worrying about the sun's eventual expansion into a red giant and after making sure the servants didn't over-starch their generalissimo uniform.
 
That being said, I do like federations and I would really like to see a TL where the Central African, East African and West Indian Federations work over a long period of time

Have you looked at 50 years? They are doing that for the moment. (Well not the West Indies but East and Central Africa are still in existance by the '80s)
 
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