How would Africa have developed without mass colonisation?

If the Scramble never happened, so that most of Africa was never conquered by European powers, how would it have developed economically and politically?
 
If there had been very little European subjugation of the continent, then you have countless places in Africa just tribal land. I doubt you could write up an accurate political map of it.
 
The internacine warfare would likely continue though with arms sales becoming popular and bases or small colonies would still be claimed. I still see some sort of scramble eventually, especially in the late 19th/early 20th century, but there could be an African equivalent of Meiji Japan given the right circumstances.
 

katchen

Banned
I could see Menelikian Ethiopia expanding south into what is OTL Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi --the Lakes Region. And the Blue and White Nile region if Egypt did not come back. Possibly all the way to Katanga and Lake Malawi and down the Congo by default, Tsarist Russia fashion.
If the Germans helped the Ottomans with a railroad across the Sahara, I could see the Ottomans doing the same thing in Central Africa, conquering Darfur and Baguirmi, all the way to the Ubangi and Kano and Zinder. And Morocco expanding to it's maximum sphere of influence across the Sahara to the Niger with railroads with the French passively sitting on Algeria. Perhaps a Greater Liberia in West Africa encompassing the Ivory Coast and Guinea up to French St. Louis and Moroccan territory and east to the Gold Coast.
 
if the Europeans don't colonize Africa much (although it's hard to see just how that happens), then I'd think that Muslim influence would slowly work it's way through much of the east. They already had extensive contacts with the trading cities of the east coast, and were working their way inland. One area that would definitely do better would be Zimbabwe and the coast east of it. The area had a thriving trade with India and even China off and on, before the Portuguese came along and conquered everything in sight...
 
What were any other well organized states other than Ethiopia and the Dutch decended entity, just before the colonization 'scramble'? This is a subject I am really weak on.
 
Chances are that Africa still gets messed with significantly. The Europeans aren't going to let valuable trade goods go, or allow states like the Barbary States to exist/pirate willy-nilly. We'll still see many forts, expeditions, trade outposts, and colonies (particularly along the coasts) with Africa's interior being mostly left alone except for trade.
 
What were any other well organized states other than Ethiopia and the Dutch decended entity, just before the colonization 'scramble'? This is a subject I am really weak on.
The Ashante, Sokoto, Kongo, the Basotho, and the Griqua states are all rather "well-organized" for African states. Depending on the POD many Boers might just stay in the Cape to begin with.
 
Hmm, I suspect that the best way to engineer this would be to delay African colonization while not butterflying WWI or the Treaty of Versailles, so that the Scramble is strangled in the cradle.

Imperialistic claims are probably inevitable, the trick is to time something that would end imperialism before anything comes of the African colonies.
 
What were any other well organized states other than Ethiopia and the Dutch decended entity, just before the colonization 'scramble'? This is a subject I am really weak on.

There were plenty, be they big or small, that existed or could very well come to exist. There was the Kongo Kingdom, the Ashanti Empire, the Ghana/Mali/Songhai Empire, Benin, Mahdist Sudan, Kingdom of Zimbabwe, etc.
 
Chances are that Africa still gets messed with significantly. The Europeans aren't going to let valuable trade goods go, or allow states like the Barbary States to exist/pirate willy-nilly. We'll still see many forts, expeditions, trade outposts, and colonies (particularly along the coasts) with Africa's interior being mostly left alone except for trade.

Similar to the condition the slave trade created in earlier centuries.

The Ashante, Sokoto, Kongo, the Basotho, and the Griqua states are all rather "well-organized" for African states. Depending on the POD many Boers might just stay in the Cape to begin with.

Thanks, I recognize a few of those.
 
The POD really matters for this since it will matter what African states could possibly develop. Egypt seems to be a pretty major lynch pin since it was in support of the Khedive that the British invaded and seized Egypt, then Sudan, then in their quest to find the center of the Continent saw it's wealth and the idea of a cross continental railroad came into being. Also the collapse of the Omani/Zanzibari Empire by the British contributed to their lands.
 
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