Organic nation states in Africa?

There could easily have been multiple independent Arab nation states in north Africa, although to be true nation-states they might need a Bosnia-Herzegovina type arrangement with Berbers.
This is a very interesting point that I wish I'd thought of. Might a Bosnia-Herzegovina type arrangement be more common throughout TTL's Sub-Saharan African nation-states?
 
It already is. But East Africa is sort of an intermediate region, a bit different than the rest, no?

Ethiopia also can become such, if they centralize early and find it an interest to assimilate the gazillion 10-people ethnicities they have


A really good PoD is if Ethiopia signs a peace Treaty with its Somali neighbors Adal & Ajuuraan where they cease fighting and become allies with a mutual defense agreement. Once the peace treaty is finalised, they'll fight the oromo hordes together and push them all the way down to Mout Kenya. Then, Adal and it's souther Somali neighnour, Ajuuraan, would unify to form a unified Somali state called "the Samaale Sultanate".

After Samaale and Ethiopia are done cleaning up the Oromo mess they'd each annex a portion of Madri Bahri, as well as the Afar and Oromo territories that separate their kingdoms. Afterwards, once they're done consolidating their newly acquired territories and people, they'll spend the next few decades expanding into the neighbouring countries/territories of Oman, Ottoman Egypt (the Sudanese portion of it), Yemen and the Swahili City States. The Somali of course will have a much easier time assimilating the newly conquered nations because of Islam and the fact that they have already been assimilating Arabs and Swahilis for centuries.

That's all I can think of right now.
 
Thought the 18th and 19th centuries, Africa was seeing an increase in the number of organized states appearing throughout the continent. Yet, European colonialism essentially curbed that development. Could we have seen European style ethnic nation states appear organically in Africa? No exact pod, but preferably no eariler than the 19tn century.
The Sotho Kingdom decisively beats the Boers keeping its larger borders and not needing to request British protection.
 
I mean, I think the biggest falacy in African nation-state building in TL's is the assumption that Africa will drift towards nation-state building just because nation-states are powerful OTL. In reality, Africa had MANY powerful nations that weren't exactly monoethnic, far too many to list. My advice would be to knock out the African slave trade. It took Europe many centuries before it became powerful enough to force slavery on African societies, and African societies that refused to trade in slaves did fine in comparison to their peers. If you really need a "no earlier than the 19th century" POD, have the Ottoman Empire collapse in North Africa as soon as possible while the Barbary States were still going toe-to-toe with Europe, while perhaps also having a drought occur over West Africa forcing the states of West Africa to turn inwards into themselves and their internal organization, thus giving them time to "modernize" their administration to be better able to establish concrete trade relations with Europeans.
 
A really good PoD is if Ethiopia signs a peace Treaty with its Somali neighbors Adal & Ajuuraan where they cease fighting and become allies with a mutual defense agreement. Once the peace treaty is finalised, they'll fight the oromo hordes together and push them all the way down to Mout Kenya. Then, Adal and it's souther Somali neighnour, Ajuuraan, would unify to form a unified Somali state called "the Samaale Sultanate".

After Samaale and Ethiopia are done cleaning up the Oromo mess they'd each annex a portion of Madri Bahri, as well as the Afar and Oromo territories that separate their kingdoms. Afterwards, once they're done consolidating their newly acquired territories and people, they'll spend the next few decades expanding into the neighbouring countries/territories of Oman, Ottoman Egypt (the Sudanese portion of it), Yemen and the Swahili City States. The Somali of course will have a much easier time assimilating the newly conquered nations because of Islam and the fact that they have already been assimilating Arabs and Swahilis for centuries.

That's all I can think of right now.
Why would Ethiopia agree to any sort of peace with Adal?
 
Thought the 18th and 19th centuries, Africa was seeing an increase in the number of organized states appearing throughout the continent. Yet, European colonialism essentially curbed that development. Could we have seen European style ethnic nation states appear organically in Africa? No exact pod, but preferably no eariler than the 19tn century.
An Zulu Empire might modernize and become a monrchial nation state. Maybe the Dahomy aswell.
 
An Zulu Empire might modernize and become a monrchial nation state. Maybe the Dahomy aswell.

Zululand would basically just be Lesotho or Swaziland but on the coast. They wouldn't modernize so much as get a softer hand than OTL and wind up outside of South Africa.
 

Zen9

Banned
Holding a coast opens up trade and diplomacy.
Landlocked states only can achieve that with their neighbours.

If the Zulu can hold their coastline, then a lot of things can change.
 
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