Plausibility of a united Africa?

Exactly what it says. How plausible is a unified African nation with a POD post 1900? Is it possible or would it require an earlier POD? What effects would a united Africa have on the world? What would this nation be like? How rich and strong would it be?
Africa is an area that I know very little about and in preparation for any future timelines I might write I would like to know more about the dark continent :)
 
This is VERY unlikely. Most of sub-Saharan Africa ITTL present day has a hard time with the concept of loyalty to anything larger than a tribe. Corruption is pandemic. Infrastructure is almost non-existent in most places and poorly connected where it does exist. A large percentage of the 20th century technology has been donated by various factions in the 1st and 2nd world precisely because it can't be afforded domestically. Most of the national governments are unable to control large areas of their territory.

Unlike in some parts of the world, decolonization didn't work in Africa.

I suppose some sort of PoD is conceivable that would allow the OP goals, but I can't begin to imagine what it would be. I think it would have to be before WWII started (while most of Africa was still under the de facto control of various European powers).

Also, bear in mind that Africa is 30,000,000 square kilometers with a population of about a billion. That's three times the size of the US and almost twice the size of Russia. Heck, its almost half again the size of the USSR at its greatest extent! It would be the third most populous nation in the world after China and India.

If you could somehow overcome all the problems, a pan-African state could easily be a superpower with a huge population, abundant resources, self sufficiency in food, and so forth. Africa contains a large percentage of the known deposits of a number of rare materials (cobalt, platinum, chromium, etc.) which could provide the basis for a favorable trade balance.
 
Frankly ASB...you might logically have a handful of very large multiethnic empires, but ruling the whole thing is nigh impossible for a variety of reasons not limited to extreme differences in terrain and climate, demographic and cultural differences, very limited infastructure, and world politics (no nation would be able to get away with it in the face of other nations' certain interference). Not even the most sadomascochistically militaristic nation of Apartheid-loving Ubermenschen could manage to seize, none the less rule all of Africa.

OTL the British and French each managed to claim huge swaths thanks to pitting modern industrial arms vs. iron age weapons--swaths which they ruled with the gun and whip. Even then they did so only with great cost and difficulty, and these empires proved ultimately unsustainable.
 
Good points. I suppose for this to be any way possible it would have to be a POD before 1900.
I'm trying to avoid the frankly ridiculous Draka sort of Africa but I don't know how it could be managed.
Africa has such potential though, and having seen all sorts of crazy space filling empires I wonder if such a thing would be possible.
It would certainly have a great impact on history.

Supposing that the whole continent isn't united into one big empire, instead it is a handful of large nations, which historical nations/areas of Africa could achieve great power status realistically?
 
Judging by the modern major powers, large nations are created by conquest, and hold together in the long run because they have managed to hold together in the long run. Yeah, the second point is a tautology.

So who's going to do the conquering? The major European nations did quite a bit of that, but it didn't stick.

You might have more luck with the US model; a Euro colony that manages to gain independence, then slowly assimilates the rest of the continent over a century or two. The problem is, who's going to lead the rebellion, who's going to help them win it, and what are the other Euro powers going to say when this new nation starts edging into their colonial territory?
 
Good points. I suppose for this to be any way possible it would have to be a POD before 1900.
I'm trying to avoid the frankly ridiculous Draka sort of Africa but I don't know how it could be managed.
Africa has such potential though, and having seen all sorts of crazy space filling empires I wonder if such a thing would be possible.
It would certainly have a great impact on history.

Supposing that the whole continent isn't united into one big empire, instead it is a handful of large nations, which historical nations/areas of Africa could achieve great power status realistically?

Great Power? It would be extremely difficult. There's a reason why historically the African countries on the Mediterranean did the best.

There are three kinds of countries on the continent: Those which are corrupt and have shit geography; those which aren't and have shit geography; and those which are both and have shit geography. To quote Stratfor on the matter:

Plateaus, Rainforests and Rivers

To describe Africa’s geography is to identify the major impediments to its development. The bulk of the continent consists of raised plateaus. Escarpments lie close to the coasts, allowing only narrow coastal plains for human habitation and rendering the construction of roads and rails extraordinarily difficult. The narrow and rocky continental shelf makes for few natural quays (compared to Europe, for instance). Tectonic activity creates extensive rifting and fault lines in East Africa, and the world’s largest desert gives sub-Saharan Africa its name and its northern border. South of the Sahara, the impenetrable tropical rainforests of the Congo Basin extend through Cameroon, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), filling the center of the continent and obstructing the regular passage of people and goods.

Rivers provide the best means of transportation through stretches of inhospitable territory, but in Africa the major rivers are unreliable for commerce, in great part because the continental escarpment generates rapids. The Niger River, Africa’s longest, carries ships and barges with food, fuel and other basic goods and supports roughly 100 million people in its valley, though it flows slowly and irregularly and often floods. The Congo River transports people and goods through the expansive rainforests, but it is surrounded by the densest of forests. To the south, one of the most commercial-friendly rivers, the Zambezi, flows through Zambia into the Mozambique Channel. But a series of rapids and cataracts (such as Victoria Falls) as well as hydroelectric dams interrupt the river’s course, making it navigable only on certain stretches. South Africa’s Orange River is entirely un-navigable, while the Limpopo, forming South Africa’s border with Zimbabwe and Botswana, is accessible by steamship only at high tide and navigable for a mere 130 miles inland.

In short, Africa’s waterways are treacherous and frequently obstructed. Some rivers are entirely navigable, such as the Volta River and the Benue, both in West Africa. But the number of side channels, dams, locks and weirs that developers would have to construct to make the continent’s entire river system dependable for 21st century economies of scale would require one of the greatest and most expensive infrastructure projects in human history. Such a project will not happen any time soon.

African nations therefore have a two-pronged project. One is to ensure free and fair elections, massively reduce corruption for an extremely long period of time, and reinvest their mineral wealth in "the greatest and most expensive infrastructure project in human history". This also requires extreme regional integration, pooling together of engineers, money, a transnational water management scheme.

And even then this won't be continent wide. The Southern Africans might work together, those parts of the continent that speak English anyway, but the Nigerians have very little in common with the Ghanians. Basically, once Africa is able to sort out it's political problems it will inevitably have to look inward for a very, very long time. No "Great Power" will arise having to spend money that should otherwise be used on infrastructure projects on, frankly, quite useless overseas ambitions; and if they do, in doing so they will set back the development of the rest of the continent for quite a long time.

So, basically the goals of any stable African state are: Education, Water Infrastructure, Food Infrastructure, Roads, and Internet Access. This will be true for quite a long time.
 
Great Power? It would be extremely difficult. There's a reason why historically the African countries on the Mediterranean did the best.

There are three kinds of countries on the continent: Those which are corrupt and have shit geography; those which aren't and have shit geography; and those which are both and have shit geography. To quote Stratfor on the matter:



African nations therefore have a two-pronged project. One is to ensure free and fair elections, massively reduce corruption for an extremely long period of time, and reinvest their mineral wealth in "the greatest and most expensive infrastructure project in human history". This also requires extreme regional integration, pooling together of engineers, money, a transnational water management scheme.

And even then this won't be continent wide. The Southern Africans might work together, those parts of the continent that speak English anyway, but the Nigerians have very little in common with the Ghanians. Basically, once Africa is able to sort out it's political problems it will inevitably have to look inward for a very, very long time. No "Great Power" will arise having to spend money that should otherwise be used on infrastructure projects on, frankly, quite useless overseas ambitions; and if they do, in doing so they will set back the development of the rest of the continent for quite a long time.

So, basically the goals of any stable African state are: Education, Water Infrastructure, Food Infrastructure, Roads, and Internet Access. This will be true for quite a long time.

With the right changes in African history, particularly within the last century, you could have a number of African states on this path. I think what ultimately threw this off though was the AIDS pandemic. Nothing was really more devastating to development than that.
 
Good points. I suppose for this to be any way possible it would have to be a POD before 1900.
I'm trying to avoid the frankly ridiculous Draka sort of Africa but I don't know how it could be managed.
Africa has such potential though, and having seen all sorts of crazy space filling empires I wonder if such a thing would be possible.
It would certainly have a great impact on history.

Supposing that the whole continent isn't united into one big empire, instead it is a handful of large nations, which historical nations/areas of Africa could achieve great power status realistically?

Contrary to the postcolonial clusterf- we see today (and typically assume was always the case), Africa had its share of OTL centralized empires, some comparable to Rome in political sophistication and many comparable to medieval Europe in technology and warfare. Some possibilities for OTL African Empires that could, in the right circumstances, do well include the various West African empires (Malian empire, Songhai empire), the Kingdom of Kongo in current Zaire, Kanem and Kanem-Bornu around Lake Chad, The Sultanate of Sennar (and other sucessors to the ancient Kushite/Nubian empire), Great Zimbabwe and its sucessors (Butwa, Rowzi), Kitaran Empire and sucessor Bunyoro-Kitara in the Great Lakes region (Lake Victoria, Lake Albert, etc), and of course Abyssinia/Ethiopia.

In some ATL where the Indian Ocean trade networks stay around (say some POD to prevent the rise of the Iberian maritime powers that FUBARed them OTL) some of these empires or their ATL sucessor states could eventually benifit from eastern learning, organization, and technology. Kongo OTL had close ties (gaining knowledge and tech) with Portugual up until competition drove them into a series of wars that bankrupted the former. A Zheng-wank scenario with continued Chinese trade with East Africa could, perhaps, trickle knowledge and tech along the Sahel trade. Or perhaps greater Islamic learning/technology trickling in via Nile trade, Sahel trade, IO trade, and/or trans-saharan trade.

There are plenty of home-grown options for plausible African Empires out there. Not necessarily easy, but by no means ASB.

The "Draka" scenario or similar "a USA in Africa" concept, however, just isn't happening since a) African natives won't suffer from the massive death toll from disease that allowed the Americas to be overrun, b) native diseases and parasites hostile to Europeans and their livestock (malaria, tse tse fly, etc.), and c) the terrain and transport issues Chirios alluded to. You could conceivably have a massive South African state up to the "Tse Tse Line" (roughly OTL South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique), but after that you run into the above problems. And no matter how good your attempts to rule the thousands of disparate cultures (be it by lash or enfranchisement) it's a bridge too far to rule even half the continent since natives will always greatly outnumber colonizers, unlike in the Americas where disease did the ethnic clensing for them.
 
I can see a unified Africa happening, but only in name, not in fact: a pan-African confederation of states, where each government basically keeps running its own affairs, but they have the same currency and they're all the same color on the map. Even that's a stretch, and wouldn't encompass the whole continent - South Africa, among others, would definitely keep its distance - but it's not completely impossible. It also, however, probably wouldn't make a whole lot of difference.
 
Contrary to the postcolonial clusterf- we see today (and typically assume was always the case), Africa had its share of OTL centralized empires, some comparable to Rome in political sophistication and many comparable to medieval Europe in technology and warfare.

Political sophistication is great, but that's not how Rome became a great power. Rome became a great power because (among other things) it could move internal communications quickly enough to react to problems. How do you do that in Africa? As noted above, the rivers are problematic and roadbuilding would be a nightmare even for an empire as technologically advanced and determined as Rome.

Late-medieval Europe was just BARELY getting to the level of technical advancement Rome reached before its fall. Consider that many Roman structures (roads, aqueducts, buildings) still remain, though far from intact, two thousand years later.

Many empires have left the equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids behind - magnificent structures with no practical use. How many left behind traces of their roads, water systems, and such? Very few, and I know of none native to Africa that did so. Show me an OTL empire that did, and I'll believe you have a candidate for a major power that could hold off the Europeans (who ARE coming), maintain their own nation, and survive to this day.
 
Political sophistication is great, but that's not how Rome became a great power. Rome became a great power because (among other things) it could move internal communications quickly enough to react to problems. How do you do that in Africa? As noted above, the rivers are problematic and roadbuilding would be a nightmare even for an empire as technologically advanced and determined as Rome.

Well modern experience has proven Cellphones to be an excellent means to communicate. Rural farmers in Kenya can use their cheap Chinese blackberry rip-offs to get automatic texts from grain merchants. In Nairobi, banks now allow access to cash transfers through cellphone technology.


Late-medieval Europe was just BARELY getting to the level of technical advancement Rome reached before its fall. Consider that many Roman structures (roads, aqueducts, buildings) still remain, though far from intact, two thousand years later.

Many empires have left the equivalent of the Egyptian pyramids behind - magnificent structures with no practical use. How many left behind traces of their roads, water systems, and such? Very few, and I know of none native to Africa that did so. Show me an OTL empire that did, and I'll believe you have a candidate for a major power that could hold off the Europeans (who ARE coming), maintain their own nation, and survive to this day.

Hence the modern Chinese multi-billion dollar road building projects across Africa. These projects have connected huge amounts of territory. But I thought the OP was asking for a post 1900 POD for unification of Africa. I don't think it would have any likely hood of happening in the 20th century, but there are some POD's that would bring Africa closer to unification than it is in the present day.
 
Well modern experience has proven Cellphones to be an excellent means to communicate. Rural farmers in Kenya can use their cheap Chinese blackberry rip-offs to get automatic texts from grain merchants. In Nairobi, banks now allow access to cash transfers through cellphone technology.

Hence the modern Chinese multi-billion dollar road building projects across Africa. These projects have connected huge amounts of territory. But I thought the OP was asking for a post 1900 POD for unification of Africa. I don't think it would have any likely hood of happening in the 20th century, but there are some POD's that would bring Africa closer to unification than it is in the present day.

Agreed, but getting a unified Africa from its present state is going to be the work of generations, if not centuries. I don't think that satisfies the OP.

It is a chicken/egg problem. We have the technology, now, that a united African state would need, but no social foundation for it. Absent that technology, no social foundation is going to survive the European colonization movements.

So your PoD either needs to butterfly away the Europeans, or cause a different decolonization, or have a Pan-African state form immediately in the wake of the European decolonization (or before or during) before the corruption sets in.
 
The "Draka" scenario or similar "a USA in Africa" concept, however, just isn't happening since a) African natives won't suffer from the massive death toll from disease that allowed the Americas to be overrun, b) native diseases and parasites hostile to Europeans and their livestock (malaria, tse tse fly, etc.), and c) the terrain and transport issues Chirios alluded to. You could conceivably have a massive South African state up to the "Tse Tse Line" (roughly OTL South Africa, Namibia, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique), but after that you run into the above problems. And no matter how good your attempts to rule the thousands of disparate cultures (be it by lash or enfranchisement) it's a bridge too far to rule even half the continent since natives will always greatly outnumber colonizers, unlike in the Americas where disease did the ethnic clensing for them.

A massive South African state with good industrialisation and a relatively small gap between rich and poor would do well; though it would still have to focus heavily on micromanaging the economy and building infrastructure.

Tbh, I don't know why people think that a United Africa would do well, or even help. Size isn't everything. I'd much rather see Africa stay the way it is and focus on building up infrastructure, punishing corruption and dealing with disease than trying to jump into an unnecessary political union.
 
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It really does depend on what you mean by 'United', that is do you mean a United States of Africa or an EU+ type Union or something else.

Also, do you mean all of Africa, or just the parts that would/did end up independent?


Anyways, for a structure somewhere between EU and fully integrated Federation;

1. Have Europe invest more in its colonies, build them up, create infrastructure.

2. Only have a single World War, preferably in the 1940's.

3. Keep the United States from becoming influential enough to pressure Europe (America's insistence on immediate, blind decolonization is what caused most of Africa's problems IOTL), or if they are influential have them not give a damn about colonialism outside the Western Hemisphere.

4. Have people come into power in some places that realize Africa can't be under European domination forever while having other who want it to be coming to power other places, that way an established African Intellectual and ruling class can be established, while also creating strong movements for Independence.

5. Have Pan-Africanism become stronger than it was IOTL, probably by having the places being given autonomy/independence supporting the independence struggle in the other places that were'nt being given any (in the case they wanted it that is).

6. Once everywhere is independent, have a Con/Federal system set-up where the better off places start helping the less off places and integrate, while not also 'ruling from a far-off capital'.
 
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