Why were colonies not settled in Western Africa?

As has been said already, much of inland Kenya is comprised of Highlands where the rate of tropical disease is significantly lesser and where the climate is similr to Europe.

This. People usually don't realize it, but Nairobi has one of the best climates on earth - daytime temperatures in the 70s virtually every day, and cool in the evenings.
 
Kenya didn't really get properly settled by the British until the 20th century, for all sorts of reasons. Like Rhodesia, settlement in the last phase of colonialism rather doomed its long term prospects of staying dominated by the Settlers

If you could engineer a POD where it gets settled a century or so earlier, that would be interesting
 
So looking at other maps of Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawai and Zambia seem also like promising settlements for Europeans, on the basis of highlands. Is this accurate?
 
So looking at other maps of Africa, Uganda, Tanzania, Malawai and Zambia seem also like promising settlements for Europeans, on the basis of highlands. Is this accurate?

Zambia and Tanzania were settler destinations OTL, while I think the size of Lake Nyasser means that, despite the highlands, it's not a good location. Indeed, the only good ways into the country are through the settler unfreindly Shire River Valley in the south, across the settler unfreindly Lake from Tanzania, or into the highlands through Zambia, at which point you would have settled some time before.
 
Zambia and Tanzania were settler destinations OTL, while I think the size of Lake Nyasser means that, despite the highlands, it's not a good location. Indeed, the only good ways into the country are through the settler unfreindly Shire River Valley in the south, across the settler unfreindly Lake from Tanzania, or into the highlands through Zambia, at which point you would have settled some time before.

Where's Lake Nyasser? I can't find anything but Lake Nasser in Egypt coming up - is it the same as Lake Malawi?

EDIT: Found it - Lake Nyassa. What's the problem with the Lake anyway? Is it any worse than Lake Victoria? Or is the issue just crossing it to get there?
 
In OTL there was obviously big settlement of Europeans in North Africa, Southern Africa, and East Africa: why did this not happen in West Africa, parts of which were under European control for much longer?

Why were there so few colonies inside active volcanoes? :rolleyes:
 
Where's Lake Nyasser? I can't find anything but Lake Nasser in Egypt coming up - is it the same as Lake Malawi?

EDIT: Found it - Lake Nyassa. What's the problem with the Lake anyway? Is it any worse than Lake Victoria? Or is the issue just crossing it to get there?

It's quite a bit lower in altitude.
 
Well IIRC the Sultan of Zanzibar offered to lease the governance/tax collecting duties for his mainland territory, which theoretically ran from Somaliland to Mozambique and inland to the Great Lakes, to some Scottish businesman in the mid-1870s due his getting nervous about the Egyptians looking a bit expansionist and seeing it as the best way to block them. Several people at the Foreign Office quietly opposed approval of the deal as they thought the company would go bust and drag the government into taking over a mess but suppose it goes ahead? That gets you an alternative Imperial British East Africa Company a decade early and also cuts the Germans out of eastern Africa. Now you just need to somehow find a way to keep the company breaking even whilst encouraging large scale white settlement. Perhaps the diamond fields in northern Tanzinia or one of the other natural resources in the countries are discovered early? Of course that's still rather late so who knows.
 
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Well IIRC the Sultan of Zanzibar offered to lease the governance/tax collecting duties for his mainland territory, which theoretically ran from Somaliland to Mozambique and inland to the Great Lakes, to some Scottish businesman in the mid-1870s due his getting nervous about the Egyptians looking a bit expansionist and seeing it as the best way to block them. Several people at the Foreign Office quietly opposed approval of the deal as they thought the company would go bust and drag the government into taking over a mess but suppose it goes ahead? That gets you an alternative Imperial British East Africa Company a decade early and also cuts the Germans out of eastern Africa. Now you just need to somehow find a way to keep the company breaking even whilst encouraging large scale white settlement. Perhaps the diamond fields in northern Tanzinia or one of the other natural resources in the countries are discovered early? Of course that's still rather late so who knows.

Sounds remarkably like how the East India Company got started.
 
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