But wherever there is patronage, you run into similar problems, and patronage seems to be a common denominator amongst many of africa's worst-off states.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which monitors incidents of conflict around the world, found that there had been 21 600 incidents of armed conflict in Africa in 2019 (up to 30 November). For the same period in 2018, that number was just 15 874. That represents a 36% increase.
European countries created African country borders without an understanding (or care) of the culture and relationships/feuds between a whole continent of people. They put these people together in countries and flipped all of that long history upside down.
I don’t want to diminish the impact of European colonialism, but that’s not really actionable in 2020. Bangladesh, where I’m from, was stripped of capital by the British Empire. Okay, now what? How does that fix the weak rule of law, the political patronage, etc? And it’s not like European countries don’t have a long history of sectarian and ethnic warfare.
It is actionable, the powers that be are simply averse to acting on it. I will never understand the drive to preserve nation constructs that are barely a century old in many cases at all costs.
You are comparing borders that have mostly had the chance to settle into consenting national identities over the past two thousand years to borders that were forcibly drawn in the late 19th/early 20th centuries (in some places disrupting existing nationalisation processes), as if Europe did not also go through periods of unrest and instability in the wake of dissolving empires.
That is besides the fact that (for example) there are far more extant ethnic groups in my country alone than in all of [Western, if not the entirety of] Europe - the considerations when it comes to building a nation are simply not the same. There's nothing that irks me more in these discussions than "Why haven't you already done what took us centuries to do naturally in the space of a few decades under artificial tension?"
The conflicts in Africa had already existed before the Europeans. I argue that the preexisting conflict is the fundamental cause of the lack of prosperity in Africa, not colonization. Colonialism in Africa only contributed to the problem.
Before America was colonized, there were also political divisions and multiple distinct cultures. Then, a new culture showed up and eliminated all of it. Rightfully or not, it was the establishment of unified central authority that gave America its prosperity. Go look at a map of North America and notice there's only three big countries. In Africa, the situation is essentially a stalemate because there are so many competing factions.
A group of small nations is always going to be more inefficient than one big nation. Just imagine what would happen if you abolished the federal government of the United States.
That's a simplistic view. That might be true in dynamic urban environments where people compete for intangible resources and success is predicated upon individual merit. That's not so much the case when people fight over collective ownership of land, waterways or mines.
It's never one cause. In complex systems like life, you should expect a lot of variance.
But one interesting observation I was reading about was the lack of navigable waterways. Waterways make travel and trade (especially in large quantities) much easier. That then leads to a lot of cultural mixing, learning, and shared prosperity. Africa lacks these navigable waterways compared with Northern and Western Europe or many parts of Asia.
The invention of air travel helps, but the second- and third-order effects will linger.
I should also point out that it's not an unqualified bad thing. More separation leads to a different culture and, in some ways, more diversity. But it's not great for prosperity.
But does it? A quick Google says that the Nile River, Niger, Benue, Congo and Zambezi are navigable.
And European rivers are in many cases only navigable because they were canal'd and dredged. One thing that really struck me on my first trip to Europe was how small some of its historically famous rivers really were. In my mind a navigable river was the size of the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi.
My memory from some introductory classes in African Studies from the mid-aughts has any relevancy here. The standard narrative at the time was that the Colonial investments in Africa, as a rule, involved building infrastructure to connect the interiors to the cost in the colony. The consequence of this is that post-colonial economies do not get to leverage this investment for inter-country trade. Imagine trade from Chicago to New York _requiring_ routing through the Mississippi up the coast to the port of New York. From a cursory look over the waterways of Africa, I am seeing similar features (interior > coast without much cross country coverage). At the end of the day we're all outsiders to this field, but I do wonder whether focusing on the presence / length without the connectivity overlay is missing a key component.
I'm just repeating what I read. I assume it has to do with a combination of rivers and coastline compared to total land area. Africa is huge compared to the coastline, for instance.
Sarafu, which is aimed at fostering local community economies, seems to be on a path towards acceptance in Kenya. It was able to expand beyond a scale of 100 to 200 businesses with the transition from paper to a blockchain backing.
Readit News
Patronage is hardly unique to African countries.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which monitors incidents of conflict around the world, found that there had been 21 600 incidents of armed conflict in Africa in 2019 (up to 30 November). For the same period in 2018, that number was just 15 874. That represents a 36% increase.
Conflict is still Africa’s biggest challenge in 2020 https://reliefweb.int/report/world/conflict-still-africa-s-b...
European borders went through many, many bloody revisions as well, yet Europe is still quite prosperous.
borders: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hvJdc7hJTR0
That is besides the fact that (for example) there are far more extant ethnic groups in my country alone than in all of [Western, if not the entirety of] Europe - the considerations when it comes to building a nation are simply not the same. There's nothing that irks me more in these discussions than "Why haven't you already done what took us centuries to do naturally in the space of a few decades under artificial tension?"
Before America was colonized, there were also political divisions and multiple distinct cultures. Then, a new culture showed up and eliminated all of it. Rightfully or not, it was the establishment of unified central authority that gave America its prosperity. Go look at a map of North America and notice there's only three big countries. In Africa, the situation is essentially a stalemate because there are so many competing factions.
A group of small nations is always going to be more inefficient than one big nation. Just imagine what would happen if you abolished the federal government of the United States.
The earth isn't just a bigger New York.
Dead Comment
But one interesting observation I was reading about was the lack of navigable waterways. Waterways make travel and trade (especially in large quantities) much easier. That then leads to a lot of cultural mixing, learning, and shared prosperity. Africa lacks these navigable waterways compared with Northern and Western Europe or many parts of Asia.
The invention of air travel helps, but the second- and third-order effects will linger.
I should also point out that it's not an unqualified bad thing. More separation leads to a different culture and, in some ways, more diversity. But it's not great for prosperity.
And European rivers are in many cases only navigable because they were canal'd and dredged. One thing that really struck me on my first trip to Europe was how small some of its historically famous rivers really were. In my mind a navigable river was the size of the St. Lawrence or the Mississippi.
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