Why most African countries are not prospering
By Tefo Mohapi - 28 April 2020
It is not by mistake, “juju”, or a curse that most African nations are failing and in most cases poor (as far as providing a good life for citizens is concerned). Despite being blessed with having all sorts of natural resources, land, etc. to this day, Africa is “poor.”
Correction, not poor, but terribly managed.
Botswana is arguably one of few countries in Africa that has been able to hold onto being stable and relatively prosperous over the decades and centuries. This is both before the British came to the country and after Botswana assumed independence. The Southern African country is doing relatively well for its citizens not because it has a small population (many countries have similar populations as Botswana but are failing) but simply because, even after assuming presidency, Seretse Khama and his political party chose to enforce inclusive political and economic institutions. Of course the country has had its fair share of problems but it has fared better for its citizens than many African countries. 1950: Ruth Williams Khama with Seretse Khama on a hill somewhere in Botswana. Credit - History Today
It’s worse when you consider that today, almost all the world’s knowledge is not only available in books, but also in most cases for free on the web. So, if that’s the case, with all the technology solutions available in the world and all the knowledge available, why are most African countries failing?
I would argue the primary reason, at the core of it all, the wrong people are in the wrong positions. As such, the wrong people are making the wrong decisions based purely on their egos and patronage. Think about it. It is actually like a pyramid (scheme) of patronage, with decisions at every level made in favour of whoever the next upper level patron is. So, for example, instead of hiring the best people and deploying the best available technology to address any particular problem, a solution and people that do things that benefit the patron are entrusted with developing solutions.
This is also why criticism which aims to improve is also frowned upon in general, because…that’s not how patronage works.
Which brings me to one of the most insightful books I have read - Why Nations Fail.
I think the book "Why Nations Fail" should be required curriculum before anyone assumes any public service office at any level in any African country. In the book Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson explain what causes countries to fail economically, giving specific examples throughout history. In the same vein, they give case studies on how to "break the mold." The above diagram is a good illustration of the key concept of the book, i.e. the more extractive a country's political and economic systems, the more likely it will fail and not benefit its citizens.
So, the next step that follows from a system of patronage is that extractive political and economic systems are developed (the authors don’t mention patronage, but I think it is a precursor to the beginning of a failing state). For example, despite it being known that digitized and transparent government procurement systems are the most efficient (for the benefit of citizens), a country that runs heavily on a patronage network will hang onto inefficient methods simply because new technology threatens this patronage pyramid (scheme).
This is also something many technology startup founders miss when they pitch their efficient and innovative solutions to African governments, i.e.if it threatens the patronage network, my friend, forget it.
How do we get our various African countries out of this cycle of poverty and failure?
"the primary reason, at the core of it all, the wrong people are in the wrong positions".
South Africa in 2020 is a case study for that.
Inheriting the most industrialized economy in the whole of Africa in 1994, the ANC government's methodology of deploying cadres - instead of the most capable person for the job - led to exactly where the country is at make-or-break point due to an incapable state unable to deliver services it taxes the citizens still able to pay taxes, so dearly for.
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.
You could say the same thing about the whites/blacks in the USA. But even there they've figured out how to make diversity into the "secret sauce" behind prosperity.
Diversity and immigration of talent keeps USA prosperous today. However, the path to prosperity was built on the backs of captured slaves followed by two world wars which left the rest of the world damaged but USA emerged out with a massive industrial infrastructure.
>the path to prosperity was built on the backs of captured slaves
Slavery is common, especially in Africa today.
>which left the rest of the world damaged but USA emerged out with a massive industrial infrastructure
And yet we're the ones with a lower standard of living, a worse social safety net, worse health, higher debt, higher crime, worse education, and no universal healthcare system. Guess diversity and immigration didn't work out so well after all.
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.
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.
Why do people like to argue that changing the status quo would cause suffering as though the status quo is not itself causing plenty of suffering? Especially when the chaos "caused" by change is most often actually caused by violent opposition from those desperate to preserve the current state of things?
The disruption is usually not worth it once generations have built their lives and have built their homes based on an existing border regime.
Read about the India Pakistan partition. How would you feel if you have to leave behind everything you have and move to another country because someone decided it is so.
Again, in many cases this is an arrangement that's only about a hundred years old (with about six or seven decades of sovereignty) _and_ is clearly not working out for the people involved. Why do people talk as though they are immutable institutions from prehistoric times?
Plenty of people built their lives on the US being a British colony. Plenty of people built their lives on Austria and Germany being a single country. Plenty of people built their lives on the USSR being a single entity. I could go on and on listing examples. Why is everyone else allowed to naturally form their own national identities but recent (particularly African) colonies are supposed to suck it up and endure the empty ones forced on them?
Perhaps. But what is your actual proposal that will actually make things better? Move the borders? Dissolve countries and go back to being tribes or something? What would that actually fix?
And if that won't fix much, then your talk about sunk cost is pointless.
It's fascinating to me that people talk about a peoples' desire to exercise their right to self-determination (whether autonomist or secessionist) as absurd, especially people whose forebears have already exercised that right to set up the stable societies they benefit from today.
People understand/respect separatism when it's Kosovo, Scotland, Catalunya, Hong Kong, etc, but all of a sudden want to be led by the hand when it involves African nations.
OK, but rayiner's comment was about fixing societies and economies. If you want independence for independence, fine, I've got no problem with that. I merely hope that you either succeed or fail as peacefully as possible.
But the context was about economics, so I presumed that you were saying that it would be economically helpful to change the boundaries.
"Economics" is not a somehow pure and distinct topic from nation building - economies thrive (and vice versa) on the stability of nations. You cannot force economic prosperity out of instability and disunity, so it is very strange to ask how creating more stable/unified nations or autonomous regions is economically helpful.
This obviously does not apply to all sub-Saharan countries - there are many that already had or have managed to forge national identities of their own. I am speaking for those of us who are unevenly yoked and know it.
Fair point. Important point, too. I would merely say that independence gives you the opportunity to create stability. But you still have to make it happen, and it's not as easy as it seems.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Why most African countries are not prospering By Tefo Mohapi - 28 April 2020
It is not by mistake, “juju”, or a curse that most African nations are failing and in most cases poor (as far as providing a good life for citizens is concerned). Despite being blessed with having all sorts of natural resources, land, etc. to this day, Africa is “poor.”
Correction, not poor, but terribly managed.
Botswana is arguably one of few countries in Africa that has been able to hold onto being stable and relatively prosperous over the decades and centuries. This is both before the British came to the country and after Botswana assumed independence. The Southern African country is doing relatively well for its citizens not because it has a small population (many countries have similar populations as Botswana but are failing) but simply because, even after assuming presidency, Seretse Khama and his political party chose to enforce inclusive political and economic institutions. Of course the country has had its fair share of problems but it has fared better for its citizens than many African countries. 1950: Ruth Williams Khama with Seretse Khama on a hill somewhere in Botswana. Credit - History Today It’s worse when you consider that today, almost all the world’s knowledge is not only available in books, but also in most cases for free on the web. So, if that’s the case, with all the technology solutions available in the world and all the knowledge available, why are most African countries failing?
I would argue the primary reason, at the core of it all, the wrong people are in the wrong positions. As such, the wrong people are making the wrong decisions based purely on their egos and patronage. Think about it. It is actually like a pyramid (scheme) of patronage, with decisions at every level made in favour of whoever the next upper level patron is. So, for example, instead of hiring the best people and deploying the best available technology to address any particular problem, a solution and people that do things that benefit the patron are entrusted with developing solutions.
This is also why criticism which aims to improve is also frowned upon in general, because…that’s not how patronage works.
Which brings me to one of the most insightful books I have read - Why Nations Fail.
I think the book "Why Nations Fail" should be required curriculum before anyone assumes any public service office at any level in any African country. In the book Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson explain what causes countries to fail economically, giving specific examples throughout history. In the same vein, they give case studies on how to "break the mold." The above diagram is a good illustration of the key concept of the book, i.e. the more extractive a country's political and economic systems, the more likely it will fail and not benefit its citizens. So, the next step that follows from a system of patronage is that extractive political and economic systems are developed (the authors don’t mention patronage, but I think it is a precursor to the beginning of a failing state). For example, despite it being known that digitized and transparent government procurement systems are the most efficient (for the benefit of citizens), a country that runs heavily on a patronage network will hang onto inefficient methods simply because new technology threatens this patronage pyramid (scheme).
This is also something many technology startup founders miss when they pitch their efficient and innovative solutions to African governments, i.e.if it threatens the patronage network, my friend, forget it.
How do we get our various African countries out of this cycle of poverty and failure?
South Africa in 2020 is a case study for that. Inheriting the most industrialized economy in the whole of Africa in 1994, the ANC government's methodology of deploying cadres - instead of the most capable person for the job - led to exactly where the country is at make-or-break point due to an incapable state unable to deliver services it taxes the citizens still able to pay taxes, so dearly for.
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...
Corruption, Geography.
Slavery is common, especially in Africa today.
>which left the rest of the world damaged but USA emerged out with a massive industrial infrastructure
And yet we're the ones with a lower standard of living, a worse social safety net, worse health, higher debt, higher crime, worse education, and no universal healthcare system. Guess diversity and immigration didn't work out so well after all.
The earth isn't just a bigger New York.
Read about the India Pakistan partition. How would you feel if you have to leave behind everything you have and move to another country because someone decided it is so.
Plenty of people built their lives on the US being a British colony. Plenty of people built their lives on Austria and Germany being a single country. Plenty of people built their lives on the USSR being a single entity. I could go on and on listing examples. Why is everyone else allowed to naturally form their own national identities but recent (particularly African) colonies are supposed to suck it up and endure the empty ones forced on them?
If the borders don't really matter, then redrawing them does no harm.
And if that won't fix much, then your talk about sunk cost is pointless.
People understand/respect separatism when it's Kosovo, Scotland, Catalunya, Hong Kong, etc, but all of a sudden want to be led by the hand when it involves African nations.
But the context was about economics, so I presumed that you were saying that it would be economically helpful to change the boundaries.
This obviously does not apply to all sub-Saharan countries - there are many that already had or have managed to forge national identities of their own. I am speaking for those of us who are unevenly yoked and know it.
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?"
European borders were most certainly forcibly drawn.
> "Why haven't you already done what took us centuries to do naturally in the space of a few decades under artificial tension?"
All I'm saying is that the border argument seems weak.
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.
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.
1. they are black
2. they have been subverted by jews
3. they are blaming whites for their failures
4. they are MASS MURDERING white farmers