# What happened to Africa?



## Normal_Guy (Apr 14, 2019)

Isn't Africa one of or most resourceful continent in the world, so what happened? How did this continent  end up in such a mess? Is it the people? Is it the climate? Is it outside forces ? I think I know the answer but what are your thoughts.


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## Richardo Retardo (Apr 14, 2019)

Normal_Guy said:


> Isn't Africa one of or most resourceful continent in the world


No, it's just really big. When compared to most places of the same or smaller size Africa is really resource barren.


Normal_Guy said:


> How did this continent end up in such a mess?


It's always been a mess. The Mansa Musa being the richest man in history myth is largely something that was made up to make Black Americans feel better.


Normal_Guy said:


> Is it the people?


Africa is incredibly diverse, which is one of it's biggest problems because of how much instability and violence that causes.


Normal_Guy said:


> Is it outside forces ?


lol nope. European and now Asian interference is the only thing that has brought some areas of Sub-Saharan Africa into second world status. I mean, sure, there were awful things done to some African peoples but colonialism was a overwhelmingly net positive for the Continent.


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## nonvir_1984 (Apr 14, 2019)

Toss the question on its head. What hasn't happened to Africa? I think all they have missed out on is nuclear war - the Japs have that grievance cornered ATM; but give the Africans time.


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## Non-Threatening Niall (Apr 14, 2019)

Richardo Retardo said:


> lol nope. European and now Asian interference is the only thing that has brought some areas of Sub-Saharan Africa into second world status.



I think I catch your drift, but wasn't the second world the Comecon countries?


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## Ghost of Wesley Willis (Apr 14, 2019)

The problems in Africa can be contributed to a lot of things. Most of which be contributed towards blindly drawing borders with disregard for tribal or ethnic boundaries during the scramble for Africa by European Powers. You've also got the way too rapid pace of decolonization after WWII, the internal strife and corruption following decolonization, and now China sinking it's teeth into Africa.


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## Richardo Retardo (Apr 14, 2019)

friends o' niall said:


> I think I catch your drift, but wasn't the second world the Comecon countries?


Yeah, it's not a perfect term to use due to it's political baggage but I was using it to mean better than 3rd world.


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## Disgruntled Pupper (Apr 14, 2019)

Normal_Guy said:


> Isn't Africa one of or most resourceful continent in the world, so what happened?



Oh gosh no. Africa's basically a giant hunk of iron with a thin layer of pretty shitty soil and a few pockets of better things here and there. This is part of the reason why it's so prone to famine and desertification (though the practices of the humans on it certainly don't help) and why mining costs at least twice as much as it does elsewhere.


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## Y2K Baby (Apr 14, 2019)

You can't blame all of it on colonization.


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## Kamov Ka-52 (Apr 14, 2019)

Diplowave said:


> Barely anyone developed it except britbongs in the south.


That's not entirely true. While the inland parts of the content had minimal colonization because lol malaria, Spanish and French North Africa were pretty developed as were some coastal and coast-adjacent areas of Sub-Saharan Africa. The former are and have been for African countries, comparatively stable and developed. In the case of the latter group: what infrastructure was left to them was left to rot due innumerable nightmarishly complex civil wars between various ethnic/political groups all hell bent on genocide-ing each other, (fueled by American and Warsaw Pact money, arms, and training,) as well as just general ignorance, our outright malice has left them pretty much devoid of basic infrastructure. At least until the chinks started dumping money into the continent.

The way Britain and France cocked up decolonization basically ensured Africa and the Middle East would be a clusterfuck.


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## KeyserBroze (Apr 14, 2019)

Diplowave said:


> Now china is dumping all the iphone money into african infrastructure and taking all the gravel.



China is running into similar issues to the prior colonial powers; cultural differences or otherwise.









						China: Embracing Africa, But Not Africans
					

The next step for Beijing in its Africa relations is better people-to-people relations.



					thediplomat.com
				




"To improve people-to-people relations, the Chinese government could start by encouraging Chinese companies and state-owned enterprises in Africa to hire 20-30 percent of their workforce locally.
This would stimulate the local economy and stifle complaints of a racialized hiring process amongst Chinese companies in Africa that prefers to import Chinese migrant labor because of complaints of lazy African locals."


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## Normal_Guy (Apr 14, 2019)

Diplowave said:


> Every country did a land grab on it. Barely anyone developed it except britbongs in the south. Then when the rest of the natives went to brit bong land they eventually overthrew shit. Now china is dumping all the iphone money into african infrastructure and taking all the gravel.


So when everyone was developing they empires and dynasties what tf was Africa was doing ? Was it being dunked on other countries even then?


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## Kamov Ka-52 (Apr 14, 2019)

Normal_Guy said:


> So when everyone was developing they empires and dynasties what tf was Africa was doing ? Was it being dunked on other countries even then?


Africa isn't really well suited for the development of civilizations, and not just because it's full of niggers kangs. The animals aren't well suited for domestication, and if I remember correctly, none of humanity's traditional staple food crops (corn, wheat, rice etc.) were native to the continent, they were all introduced by the Europeans.


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## Y2K Baby (Apr 14, 2019)

Normal_Guy said:


> So when everyone was developing they empires and dynasties what tf was Africa was doing ? Was it being dunked on other countries even then?


Nigga, read a book.


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## Normal_Guy (Apr 14, 2019)

Richardo Retardo said:


> It's always been a mess. The Mansa Musa being the richest man in history myth is largely something that was made up to make Black Americans feel better.


So u saying from day one the people Africa never had a clue about anything and it was always a cluster fuck of poverty, wars and retardation?!


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## Normal_Guy (Apr 14, 2019)

Tard Baby said:


> Nigga, read a book.


No


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## Y2K Baby (Apr 14, 2019)

Normal_Guy said:


> No


Are you black or something


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## Normal_Guy (Apr 14, 2019)

Tard Baby said:


> Are you black or something


Yes, I am black. Tf your problem you African or something


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## Y2K Baby (Apr 14, 2019)

Normal_Guy said:


> Yes, I am black. Tf your problem you African or something


I'm Texan.


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## millais (Apr 14, 2019)

Enjoyable movie on some of the failures of decolonization in Africa





						YouTube
					






					www.youtube.com
				




The truth is that most of the colonial territories in Africa were not making much of a profit for the European governments (different story for the corporations). So the governments were very keen to let go and cut their losses in the process, but they did this before the black African was sufficiently educated and economically developed for independent rule.

The biggest tragedy was in Belgian Congo, where on the eve of decolonization, there were only 3 (three) black Congolese university graduates in the whole country.

The South African model of "separate development" would have fixed this problem in their country by withholding political representation from the black African until his level of economic development had reached parity with the European, but unfortunately the self-serving bureaucrat FW de Klerk ruined it for everyone by forcing majority rule twenty years too early.


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## ProgKing of the North (Apr 14, 2019)

That might have been the better option, but put yourself in a black African's shoes. Some asshole telling you "no, you can't have any say in how you're governed, you're not ready for it yet"? Fuck that noise.


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## AF 802 (Apr 14, 2019)

They blessed the rains a little too much.


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## TaterBot (Apr 14, 2019)

It's all [_insert country of choice_] fault. It always is, isn't it?


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## Kalishnakov (Apr 14, 2019)

Islam happened to Africa.
Similarly, 'globalism',SJWism and troonery has happened to the Western world.


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## Foxxo (Apr 14, 2019)

Africa is TOO resource-rich for its own good. It never had a chance on the world stage.

North Africa did reasonably well, but like Mesopotamia it was easy to sweep through. The best independent society you had there was Egypt, and that was only because it got a head start with irrigation due to the Nile and it had a chokepoint at Sinai to fend off the Levantine guys. They pretty much waned in comparison to everyone else once comparable civilizations arose, anyway, and they even lost to the Nubians. Great at making food, sure, but not too great at anything else.

Everything south of them is effed by Malaria. Mosquitoes love muggy climates, and they carry a disease that effs you. If you want some idea of how bad Malaria is, just note that natural selection favored a condition that distorts your red blood cells in sub-Saharan Africa just because the chance of dying before you'd have kids with Malaria was lower if you also had this other death sentence tagged on. Worrying past subsistence was kinda pointless back in the day if you could get a horrific disease from a mosquito and die at any moment, on top of the other horrible Old-World diseases. And areas in northern Eurasia that didn't have malaria sucked too, sure, but those that aren't completely frozen or who have trade are doing pretty well now. You could also say that it never getting cold means that Africans never had to plan for a "dead season" with their crops, but they probably had dry seasons, so I'm not going to dwell on that.

There's also the fact that tribalism isn't very conducive of advancement, either. You don't feel the need to advance if your system you have is the best you've ever had. You had lots of stateless societies in parts of Africa that weren't touched by other civilization, which isn't quite the libertarian dream in the sense that there aren't any roads. African places that did significantly advance past tribalism were near the Romans/Egypt/Islam, or adjacent to Islamic trading cities on the East African coast. The rest is "Middle Africa", the boonies. Note that most of these places that did get the exposure were conquered by those who gave them a hint of their civilizations, and/or collapsed when that contact was cut off. (See West Africa, East Africa outside of Ethiopia, and all of Africa during and after colonialism).

Basically, Africa didn't have much of a reason to get ahead until it was too late, and the few things that they would've wanted to get ahead with (dealing with Malaria, possibly air conditioning) were far too advanced for what anyone could have possibly reached on their own.


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## Krokodil Overdose (Apr 14, 2019)

Normal_Guy said:


> Isn't Africa one of or most resourceful continent in the world, so what happened? How did this continent  end up in such a mess? Is it the people? Is it the climate? Is it outside forces ? I think I know the answer but what are your thoughts.


I dispute the premise of the question. Nothing "happened" to Africa- there, human life stayed as it has been for the vast majority of our history: nasty, brutish, and short. What didn't happen is that it never hit the Goldlocks mix of social institutions and technology that enabled things like the Renaissance, the Industrial Revolution, and all those other events that enabled a segment of humanity to climb out of that hole and into the land of milk and honey McDonald's and porn that the first world resides in.

Of course, they also didn't turn themselves into Calhoun's rat experiment in the process, so we'll see who has the last laugh in the evolutionary long run.


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## Manah (Apr 14, 2019)

Generally speaking, Europe and Asia were the native home to more useful kinds of plants and animals than Africa. Horses, dogs, etc. Note that one of the most historically advanced Africa countries, Egypt, is also one of the first countries in Africa to benefit from the flora and fauna of Eurasia.

As a result, Africa, especially sub-saharan Africa, wasn't really suited for forming the same sort of large scale settlements that Europe was, and developed more slowly as a result.

That part is what I know for a fact, this part is more speculation:

Now, fast forward to the era of colonization: A lot more Europeans wanted to live in the Americas than Africa (I'd presume because it had a more similar climate? I'm not an anthropologist or anything). Since colonists were getting ready for the long haul in the Americas, they busied themselves with killing the natives to take the land they wanted, or herding them onto the land they didn't care about. Since Africans were more being used as slave labour than fertilizer, their population remained somewhat more stable. When the age of empire building came to an end, the Colonial powers pulled out for the most part and left the devastated populations to sort out the mess themselves, which things like age-old rivalries didn't make any easier. The places that kept reasonably large European-descended populations (like South Africa) had their own set of troubles.


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## crocodilian (Apr 14, 2019)

Tard Baby said:


> You can't blame all of it on colonization.



You can't blame _any_ of it on colonization. Parts of Africa developed by European settlers have all ended up great (until the natives start getting uppity and kill them all, anyway.)


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## Kalishnakov (Apr 15, 2019)

Every time 'whitey' is kicked out, the nation goes to shit. 
Every time.


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## Tasty Tatty (Apr 15, 2019)

Africa was doomed from the start. Humanity maybe started from there, but the place wasn't suitable for them to live. That's why the first main civilization was in Egypt, where there was a river that helped people to survive. Compare Africans with other human groups and you're gonna see how fast these groups developed and managed to create not one but more than two civilizations. Compare the African tribes with what the first settlers of the Americas did before they had any contact with the Europeans. In fact, by the time Europeans had evolved and became strong, Africa was still very underdeveloped and they were an easy prey for them, which didn't happen with many American groups.


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## wateryketchup (Apr 15, 2019)

Kalishnakov said:


> Every time 'whitey' is kicked out, the nation goes to shit.
> Every time.


That's why they need us to rule over them and teach them how to be civilized!


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## Red Hood (Apr 15, 2019)

No one blessed the rains.


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## Kalishnakov (Apr 15, 2019)

wateryketchup said:


> That's why they need us to rule over them and teach them how to be civilized!


No , I wouldn't go to that extreme. But certainly would not invite them into Europe to assuage "white guilt" either. 
They wish to live with the Western freedoms, then they will have to change their religion and manners. Till then, it will be the same old shit show it has always been.. Just look to the "Rainbow Nation" to see how that is working out.


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## queue-anon (Apr 15, 2019)

Resource-rich African countries are the most fucked by far for a lot of different reasons, but the main one is, when you have a lot of wealth, people are going to fight over that wealth unless something/someone exists that can put down any fighting quickly and effectively. African countries that were the most successful in the aftermath of decolonization had relatively few natural resources, a “president for life” with an iron fist (ideally one who steals only some of the country’s wealth for himself, not all of it), or both.


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## Clop (Apr 15, 2019)

crocodilian said:


> You can't blame _any_ of it on colonization. Parts of Africa developed by European settlers have all ended up great (until the natives start getting uppity and kill them all, anyway.)







As the guy interviewed says: Yemen fucking loved the "colonizers." As soon as they left shit got real. But you only hear about the part where they "fought against the colonizers for FREEEEDOOOOM" - even if that freedom is freedom to return to medieval laws.

Yes, not quite in Africa, but close enough.


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## 1864897514651 (Apr 15, 2019)

Africa is poor because the people there suck. You can get into the history of wars, colonization, or whatever all you want, but if you have a society of people that truly believe that they can become wealthy by consuming the body parts of albino human beings—what are you seriously expecting? A non-trivial percentage of their population believes that having sex with a virgin can cure HIV/AIDs. A significant part of their economy is based on witchcraft, magic, potions, and other complete nonsense. Civilizations, societies, and economies are based on the holiness of the people within them. The vast majority of African people are mentally insane and probably possessed by demons. It all has to do with the fact that their civilization has witchcraft as its foundation for social mores.


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## NOT Sword Fighter Super (Apr 15, 2019)

Black people happen to Africa,  of course.


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## MarvinTheParanoidAndroid (Apr 15, 2019)

To my knowledge, one of the reasons why it's such a shithole is because of all the insane parasites that live there, including flies that infect labor animals with some fucked up disease that takes the energy out of them, and because of that Africa has never been able to have strong agriculture despite having the apparent tools at their access. Then you have shit like droughts that also severely hurts agriculture.


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## Crocophile (Apr 15, 2019)

I think it's kind of funny people are like "of course Africa is fucked up, they can't stop waring on each other!" as if war was not the primary hobby of every western tribe, territory, and country up until Hitler ruined it for everyone by taking it too far. Seriously, Europe's history is pretty much war after war after war. White people fucking love war. So I think it's a little unfair to look at a post-white-people Africa, when we left behind all our wars toys and more importantly massive power vacuums, then say "Wow I can't believe those savages can't govern themselves!" Like what did you expect? 

Modern Africa is about 30% less horrible than propaganda would have you think. It's not all barbarians in mud huts, there are actual cities, many of them as nice as any western ones. The continent is rapidly developing, and is doing so more cleanly than its predicessors thanks to huge strides in technology since the industrial revolution. A lot of great tech is being debuted there, especially on the agricultural front, it's exciting to watch. And politics have become hugely progressive in the last few years (the good kind of progressive, like cracking down on genital mutilation). Yeah, being a homo is a stoneable offense in Brunei, but Kenya and Botswana are due to over-turn anti-faggotry laws this year. The continent is a mixed bag of traditionalism and progression and there's some growing pains from it sure, but it's not 11 million square miles of lion filled slums like those 'Save the Children' charity ads would have you think.


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## Judge Holden (Apr 15, 2019)

To sum up, there is a _very_ good reason why the ancestors of europeans, asians, and americans got the fuck out of that continent.

It is great at sustaining basic tribal tier life, and if you have industrial age tier technology and knowhow you can do a fucktunne with the land and resources and climate, but organically developing anything inbetween was just straight up impossible through >90% of the continent due to the screwey climate and seasons patterns, godawful pathogens rendering some of the best land too dangerous to settle, and other such wonderful features such as the fact that lacking reliable and consistent seasons meant that a fucktunne of africa never developed a cultural sense of time and its importance which was a death sentence for any halfway organised civilisation.

The few nations in africa with access to halfway reliable climate and safe arable land wound up doing pretty well for themselves, and were more or less on the level of the middle east in terms of development, but for the rest of it there was no way in hell anything could be done until the 19th century advances made it halfway safe and worthwhile to develop the interior.

This is why both europans and arabs made damn sure they stuck to the coast throughout the middle ages and enlightenment era and limited their interactions to mostly just buying slaves and ivory and such until they had the means to go further inland.


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## cuddle striker (Apr 15, 2019)

MarvinTheParanoidAndroid said:


> To my knowledge, one of the reasons why it's such a shithole is because of all the insane parasites that live there, including flies that infect labor animals with some fucked up disease that takes the energy out of them, and because of that Africa has never been able to have strong agriculture despite having the apparent tools at their access. Then you have shit like droughts that also severely hurts agriculture.


oh man this. even though yes war is inevitable because of all the things @Crocophile says, disease and parasites are HUGE reasons everything South of the Sahara is fucked. 

sickle cell is vile and horrific, even the trait can make you ill (not the full sickness) but it's a necessity because malaria is worse.

guinea worm, mango worm, hookworm, all the worms and the tsetse and the mosquito, in league against humanity in every way.

and then there's the zoonotic viruses. ebola, HIV, and more. humans have been there for so long that everything knows how to infect us. 
liver flukes. HUMAN liver flukes. that's how long humans have been there.

then the fungi, the bacteria, and vicious animals from ants on up to hippos. and all, every last animal, used for food at some point, or kept, or lived next to, long enough for diseases to mutate and get into the peoples.

yellow fever was bad juju from slavery, when it was happening, this was the rumor. and it was true. so many illnesses brought from there to the American South, hell, to all the warm places of the West. it's a nightmare for public health.


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## eternal dog mongler (Apr 15, 2019)

Well there are basically two problems with modern Africa:

1. Colonialism. Britain drew up some stupid fucking borders, France never really ever stopped interfering with Francafrique. It'd be best for Africa to balkanize a little bit so they could have democratic nations instead of a strongman trying to wrangle tribes together. Sudan had a coup recently because the IMF decided the government was spending too much and asked al-Bashir to remove the bread subsidy, which he did and it caused immediate riots. That's, well, colonialism.

2. NGOs moved in to improve African lifespans and stop child mortality but never bothered to do any sort of economic development. This results in exciting things happening with rampant youth unemployment and Lake Chad drying up because of over-irrigation.

And then you have a bunch of self-inflicted problems like wealth inequality. The richest person in Nigeria, IIRC, is the owner of Dangote Cement. He's worth billions while many other Nigerians are just subsistence farmers or (in the eastern region) internally-displaced people living in a refugee camp somewhere because of herdsmen attacks and Boko Haram.

But in general the problem is the fucked-up borders for African nations. That's why there's a guerilla movement in Cameroon right now between the anglophone regions and the Biya government. Also the US kinda explicitly moved in and created South Sudan because they had oil and that was the only reason we really bothered to do that.


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## cuddle striker (Apr 15, 2019)

eternal dog mongler said:


> Well there are basically two problems with modern Africa:
> 
> 1. Colonialism. Britain drew up some stupid fucking borders, France never really ever stopped interfering with Francafrique. It'd be best for Africa to balkanize a little bit so they could have democratic nations instead of a strongman trying to wrangle tribes together. Sudan had a coup recently because the IMF decided the government was spending too much and asked al-Bashir to remove the bread subsidy, which he did and it caused immediate riots. That's, well, colonialism.
> 
> ...


the NGOs that fund women solely, seem to do a lot more good for the communities in general. it's the old men plant tobacco, women plant food, thing.

if you want to get polio vaccines to everyone, you ask the women. they're the ones who truly give a damn. it's like that in a lot of places all over the world, but in southern Africa it's just more pronounced.


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## Kalishnakov (Apr 15, 2019)

Africa would do better with enforced* birth control *as opposed to medical aid which only acts to exacerbate the problem via extended life times and reduced infant mortality.


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