Climaxing Sunset
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2021
Botswana isn’t exactly a “powerhouse” economically. It’s a lower middle income economy that relies a lot of agriculture and mining. Plus Botswana’s demographics aren’t that diverse either, they have one dominant ethnic group that make up 80% of the populace (Tswana), meaning that the risk of ethnic civil wars is negated in the country compared to diverse mutt zones like South Africa or the United States.Though I agree that the extremely difficult environment and coastal geography in much of Sub-Saharan Africa hindered complex development in several areas (it's hard to build complex civilizations when the numbers of domesticable animals are extremely few, the rest are trying to kill you, and the lack of winters prevents the seasonal culling of virus-spreading mosquitoes and flies), there are numerous exceptions to the rule and several states in Africa have managed to overcome those limitations. Botswana is perhaps the most striking example - it's a developed country and the most stable on the continent, but located on a vast, largely barren and arid plane.
The great Thomas Sowell (who is black) discussed this in 'Conquest and Culture'. If Botswana - within less than a century - could perform its acrobatic miracle of development from one of the poorest on earth into a powerhouse, there's something in the argument of Africans' supposed inherent inferiority that doesn't hold.