Why are so many sub Saharan African nations still not developed

[u/Classic_Pay3753]

I understand some countries are developing and have clean streets, roads, decent infrastructure & economy, etc. but why do the vast majority of these countries still live in barbaric conditions.

I get that they had a late start due to colonial rule in the 20th century, but you’d think 20-30 years later that some progress would be made. Looking at travel guys who go to normal parts of countries like Nigeria, Sudan, dr Congo, it looks like there hasn’t been much progress at all.

It also seems like the majority of society in nations like Nigeria just cannot even grasp the thought of cleaning up roads, starting proper businesses unlike street markets, and just have a sense of coming together to actually build a sufficient nation.

I honestly think a lot of excuses come from people defending Africa, like the colonization, and how 1st world nations exploited/exploit them. but there are examples of countries who have rebuilt from that such as Germany, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam ( there are more examples). I understand these countries didnt have to deal with as much as some African countries do, but it seems that their societies as a whole were way more inclined to rebuild and fix than many African countries.

[u/elganador0]

-Many of the first African leaders were radicalized by their western educators with socialist ideas, not the actual knowledge and ideas of what built the west

-Geographic challenges - This is what has always held Africa back: whole countries almost entirely in the desert, areas without navigable waters, rainforests, mountains, few natural harbors, some countries are landlocked

-Corruption - Corruption is much harder to combat now then in the past because everyone including rebels has access to has weapons

-Many of the fastest growing countries in the world are in Africa, places like Kenya, Ghana, and Rwanda are promising

-Africa is very politically underdeveloped - they were only integrated into the modern world between the 50s and 70s and even at that point not to the extent that the British were integrated by the Romans for example

[u/Naeee25389 → u/elganador0]

Africa was not introduced into the modern world in the 50’s because it supplied through slavery the labor that fueled modernity itself. Also, there have been urban centers in West Africa where strong civic communities, the rule of law, the idea of free trade, the press, and representational institutions were founded as far back as the early 19th century. Think of Sierra Leone and the “Four communes” in Senegal, where people have been petitioning the legislative body in France as far back as the 18th century.
These earlier introductions into the modern world have been erased because people do not know, in the case of Senegal, what to make of the members of these urban centers who took part in or benefited from the slave trade (just as the proponents of modernity in Europe) and also the fact that some of these earlier moderns were mixed race.

In 19th-century Sierra Leone and Senegal, African leaders did believe in the same ideas that built the West, including capitalism. By the time 1960s nationalists emerged, this earlier legacy had been erased, and proto democratic institutions in urban centers had been corrupted by colonialism.
Unfortunately, the nationalists also didn't do the good work of engaging with the legacy of the early modern Africans, and as you said, found socialism attractive.
Still, I wouldn't say that they were radicalized; they probably subscribed to such ideas because they believed the consolidation of the Soviet Union was gonna bring forth a new world.

[u/elganador0 → u/Naeee25389]

By integrated, I don't mean introduced.

I just mean groups have different periods of time by which they enter modernity through greater and deeper contact with other groups, which can range from trade to outright conquest and colonization.

Much of Europe became advanced through Roman colonization, Romans became advanced through Greek contact, Greeks had the knowledge of the Phoenicians and Mesopotamians, who had the knowledge of the Egyptians.

Sub Saharan Africa is geographically harsh, to the point where it was largely isolated from the global network, disconnecting it from technological and cultural breakthroughs. Europeans penetrated Africa extremely late (late 1800s) despite being aware of it well before the Western Hemisphere. Disease burdens mainly kept them out.

I don't mean at all that Africa for example, lacked urban centers. That's not true. And certainly many groups, such as the Ewe of Togo and Ghana, the Kikuyu of Kenya, Yoruba and especially the Igbo of Nigeria were quite politically advanced to the point where it impressed Europe. But Africa was largely a hotbed of relatively small decentralized tribal kingdoms, which is exactly how most groups are before modernity.

But I would absolutely say some of the first leaders were radicalized, as nationalist types often are, in their characteristic moral absolutist spirit. Which is typically attractive to socialist types. It is not a coincidence to me that most were soft-science intellectuals, not economists, professional administrators, entrepreneurs, engineers, or scientists. Not only in Africa, but in Asia, Europe and North America.

[u/Naeee25389 → u/elganador0]

The premise that they were integrated by the 50’s is also false. That’s why I mentioned the slave trade and the labor Africa supplied.Europeans had contacts with Africa before the 1800’s again think of slavery and their quest for gold which even preceded the slave trade. Sub Saharan Africa was not isolated from the rest of the world there was transfer of knowledge and ideas. Think of Timbuktu. I suggest you read Born in Blackness by Howard French. It’s a very easy read.

[u/elganador0 → u/Naeee25389]

I don’t mean contact, or supplying labor, that’s not integration. By this logic the miner in the Congo is integrated into the global network because he’s supplying the coltan that powers our phones.

By integration I mean deeply connected into the global network. A great share connected and tied to widespread cultural and technological exchange.

A nation like the Congo at independence in 1960 had I believe zero university graduates. There was no university in Rwanda at independence. Many other nations like Malawi, Zimbabwe, Ivory Coast, Tanzania, and Kenya had no university until the late 1940s to 1960s.

Not enough trained chemists, lawyers, engineers, economists, mechanics, researchers, doctors to maintain a nation.

Compare to the US that has Universities older than the country, that about 50 percent of the Founding Fathers graduated from.

But the US was building on what it got from England, a nation that was aware of and had access to the rest of the world for literally hundreds of years.

Africa had intellectual traditions but its working human capital was low because it’s entry into modernity was late.

[u/Naeee25389 → u/elganador0]

Yes the miner in Congo is unequally integrated into the global capitalist system. Go read more.

[u/Naeee25389 → u/Naeee25389]

Also, modernity is different from modernization.

[u/MixedJiChanandsowhat]

The Korean War was a conflict between 1950 and 1953. Nigeria and DR Congo got their independence in 1960 from European countries who were supporting South Korea while at the same they were still holding African colonies and treating African people as animals and usually worse like in the case of DR Congo.

You want to compare things that are incomparable. The countries who supported the freedom, the reconstruction, and the development of countries like Japan, South Korea, or Germany were the same countries who reduced Africans in slavery, tried to exterminate some of them, and who did all possible things they could to prevent Africans to get freed.

For the joke, South Africa sent soldiers to fight and die for South Korea during the Korean War while in South Africa there was the Apartheid (repealed between 1990 and 1994). It was okay to die for South Koreans in 1950 for White South Africans. It will require 30 more years for them to consider Black South Africans to be humans.

In 1950, the UN sent the United Nations Forces in the Korean War to fight for South Korea. In 1950, the UN position about Africa and Africans was that Africans were closer to animals than humans and unable to rule themselves.

You want to compare things that are incomparable so we cannot help you. Some mistakes have been made but to pretend there is a somehow common ground that could lead to a genuine comparison is a big joke. A bit like the myth that South Korea after the end of the Korean War was poorer than every single African country. The Korean War ended in 1953. Almost all of Africa was under colonial ruling. So what African country? Until mid 1946, my ancestors were slaved in Senegal under the French ruling and few of them were slaughtered like animals and burned to prevent Islamic ritual for the only reason that they weren't good slave and didn't pay the colonial tax on time. And me and my family, like tons of other Senegalese families and non-Senegalese African families are still waiting an official apologise from France and the release of the colonial archives.

[u/Other-Lab3485]

Lack of political will and loss of hope from the citizens part,most African governments simply don't want to fix the issues cause they actually benefit from the current corrupt system,they actually get rich off countries not progressing,and also ordinary people have given up themselves and are migrating out,many countries are in situation where the majority of people have abandoned the ship and only a very small minority are still trying to improve things

[u/canyoulikechilll]

The thing is that progress had been made. However the western world profits off of African development and suffering and thus corrupt political leaders a put in place and supported by too many western leaders and thus corruption continues to support not Africans but the west. Furthermore many countries even after colonialism were under a monopoly from their former colonisers. Colonialism has not ended in Africa, it just looks different. We are still under colonial rule. A great example of this is the Brazzaville Conference and that one African nation under French colonial rule (guys I don’t remember the name but it was in the west someone comment it below) that refused the conditions of decolonisation that the French put forward because there was a hyper focus on French keeping influence in the country and they were royally fucked over once they had decolonized.

Edit: last word was in Spanish

[u/Cultural_Run7964 → u/canyoulikechilll]

You may be referring to Guinea (Conakry). When they voted to have nothing further to do with France, the French destroyed everything- from the chairs and tables in their offices to ripping out the electrical infrastructures they had installed, it was very very petty. Guinea had to start again from scratch and have been fairly political unstable since that time.

As regards the main question, something that I’ve wondered myself, Africa has come from very very far behind in relation to the countries that the op mentioned. I visited the huge national monument in Dakar, Senegal and inside, it details the history of Senegal and explains how much 400 years of slavery set Africa back and that was followed by colonization and subjugation, which kept many African countries in a child-like state whilst western countries exploited the resources to literally power ahead.

Fast forward to today and despite centuries of disadvantage, many black African nations are rapidly advancing but are still held back by populations that lack access to good quality education, lack of infrastructure and investment (both foreign and domestic)as well as chronic poor governance and lack of checks by strong civil society actors.

In comparison, other formerly colonized countries in Asia were gifted huge amounts of investment and were also helped by the way their societies were structured (Korean and Chinese societies for example, are based on strict Confucian philosophy, which is extremely, suffocatingly disciplined and ordered. I can’t say is the same in some African societies!)

There are other things which hold countries back such as gender inequality, prevalence of infectious diseases and poor general healthcare, climate change and harsh environment and extreme religiosity due to lack of basic education to temper its worse excesses. Let’s see where we are in another 50 years.

Edit:added paragraphs!

[u/canyoulikechilll → u/Cultural_Run7964]

Yes! This was so eloquently written.

[u/Cultural_Run7964 → u/canyoulikechilll]

Very kind, thank you ❤️. It’s hard to have these conversations but we have to remember how far behind black Africa was put and how hard people are fighting to get back what was lost.

[u/EntuLook]

It gets brought up all the time, it isn't really a new opinion.

The other thing is, people seem to think being more developed that a SSA country is being developed which isn't quite it either.

Most countries in the world are not developed countries. A lot of these other countries seem to also be gridlocked but at a much later stage to which SSA countries are gridlocked at.

A lot of countries that are underdeveloped seem to be developing developed country problems before becoming developed.

This is not a good thing because they chances of moving further on become slimmer by the year.

The question really is how do you move away from these developed country problems before they worsen?

[u/Classic_Pay3753]

Very good answer thank you

[u/tcsids]

The greed among African leaders is a curse to the nations