Current Events > Why is Africa so poor of a continent?

(+) Yeah! (+)

FLUFFYGERM posted...

PowerfulSageIRL posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

uwnim posted...

It was completely and utterly fucked by colonialism which didn't end until the mid 1900s.
Some of the aid given to the countries there is counterproductive and hurts industrialization.

I mean, it was indeed fucked by colonialism

But they weren't exactly on the brink of change beforehand. Its not like the Europeans stifled their progress when they were never making any to begin with.

actually, it's exactly like the europeans stifled their progress. stealing natural resources, devastating their homes, taking tons of people as slaves. do you really think that wouldn't set a culture back?

Different tribes in Africa were engaging in a much larger and longer slave trade with each other and with Arabian nations before the Europeans really got involved.

cool. this does not in any way negate my statement.

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

PowerfulSageIRL posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

uwnim posted...

It was completely and utterly fucked by colonialism which didn't end until the mid 1900s.
Some of the aid given to the countries there is counterproductive and hurts industrialization.

I mean, it was indeed fucked by colonialism

But they weren't exactly on the brink of change beforehand. Its not like the Europeans stifled their progress when they were never making any to begin with.

actually, it's exactly like the europeans stifled their progress. stealing natural resources, devastating their homes, taking tons of people as slaves. do you really think that wouldn't set a culture back?

They were making literally zero headway for thousands of years. They were in essentially tribal homeostasis.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Djenne_great_mud_mosque.jpg/1200px-Djenne_great_mud_mosque.jpg
https://s-i.huffpost.com/gen/2974166/images/o-NUBIAN-PYRAMIDS-facebook.jpg
https://sacredsites.com/images/africa/zimbabwe/Great-Zimbabwe-construction-artist-reconstruction-1200.jpg

Wow look at that tribal homeostasis with no headway in civilization. I don't blame you for not knowing anything about Africa. It's a tragedy that American schools don't really cover history from this part of the world.

ManBeast462 posted...

The SJWs are in such denial lol

Denial of what? The only denial are from people like you who, for whatever reason, want to keep believing Africa never had anything going for it.
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Can you guys just shut the fuck up and bless the rains down in Africa?
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PowerfulSageIRL posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

For general knowledge? lol

unless you can show a whole lot of good sources for that claim, I'm gonna assume it's based on nothing but ignorance and racism

And I'm asserting that your position is pure ignorance of common knowledge.

Africa, with very few exceptions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, has had very few civilizations. The vast majority of the continent lived tribally when the Europeans arrived.

FLUFFYGERM posted...

PowerfulSageIRL posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

uwnim posted...

It was completely and utterly fucked by colonialism which didn't end until the mid 1900s.
Some of the aid given to the countries there is counterproductive and hurts industrialization.

I mean, it was indeed fucked by colonialism

But they weren't exactly on the brink of change beforehand. Its not like the Europeans stifled their progress when they were never making any to begin with.

actually, it's exactly like the europeans stifled their progress. stealing natural resources, devastating their homes, taking tons of people as slaves. do you really think that wouldn't set a culture back?

Different tribes in Africa were engaging in a much larger and longer slave trade with each other and with Arabian nations before the Europeans really got involved.

Africans did not engage with Arabs in the Arab Slave Trade as much as Arabs flat out raided them and captured slaves. Arab Slave Trade was very brutal and violent compared to the Atlantic Slave Trade.
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PowerfulSageIRL posted...

FLUFFYGERM posted...

PowerfulSageIRL posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

uwnim posted...

It was completely and utterly fucked by colonialism which didn't end until the mid 1900s.
Some of the aid given to the countries there is counterproductive and hurts industrialization.

I mean, it was indeed fucked by colonialism

But they weren't exactly on the brink of change beforehand. Its not like the Europeans stifled their progress when they were never making any to begin with.

actually, it's exactly like the europeans stifled their progress. stealing natural resources, devastating their homes, taking tons of people as slaves. do you really think that wouldn't set a culture back?

Different tribes in Africa were engaging in a much larger and longer slave trade with each other and with Arabian nations before the Europeans really got involved.

cool. this does not in any way negate my statement.

yeah, it does. you make it sound like europeans came in and fucked things up with slavery and etc, whereas it's not actually like that.
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FLUFFYGERM posted...

yeah, it does. you make it sound like europeans came in and fucked things up with slavery and etc, whereas it's not actually like that.

Europeans did fuck things up with slavery, they just weren't the first.

@RoboLaserGandhi posted...

PowerfulSageIRL posted...

RoboLaserGandhi posted...

For general knowledge? lol

unless you can show a whole lot of good sources for that claim, I'm gonna assume it's based on nothing but ignorance and racism

And I'm asserting that your position is pure ignorance of common knowledge.

Africa, with very few exceptions, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, has had very few civilizations. The vast majority of the continent lived tribally when the Europeans arrived.

Did you read my posts?
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Yeah I did read them

You posted the handful of cherry picked exceptions I mentioned

You started diverting the conversation toward specifics when it was always about the continent as a whole

Sativa_Rose posted...

Kazi1212 posted...

For instance, none of the countries in South America are considered first world, but a majority of Soth American nations rank much higher on the HDI than the average African nation.

Most South American nations got their independence over 100 years before most African nations did. Prior to European contact, most were still living traditional indigenous lifestyles. Many parts of Africa were not colonized until after the 1870s as well, so basically any way you put it, African nations are simply newer and have had less time to develop.

The problem with that argument -- and it's a pretty fucking big one -- is that Africa had access to contact with Europe from a far earlier age and that's in addition to sub-Saharan Africa not developing much on its own. South America had no access to (or even knowledge of) Europe until what, like the 1500s at the earliest when European explorers started to head down that way? That's not to suggest that sub-Saharan Africa had ready access to Europe, but they had advantages in that arena which South America did not.

AmericaTheBrave posted...

Anarchy_Juiblex posted...

It's the continent of 10,001 excuses. All of which secretly boil down to "let's blame whites"

Those "excuses" are pretty easily backed up.

Except they're really not. Prior to colonialization, it's not like sub-Saharan Africa had thriving, advanced civilizations. Pre-colonized sub-Saharan Africa had less going for it than post-colonized sub-Saharan Africa. Colonization, for all of its immense problems, was the first time that many of those nations began to truly modernize.

PowerfulSageIRL posted...

it's almost as though having all your wealth and natural resources stolen, your land colonized, and a significant number of your people taken into slavery, might have a negative effect on an area

It's almost like you're deliberately writing off the thousands of years prior to colonization when nothing was really happening with the area which, not so coincidentally, made the area easier to conquer because it was able less able to resist hostile nations.
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Broken_Zeus posted...

Africa had access to contact with Europe from a far earlier age and that's in addition to sub-Saharan Africa not developing much on its own

This is actually false for certain regions of Africa. For example, the interior of the Congo River Basin was not reached by outsiders until after 1870. That includes Africans from other parts of the continent. The jungle was too dense and the journey was believed to be impassable. The people living there hadn't had outside contact.

The Sahara Desert acted almost as an ocean separating North Africa from Sub-Saharan Africa.

You definitely see more advanced civilizations (historically speaking) in places like Ethiopia and the Swahili coast that had contact with outsiders compared to places like the Congo River Basin that did not.

Another thing that is kind of counter-intuitive is that the New World was actually colonized earlier than much of Africa was. Colonization of Africa was limited to North Africa, the coasts, and South Africa up until the Scramble for Africa which began in about 1870. On the other hand, the days of colonization in the New World were basically over by then, with most former colonies in the Americas already independent. So countries like Brazil and Argentina actually have a head start in a way over many African countries.
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