Africa is home to some of the oldest civilizations on Earth. Yet, by all metrics, it is the poorest continent. Whether it is GDP per capita, life expectancy, political freedom or literacy rates, Africa ranks dead last. Why is this? The answers you will often hear are white (European) colonialism, racism, corruption, lack of unity, instability and lack of resources. There are elements of truth to some of these, yet the reasons you often hear from today’s mainstream historians and race hustlers are misleading. For one, Africa is a continent, not a unified nation of people. There are 54 recognized countries in Africa, each with its own unique circumstances. I’m going to take an in-depth look at all of the perceived causes of poverty and use statistics from individual nations to challenge each.
Out of 54 countries in Africa, only 9 have an annual GDP per capita greater than $10,000 (based on USD). For comparison, the U.S. average is $60,200. In order of richest to poorest: Seychelles $24,000, Mauritius $19,500, Equatorial Guinea $17,000. Botswana $16,000, Gabon $14,400, Egypt $12,000, South Africa $11,500, Algeria $10,700 and Libya $10,300. The highest earners are small island-states off the coast of Africa and can hardly be considered a true representation. If you look at overall GDP, Egypt would be considered the economic leader of Africa at $1.2 billion (20th worldwide), with Nigeria a close second at $1.0 billion (25th worldwide).
I think most would agree that Africa is handicapped by geography. Certain areas of the world will face more challenges than others. For one, most of the fertile topsoil in the world exists in the northern hemisphere. Africa will not yield crops like the American plains or even northeast China can. One of the largest rivers in Africa is the Zaire. The Zaire begins 4,700 feet above sea level and drops over several waterfalls before it finally empties into the Atlantic. Freight can only be transported over short distances. The Nile does not have these problems; however, it is too shallow for larger ships. Contrast this with the Mississippi River, which runs for 2,320 miles, is deep enough for large ships, and only falls a few feet over the entire stretch. It is an ideal river for large scale transportation and commerce (credit to Thomas Sowell for these statistics).
Ease of transportation develops civilizations. And while geography discriminates, I am unconvinced that poor geography can be blamed for a nation’s economic woes. Just look at Japan. Poor natural resources and poor navigable waterways, the same problems as Africa. Yet Japan is the 4th largest economy in the world. Hong Kong, Singapore and South Korea are also sitting on rocks with almost no arable land, yet they outperform many European nations. Ingenuity and good economic policy can overcome geographic handicaps, and this has been true throughout human history. I do not accept the “Africa is poor because of geography” argument, especially since Africa has more arable land than the economic juggernauts of Asia.
The next argument is that Africa is poor because of European involvement. European colonialism exploited the African people and stripped them of their resources. I’ll get to the colonialism argument later, but for now let’s look at the idea of an isolated Africa, free of European influence. Today’s culture warriors will argue that if Africa were left alone, they would have achieved great prosperity and technological advancements. But those making this argument don’t realize that we already have a real-life example of their Wakanda.
Liberia
Liberia is unique in that it is the only country in Africa to have never been colonized. The rest of the continent was under a combination of British, Belgian, Italian, French, Portuguese and Spanish rule from roughly 1880 to 1960. Ethiopia was never technically colonized however they went through periods of Italian occupation. Why was tiny Liberia, on the coast of West Africa, left out of the African Scramble?
Liberia is an outlier because it shares its DNA with the United States. Beginning in the 1820s, the American Colonization Society purchased land from the native tribes of what would become Liberia. As part of the deal, roughly 20,000 freed slaves were sent to live there. The Americans also sent slaves freed from impressed ships (“recaptives” from modern-day Nigeria, Cameroon and Ghana) participating in the now illegal Atlantic slave trade. The freed slaves, or Americo-Liberians formed a constitutional republic in 1847, modeled after the American. However, the Liberian constitution mirrored the U.S. in name only.
The Americo-Liberians oppressed the native population, enslaved many and brought back the slave trade. As a result of this, the U.S. refused to recognize Liberian independence until 1862. The Americo-Liberians’ True Whig Party held single-party control of the state for 100 years. The bad blood between the groups lead to constant civil unrest, and outright civil war when the True Whigs fell in 1980. The civil war(s) bred atrocities unthinkable to a modern mentality, horrific acts such as cannibalism, human trafficking and female genital mutilation.
Throughout Liberia’s history, no infrastructure or industry was built. The corrupt Liberian government also practiced poor policy such as printing fiat currency at hyper-inflationary levels and taking on massive debt to pay its public sector (often the family of whoever was in charge). Civil unrest tends to drive away foreign investment. However, in the 1920’s, the Firestone Tire Company took a special interest in Liberia. They invested heavily in plants and harbors necessary to bring rubber, foreign to Liberia, to their shores. A $5 million loan was provided to the Liberian government to pay off debt, and Firestone became the largest employer of Liberians, which it remains to this day. Private investment, not government aid, was the only thing that developed Liberia’s economy and infrastructure in all of its existence.
Now surely, someone will make the claim that Firestone has “exploited” the Liberian workers. However, workplace exploitation is also a myth because all labor has alternate uses. The alternative to being paid low wages by American standards, is to be paid nothing at all. Liberia has no industry, therefore there are no other options for Liberian employment. Contrast this with a nation like Japan. Japan accepted rapid industrialization and opened up trade to the rest of the world. Initial foreign investment in Japan bred “sweatshop” conditions and low wages. As Japan developed their industry, employees had more choices in how to allocate their labor, creating competition in not just the Japanese, but the global wage marketplace. This rapidly increased wages, as foreign investment must also operate under the economic rule of alternate uses of labor. A country with a dynamic economy is more attractive to investment, while an unstable country with minimal economic productivity is not. Thus, Japan went from third-world status to a global leader in less than a century, with rapid growth in wages and living standards.
Meanwhile, Liberia was free from colonialism, received generous donations from private investment, was excluded from both World Wars, and still has nothing to show for its near 200-year existence. To play devil’s advocate, one could argue that the Americo-Liberians brought back a colonial legacy of slavery from the Western world, and that I understand. However, one only has to look at the true history of Africa to see that slavery was already an established institution long before Europeans stepped foot on African soil (hence, the name slave “trade”). In North Africa, it is still practiced. So no, I’m afraid I cannot accept the Wakanda myth as a reason for African poverty, either.
Let’s take a look at the claim that colonization and racism destroyed Africa.
South Africa/Zimbabwe
South Africa and Zimbabwe (as Southern Rhodesia) were both part of the British Empire. Regardless of where you stand on colonization, introducing industry and advanced agriculture techniques statistically improves an economy. South Africa was the first to achieve independence from Britain in 1910 and became one of the strongest economies in Africa. Rhodesia existed as an unrecognized state from 1965 to 1979, before becoming the independent nation of Zimbabwe in 1980. Both countries had a white minority political ruling class.
The British were well versed in empire and knew how to run things efficiently. For example, during the last decade of colonial Rhodesia, the colony was so productive that it experienced a 64% increase in export revenue. A trade surplus attracted a steady flow of European and Asian migrants looking for economic opportunities. The local Africans also experienced drastic decreases in unemployment and improved their living standards by investing in Rhodesia’s growing industry. The average African Rhodesian saw a 73% increase in wages in the final decade of colonization. South Africa experienced similar growth.
Despite economic growth, racial tension became a problem for both countries. But the apartheid issue is also more complicated than the version you get from television. The conflicts in South Africa were not just black and white (metaphorically and literally speaking). Dutch settlers were at odds with British settlers in the region, however the native Khoisan people had no conflicts with either. The expanding Zulu tribes of the north had no ancestral claim to the land and would have probably conquered the Khoisan people anyway, if not for the Dutch and eventually the British. If you want to look at things through strictly an ancestral claims lens, the white settlers of South Africa have lived there far longer than many of the tribes that populate the country today.
Rhodesia also had a class system, but it was based on meritocracy, not race. Many of the natives were not skilled workers, and were thus excluded from the political process. Skilled natives were allowed to participate in the political process, but from an outsider’s perspective, one would assume that Rhodesia was racially segregated. If Rhodesia allowed universal suffrage, it is possible that future problems could have been avoided. Hard to say.
This is not an in-depth review of South African and Rhodesian history, but it’s important to understand the similar DNA of both. When Rhodesia became Zimbabwe, they fell under the rule of Robert Mugabe. Zimbabwe was growing in the 1990s, however Mugabe lost patience and installed wage and price controls, nationalized most industry, and deficit spent his way through a war with the Congo. His reckless economic policies damaged the currency so much that it became worthless. Debt hit over 200% of GDP.
Mugabe also adopted a social justice policy of land redistribution. Around 2010, “native” Zimbabweans were given control over white enterprises, namely farms. The only problem being the natives that were given control over the farms had no agricultural skills. The whites that were driven from these farms were not just relocated, but often executed. And without the ability to produce, Zimbabwe, once a net exporter of food, fell into mass starvation. The average Zimbabwean lives on $2,700 USD a year.
The tragedy of this is that South Africa today is repeating the exact same mistakes. As revenge for apartheid, white farmers have been driven from their homes and murdered. Estimates say that anywhere from 3,000 to 4,000 have fallen victim to these attacks. And just like Zimbabwe, nothing is being done with the conquered land, and thus South Africa faces the same hyperinflation and starvation problems. Nothing was learned. Zimbabwe has very recently made attempts to give reparations to white farmers in an effort to solve their food shortages, but it remains to be seen if this will work. Trust has been irrevocably broken.
Racism is a problem in Africa. But some of the most gruesome atrocities were not white vs. black. The Rwandan Genocide of 1994 was committed by the Rwandan government against the native Tutsis. Uganda’s Idi Amin is considered to be one of the most brutal dictators in human history, cut from the Stalin mold. He was notorious for eliminating ethnicities that were “politically inconvenient.” In addition to the above-mentioned Liberian civil wars, and the constant civil wars in surrounding nations like the Congo and Sierra Leone, Africa has a long history of ethnic/tribal violence. This is the problem with outsiders viewing Africa as one people solely based on skin color. Africans do not see things that way. Tribal grievances existed pre-and-post-colonization.
While colonization is usually the go-to argument for why Africa suffers, this is a very complicated issue that does not boil down to simply black vs. white. And in many cases, economic growth improved dramatically under colonization, and stagnated or even collapsed without it. If you do not agree with colonization, or private investment, maybe you believe that foreign government aid is the solution to Africa’s woes. If we helped Africa build democracies, sent enough money, and put the right people in charge, Africa would be prosperous. I have another example to challenge that.
Somalia
Somalia is one of the more tragic stories of U.S. interventionism. But before we get into that, it’s important to understand where Somalia was headed in the 1990’s. Somalia achieved independence from Britain and Italy in 1960. In 1969, communist dictator Siad Barre overthrew the Somali government, where he remained in power until 1991. When he was finally deposed, a civil war broke out that lasted throughout the decade. But despite the strife, something interesting happened.
The opposition parties, the communists and the warlords were so exhausted from constant fighting, any political control they had over the Somali people ceased to exist. Somalia descended into anarchy. Supporters of strong central government like to point to Somalia as an example of what happens when government is absent. But they miss the point.
Somalia’s government was typical of most African governments. They kept foreign aid for themselves and their cronies. They made trade illegal which in turn starved their people. They nationalized almost all industry. A side effect of the government becoming obsolete was that all restrictions on business disappeared. Somalia became the fastest-growing nation in Africa, developing a communications industry that raised wages for the citizens, not the political class. Somalia was by no means a paradise by Western standards, but they were headed in the right direction.
Somalia was not growing their economy because of a devotion to free-market principles or Adam Smith. This was just the natural state of things. Without government restrictions, the people were free to trade, innovate and succeed without government oppression. But that ended in 2001, when in attempt to root out al Qaeda and “liberate” Somalia, the Bush administration began a war that continues to this day. Most Americans don’t even know that we are in Somalia. Yet, Somalia is the longest war that the United States is currently involved in.
Today, the average Somalian survives on $800 USD a year. It is impossible to predict what would have happened if Somalia were left to its own devices. But the facts cannot be disputed, Somalia was in a much better place in 2000 than they are today. Which discredits the foreign aid, “building democracy” argument. The U.S. military is meant to break things, not build things. And us “helping” Somalia is proof of that. By the way, al Qaeda was not in Somalia and Somalia had nothing to do with 9/11. So much for that.
I have gone through all of the accepted arguments for African poverty, and there are too many counterexamples for them to hold weight. There has to be something else that causes their economic woes. In looking at my examples, I noticed a common theme. Government controlling the economy, lack of trade, price controls, it sounds like Africa has a problem with:
Socialism
I think I found an explanation that might bring us closer to solving the riddle. Africa suffers from the biggest economic disaster of all: socialism and communism. All of these nations have identified, or still identify, as communist/socialist regimes under the Marxist/Leninist ideology (deep breath):
Algeria (since 1962), Angola (1975-1992), Benin (1975-1990), Burkina Faso (1987-2014), Cabo Verde (1975-1992), Chad (1962-1975), Democratic Republic of the Congo (1970-1992), Republic of the Congo (1963-1968), Djibouti (1981-1992), Egypt (1953-2007), Equatorial Guinea (1970-1979), Eritrea (since 1991), Ethiopia (1974-1991), Ghana (1960-1966), Guinea (1958-1984), Guinea-Bissau (since 1973), Libya (1969-2011), Madagascar (1975-1992), Mali (1960-1991), Mauritania (1961-1978), Mozambique (1975-1990), Namibia (since 2019), Senegal (1960-1981), Seychelles (1977-1991), Sierra Leone (1978-1991), Somalia (1969-1991), Sudan (1969-1985), South Sudan (part of Sudan until 2011), Tanzania (since 1964), Tunisia (1964-1988) and Zambia (1973-1991).
31 out of 54 countries identified as socialist or communist in the Marxist/Leninist model. To give an example, here is the presidential oath of the Congolese constitution:
I swear allegiance to the Congolese people, to the Revolution and to the Congolese Labor Party. I shall undertake, while guided by Marxist-Leninist principles, […] to devote all my strength to the triumph of the proletarian ideals.
Straight out of the Soviet playbook. And those are just the countries that identified as Marxist/Leninist. South Africa has flirted with communism throughout its history, and nobody is going to argue that Zimbabwe was an example of free-market capitalism. Liberia, while never communist, pulled a lot of the same tricks from the Marxist playbook such as currency devaluation and massive public sector budgets financed by debt. Regardless of race or creed, wherever socialism is applied, price controls, land redistribution, currency devaluation, deficit spending, decline in foreign investment, abolition of private property and the banishment or outright execution of the productive class follows. Every. Single. Time.
You can go back even further, before the terms capitalism and socialism were coined, and see the same problems. When the Portuguese arrived on the western coast of Africa in the 15th century, the Kongolese people weren’t even using the wheel. The wheel had been utilized for millennia! The leaders of the tribes did not want the wheel to be used because they did not want their power disrupted. The idea that Africans were right around the corner from inventing planes if it weren’t for white colonialism is nonsense. The political institutions of the time were exclusive, thus innovation could not take place.
You see the same problems with African leadership today. Say what you want about foreign aid and occupation, but there are many places in Africa where if Americans left, infrastructure would collapse overnight. The people simply do not have the ability to keep the water running or the electricity on. The warlords in power need their subjects to be destitute. This has been true throughout African history.
Africa never had the hundreds of years of Christianity that developed property rights, inclusive political institutions, and capitalism. Their institutions remain exclusive (socialism) as opposed to inclusive (capitalism).
Solutions
What are the solutions, besides abolishing socialism? Real private investment and not foreign aid. Foreign aid always winds up in the hands of corrupt governments and not the people. The private sector investing in infrastructure and jobs helps the working class. A productive working class that can afford basic necessities also reduces the chances of political conflict, and political stability increases the chances of foreign investment.
Another way to help political stability would be to allow self-determination. Much like the Middle East, most of the borders in Africa are colonial leftovers that pay no mind to the ethnic makeup of those within said borders. This always causes conflict. Self-determination and recognizing differences are steps towards peace. I confess that colonization has damaged Africa. But it has done so by setting up arbitrary borders, and you never hear that side of the argument. Africa will not develop into Europe, or Asia, or America. Whatever it turns into will be uniquely African. The process must be allowed to play out.
Lastly, isolation leads to backwardness. The “noble savage” myth. Liberals may find it refreshing that Sub-Saharan Africans live in 16th century conditions, but the reality of the situation is that children die from tooth infections that can easily be cured with modern medicine. This is not unique to Africa, cultures that are isolated lag behind. For various geographic reasons, the highlanders of Scotland in the 17th century, the people of Appalachia and those of Papua New Guinea today have all lagged socially and economically behind the rest of the world. There is a fine line to walk between preserving culture and developing society.
GDP Statistics pulled from the CIA’s World Factbook.