Why is Africa Still So Poor?

The African continent is famous for its poverty, but many people do not know the complete reason why Africa is so

poor

, while we all have a vague idea like corruption, colonization or foreign interference. All of these reasons ignore why any of these things can happen in the first place, so in this video I seek to change that. In this video we will see from the time when African countries were rich and powerful how over the centuries Africa lost its wealth and why Africa has not been able to get out of its poverty while many other countries and foreign colonies have done so and to To do this we need to start in the 14th century with East Africa connected to the Indian Ocean trade, while West Africa was home to the richest person who ever lived, a man called Mansa Musa, while many historians throughout history history we have come to the conclusion that Africa has almost no history apart from the mummies and the pyramids.

It is important to remember that for most of history much of Africa was as well connected to the rest of the world as Europe or Asia, they developed metallurgy that was on par with Europe and Asia developed complex mathematical theories and had intricate systems of government, such as city-states, kingdoms and empires. What changed well in the 14th and 15th centuries: Africa's prosperity began to lag behind that of the rest of the world. This was due to two external factors. forces the Ottoman Empire and the Western European Empires we will start with the Ottoman Empire because the Ottomans needed slaves and the way they got their slaves was through war, they went to villages, towns and cities to capture the men, women and children to sell as slaves at home and the easiest and cheapest place to get new slaves was East Africa, so slave traders could make a lot of money buying or capturing East Africans to sell to the Ottomans.

This trade continued until the 19th century. Something similar was happening with the empires of Western Europe. At first, European traders came to Africa to trade salt for gold and ivory. Later, Europeans sailed around Africa to go to Asia. As a result, West Africa became an important place for European traders to stock up on supplies. On the way to and from Asia, soon after the Europeans tried to go directly to East Asia by crossing the Atlantic, but instead they ran into America, in these Americas the Europeans established colonies and these colonies were supposed to have the same system of government than that of Europe with the nobility, barons, clerics, knights and peasants, but those Europeans had a problem.

The Native Americans who were supposed to become the new farmers were dying of diseases like smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, and many more, and a dead farmer is an unproductive farmer, so where were they going? to find new peasants for the American colonies, well they found them in the slave markets of West Africa at the time West Africa had slavery, but it was not the kind of slavery we often think of a slave often had similar rights to those of the non-slaves who had their children. They were not automatically slaves and were often part of the family structure rather than a separate worker, so European traders began purchasing slaves from West Africa.

West Africans were happy to sell European slaves because their own gold mines were running out in the 15th century and they were looking for a new way to make money, but how do you get new slaves? Well, you go to war for them. Several African countries went to war with their neighbors, captured their citizens, and then sought those citizens for the Europeans. The prominent slave countries were Ghana. empire the empire of mali the bond state and the songhai empire from the perspective of the

africa

n rulers this seemed like good business, they were weakening their rivals while making a lot of money in the process and so over time slavery went from being a relatively small market where slaves had rights in a large war system where slaves were converted into property to be sold to the highest bidder.

This evolved into a system where slave traders would go to Africa to buy slaves and put as many as they could on their ships and then sail to the Americas, where those slaves were sold to be worked to death in the fields, those Slave traders then bought raw materials that those slaves produced, such as sugar cane cotton or cocoa, they sailed to Europe and sold those raw materials for a profit in Europe, those materials would become manufactures. products like rum, clothing, or weapons, merchants then purchased those manufactured goods and sailed back to Africa to sell those manufactured goods and use the profits to purchase new slaves.

This was a good deal for everyone except the slaves, Americans received slaves to use on the plantations. the Europeans received raw materials and the West Africans received manufactured goods and the plight of the slaves was not a problem for either of them, while on occasion the Europeans attempted to take slaves by force, this always failed because the African kingdoms were too strong at the time and so they maintained friendly relations in which any country that was willing to sell slaves over the centuries, empires collapsed into civil wars and slave traders were more than willing to buy out their former partners slaves as slaves to be sent after the Americas and so on as empires rose and fell.

There were always merchants willing to buy slaves, as happened in the kingdom of the Congo, which was divided into several factions, each of those factions needed weapons and money to finance their war effort and that is why they captured slaves from other parts of the former kingdom of the Congo. congo and The sold to Portuguese traders as the Europeans founded more and more colonies in the Americas, the more slaves could be sold and the richer the merchant became, and this trade had a long-term effect on the economies of Africa, both in Africa western and eastern Africa.

Africa with the Ottomans because before industrialization, a country's economy was determined by the number of people living in the country. The more people you had, the larger your economy was, and if you had a large economy, then you could have a small portion of your population. focus on producing things other than food in Europe, for example, artisans produced all sorts of things from alcoholic beverages, steel muskets, cigars, and of course that sweet, delicious, sweet chocolate, but those industries took centuries to fully mature, but in Africa these industries never matured the way they did. did in the rest of the world because in Africa artisans were enslaved and this had a tremendous impact on African economies while European, Asian and American industries continued to grow and improve African industries stagnated and soon could no longer compete with the European and Asian imports and African industries became small and insignificant because better and cheaper products could be bought in Asian and European markets, but you may wonder why Africans accepted this because they had to when you have several war empires at your disposal. around. invest in a strong army to protect yourself, but if you put more money into the army it means you will have less money to spend on your own economy, so if an African leader realized what was happening he couldn't invest in industries because they had to protect themselves and so throughout the 19th century, African economies were slowly declining because the slave trade slowly destroyed African economies and at the same time generated huge profits for those who captured and sold slaves, but why did Western Europeans and the Ottomans weakened Africa? for hundreds of years, well because it was convenient for the people in charge at the time, it was not a grand plan, but rather every merchant and government company saw an opportunity in Africa to make profits, these profits came at the expense of the long-term African finance. wealth and most of the people involved probably don't even realize this and when a particular region becomes weak there are always the strong that will exploit the weak and in the 19th century three major events occurred that would solidify African poverty: the first It was the end of slavery.

Suddenly African slave traders were losing customers because slavery was becoming illegal around the world and this was a big problem for African countries because their economies depended on exporting slaves and importing foreign goods, but now They lost their main source of income and because Africa had not built any other industries due to the slave trade, it had no other type of income with which to trade with the outside world, so Africans could no longer buy many of the goods and tools on which they depended and, as a result, Africans could no longer purchase many of the goods and tools on which they depended.

Economies slowly collapsed in the 19th century. The second important event of the 19th century was industrialization. Europeans and Americans began to produce more than the rest of the world. Africa became insignificant in world affairs in the mid-19th century and many of the stereotypes about Africans, such as having no history, no established government and various racist beliefs emerged in this period when Africa had become weaker with little to offer the outside world and the outside world took little interest in Africa and then the third major event occurred in the 1870s. With the African economy in ruins and European industrialization in full swing, Europe suddenly had the ability to transport large quantities of heavy materials across the oceans before it became uneconomical to transport heavy oars from Africa to Europe because the technology was simply not available.

It was not yet profitable, but steam technology meant trains, steamships and factories that could transport and produce goods at a profit and in 1871 the king of Belgium decided that Belgium should have a colony. He looked at the world map and noticed that Africa was weak and available. And so, once again, the strong took advantage of the weak, other European nations soon joined in and almost all of Africa was colonized by Western and Southern European empires until Africa looked like this and that after the First World War and this had three significant results for Africa. The first is the increase in poverty.

The European colonizers cut little corners for the people living in the colony. Africans were pushed out of the most fertile regions to make room for European settlers. Plantations were built for Africans to work and Europeans to own, and the taxis that Africans paid were rarely spent on improving their lives, but rather on continuing their own oppression, European colonizers were only interested in extracting wealth from their colonies by building roads, railways and ports to transport raw materials to Europe and North America, in essence, any wealth Africans had was systematically taken away from them. and handed over to European settlers, a prominent example is the Congo Free State, where by the way, they worked to death for millions of people, if you are curious what free means in the Congo Free State, it meant free from supervision , so the rulers of the colony could exploit the locals without any interference The second is the infrastructure that was specifically designed to transport raw materials to their European overlords The first president of Togo said it quite well the effects of the policy of the colonial powers have been the economic isolation of peoples living next to each other in some cases within a few miles of each other, although I can call Paris from my office phone here in May, I cannot make a call again call to Lagos in Nigeria, just 250 miles away, as it takes me little time to send a letter by airmail to Paris the same ladder takes several days to reach Akra, just 132 miles away.

Railways rarely connect across international borders. Roads have been built from the coast to the interior, but very few link to the economic trading centers of Togo's productive central regions. Benin and Ghana are as far away from each other as if they were on separate continents and the third result was that by replacing all African leaders with European leaders, Africa was losing vital skills in terms of governing itself, such as business managers, government leaders or accountants. as well as practical skills as mechanics, construction workersconstruction or medical professionals, and that was a problem when Africans began demanding their independence after World War II, when protests, riots and rebellions broke out across the continent until colonizers realized that a few million Europeans They just couldn't.

It would not control over 200 million Africans if those Africans refused to cooperate, so between 1945 and 1975 almost all African countries became independent at that time, it was thought that if Africans ruled Africa again, wealth would soon follow. , but this did not happen, but Why hasn't history shown us that former colonies can become rich countries like New Zealand, Ireland or South Korea? However, not a single country in Africa is what we call a developed country and the reason for this is the way the colonizers left Africa because when people do not have the skills to govern a country, when communities do not connect with each other yes and when prosperity is already low, it becomes very difficult for the leaders of that country to bring prosperity to that country, but at the same time, the leaders of African independence movements promise the African people prosperity after independence.

So how were African leaders going to deliver well on this promise of wealth and prosperity for most African countries? The solution was an economic system called African socialism. The way this system works is that many industries would be controlled. by the national government, such as construction mining plantations, etc., then he would use all the resources of the nation to industrialize because at that time manufacturing jobs paid higher wages than agricultural jobs and so he decided that the best way for him Africa to get richer was to replace low-income workers. Paying jobs in agriculture and mining with high-paying factory jobs made foreign products more expensive by imposing additional taxes on those products, arguing that if foreign products are more expensive then people will need to buy products from their own country instead of what the foreigners expected. leaders that foreign investors would come to their countries because those foreign companies would not have to pay those extra taxes if they simply moved some of their factories to Africa and, fortunately for Africa at the time they gained independence during a cold war, they could receive foreign aid of the West or the Soviet Union in exchange for being on were on their side in the cold war and although of course each African country had different economic policies, they were all more or less similar to this, but African socialism simply did not work Firstly, trade restrictions meant that African countries could not sell products to each other.

Another meaning is that it was difficult to find customers to buy products made in Africa, as a result, none of the industries could grow enough to be able to compete with the industries in North America, Europe or East Asia, so no one else wanted to buy African products. goods because they could obtain those same goods better and cheaper from other countries; Second, a single large government is not able to adapt to changes in global markets as quickly as hundreds of smaller companies, meaning that centrally planned economies will always be less efficient than economies that have many different companies competing. each other, Third, Africans simply lacked the skills and education necessary to work in manufacturing jobs, meaning they were much less efficient than their better-educated counterparts in the rest of the world, for example outside of the 200 million black Africans in the 1950s, only 8,000 received secondary education, 200 university education and a third of the student-age population went to primary school, so it would be decades before enough qualified professionals entered the labor market , so African countries select the people needed to make their countries prosper.

The fourth reason why it didn't work has not so much to do with African socialism itself but with the African continent, because Africa's landscape is harsh and some places experience droughts that last for years, such as the drought that lasted since 1968. a 73 causing great food shortages, while elsewhere there are locusts and red-necked birds that make agriculture almost impossible. The fifth reason was disease: yellow fever, smallpox, sleeping sickness and malaria, about some of the diseases that plagued African development and while smallpox was being eradicated. New diseases were spreading, such as river blindness, where worms live inside the eyes and have become the second leading cause of blindness worldwide.

Orteg bilharzia caused by a worm that likes to live in rivers, infects the urinary tract or intestines, which can lead to kidney failure, infertility. and in children it can cause growth and learning problems. All of these diseases can be easily prevented in rich countries with access to water sanitation facilities and modern medicine, but because Africans were

poor

, they could not afford the medical clinics and medicines they needed to combat these diseases. and so a combination of trade barriers, inefficient governments, lack of education, hostile environments and disease meant that this system was doomed to fail from the start, there was simply no way for any African nation to achieve wealth and prosperity at that time. due to underdeveloped countries. they inherited from their former colonizers, but this raises a new question: why did African countries choose this system in the first place?

Well, the reason is that it was a system they inherited from their former colonizers, where the colonial government controlled almost every aspect of the colony. economy and if they wanted to change to a free market system like Western Europe, East Asia or North America then they would need entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs to establish new businesses but the problem with this is that Africans were not allowed to run businesses under the colonialism. So the entrepreneurial attitude did not exist, also due to colonialism Africans were never trained in modern skills so if you wanted to open a factory for example it would be impossible to find qualified employees who knew how to operate the machines and factories in In today's world we know the answer to this dilemma because we have seen countries like Singapore, Vietnam and China in similar situations, but between the years 1940 and 1970 there were no examples to follow, except countries like Japan and the USSR, which had achieved development economic. through strict government control and that is why African leaders thought that African socialism was the best way to create wealth and prosperity for their countries, except that those two countries did it through the death of millions and already had a population educated when they began their economic development projects.

This for a colony that became rich after independence from South Korea, they decided to focus on only a few industries, such as electronics, agriculture, and steel, and only put trade barriers on those products. South Korea would then market those products with things it did not produce. As a result, South Korea became a world leader in things like electronics and has become one of the richest countries in the world, but this only explains why Africa did not become rich immediately after independence. However, after a few decades, Africans would have better education and in fact, we could establish African companies using African labor to create an African industry, but this did not happen until the 21st century, so why did it not happen sooner? ?

Well, this has a lot to do with the corruption that emerged after independence, shortly before independence. most African colonies became democratic and these democracies were very unstable because they had only existed for a few years; In most cases, we

still

see this today, where recent democracies tend to be the least stable and most African nations were not united at all. Some countries. We were lucky because most people spoke the same language while other countries had hundreds of different languages ​​and good luck trying to run a political campaign in over a hundred languages ​​so politicians realized they could win more votes As a result, politics became divided along ethnic lines and African countries became more and more divided with each election in the 1960s and 1970s, so now groups of people were not only divided according to their ethnic origin, but also politically separated according to their place of birth.

From the perspective of For a politician, this made a lot of sense if he wanted to win votes to attract certain ethnic groups, but from the perspective of the country as a whole it made the country became more difficult to govern over time and if a candidate decided to appeal to the entire country rather than specific ethnic groups they would lose the elections and therefore, through a natural process, African nations tended to become more divided after the independence, all thanks to the social and political systems left by their former colonizers. A prominent example of what went horribly wrong was Rwanda with the Rwandan Genocide, where over half a million members of the Tutsi ethnic group were massacred along with many other crimes against humanity.

Once a party came to power, they tried to keep power for themselves. Many Africans viewed democracy as nothing more than a mess of infighting with opposition parties abusing their power to hinder the greater national interest, therefore a one-party system was created in many African nations in the years after independence by crushing the opposition and in countries with hundreds of different cultures and languages ​​it makes sense that you don't want To confront all those vying for power, by the 1980s the elites had taken full control over the political system in the most African countries and so very little changed after independence with the European elites replaced by African elites and those new elites were worried that they would be overthrown in a coup d'état, so how are they going to stay in power? taking money meant for economic development and giving it as salaries to powerful government officials to keep them happy enough not to start a rebellion, but while the colonies had oversight of their European government, which would fire anyone who became too corrupt, the New leaders had no such oversight and to show how incompetent some of these governments in the Central African Republic are, the government did not even keep proper records of financial transactions in 1964 Senegal.

They spent 47 percent of the government budget on the elites, 58 percent on the Ivory Coast and 65 percent on the home region now called Benin, and if outsiders wanted access to African resources, all they had What to do was bribe government officials to gain access and, therefore, African governments and businesses. He began paying money to African elites to gain access to resources that rich nations needed to run their own economies. As a result, the elites became richer while the poor became even poorer, so if you are an oil company, all you have to do is bribe the government. officials and you can extract all the oil you want, the elites would get a share of the profits, while the people would see no benefits from the resources taken from their own country.

This is a system that is

still

active in many parts of Africa to this day. and if you are a country or a company that does not want to give money to corrupt politicians, then there will always be someone else who is willing to pay, as a result, anyone who thinks that morality is more important than those resources will always be one of those who are willing to pay the bribe, thus creating a system where world leaders who are willing to pay those bribes will always have an advantage over those who will not pay bribes and, over time, bribes had become the norm.

In Africa, Africans were not stupid. Of course, and they saw what was happening, they often protested or even started rebellions to stop their own exploitation, but in the 1960s African countries did not have a military strong enough to keep the peace, so who did they call? to restore order? Former colonizers, the French and British in particular, suppressed rebellions and protests across Africa in exchange for greater access to African resources. For example, in 1962, French troops dissolved thefighting in what is now called the Republic of the Congo and put down a rebellion in Cameroon. Meanwhile, the British suppressed mutinies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1965.

These military interventions became common throughout Africa, from Algeria to the Congo, Benin, the Central African Republic, Upper Volta, Ghana, Nigeria, Ethiopia, all independent countries and all had European troops stationed there to ensure European access to African resources. African nations experienced around 40 successful coups in the first two decades after independence, so Africa gained a reputation as a very unstable country, so unstable that almost no one wanted to invest in Africa except for its resources, and This highlights another problem that people think of Africa as a single entity, a continent full of poverty and war, so when someone hears about, for example, Boko Haram in Nigeria, they are often lumped in with the rest of Africa.

Africa as if it were just another war on a continent full of war, but what most people do not realize is that the area in which they operate is over a thousand kilometers from the economic centers of Nigeria and has almost no no effect on business; They are further away than Amsterdam from Warsaw, but companies still refuse to do business in Africa because of this belief and this creates a cycle of people grouping Africa as a poor continent, resulting in less business, resulting in Africa remains in poverty. It is for this reason that throughout this video I have used the words almost all or a few quite a bit to show that Africa is a diverse area. and they simply cannot be grouped together in most cases because of this diversity in people's landscapes and cultures, despite all these problems, some things improved in Africa in the 1980s.

African politics began to stabilize with less hits. Enrollment in primary school rose from 36 percent to 63 percent in secondary school. from 3 to 13 years old. life expectancy increased from 39 to 47 years and medical professionals per person doubled overall, although the average African was becoming poorer, however, Africans were receiving better healthcare and education and this would be very important for Africa in the 1980s because in In the 1980s, Africa faced three major problems: the first was that the infrastructure it had had begun to fail, which meant that raw materials became much more difficult to export. The second was that Africans who received a proper education decided to move to another country where they could do so. receive a better salary, which means that Africa was losing its smartest and best educated people and the third was the fall of the soviet union in the 1980s, the soviet union decided to stop participating in the cold war and focus on their own economy, as a result they no longer sent as much money to African allies, in turn, Western countries decided that they were also going to send less money to Africa, so suddenly African leaders no longer had enough money to stay in power with the system of bribes and, therefore, Africans.

The leaders decided to ask for financial help from the Western nations, but this time those Western nations were no longer interested in giving money directly, rather the African nations would have to sign loans with the rich countries and in return, the African countries would have to reform. their economies in such a way that it would be easier for companies to do business in those countries and although several industries were privatized and free markets emerged, most African countries experienced few reforms and the reason they experienced so few reforms is that African dictators had the idea that they could try to privatize their economy. selling privatization to the highest bidder, basically doing what they had been doing for the last two decades: bribes in exchange for access to African markets, so nothing really changed except that this time Western institutions supported this process by rewarding those dictators through foreign aid. packages that made bribes even more profitable in Nigeria - for example, the government privatized several state-owned companies, of which 80 percent of the shares were owned by the country's leaders - in fact, they changed nothing at all in Kenya , Uganda, Zaire, Guinea and Senegal.

They sold government businesses to friends and family of government leaders. The only businesses that really saw significant investment were oil and mineral extraction. which, as in the 60s and 70s, was sold to the highest bidder by bribing government officials. As a result, the 1980s are often called Africa's last decade and why Africa remained poor until 1989 because protests broke out around the world, the east of the Soviet Union. Europe Taiwan South Korea China and Africa Africans were once again protesting their own oppression and that is why rich countries decided to change tactics instead of giving money to dictators for false privatizations, they instead gave money to countries who reformed their government to be more democratic and thus faced dictatorships. two issues at once, on the one hand, their own people were getting restless and on the other, their incomes were declining, so the elites allowed a small amount of reforms enough to appease the people and the rich countries, but not enough for them to be satisfied. removed from power spread across Africa to Zaire Ghana Nigeria Togo gibbon Cameroon Kenya Uganda Malawi South Africa until it spread across the continent with, of course, several exceptions, while some governments resisted, such as the Central African Republic, most democratized at least slightly, each country had its own struggles of course, but overall the continent made slow but steady progress towards democracy, even today we still see this progress in action in Africa as elections are often contested and often unfair but they are more democratic than a complete dictatorship and this process has made Africa more stable and more open for doing business in the early 90s and now new leaders were in charge of Africa and these leaders had to fight against corruption to fight poverty and by fighting poverty they could stay in power as this would give them votes in future elections reduce the role of government in the economy encourage growth in the private sector allowed Africans to they were much better educated than in the 1960s use their skills to develop their country and attracted investors from abroad these policies focused mainly on using the strengths of Africans themselves rather than having the outside world impose policies on them, the African Renaissance It can only be successful if its goals and objectives are defined by Africans themselves, if its programs are designed by Africans themselves, and if we take responsibility for the success or failure of our policies.

African countries began to work more together through institutions such as the African Union, reducing trade barriers to facilitate trade between African countries, investing in stable governments to ensure that they did not have to worry about a civil war on the other side of its border and creating Various agencies to cultivate African talents and these trends have had an effect in the last three decades, and some African countries are now the fastest growing economies in the world, so we come to the 21st century, where history It is too recent to do a real historical analysis. However, there are some trends worth noting Africa still faces many problems.

They are the least prepared for climate change and are probably the ones who suffer the most. One third of all children are malnourished. A third of children do not finish secondary school. Extremists find it easy to recruit large numbers of poor, unemployed youth, pandemics are common across the continent, greed is just one among many, and Africa's economic development is limited to certain countries. African countries are watching the economic successes of East Asian countries and adapting those policies. For their own countries, this is resulting in the opening of factories, agricultural centers and technology centers in many African nations;

For example, they can take advantage of the fact that Africa and Europe have the same time zones and take on various white-collar jobs from companies based in Europe for a lower price. A new generation of Africans is entering labor markets that are better educated and more skilled than any previous African generation with these hardworking and talented people African governments have created economic policies to harness the talents of Africans by allowing them to establish their own businesses in a free market that generates wealth for Africans for Africans in Africa for example, let's take the Hyacinth plant, an invasive species in Lake Victoria, African scientists developed a method to convert this invasive species into protein-rich animal feed, this feed is now being sold around the world in the 21st century.

Developments like these are creating a rapidly growing middle class with increasing purchasing power. This middle class will want to buy things with that extra money and this will allow Africa to sell more products to other Africans. In turn, it allows Africans to create industries specifically tailored to the African market, a market often neglected by rich countries and, While Africa is still in a position where it primarily exports raw materials, it is currently undergoing economic development that, if it continues, will finally put an end to the large-scale poverty that has systematically plagued Africa for centuries. Africans not only have hope for the future but that, for the first time since colonization, they are obtaining the tools that will create this future, and yet, despite all the information contained in this video, there is a lot that I had to leave out, such as the disastrous agricultural programs that cause famine in areas with some of the most fertile land in the world.

The economic successes that eventually failed due to corruption are the French financial systems that link African currencies to France. Therefore, I left them. articles and youtube videos in the description with more information about Africa, in particular information written by Africans themselves, if you are from Africa or are an expert on Africa, please share more information about this topic in the comments. I will answer heartily once you provide more. information so that people can learn even more about Africa and leave a similar comment and subscribe to appease the almighty algorithm. This was very much in the historical realm, thanks for watching.