Why did Africa never develop?
Africa was where humans evolved, and since humans have been there the longest, shouldn’t it be super developed compared to places where humans have only relatively recently gotten to?
Lots of the replies are gonna be saying that it was European colonialism, but Africa wasn’t as developed compared to Asia and Europe prior to that. Whats the reason for this?
Also, why did Africa never get to an industrial revolution?
Im talking about subsaharan Africa
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One thing that never seems to get brought up in this discussion is that development of civilization happened on an exponential scale extremely quickly. Our oldest civilizations developed over the course of 6,000 years or so, maybe 12,000 if you’re really stretching it. Comparatively, Homo sapiens have been around for 315,000 years. The development of civilization has been a tiny blip on that timescale, and so any variation due to things like geography, climate, trade etc. would have huge consequences. The civilizations that developed earlier than others had a massive advantage from a small variation and the advancements compounded on each other very quickly.
There's also the fact that civilization did in fact started in hot weather, differently from what people are pointing out here. Not only is Mesopotamia hot, the indus valley civilization also started in a hot and tropical place. You could even say the same for China, although I believe the Yellow River, another cradle of civilization, tends to be more temperate. And then there's the new world civilizations such as the Maya. Civilization did not appear firstly in Europe, it was imported over time. Europe is in fact the only, single cold place where civilization de facto existed before the great navigations.
The reason Africa never did develop is complex. Varies from physical isolation, to hardship to travel in land, to disease and lack of cargo animals (horses die from disease), soil infertility, etc.
With a good river system
What you failed to mention is that those weren't just 'hot places', but specifically all were annual floodplains where agriculture was relatively easy. Egypt as well.
Subsaharan Africa really doesn't have such things besides maybe the Congo.
Plenty of north / east asian civ in cold places (ie Japan). Andean civs also existed through the cold. Central asia also gets very, very cold. So I don't think that's a good assertion at all.
I'd wager that the biggest reason Africa didn't develop like Europe was a lack of competition in a very large continent. After the development of agriculture, it was relatively easy for people to migrate into empty space with little competitive pressure. It still happens today.
Europe, on the other hand, is small, was densely populated and the opportunity for entire communities to up and leave was comparatively limited. The same goes for the near east and presumably also the more amenable parts of China.
Civilisation appeared in areas where there was an incentive to stop being nomadic and stay put in one place. This requires very fertile soil in the area you stop, it requires other areas surrounding to be inhospitable enough that you don't want to travel around them anymore and often the motivation for this is there not being enough edible plants that grow in the area to forage for.
I know the book Guns, Germs and Steel has a lot of issues - but one takeaway I took from it is that any little factor can end up compounding, big time.
Ex, having an easily farmable and versatile crop such as wheat, rice, barley etc. is a huge help when trying to support large populations of people.
Also, didn’t the book mention beasts of burden play a big role. Animals that can be easily domesticated to help plow crops, etc.
Afroeurasia had horses which increased productivity massively, although Africa less so. The Americas had horses thousands of years ago but not really in the colonial era until Europeans brought them back.
Africa is one really big blob of land with comparatively few rivers and so their geography is disadvantageous as sailing along the coast or rivers was the best way to move any goods extremely efficiently. You could move literal tons of stuff via ship, or you could haul a few kilograms yourself and with horses, not tons but many times more than one person could.
The Mediterranean had its fair share of empires, as did China because the terrain was so favourable. The Mediterranean is a circle of sea with decent coastline all around and is great geography for productivity and if there was civil unrest or a war that needed more soldiers, it was comparatively easy to send an army there. The mainland part of China was based around the yellow river and there were rivers all over the place with very favourable terrain
Sub saharan you probably mean. Because Egypt was one of the first high cultures there were.
Sub Saharan i think a big factor is tropical diseases. There is a reason african colonisation started super late when more modern medicine was developed
Isolation is also part of it trade routes like the silk road had massive impact on development. The Mediteranian sea played a big part in ancient Greece and Rome, the Ottoman empire, Egypt and other norther African countries.
The US became developed so fast because it was part of the British empire. England was the first country to go through industrialisation this easily adopted in America. They also had a very modern constitution when they became independent.
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Well America was also founded right as the industrial revolution was kicking off which definitely helped its rapid growth. Not to mention being physically isolated and having lots of natural resources definitely helped.
The US became the defacto super power post WW2 precisely because it was one of the few industrialized nations that wasn't ravaged by war.
You'll find that areas that are harder to survive in tend to be catalysts for invention, not only for weather or temperature reasons but areas that are low in certain natural resources. Certain areas like the cradle of civilization don't want for much. If food is plentiful, space is plenty, and conflict is low there isn't much reason to change how you're doing things. Think of the Polynesian islanders, idyllic lives lived on tropical paradises, plenty of space for their lifestyle, plenty of food from the sea and meager subsistence farming, there isn't much need to reinvent the wheel when life is good.
[I grew up in West Africa, spent 17.5 years in varying countries over there before returning to the US]
My long-standing theory is that interaction with other cultures spurs innovation, and the majority of Africa simply didn’t have that interaction until it was too late (arrival of the Age of Exploration).
There were (and are) are TONS of different people groups/cultures/customs across Africa, but there were very few instances of two cultures meeting that come close to the likes of the Persians, Greeks, Romans, Egyptians all intermingling.
Even war is a major catalyst for innovation - there's a reason China was so good at seigecraft, for example. The Mongols even used Chinese engineers & technology in their armies.
I could list more empires/large kingdoms, but you get the idea.
The point is: a large portion of Sub-Saharan Africa had very little, if any, contact with people groups that were wildly different than their own. Name any center of technological innovation, warfare innovation, study, or art in the Ancient World through the early Middle Ages and you’ll see they all had had a ton of outside influence and interaction.
Imo, governments siphoning money away from where it is needed most (infrastructure, education) is still the biggest problem today. They’re keeping the vast majority of their own populations down.
Here’s one example: Ghana is, by all accounts, one of Africa’s most peaceful and prosperous countries. When I lived there, the government was literally selling its own electricity to neighboring countries while its own people were going without power. 24 hours of electrcity, 24 hours without. This would go on for long periods of time.
It was such a meme that ECG, the “Electricty Company of Ghana” was known as “Electricity Come and Go”.
This was recent, mid to late 2000s.
That is such a awesome and interesting theory that makes so much sense I'm frankly annoyed its not talked bout more itll also explain the native Americans staying a hunter gather tribes (not all but a good lot of them)
One thing I've heard from an anthropologist is actually not that they have it hard, but the complete opposite - they have a great life there.
While europeans had to struggle to survive and adapt to relatively harsh environment, africans always lived in perfect conditions with plentiful food and warm temperature and didn't need to progress in technology.
I think probably a more complete picture here is that after the adoption (editing invention to adoption as u/Artharis pointed out) of the heavy plow, food production in colder climates paradoxically far exceeds the food production in warmer climates. Back then, this meant that more labor could be diverted away from farming and into other professions which propelled these countries towards the industrial era
Right, the hardships of living in a harsher climate spurred the development of more advanced agricultural technologies, which steadily increased crop yields and decreased the number of people engaged in subsistence farming. Once those people were free to specialize and innovate in other fields, technological and social progress snowballed.
There’s also the less scientific theory that colder climates force communities to better organize themselves, in order to ensure that everyone’s food will last the winter.
Just to add to your comment, particularily :
That`s a great point, but I have to point out that it wasn`t the invention of the heavy plow, it was the adaption of the heavy plow. The Romans were the first who independently invented the heavy plow in Europe ( China did it before but it didn`t spread ), however two things ...
The Roman Empire was so massive it included the breadbasket of Tunisia and Egypt, which back then had the perfect climate and conditions for agriculture, they rather shipped the produce of North Africa to the rest of their provinces, rather than invest into local agriculture.
The Romans had slavery which made them far less incentivised to use technology and far less incentivised to allow peasant/farmer communities to exist. Roman agriculture was dominated by a rich elite and slaves, when agricultural production was low, they simply utilized more slaves, rather than use technology. A proper class of free farmers/peasants never really existed in the Roman Empire ( it did in the Republic, it was the main class from where soldiers came from ) because they could not possible compete with massive estates and their slaves which could and did undercut any free farmer.
... and therefore the heavy plow did not spread to Europe.
Only after the Roman Empire fell, and slavery declined ( and died out when it comes to fellow christians ) would the heavy plow be adopted in Europe and result in a massive population boom and agricultural revolution in Europe.
So adoption of technology is far, far more important than inventing ( or having ) it. Rome`s system kept Europe down.
And it`s not necessarily paradoxically that food production in colder climates became better than in warmer ones, since utilizing technology or better techniques, you mention the heavy plow, but also the 2-field rotation and later 3-field rotation which was developed & widely used in the early middle Ages in Europe allowed European farmers to basically grow and harvest a crop in any season, even Winter, while the fields become far more healthier as they have time to heal and regenerate nutrients. Therefore the farmers had far more money and Europe also increased it`s the population, as crop failures weren`t as devastating as they were before while far more produce is available to eat or feed animals.
Incentives are important.
Any good system/environment should incentivise good behaviour. A bit colder climates with harsher ground, incentivised better technology and techniques.
Whereas warmer climates with great & fertile ground, disincentives development, technology and good systems. Why develop any good technique when you can just throw more manpower, particularily slaves at the problem to increase output ? This is also why the Resource Curse exists and countries like Germany and Japan with barely any natural resources, are rich and have a great manufacturing sector, while most countries that are resource rich tend to be corrupt and poor. Resource extraction is easy, you can get money quickly, cheaply and with no major effort. Naturally nothing is set in stone and even resource rich countries like the USA can benefit from their resources, but the incentive structure is simply not there and has to be created from the ground up ( and the USA was also lucky they discovered plenty of resources later than other countries, when their economy already functioned perfectly without extracting their own resources ).
I think the best example is the Great Bullion Famine. Since the Roman Republic, European countries sold metals such as gold and silver for "Eastern" ( Middle Eastern and especially Chinese ) goods, such as silk and spices, both are renewable/growable, aswell as porcelain while metals are not. Over 1500 years of this unequal trade ( especially in the High Middle Ages where trade with the East increased due to Europe becoming far richer ), Europe ran out of metals, hence the Great Bullion Famine. Such a major problem is a major incentive and we can see how Europe coped : Portugal and Spain wanted to create a direct western route to India in order to massively lower the cost of trade. "Germany" created new systems in mining and metallurgy in order to increase output ( Georgius Agricola is considered the father of mineralogy and the founder of geology as a scientific discipline because of his work that only started due to the Bullion Famine ). "Italy" created much better ships that greatly extended their range ( which allowed to voyage to America in the first place ) because they wanted to find other trade routes aswell. France, England and Germany also developed different barter systems in order to deal with it, so that usually spices were used instead of metals.
So having a problem incentivises solutions that will make you improve. That improvement can be varied, whether it`s a political, technological, societal, cultural or other solution, it`s usually always an improvement, even if the solution has some problem, it will be fixed over time. So I really wouldn`t call it paradoxial, but rather a logical consequence.
I’m indigenous to Kenya and it’s because there was no need. My people lived near the equator where it’s literally garden of Eden vibes. We had everything we needed and because our culture and religion is closely tied to the land, there wasn’t an itch to “evolve” away from that. We are not a monolith so some cultures did seek to establish empire and expand while others stayed close to home and had some skirmishes with other close by groups. I’m obviously oversimplifying it but yeah.
Many reasons, one is the availability of domesticatable animals. Horses made a big difference.
Navigable inland waters as well. Some people suspect that Eurasia being more confined between fewer latitudes meant its domestic animal and farmed plants could also be traded and used more readily while other continents had climate challenges.
Basically slightly better trading opportunities led to multiplied advantages that eventually hit critical mass.
Other continents' populations of clever inventors had no trouble making advancements and world-first discoveries, it may just be that Eurasian discoveries were traded more quickly. More inventors saw the product more often and out of its cultural context, leading to creative uses.
It is probably just a bunch of lucky breaks to industrialize first, and European geography offers more chances to get lucky.
Lack of larger settlements, disconnect from rest of world due to sahara and absence from major trade routes like silk road. You can't do much if you are in that position.
However they did had a few big empires like Mali, Ghana, Aksum.
African here and here are my own opinion. My country is Madagascar. We have uranium, oil, and other ressources that could make us rich or at least developped. And the reason why we do not develop is definitely because education. Someone that know how the market works will have an edge to develop. And most entrepreneur here in my country the few 1percent know how the market works, how to manipulate it. They know which one to contact etc...
The majority here in my country do not have this type of knowledge, I will definitely say that they are still stuck to a mindset from the very old times. Waiting for the messiah to help them or that type of thing. Destroying everything to just have the everyday bread. Yeah, I blame also religion for our non development.
So the people that have the knowledge will easily, like SUPER easily manipulate the people. People here in my country do not know about worker rights, even tho it's a right. Unionizing is alien to us, and protecting our ressources is something that they do not know the importance of it.
Here the majority of people are so poor that they would kill for just 2 euros. And I am not even fucking joking.
If we had better education, we would have a better mindset and invest in our future. But my people are dumb and colonisers managed to made us dumber.
It depends on how you define "never develop." In 1700, West Africa's population density was about 25 people per square mile or 10 per square kilometer per Patrick Manning and my own math. During this time frame, this would have made them about half as dense as 1700s Poland and more dense than Ottoman-controlled Bulgaria. Which is to say, rural, but still containing kingdoms and cities. Plus, I assume the region of West Africa used in the study includes the Sahara such as parts of Mali or most of Mauritania. I bring up West Africa in particular to eliminate ambiguity. Africa is about four times the size of Europe and is similarly culturally, topographically/geographically, and climatically diverse. There are some common features, but still.
With that in mind, modern (1600s onward) Sub-Saharan Africa's lack of development is mostly due to colonialism and the slave trade. West, Central, and Southern Africa's population declined throughout the 1700s and 1800s and only recovered to pre-colonial levels in the 1900s. East Africa (arguably one of the most developed regions in Sub-Saharan Africa) did see a population increase by about .15% per year on average. Which is on par with High Medieval Europe's growth rate, but pales in comparison to Europe's growth rate of .56% per year on average in the same timeframe.
Which really brings me to what I think you're asking - "Why didn't Africa develop to be as advanced or more advanced than Europe in the first place?" Climate and Geography played a role in this. Much of Africa's population lived in a region with high variation in precipitation or low precipitation to begin with. For example, on average, Timbuktu gets only 182mm (7.1 inches) of rain a year. However, this number can double or half in a given year, making climate a lot more volatile. Understanding just how bonkers European development was is also something to keep in mind. European mercantile thalassocracies like the Hanseatic League or Venice heavily competed with European nobility after the Black Death. Similar such states have appeared across the world. But Europe's proximity to the Americas, combined with the naval advances from the Thalassocracies, allowed them colonize the New World. To put how tremendous of an event that was into perspective, inflation increased by 1.2% compounded every year during the Price revolution (1520s-1640s), which was during a time when .5% was considered "unusually high" in England and most decades averaged at less than .01%.
I say all of this to point out that Africa was developed. Not as developed as, say, Modern Europe - but still developed. And yes, there were climatic factors that played into how much food one could produce in a given year. However, a lot of it is also because Europe's rapid development was a historic anomaly that makes Africa, Asia, and the Americas look Neolithic by comparison. And Europe's development was often at the detriment of Africans.
This is more the fact you just don't know about the developed states in Africa. North, East, West Africa have all had prominent empires that have influenced history. North Africa you have the Mamluks, Fatamids, Almoravids, Egypt under Pasha Ali. For West Africa you had Mali, Ghana, Benin, Sokoto. For East Africa you have Ephiopia. South and Central Africa are historically more underdeveloped simply because agriculture is more difficult their and so many natural barriers exist between the regions and the rest of the world. Even then Zimbabwe is a prominent empire that existed in the region.
Ancient Egypt was pretty developed, then became Greek, then Roman, then Byzantine, then Ottoman.
Carthage was also very developed, it became Roman, then Vandal, then Arab, then Ottoman.
Abissinia (Ethiopia) was a developed Christian kingdom, that was impacted by Arabic expansion in the XVI century, but was independent until Italy invaded in the XX Century.
Great Zimbabwe, Butua, Rozvi and other kingdoms were developed cultures in southern Africa that got heavily impacted by Portuguese expansion in the XVI and XVII centuries.
So I would say your premise is incorrect, Africa had many developed cultures and nations throughout the centuries.
Edit: removed biased wording.
Was gonna make a similar comment, but decided to see If someone already had. Took far too long to find one. OP didn't really define his meaning of "developed," but much of African history would fit many definitions. There's a lot of African history that isn't taught or well known in the west, since there's literally no reason for it to be, and it's not as popularized or romanticized in the media and video games like European or east Asian cultures are.
There are a few separate things to look at:
what drives development
for most of the world, people change how they do things when they have to. humans started wearing clothing vs being naked due to the ice age (or rather, global climate cooling), as an example.
Africa is a big continent, and has a number of different climate zones, cultures, and such, but overall, what people think of when they think of africal is tropical savannahs. and in that zone, it is basically nature's paradise. You don't need all the accoutraments of development when your habitat is already perfectly suited to your needs.
but the other areas, like the norther zones and the southern ones? they absolutely developed, at the pace that the environment prescribed, until interrupted by invaders from other continents, plural.
what counts as development
generally we see things like organized farming, housing structures, technology. but we know these to be flawed when we look at historical mis-understandings
an easy example to my mind is my own (native american) heritage. the climate in the usa is not suited to monoculture planting, which is what big ag is. it is perfect for food forests, which is what natives did and still do. Plants were grown all together, instead of in rows and plots, so that they could contribute to each other's survival. the most famous example being the Three Sisters, Corn, which grew tall and sturdy to support Bean climbers, which enriched the soil for Squash, which shielded the roots for all three, allowing them to grow with far less water than if grown alone. This method also utilized the space far more efficiently, so that crops could be planted more densly and grown on less land.
who gets to decide that
historically speaking, the people deciding what counted as development were whoever won the war in that space. so, the romans decided the picts were primative, but the picts considered the vikings primative, and the vikings considered the saxons primative, etc
Some of you need to brush up on the history of Africa.
I've read multiple books on the history of various African countries, and the misinformation in this thread is... something
I actually own a book covering this. There are multiple explanations, you can pick your poison. From the sub-saharan africa chapter of a history of the global economy edited by joerg baten(that specific chapter was written by gareth austin)
1- Dependency theory. The development of the west resulted in the under development of the rest. This theory argues that Africa’s relative poverty was a result of choices made by european nations during the slave trade and then after during colonial rule. For example, colonial governments would create extractive institutions that benefited the colonizers but which were not good for self sustaiming economic growth
2- the type of institutions and organization systems that naturally developed(as opposed to imposed by external parties) in africa were simply not good for economic growth. For instance, it has been observed that for a lot rulers of african states, it was particularly beneficial for them to maintain policies that rewarded themselves and their followers over general prosperity, economic growth and public welfare.
3-Africa had low population density but is land abundant. Furthermore, much of this land was unable to be used most efficiently for various reasons from diseases to extreme seasonality. Lastly, precolonial africa had uniquely diverging rather than converging inheritance systems. The combination of all these factors meant that it was difficult for potential rulers to extract large revenues from farmers and create strong states. The main exception being Ethiopia which is located in a relatively fertile region, which perhaps explain the longevity of their state and their ability to resist colonization.