Why is Africa so backwards still?

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The greatest civilizations were born on the harshest lands with hostile surroundings: ie. Egypt (Desert) , Europe (harsh winters, wars), China (harsh weather, enemies), Mongolia (dry lands, lots of enemies), Japan (earthquakes, mountainous lands, civil wars), Russia (extreme winter), Arabia/Babylonians(desert, wars, invasions), Persia (surrounded by enemies), the lands of Canaan (forced to pirate and sail to get resources like Phoenicia, Ancient Israel, Philistines...) ...etc
Each of these civilizations went through ups and downs but they all became great and advanced at some point.

The populations of those lands were forced to develop progressively agriculture, sailing, storage ways and war tools in order to survive.


The need creates innovation and invention, innovation creates progress, progress creates power..

While in Africa the land was mostly fertile, the forests there were rich enough to provide enough food and water all the year for its small populations (without even the need of agriculture). They didn't develop because they didn't have the need to develop.

North America is the same, that's why the native Americans stayed primitives for too long.

Have you ever experienced winter on the Great Plains of North America. There is nothing between you and the North Pole except picket fences and church steeples.

ruveyn

They were nomads, they would move further to the south.

Just like the Mississippians:

http://www.suppressedhistories.net/Gall ... ippia.html

And about your proposition of enemies and bad climate helping development:

The Mongols were not a great civilization and all they had that was civilized was taken from other peoples: Their writing system is from Persia, their tea was imported from China... that is about it.

What about the Maya? They did not really have any external enemies and lived in the tropics yet they developed quite splendidly. Or the Indus Civilization, which was in one of the most fertile places on Earth and there have been no confirmed cases of military activity during their history. Or the Norte Chico, who lived by the most fertile fishing grounds on Earth and also lacked military activity.

China indeed had many enemies in the Shang Dynasty but by the Han, save for the rather short Mongol and Manchu conquest, the Chinese had effectively eliminated their enemies by their sheer technological sophistication and population.

What about the endemic warfare of Highland New Guinea, or the parched deserts of Central Australia, or the Inuit? Why did they not become great civilizations?

^ Yeah, that article on the Mississippi civilizations is great. Nobody knows that existed, becasue smallpox (or something) had wiped them out before the Europeans made it that far inland. They just didn't leave monumental architecture around after they had to revert to wandering. Except for the mounds that the houses and temples were built on. Tons of those around the midwest here, even up in Iowa and Minnesota.

They're not backward just because they don't live like middle class Americans for god's sake. And what's with all this "primitive" BS? You can't "stay primitive for too long", living in the technological age doesn't make you culturally superior and living in a self-made hut/shack in some remote desert doesn't make you underdeveloped. It's a very arrogant view.

Correct about the Eurocentricism part.

However, living in "the technological age", by which I will assume you mean the Information Age, does make one technologically superior by definition to someone who is not in the Information Age in the same way that Industrial Age civilizations are technologically superior to unindustrialized civilizations. Such was also the case within Precolonial Africa: Nri was certainly more technologically advanced, having steel, writing, agriculture, &c., to the San People who had none of those things. Technology does not develop in the same way everywhere, as can be seen with the Inka and being more developed in engineering, medicine and textiles than the Spanish yet completely lacking the ferrous metallurgy, complex mechanical devices and printing that the Spanish had. Likewise, sociocultural development is not simple nor linear: To go further with the Inka-Spanish example, the Inka were clearly more developed in most way, such as economics, gender relations and statecraft though the Spanish had an edge in inventiveness. Thus, overall, the Inka Empire was more or less technologically equal to the Spanish but socioculturally effectively superior; thus, in those two areas at least, it is certainly fair to say that the Inka were a civilization superior to that of the contemporary Spanish.

With regards to Africa, the main issues I can see with the development are of course colonialism but also many African cultures: Most were very tribal and the ones that were the least tribal, like the Ethiopians and the Nri, were the most developed, as tribalism makes the building of large states or a centralized bureaucracy very difficult due to promoting subjugation of conquered peoples over assimilation of the conquered; a similar problem with a much more polite name, nationalism, prevented the West from keeping its colonies around the globe, except where there was a more or less complete genocide of the population, as in the USA and Australia, unlike the Chinese or the Inka who both used assimilation into their culture over subjugation of others. Within living memory, this same nationalism in Europe is the reason for the failure of the EU, the success of Nazism, and the fall of the West's dominance of the Earth while it is the cause of numerous civil wars and lack of development in Africa.

Primitive as primitive civilization, not as primitive beings.

Now, spare me the moral speech.

I wouldn't say that Africa is "backwards", certainly not as a whole. The legacy of colonialism certainly is the biggest factor of those listed in the poll. Lets not forget that a good portion of Africa went from colonialism immediately to Cold War battle ground, it's not surprising that they are where they are now. There are a ton of other factors to like disease and ethnic/sectarian conflict.

All good points. I think isolation from other civilizations play a key role, the indigenous of Australia and the Inuit were been quite alone for long time. You can't really compare the Egypt/Arabia's desert with the Australian desert or the icy lands of the Inuits, while the Central Australia might be harsh but it had enough food access, and the people had the whole continent for themselves so they could move to the shores during the drought and the Arctic regions aren't really poor of animal life.

As for the Maya, I found this piece:

"Even the rainforest experiences an annual dry season; the trees hang on by tapping groundwater. “The Maya couldn’t use groundwater because it was 500 feet below them, and they had no technology to reach it, so they depended on rainwater.” In the Petén region Sever studies, rainwater accumulates in swamplands, known as bajos, that cover about 40 percent of the landscape. Today, that rainwater evaporates before anyone can use it effectively, but excavations and satellite images have revealed networks of canals among the Cibales or bajos, (the breadbasket of the Maya world), (left picture: Bajo in blue, dry land in green, and higher elevations in orange), apparently dug during the time of the Maya. Sever, suspects that the Maya used the canals to redirect and reuse the rainwater. This labor-intensive agriculture, which probably kept farmers working diligently all day, would have barely outpaced demand. "

http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_agriculture.htm


The Aztec as far as I know relied much more on hunting and gather and had very primitive agriculture, an interesting unique combo.

[emboldening mine]

This is probably the most accurate and concise post in this thread so far. Add to this that colonialism is still going rather strong in Africa, only it operates under the guise of multinational corporate interests instead of state governments. So yeah, African nations have lots of resources, but aren't allowed to use them for their own benefit. Political leaders in 3rd world resource rich nations who oppose multinational corporate business interests don't seem to last too long.

Take Nigeria, for example. Nigeria has the 11th largest stash of oil reserves in the world, is the 8th biggest oil exporter in the world. Most nations have a state run oil agency that uses oil revenue to give everyone health care, build infrastructure and so on. Not Nigeria. Foreign oil corporations own their oil (Shell and Chevron), and give some massive bribes to corrupt government officials, but the Nigerian people don't get much of anything from it. This led to forced evictions of local populations living over the oil fields, and subsequent civil war. It wasn't until 2001 that the new Nigerian "democratic" government decided that prectice wasn't popular, so they put in a "Nigerian Delta Development Commission" to rectify the disparity. It hasn't done much of anything other than some greenwashing. The Nigerian Delta is still in a civil war of locals vs. oil workers.

Aztec agriculture was very advanced for their time: http://northeasternpermaculture.wikispa ... ardens.pdf . Not only did they practice the earliest form of intensive aquaponics to feed their heartland in the Valley of Mexico but they also farmed such productive crops as amaranth, chia, spirulina and avocadoes in addition to the well-known maize.

If you are looking for a civilization based on wild food harvesting, look to the Norte Chico: http://www.hallofmaat.com/modules.php?n ... cle&sid=85 . The Norte Chico, one of the world's earliest civilizations, barely farmed anything save cotton for their fishing nets; the fecund coast was their main source of food in the form of fish, shellfish and sea vegetables.

Their agriculture and water delivery systems were far in advance of anything Europe had at the time Cortez landed in Mexico. The Spaniards had horses, guns, germs and steel which is why they conquered the Aztecs.

ruveyn

Africa needs a space program.

Good post, this is essentially what I think it boils down to as well. It's not in the interests of these multinational corporations or the countries whom they own, such as our own, for Africa and elsewhere in the undeveloped world to become developed stable liberal democracies because the people of countries probably wouldn't sit back and allow the natural wealth of their country to be stolen by these foreign corporations.

Led by their top notch rocket engineers. All 7 of them.

ruveyn