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To: Cronos

Your knowledge of Africa is admirable. However, there are a few points I would like to raise.

1. West Africa was the home to many large states in the pre-colonial era with highly developed social systems. Examples include the Yoruba states, Dahomey, the Benin Kingdom and the Kwarafa Kingdom. Central Africa also had many large states like the Kongo kingdom. The Zulus and Xhosas in South Africa also had relatively well developed societies.

2. I agree that there are communities like the Masai, the Pygmies and Kalahari Bushmen who find it extremely difficult to adapt to modern society. Unfortunately, Western media tends to concentrate on these groups creating a warped view of African society.

3. I don’t agree that African have the same problems with adapting to modern society as the native Americans and Aborigines. The success of the African diaspora in Europe and North America shows that the problem is not the inability to adapt to the twenty first century, but the absence of opportunities at home.

4. Indian immigrants are very active economically in Africa but there are other major players like the Lebanese, the Igbo and the Hausa in West Africa and the Kikiyu in East Africa. Kano in Northern Nigeria was and still is a hub of trade between Northern Africa and the Sudan. The Igbo of Nigeria also have play a large role in trade in West Africa.

It is instructive that the richest African is a Hausa-Fulani from Kano.

5. I believe that the Chinese will be more successful than the Indians in the long run. The Indians have a very long history in Africa but have remained a very closed society. The Chinese (this might surprise you), are considered more open the Indians. You are more likely to see Chinese making attempts to interact with the locals than the Indians (they don’t carry the baggage of the Indian caste system with them). In addition, Chinese are more likely to marry local girls than Indians (Jean Ping, head of the African Union is the son of a Chinese trader).

6. A major problem (some say the major problem) with the modern African state is that most African states are artificial. Borders of African states merely reflect French, British, Portuguese and Spanish areas of influence decided in 1884 - 1885 Berlin conference. For example, the British grouped the traditional slave raiders (the Northern Sudanese) with people who traditionally resisted slave raiding (the Southern Sudanese). The Southern Sudanese had much more in common with the Nilotic peoples of East Africa (like the Luo of Kenya) than with the Arabised Sudanese, yet the British still stuck to their guns.

The end result was that 2.5 million people had to lose their lives before a Southern Sudanese state (which should have been created in 1956) came to be.

So much energy is expended in fighting between different ethnic groups in artificial states that development often takes a back seat. A similar situation existed in Europe until the peace of Westphalia was signed and Africa is moving in that direction, albeit violently.

7. The next few decades in Africa are likely to be more peaceful than the previous two for the simple reason that there is finite amount of violence people can take and the growing role of civil society. I cannot see a situation in which Rwanda would revert to the levels of the 1994 massacre in the next two generations and Nigeria has been spared a full blown Civil War because the memory of the last Civil War in which 1 million people died is still fresh. The 2007 crisis in Kenya was resolved because Kenyan Civil society did not want the gains of steady economic growth to be erased by inter-ethnic fighting and the Congo War is frankly speaking, running out of steam.


29 posted on 04/27/2011 8:27:36 AM PDT by AfricanChristian
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To: AfricanChristian
Thank you for that compliment, but really, my knowledge of Africa south of the Sahara and Ethiopia is poor and inadequate. My knowledge of this pales to insignificance compared to my knowledge of Eurasian (bar China/Japan/Korea) history.

To respond to your points:

  1. 1. West African states -- there is not much information about this and a lot of them were still influenced by the more advanced Arab and Berber cultures. The Zulus and Xhosa were still warlords at the time of the Battle of Isandlwana -- they were in 1879, the same position the English were in the 10th-11th centuries -- not a stable state as it had no defined bureaucratic system or boundaries etc.

  2. I wouldn't club the Masai who had a defined society with rules etc. with the Pygmies and Bushmen who are/were hunter-gatherers. Also, the Masai being Buntu are of a different race from the Pygmies and Bushmen, both of which are of different races from each other. Yes, I agree that the Western media creates a warped view of African society -- but it does that about all societies, reducing everyone to a caricature

  3. Some Africans definitely do -- the Bushmen and pygmies in particular and secondarily the peoples of the Congo. The North Africans and East Africans were sufficiently advanced to not have their culture devastated when they interacted with Arabs or Europeans or Indians. West Africa is a mix of the two situations above. Also, please do note that you talk about the AFrican diaspora -- I specifically pointed out that this was to do with societal groups and not individuals. Individual black Africans can be as smart or dumb, cultured or barbaric as whites or browns or East Asians. Again, I humbly state that you also use the collective term "African diaspora in ..." -- the Somalis are not doing so well as the Kenyans or West Africans as they bring their culture across which is endemic war. The North Africans do better than folks from Congo etc.

    The absence of opportunities -- this is caused due to bad boundaries cutting across tribal lines and also because some societies haven't progressed beyond clan lines. This is not only an "African problem" but also visible in Afghanistan, Albania etc.

  4. Thanks -- I did not know about the other groups. Who is this Hausa-Fulani from Kano that you refer to?

  5. Possibly. Indians are racist, but I thought the Chinese were racist as well and didn't know about Chinese marrying local girls

  6. Yes, I agree, as I referred to in point 4.

  7. We can only pray -- predicting over decades is really no more than a guessing game. Nearly anything is possible.

31 posted on 04/28/2011 12:01:55 AM PDT by Cronos (Christian, redneck, rube and proud of it!)
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