[Cronos]

The whole colonization thing in Africa proved to be disastrous for the Europeans who moved there; abandoned by their governments, often unable to flee with any assets

With the one notable exception of Botswana where there was a real melding of peoples who now all call themselves Tswana, whether white or black or whatever

The past fifty years really demonstrate what Africa lost when the whites left... - again, it really depends where -

in Botswana, the whites never left and are completely integrated

in the DRC (Congo), despite the latest hell, it was no better under whites (think of the Belgian King Leopold's genocide) or Namibia with the Germans committing genocide there.

in East Africa it was more or less the same as under colonization with the exception of Kenya which is doing much better now

In West Africa in general it was better under colonization - with the exception of Senegal. Arguably the French never really de-colonized in West Africa, they just changed the names of the states.

[kearnyirish2]

Botswana is a mess; stable by African standards, but with real problems (especially AIDS, which infects nearly a quarter of the adult population). Despite its size, it functions more like a city-state than a large country (with less people than the NYC metro area, living in a small part of the total land area).

Some colonizers were brutal, and all indefensible - but without them there wouldn’t be a single paved road or electricity there.