What are the effects of Colonialism and the Cold War upon Africa?

Great Debates
1

I’d like to examine what effect Colonialism and and interference by Cold War powers have had upon Africa in the present day. The topic came up in another thread where someone was very dismissive about the effects of colonialism.

By Africa in the present day I’m referring to a lack of social development, lack of economic development, high levels of external conflict and internal instability

I would highlight 4 main areas: territorial boundaries, ethnic rivalries, unequal distribution of resources and lack of institutions which all stem from colonialism and are partially responsible for the economic situation of Africa today.

Territorial Boundaries.
Across Africa these were defined by the Colonial powers with little to no reference to pre-existing power structures or how capable these countries were at being sustainable. Territorial integrity is seen as being at the heart of modern sovereignty a concept Africa inherited as a legacy of a European state system and the legacy of these cobbled together states is that there is no existing polity that enables a state to function.

I would point to similar events in Yugoslavia where a country can be contained by a charismatic leader or force but once that evaporates blood shed is never far away.

**Ethnic Rivalries **
Africa is a maze of different tribal and ethnic identities which were actively exploited for generations in order to maintain colonial rule - this has direct consequences for the state of Africa now - Most politicians are old, and considering de-colonisation only took place in the 60’s for many places it is understandable that old grudges and hatreds still exist. It is incredibly hard to change people’s mindsets particularly when there is an-

Unequal distribution of resources.
Resources cause conflict, farm land, minerals, jobs etc. And as a legacy they are unequally divided between groups this economic competition makes healing wounds and overcoming differences immeasurably difficult.

And finally the lack of institutions
When colonialism ended many of the countries were left without any of the infrastructure that create and maintains a nation. Courts, police, tax collectors, teachers were all non-existent or in limbo and thus crumbled which means for the past 40 years countries are having to be built from scratch - but then the Cold War intervened .

This post is long enough but hopefully we can discuss the Cold War as well. So how much responsibility do you believe colonialism and the cold war has for Africa today, and how so?

2

While I’m not an expert on Africa, I do know a bit about the Indian subcontinent as a parallel. There, in 1947, the entire subcontinent was thrown into utter chaos, with arbitrary political divisions and ethnic disruptions; ethnic violence at partition alone claimed somewhere between 200k and 1M lives. Effects of those arbitrary divisions continue to this day. However real blame for current problems on colonialism and post-colonial breakup lasted barely a decade or two post Partition. The countries moved on, warts and all.

Interestingly, Pakistan and India (and even Bangladesh, more recently divided from West Pakistan into its own country) have found rather remarkable pockets of substantial success on the world stage as well as their internal systems. Successes included manufacturing, weapons (both are nuclear powers), reasonably robust infrastructure, and export of brain power. Pakistani and Indian populations are highly over-represented in STEM fields (Science, Technology, Math and Engineering) across the world.

In short, although colonized and devastated by the effects at Partition, both countries have been able to leverage their populations’ collective talents to move forward, even in the face of horrible political systems (for Pakistan, at least). Both have a remarkable depth of brain talent that cannot be swept into oblivion by external circumstance, and continues to surface.

I might add that much of colonialism in the Indian subcontinent left a valuable mark, both in terms of infrastructure (railroads and communications, e.g.) and governance (legal systems, e.g.). Their native populations were able to not only maintain, but build upon those colonial legacies, and the Indian Railroad (as an example) is one of the most complex in the world. This stands in stark contrast to sub-saharan Africa, where post-colonially the infrastructure has tended to crumble away despite ongoing injections of foreign aid and foreign programs…

It’s difficult to summarize whether colonialism was net good or net negative for the Indian subcontinent, and I’m sure opinions would vary. What is certain is that a history of colonization did not somehow doom those populations to decades of incompetence and total lack of progress.

3

Colonialism on the Indian subcontinent is not quite equivalent to colonialism in Africa. Barring Goa and a couple of enclaves, India was ruled by a single entity that employed native Indian bureaucrats as well as leaving behind a tradition of its own bureaucracy.

Africa was divided among several separate nations which each employed widely different methods of bureacracy and governance, often excluding the local peoples from participating in any governance, at all, and on some occasions, deliberately dismantling the infrastructure as they left.

Beyond that, a sort of post-colonial colonialism continued in Africa after independence, with the Soviet Union and the West continuing to engage in destabilizing actions of the “other guy’s” allies whereas Britain allowed India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to develop their internal politics without significant external interference.

Pointing at Africa and the sub-continent and claiming colonialism did not destroy one, so it could not have ruined the other is simply ignoring the significant differences between the two regions both during the colonial period and after it.

4

I lived in the Congo soon after Independence, and have recently read a few books about the period I was there. The first was a memoir by the CIA station chief in Leopoldville, the second a more academic book by Madelaine Kalb show cables from our side and recently available ones from the Soviet side.

Lumumba and his successors were strongly supported by the Russians. Kasavubu and Adoula (Mobutu was an Army Colonel, important but not yet a political leader) were supported by us.

The Congo, with its mineral wealth, was considered a crucial state to have as a Western ally. We had quite a hand in what was going on.

BTW, Kalb shows that the Eisenhower approach to Africa, which was an us against any states leaning left, like Ghana and Guinea, was much less effective than the Kennedy approach of trying to work with everyone.

BTW here is Station Chief: Congo which is an excellent read, and here is the Kalb book which is a might bit dry. If you read the Devlin book you may not believe some of the stories. You should. It rang very true to me.

5

While I’m not sure that countries afflicted with near daily terrorism and some of the world’s most breathtaking poverty who are occasionally on the brink of nuclear war is a rousing success story, there are other important differences to keep in mind.

One of the major goals of British colonialism in South Asia was to create new markets for British goods. In order to do so, they developed India’s markets and worked to create a consuming middle-class. A result of this is that the British left behind a lot of infrastructure- roads, schools, one of the most amazing rail systems in the world, a class of educated bureaucrats, irrigation systems and hospitals.

Colonial forces in Africa, on the other hand, usually did not invest a lot in infrastructure. Any roads, railways and ports were built with the sole intention of getting natural resources out of the country, with little regard for how they might serve local markets. Instead of building an educated class of bureaucrats and a police force to maintain public order, they relied on (often inappropriately chosen) local rulers to handle day-to-day governance.

It’s hard to appreciate just how little African colonialists did beyond removing resources and demanding tributes. When I lived in Cameroon, even major cities outside the capitol might have just one or two colonial-era buildings- outposts, basically. No colonial era schools, police stations, hospitals, public offices, etc. Just a building or two from which to collect tax revenue from local leaders and perhaps direct mining and logging activities. Nobody ever bothered to build a road directly connecting the two halves of the country- to this day you have to go about 300 mostly unpaved miles out of your way to take a car between the southern and northern provinces. There is one passenger and one ore rail line (in a country the size of California) that serves as the only real connection between the provinces- and even that stops about 500 miles short of the northern part of the country. Only six universities serve a population of around 20 million.

And Cameroon was one of the better off countries at independence. Chad, about the size of Peru, has 300 miles of paved roads and no railways- how the heck can any meaningful market activity happen when there is no way to move goods around? Some countries achieved independence with less than ten college graduates.

Here is a bit about Niger, taken from a Time magazine article published in 1962:

Is it really that surprising that Niger still isn’t churning out engineers and building nuclear power plants?

6

You both make very valid points, of course; no two countries have identical histories. The point about nuclear weapons, sven, is not that it is a harbinger of “rousing success” but that it is a marker to prove that a brain talent pool exists in the country. I don’t agree (but it’s a fine point) that interests of the Soviet Union, China and the West did not equally come to bear in mucking up the Indian subcontinent post-Partition, and some of my personal family history is wrapped up in much of that…

In terms of success–or lack thereof–for Africa, it has always pleaded special circumstances. Special geography; special colonialism; special disadvantages. WRT colonialism, it’s as if an argument is being made that the colonial powers decided to improve India and rape Africa. I think it would be more persuasive to argue that colonial powers worked with what they had, and what they had was heavily dependent on the ability of the local population to support it. India’s population could support a more robust physical infrastructure and bureaucracy. Africa’s population was unable to do so. It’s not as if someone mapped out one plan for Japan, another for India and a third for Africa. It’s not as if the colonial powers were somehow uninterested in better railroads and legal systems for Africa, or develop Africa as a market.

What happened instead, is that colonialism unfolded within the constraints of the natural resources of a potentially colonizable nation. Among those natural resources is the net, or average, ability of the local population. With Japan, the best the West could do was establish trading and local influence. With India, they could establish control and fairly robust infrastructure with the local population. With Africa they had pretty much free reign for removing physical resources, but minimal success at establishing infrastructures using the populations themselves as part of the colonial chain.

7

Eh, and less development presumably means they’re sub-human brutes?

There’s not any good way to read such a comment.

It’s more persuasive - rather than adopting what is frankly a deeply racist line of thought, to acknowledge that the mix of perceived indigenous levels of development - India certainly had a deeper and broader history in general - of deeply anchored state societies than Africa, and indigenous infrastructure was already partially developed to serve ancient East-West trading ties… something never the case for sub-Saharan Africa. And then add in the profound skill colour “scientific racism” of the period when European colonisation took off in Africa, late 19th century really, and you have a rather different cocktail than that of India, which considerably pre-dated that nasty type of thinking.

An argument from population…

Actually, yes they bloody well DID.

In fact, that is not true, French and British colonial powers were uninterested in investing in the development of the African markets, which were seen as without the potential of Asian - which were already more advanced - and by the time real colonisation occurred, the mid and late 19th century “scientific racism” was profoundly effecting how we looked at Africa, the “dark continent.”

My family is an old colonial one, it’s more than painfully clear from old journals that Africans were seen as virtually sub-human, incapable of learning in general etc.

That’s deep poison.
In sum Africa does show special circumstances.

Special geography: check.

Africa has older, weaker soils over much of its expanse. That has real impact on the returns on farming, in particular traditional farming. Also of course, unlike India, did not benefit (sharing this with the Americas) from being part of a large scale ebb-and-flow of trade and ideas that was EurAsia. “Thanks” to the Sahara and disadvantageous trade winds and currents.

Special colonilialism: deeply effected by scientific racism

Minimal success. MINIMAL EFFORT: you write from the presumption that the effort was made, it’s painfully evident from the record that it was not considered worth while (partially as the returns were not there, partially due to pure racism)

8

Here is a half-assed pit thread directed at our favorite racists.

Let’s try to stick to the rule that for every response to a racist, you also contribute something to the OP. There is no reason to let these guys get away with turning every thread on Africa into a platform for their agenda.

9

even sven, you’re out of line.

Whatever your views of Chief Pedant’s general philosophy and regardless of your personal views of him as a poster, he has not yet made an argument in this thread that should be construed as racist and linking to your Pit thread is poisoning the well.

Let’s keep the discussion in this thread focused on actual posts in this thread.

[ /Modding ]

10

It wasn’t colonialism so much as it was the Cold War that ruined Africa.

As colonies many colonies were very successful. Yes, the natives were treated badly by most, but the economies were going strong.

So what happened? First of all white flight. The whites had the administration knowledge and education and they left in droves.

Second the Cold War happend. This is important as it show WHY Africa is like it is.

Africa suffers from a lack of true visionaires and leaders who wanted to improve their nations for the sake of their nations. The leaders of the United States in 1776, wanted a successful nation. Sure they had wealth and looke out for themselves, but they had a goal in mind, creating a strong nation. Not simply getting rich.

When Africa de-colonized, there were very few educated people who could assume power in nations. So military leaders and other opportunists found their way in.

Without a Cold War, those, for lack of a better word, “Bad leaders” would have soon been tossed out. But because of the Cold War, these people once in power could play the USA off the USSR and stay in power without any justification to do so. The leaders of these African states had one goal. To get rich. As their wealth increased they got power hungry as well.

Congo is a vastly wealthy nation, but Mobutu wanted to put all that wealth in his own pocket and as long as he could say “Well USA if you don’t keep me in power, I’ll go over to the Soviets,” he could do so.

It was the Cold War that allowed such corruption to continue. Normally corruption runs its course. Of course it doesn’t always end good, sometimes another corrupt leader takes over, but one peson or party doesn’t have the ability to maintain the power.

Another huge issue with Africa is population growth. There is nowhere for Africa to put it’s rapidly growing populations. When Europe had a similar problem it was easily solved by millions of people going to the New World and Australia. In Russia they went East (by force sometimes).

If you look at other places you’ll see it isn’t like Africa. Look at India versus Pakistan. India is a highly successful democracy versus Pakistan which is a few steps above a failed state.

The whole point of Pakistan was the Muslims said they couldn’t get a fair deal under India.

Oddly enough, the two most richest men in India are Muslims. Muslims in India have achieved wealth far beyond Pakistan. What’s more of the millionair Muslim in Indian almost all of them have achieve their millions through commercial ventures. Contrast this with Pakistan where nearly all the Muslim millionaires are either land owners or military men.

The committment of the African Union to maintain colonial borders is also problematic though not as bad as people make out. To date Eritria is the only border change. Somaliland is also an oddity as a success (well for Africa anyway), and is a breakaway state

11

One of the effects of the Cold War was to sustain the Apartheid system way past its probable lifespan, because of the White regime’s usefulness as a buffer state. Really stupid move, as it drove the resistance movement straight to the Communists for support, whereas before, they weren’t a particularly Marxist doctrine, but much more in the Panafricanist mould.

12

Furthermore, the visionary leaders who did pop up were often shot or otherwise disposed of by Cold War intellegence agencies. A whole generation of idealistic, hopeful, and educated potential leaders were assassinated right at the point when they should have been inspiring and leading Africa. We took what may have been Africa’s George Washingtons and Thomas Jeffersons and shot them them down on the eve of independence.

We all know how Lumumba ended up in the back of a CIA trunk. But what would Central African Republic be like if Boganda’s plane didn’t blow up, leaving room for one of the worst guys to ever live, Bokassa? Could Cameroon have had a better shot if the French army hadn’t killed Ruben Um Nyobé and Felix-Roland Moumi? Would Guinea have turned out better if the Portugese hadn’t killed Pan-Africanist intellectual Amílcar Cabral?

France admits to being involved in over 40 military operations over the Cold War years to make sure the person they like gets or stays in power. Basically, we have them to thank for the generation of “dinosaur” leaders in Francophone Africa. Who knows what all other forces have done. France is just particularly frank about their Cold-War meddling.

Here is a good article on France’s changing role in Africa.

13

Another consequence of both colonialism and the Cold War is, of course, the crippling debtburden on former colonies. Hell, South Africa had this odious debt in spades from the loans made to the apartheid government in the 70s and 80s. That’s without going into the various World Bank and IMF shenanigans, like vulture funds, enforced privatisation of public services, mandatory contracts for companies from donor countries, etc.

14

This might be true, but requires a close, detailed comparison with Asia, as it is not as if cold war did not exist there.

eh, going okay - one important (not to be divorced from racism, v. important as I can attest via family) reason of under-investment in infrastructure was a legit perception of poorer returns - of course starting off lower levels of infrastructure in general than Asia and a whole cultural complex that had not had the domestic level of Eurasia integration over centuries that Asia had…

Weak supports, and the infrastructure really started going in the 1950s.

Well, that… no doesn’t make sense. Most of Africa was not subject to settler colonialism. That’s a very limited, specific phenomena of Southern and parts of Eastern Africa. Pretty meaningless for the rest…

Wait, I understood white flight I think too narrowly, if you mean by white flight, the withdrawal of the colonial administrators (mostly a non-French phenomena as the French stuck around, officially), yes, sudden withdrawal of expertise was absolutely catastrophic. But I would not call that “white flight” but “colonial withdrawal.”

White flight is better left to cover as a phrase the flight of White (or not so white) business / private investors.

Eh special pleading. And I think not well founded.

Of course fragmented polities boost this, but methinks you’ve never done business in Malaysia…

That’s true.

The best route to education in general was military / security functions, although administration was another. No level playing field, and profound racism about adminstrators.

No, there is plenty of “space” relative to population density. It’s rather economic productivity hasn’t kept up with population growth, and staggeringly inefficient ag and agribusiness activity is actively harmful to long-term enviroment. Bloody depressing. (and makes me gnash my teeth when bloody NGO types go on about ‘protecting traditional farming from corporate blah blah’)

Your India versus Pakistan discussion though is damned good.
If you look at other places you’ll see it isn’t like Africa. Look at India versus Pakistan. India is a highly successful democracy versus Pakistan which is a few steps above a failed state.

The whole point of Pakistan was the Muslims said they couldn’t get a fair deal under India, particularly:

This is very useful for explanatory analysis

Err, well yes, but doesn’t explain anything but South Africa and immediate neighbours. However, to widen your observation, I am long convinced that the American hyper-hostility to anything Left and ignorance led them to lap up any kind of rot sold by the worst racist colonialist types, and significantly helped push post-colonial governments towards Soviet type thinking.

However this is utter rubbish.

This is pure Third Worldish tripe.

Post-colonial debt and the pissing away of that capital is very much Indigenous Fault.

World Bank and IMF did not commit shenanigans, your comment on mandatory contracts is mere Left ignorance, and privatisation of services in countries with deeply corrupt and incompetent public services is hardly something to critique. This last comment pretty much illustrates who real problems from colonial rule are used to cover up corruption.

15

That’s a bit simplistic. The Congo was a mess before Mobutu became corrupt, and the Belgians were responsible. There was an excellent university just outside Leopoldville, but they had just started letting Congolese in before independence. The Belgians, under pressure, left abruptly, and the infrastructure collapses, since the Belgians had never trained the Congolese in how to maintain it. The fighting in 1961-2 was not between the UN and leftist forces, but between the UN and mercenaries in Katanga sponsored by the Belgian company Union Minere.

Sure Mobutu became corrupt, but he started out as reasonably honest and competent, and it is not like the situation has gotten any better after his death and after the end of the Cold War.

16

Errm, no. The WB and IMF contracts are a matter of public record, and the Washington Consensus points are common knowledge.

Not in South Africa, not in Zimbabwe, not in Angola, not in Mozambique…and those are just the ones I’m personally familiar with.

Any institution still clinging to a pure monetarist model after '97-99 is very much still up to shenanigans

Sure:rolleyes:. It’s not like the OECD, that notorious lefty organisation, doesn’t run the numbers on this sort of thing. Things have improved the last 10 years, but they’re far from OK. It’s your comment that’s ignorant.

Those are not the only countries where they do this. And privatisation is not always the answer. Especially in countries where people have no money, and free state-run health and services are vital. Public goods, like water, should not be subject to mareket forces.

Corruption be damned. There are other ways of dealing with it. The IMF and WB are good ideas in the main, but their commitment to an outdated economics model renders them less than beneficial, and occasionally quite harmful. Look at the Malawi corn subsidies, or the Bolivian water crisis.