I thought I would second the observation on the artificiality of all borders. Note, for example, that the French central government pursued an aggressive policy of stomping out the regional dialects and any non-Frenchness as defined in Paris. Nation building. You’ll find the same history in Germany, etc.
My sense of what presents the most serious problem for African borders is lack of digesting the borders insofar as they are consciously seen as having been imposed from “outside.” Insofar as the conquest and border making came from an “outside” third power now more or less absent (the colonial power) the communities, sometimes transnational, have a hard time swallowing living with sometimes traditional enemies. Neither side feel defeated, constant struggle. On the other hand, national identities have sprung up too, so you’ve no clear anchor. A vast generalization for the continent.
One added note, I’m not sure that I would say Tanzania recieves enormous amounts of money from the US or the World Bank. Of course corruption is a horrible problem, but more on such things later.
Now in general, an interesting question. Even speculation is difficult.
First, let?s pack away the idiocies. Despite the ignorant intervention, as Tamerlane ably noted Africa indeed knew state societies of great complexity and duration. I advise the poster to go and consult the stodgy but emminently reliable Cambridge History of Africa to relieve himself of modicum of his ignorance.
So what do we have?
Okay, our hypothetical presents a scenario with no European slave trade and no European colonialism. Let?s limit ourselves to this.
There remains then the trans-Saharan slave trade, to North Africa and to the classic Middle East, with points of origin in West Africa and in East Africa, as well as Central Africa (Sudan area). I believe figures are harder to come by than for the Atlantic trade, but I think estimates have suggested they were substantial. This is still going to present an issue, although perhaps not as bad given the long term decline of the Islamic world and thus its buying power.
Returning to the basics, I have to agree that in terms of ability to support in the long run dense populations, sub-Saharan Africa is not well placed. Diamond I think correctly identifies a one-two punch of small number of domesticates combined with a fearsome disease regime, both for animals and for people.
Let?s add that much of the continent to my understanding is underlain by very poor soils which exhaust quickly. Exceptions, as I recall dimly from a geography class a long time ago are in the Niger river basin and South Africa. I think Ethiopia too come to think of it, but let me not get bogged down, and just say poor, fragile soils are widespread, limiting potential for long term, dense populations. Precisely the requirements for what? Technological advances.
It strikes me that we see a platforming effect, for example in West African history where the medieval states never congealed after a certain point, I hypothesize due to climactic/soil/disease constraints on population densities. Given wealth was available through trade with the Islamic world, and to a certain extent access to medieval sciences --although I read once that this was somewhat limited due to some theological developments I frankly didn?t follow? their platforming strikes me as likely to be related to natural constraints since both the states and possibly even metal technology had been independently developed so we have no reason to presume the societies were not capable of at least some innovation.
Next choice is the wetter zones. They seem to present a later development. Probably like Northern Europe, penetrating the forest and creating dense societies was hard before metal working became common. My guess there. Still I read in the past that especially the lower end of the Niger river, in lower modern Nigeria, a bunch of fairly stable and advanced states sprang up. The would be the folks who later get whacked by slaving.
Without an Atlantic slave trade I suppose we can imagine a somewhat different trading relationship growing up between the African coastal kingdoms and the Europeans. Certainly without large scale black slavery spring up, European African relations would probably not have taken the nasty turn towards really nasty racism that they did in the 18th century. Maybe states such as Angola, with its Portoguese speaking aristocracy, and others like it, would have developed more stable relationships. Still, there is the problem of labor and soil. Without beasts of burden ? imported ones of course die from trypso and acclimatized ones are stunted ? you have to depend on people for everything. Significantly limits your work output in the long run. Add in fragile soils and disease making high pop densities hard to sustain in the long run …
It?s hard to see how colonialism can be written out of the picture, however. On the other hand, removing large scale black slavery from the Atlantic world relations might have ended up with a form of colonialism more like that which penetrated Asia and which ended up, in my estimation, being marginally more respectful of local culture (i.e. less of the attitude shown by a certain ignorant poster here) and thus less damaging. (I should add that I regard the estimation that French colonialism to have been better than English to be utterly unfounded. I recall someone saying to me once, when I made a similar comment, ?then why did all the refugee movements go the other way,? alluding to the fact population movements tended to be towards British territories. As I was told, while the French had some lovely language, some attractive laws on the books, reality was they taxed more, were extremely brutal in putting down revolts, showed less respect for local institutions and generally were more disruptive than the British, whose model of indirect rule ended up being lighter, although this is all a question of marginal differnces.)
I have to say the analysis depends on how one hypothesizes Africa?s or better a particular region?s relations with the outside world would go. On its own, I think environmental constraints would deprive any given society of the critical mass and long-term relative stability (above all ecological) to achieve an industrial revolution like Europe, just to take that as a bench mark. Without a certain critical mass, I think the socio-economic transformation which occured in Western Europe through the 18th and 19th century, helping replace rentier governments with more productive societies, is impossible to achieve.
On the other hand, it strikes me that up to a certain point it is clear things would have been better or at least more positive opportunities would present themselves. It would be a mistake to regard history as too mechanistic. In my view there is always a degree of luck, both at a individual actor level and at a society level.
I believe the best we can do without engaging (and I have nothing against this) more specific what-if scenarios is that the menu of choices would have been better and thus the parameters of development somewhat to quite a bit better. Of course, nothing would be guaranteed.