Hot answers tagged africa
19
For a country to be economically prosperous you need a couple of things:
You need the rule of law. A country where people can steal, cheat or break contracts as they wish makes it very difficult to conduct business.
You need ownership rights. If you do not own the land, factory or house that you are using to make money, you will not invest in it as the ...
18
Nigeria became independent from the United Kingdom on October 1, 1960, and shortly after the country plunged into a bloody civil war, with estimates for the number of dead being between 1 and 3 million. During the civil war, two secessionist states were created:
The Republic of Biafra (30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970) in the south-eastern of the country, ...
16
Africa was relatively densely populated compared to North and South America. When Europeans landed in the Americas, they were sparsely populated, and the Indians often died from diseases brought by Europeans. The few that didn't were easily conquered by the Europeans, whom "advanced" cultures such as the Aztecs and Incas mistook for gods.
The Africans had ...
13
An interesting analysis on this question was brought up by Jared Diamond author of "Guns, Germs and Steel" and I believe it is a more accurate answer to the question than that offered by Lennart Regebro (no offense intended to that author!). While Regebro is certainly true in explaining major factors to the continuation of many African nations relative ...
13
Ok, first we need to find the destination port. Wikipedia notes that Ada and Prampram were important ports in addition to Accra. Good, can we find logs from any ships that traveled from England to these destinations?
I searched but couldn't find anything for either Ada or Prampram (maybe these ports already lost their importance in the 19th century). For ...
11
In fact during the Age of Discovery, Africa had been the principle objective.
It really begins with Prince Henry the Navigator, a son of the King of Portugal who had an intense fascination with Africa. In particular he was taken with the legend of Prester John, said to be a descendant of one of the Three Magi who presided over a magical land with marvels ...
10
As I've understood it, selling entire tribes or large parts of it was already an ancient use. This was useful to the victors for money, as well as power and the guarantee that the particular tribe wouldn't attack them in the near future.
Furthermore, slave trade deep into Africa was also in use by the Arabs, who, like the Europeans did at first, bought the ...
8
Malaria
I'd actually leave it at that, if the posting software let me.
But to elaborate, Europeans actually did actively try to colonize Africa continuously during the Age of Discovery. The problem is Malaria killed them off quicker than more could be sent. The only place it really worked was in South Africa, which was too temparate for Malaria to be a ...
7
Liberia is near the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast (Ghana) that was the center of the slave trade. But it was a piece of relatively uninhabited land near the other two.
"Freed" slaves came from two sources. 1) Slaves that were freed in the United States and sent to Liberia, and 2) Slaves that were "intercepted" and freed coming from the Ivory and Gold ...
7
There are few direct benefits of Commonwealth membership and some debate about its usefulness, so the question is a fair one. Mozambique gained neither trade nor aid by virtue of membership.
I expect that the question would be addressed definitively in The Commonwealth Brand: Global Voice, Local Action by Victoria Te Velde (Ashgate, 2011) and in the SADC's ...
7
This isn't really so much about any US allies not wanting it to happen as much as it is about the African Union not wanting it to happen. In January of 2008, the US State Department issued this statement:
"While the United States does not recognize Somaliland as an independent state, and we continue to believe that the question of Somaliland's ...
7
As a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Free_State#Humanitarian_disaster - which is a reason why Leopold was put in the "ranking " you've pasted.
There's a simple reason Belgium is still a monarchy: because there was no political reason for changing the state of affairs - this idea did not occur neither to public opinion nor to international ...
7
The killings to which they are doubtless referring occurred as part of his ownership of the Congo Free State. They all happened in Africa, and the deaths seem to have been the result of a rather abusive form of slave labor that was employed to keep productivity there high. The wikipedia page says that estimates range from 2 to 14 million deaths, but there's ...
5
Algeria was more then a colony, there were French Départements in Algeria, from 1848 on until 1962 it was an integral part of the French motherland.
See Wikipedia or the french wikipedia article for the French départements in Algeria
This does not mean, that Algerians were full citizens.
See also Process of Colonization:
Algeria was formally ...
5
The New World was much easier. European diseases spread rapidly, wiping out the local population, and 'clearing the land'. In Africa, the locals had the same immunity to the likes of smallpox as the Europeans, so it wasn't 'cleared' as quickly. It also has diseases of it's own (e.g. malaria) that would hinder someone coming in.
5
From what I have been able to research, numerous sources such as this and this trace back rap to the griots of pre-colonial, western Africa. Griots were essentially poets and bards who communicated history and political messages through song. According to the article "Politics of Diaspora: Sahwari poets and postcolonial transformations of a trans-Saharan ...
4
Read the journals of David Livingstone, Henry Stanley, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, Olaudah Equiano, Quobna Ottobah, Ignatius Sancho.... You will learn more about slavery and what the world was like a few hundred years ago from these journals than from second hand historical accounts. Slavery has no color or nation. From early times, small tribes beat up ...
4
Algeria was considered a "back door" to France, from the south. In the hands of a hostile country, England, Germany, or even Libya/Egypt, it was seen as a potential invasion route to France. On the other hand, if France retained a foothold in Africa through Algeria, it could continue to influence its former colonies in "French West Africa" (which it does to ...
4
Historical Circumstances for Violence in 2007:
1. Tribal Conflict:
There are two main and conflicting tribes in Kenya, Kikuyu and Kalenjin, Kikuyu being the majority. But they constitute only 22 percent and 12 percent of the total population respectively. There are many other tribes too, but their population is less as compared to these two tribes. The ...
3
The Sudanese Eastern Front appears to have been created by a merger of The Beja Congress and the Free Lions Movement in 2004.
When the withdrawal of the SPLA from the NDA in 2004 led to the collapse of that alliance, the BC joined with the Rashaida Free Lions and other smaller groups to form the Eastern Front rebel group. However, weak leadership, an ...
3
"The gentleman will never notices what happens on the backyard of another gentleman". The victims were not Europeans, so they were not taken into account. Leopild II was not alone - all colonial powers behaved the same. Vietnam, Boer republics, Sudan and so on.
But Leopold was not a dictator. He was a constitutional monarch and the quilt is on the whole ...
3
What's ancient for you?
There are old paintings in South Africa
The Kingdom of Kush isn't in central/south of Africa, so I think it does not count.
There is Great Zimbabwe (11th century)
The Mali Empire existed from 1230–c. 1600. This cultural heritage is actually a victim of war in Mali.
Wikipedia list some more Pre-Colonial African States in the ...
3
The article in the German Wikipedia (for some perhaps telling reason its title refers to "uprising" vs. "genocide") mentions pressure exerted by protestant missionaries' churches ("Der Druck der Öffentlichkeit, besonderes der evangelischen Missionskirchen, wuchs.")
It quotes a German PhD thesis from 2004 that provides further information (e.g. on page p. ...
2
It seems to me that in recent times (20-30 years), the international community doesn't really recognize anything until the de-facto groundwork has already been completed.
The best example I can think of is the new Republic of South Sudan. It wasn't recognized internationally until after the results of its own referendum were verified, and until it managed ...
2
In Libya they completely ousted the regime and they are in an intermediate phase towards implementing democracy.
In Egypt they namely ousted the official dictator, but de facto nothing changed: the military are still in power and are oppressing the people much more than before. The protesters must certainly hope to somehow remove the military from power.
2
My understanding is that national leadership is de facto (but not de jure) rotating between members of the most influential ethnic groups in the country. National politics are perhaps rightly seen as a mess (a lot of private fortunes are at stake, hence the corruption), but the country has had a long federalist tradition too.
Some of the strongest groups ...
2
The Rwandan Patriotic Front (tutsi rebels) forces just won a shooting war that was quite distinct to the genocide. They'd fought with the Hutu authorities to a standstill in 1993 and fully possessed the capability (nothing to do with the civilians under hutu rule) to restart the conflict in response to the events of 1994.
If anything the genocide helped the ...
2
The other answers pointed out very correctly that Algiers was legally considered a part of France. What must be added is that there was a very large body of French colonists in Algiers, which was not the case with the other French possession, whatever their legal status.
2
My relatives are Belgian, and you might want to note that they are very fond of their current monarch. The question seems a bit insensitive.
Putting that aside, why would you end a monarchy because one of the monarchs performed atrocities? What relationship is there between the monarch's morality and the legitimacy of the monarchy? Would you end the US ...
2
Trying to dig up the specific reactions of the general public from that time period would be very difficult, if not impossible. But judging from the attitude of the time period there was probably not an "outrage" as we would define it today. For similar projects I've looked at old newspapers from the time period and looked for editorials. Usually there ...
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