Since ancient times, Sub-Saharan rulers and warlords tended to cruise off of selling gold and slaves to Arabs/Cumskins in return for manufactured goods such as swords, guns, fine textiles and whatever. Since we just imported everything we never really developed a strong middle class of artisans, scientists and engineers.
IMO the current state of SSA (it’s improving a lot nowadays tbh) isn’t due to some new form of neo-colonialists sabotaging industry, it’s an ongoing thing. In fact industrialisation was even attempted early on in places such as Madagascar and completely failed due to over-reliance on enslaving peasants over natural market forces stemming from paid labour market and capitalist economy. So we can’t just blame white colonists, the problem stems from within
Heck the rabbit hole goes even further; Blacks selling themselves to Libyan traffickers, black women working in awful conditions as maids in Arab countries, African warlords funded by gold mines raiding lesser tribes etc involves the same kind of economic movement that would’ve taken place 1000 years ago.
Either there’s a general cultural problem or it’s something to do with the mostly tropical environment Idk.
Slavs struggled with this problem before tbh but to a lesser extent, Pagan Slav tribes in dark ages would raid each other for Svetlana girls to sell off to Arabs while the Russian Empire fell behind in industrialisation due to serfdom
IMO the current state of SSA (it’s improving a lot nowadays tbh) isn’t due to some new form of neo-colonialists sabotaging industry, it’s an ongoing thing. In fact industrialisation was even attempted early on in places such as Madagascar and completely failed due to over-reliance on enslaving peasants over natural market forces stemming from paid labour market and capitalist economy. So we can’t just blame white colonists, the problem stems from within
Heck the rabbit hole goes even further; Blacks selling themselves to Libyan traffickers, black women working in awful conditions as maids in Arab countries, African warlords funded by gold mines raiding lesser tribes etc involves the same kind of economic movement that would’ve taken place 1000 years ago.
Either there’s a general cultural problem or it’s something to do with the mostly tropical environment Idk.
Slavs struggled with this problem before tbh but to a lesser extent, Pagan Slav tribes in dark ages would raid each other for Svetlana girls to sell off to Arabs while the Russian Empire fell behind in industrialisation due to serfdom
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