Why Africa Was Left Behind

Once you see the way broadly, you can see it in all things. - Miyamoto Musashi

Imagine a situation where you are lost, and you need to make a phone call to get directions. When you call your friend for directions, what is the first question that your friend will need answered?

?“Where are you?”

It’s very important because to know where you are going you need to know exactly where you are. For some reason, no one has ever explained where Africa is and that is what I am going to write about today.

I am currently in the process of understanding the economic thought processes in the Austrian School of Thought. In doing so I stumbled across the answer to this question which I would like to share. The Austrian School of thought believes in free markets with limited government interventions. The names of the best economists in this subject matter are, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Ludwig Von Mises, Fredrick Hayek, Frederick Bastiat, Murray Rothpart, to name a few. I’ve heard someone say that if you are learning economics and you do not know any of names above, you didn’t learn an economics education. Today I will be writing the best argument presented by Mr. Thomas Sowell as to what happened to Africa. My hope is that after reading it, you begin to understand how the future now looks bright.

Africa was cursed by its Geography

First we need to take a quick detour. Above is a chart of the wealthiest economies since 1 A.D. Over the last 2000 or so years, China and India have been the largest economies for at least 1400 years. The reasoning behind this can be found in classical economics which is now outdated. However, it boils down to the fact that these places had the most people. In this chart I don’t want to make a point of whats there and who did what, the point I want you to see the distinct lack of presence of Africa and African countries save for Egypt. Why is this so? I wrote the sub-heading that Africa is cursed by its geography now let me justify the point. These views are taken from the book Conquest and Culture by Thomas Sowell.

Africa’s Coastline is 30 500 km, though being the second largest continent it has the smallest coastline of any continent. Europe’s coastline is 68 000 km, yet it is far much smaller than Africa. This results in a problem where Africa lacks natural indentations that allow for harbors to be easily constructed on the continent. Africa has had a massive shortage of locations where ships can dock throughout history. The advantages of European geography allowed Europe to become sea faring nations much earlier in their history than Africa.

On top of this problem, Africa has shallow coastal waters. This means that only a vessel of a particular size can access a port. If the vessel is too large, it simply cannot dock on an African port. I know this well enough to say that a port has a measure called a draft. A port draft is the measure of how deep going down the port is roughly. A particular port that I worked with had a draft of roughly 10 m and if memory serves me correctly they could only receive a cargo ship carrying 30 000 metric tons of goods per ship at high tide, and if there is a high tide. This is in stark contrast to a major port in other parts of the world that can easily receive a ship that can bring in and take out a ship with 200 000 metric tons of goods.

So bad is the problem is that the deepest naturally formed port draft is in Nacala, Mozambique with the deepest draft naturally made of only 14 m. The above leads to the problem where vessels with that 200 000 metric ton capacity must anchor offshore and have their cargo put on smaller vessels which can dock onshore; this is expensive. As you can begin to see, shipping too and from over sea in Africa is generally expensive and complicated.

Much of Africa, especially Sub Sahara Africa, has had to develop and trade with little maritime shipping. This limited the ability for Africa to trade internationally as compared with other continents. Let me give you a better context on the significance of water ways as we delve deeper into the problem. At its lowest shipping from the Black Sea to South Africa can cost as little as $50 per metric ton over roughly 6 500 Nautical miles (12 000 kms). Trucking from Beira port in Mozambique to the interior in Harare, Zimbabwe costs at least $90 per metric ton over 600 kms only. This is no one’s fault as sea shipping is just less expensive than trucking. Also note that bigger ships mean cheaper costs of shipping.

To continue the discussion of water ways, there is a disappointing lack of navigable waterways that go into the interior of Africa. River mouths have been blocked by sand bars in some places; in other places rivers are connected to areas that are simply not that productive with little to offer in terms of trade. There are also thin coastal plains and very steep rises and falls of rivers that add to the lack of navigability. Then we add the low and irregular rainfall makes the situation even worse and only fill the rivers to a capacity that is navigable sporadically. Even in the event when the rivers are filled, we have a situation where only small vessels and barges can traverse these rivers.

Where the water is enough for large vessels to navigate, there are too many rapids and waterfalls. An example of Congo River has a volume of water only challenged by the Amazon River but there are steep waterfalls and rapids towards the mouth of the sea that don’t allow vessels to go inland.

The Nile River is the river that gave birth to the most historically significant societies in Africa, including Egypt. This makes sense when you look at the geography. Egypt was closest to the points of international trade and development. ?It’s not a fluke then that the top five biggest cities in Africa include Cairo and Alexandria.

The fact remains that like other places Africa’s civilization’s spout next to navigable water ways. In a google search you will find that most of the biggest and prosperous cities in Africa are closest to rivers and seas. To list some of them, Lagos - Nigeria, Kinshasa - DRC, Cairo - Egypt, Alexandria - Egypt, Cape Town - South Africa, Durban - South Africa, Luanda - Angola, Kano - Nigeria. There have been far fewer of these water ways in Africa compared to most parts of the world.

Access to water ways is such a critical factor when you look at the data, over a third of Europe’s land masses consists of islands and peninsulas, whilst only 2% is the proportion of Africa. You will notice that the most well-off economies in Africa are the islands Mauritius and Seychelles in terms of GDP per capita, the rest are playing catch up.

Back to rivers, the Niger river is the most navigable river in Africa. It has a drainage system the size of Texas. It is still difficult to navigate because of its rapids and during the dry season, its depth can be only 4 meters. It’s tributary Benue, can only be navigated in 2 months during the year. So, imagine the dilemma a sea captain and shipping agents face. If they leave too late, their vessel will be stuck in sandbanks for 10 months and if they leave too early, a lot of cargo is left behind that then needs to be moved via land which is far much more expensive. The Senegal River faces the same challenges that are even worse because of the greater number of rapids. The same story goes for the Zambezi River.

Another reason for this lack of water is because Africa is a tropical climate that lacks mountain ranges able to collect snow that can become water. This water could have supplemented the rivers, but this is hypothetical because these mountain ranges do not exist but do in other parts of the world. Rivers in Africa are dependent on rainfall primarily and as mentioned before these rains are not dependable.

The term navigable means a lot of things but in the African context navigable means that a vessel can carry 8 tons whereas in other parts of the world navigable means a vessel can carry 10 000 tones. Even the Nile had a hard time with the biggest Roman ships in Roman times.

Another thing to look at is how Africa consists of high plateaus. Almost all the African continent is 1 000 ft above sea level and over half is 2 500 ft above sea level. Because of this, there are steeper drops in water as it goes to the sea hence the rapids and waterfalls. On the other hand, the Amazon falls 20 ft on its last 1100 kms to the sea, the Congo River falls 1000 ft over 600 kms.

It's however not all gloom and doom, there are navigable stretches of rivers that are there evidenced by the Senegal River with these stretches that are further inland. 1500 regions in the Congo River are navigable. However, in both instances these are not continuous. With this you can see how the trade is limited in inland Africa primarily. ?

In Europe, besides Russia, there are no land masses more than 1200 km from the sea whilst for Africa a substantial amount is 1200 km from the sea and some portions are 2500 km from the sea. Only Asia has further distances that are compensated by having navigable rivers.

When you hear is said that Africa is a jungle, for Sub Sahara Africa, this is simply true. Jungles have diseases like the tsetse fly and malaria which wreaked havoc in the continent. The tsetse fly affected both humans and animals. Animals for example were greatly affected. If you needed pack animals such as horses, donkeys and cattle to move carts, they would get very sick.

So, imagine that on top of a lack of waterways, there was also a lack of animals to transport goods and cargo. This left Africans to carry the heaviest things on their heads and from time to time some caravans at very great risk. This all limited how much could be carried, how far it could be carried and how fast it could be carried. In terms of economics, this meant that the continent could only sell items with the greatest proportion of value. They also needed to do this at a profit. This makes the African competitiveness and appeal very low historically.

The Greatest Impact of This

The greatest impact of this lack of trade may be indeed the lack of ability to join the wealth of nations by sharing in trade, cultural exchange and political contributions. The biggest problem that I believe can be addressed on an individual level is the reason why I am writing this article. Most of this article needs institutional enterprises to fix but I would like to make the argument that as an individual, you can be part of the solution by a thorough examination of cultures. To get there, however, I need to illuminate the other factors first.

There has been a slower drive to urbanization for the continent. In terms of trade, the only things that Africa could trade that were small enough to trade at relatively inexpensive historically were, gold, ivory and slaves. The last of these is a very sad fact but these were the only things that could be traded inexpensively. It’s simply heartbreaking. Nigeria used to be called, the Slave Coast, Ghana used to be called the Gold Coast and Cote d’Ivoire, you guessed it, Ivory Coast. These where the 3 major exports Africa could afford to share with the world for a very long period.

If you look at currant statistics you will notice that the least developed countries in Africa are those that are the furthest inland save for Botswana, Zambia and Rwanda. You can imagine how the countries that are further inland have higher prices of basics like grain simply because the cost of transport takes a major proportion of the costs to deliver these basics. The unfortunate part of statistics is that they do not usually capture the costs of grain that was never shipped in the first place because of challenges posed by transportation. ?The means of transportation on the continent are far more limited even though there are greater distances to travel inland.

Remember earlier I spoke of the lack of animal power due to the climate. The impact of this meant that farming was a difficult enterprise for the continent. So, on top of a lack of muscle power to work the land, the movement of fertilizer was made very difficult in general. The African food puzzle is a topic for another day but its important to note that too this day, there is still a shortage of much needed fertilizers. Water was scarce but on top of this, water was difficult to transport without pack animals, which is another issue.

Rain being sporadic, lack of nutrient content and proneness to erosion meant that the cultivation was far easier to exhaust the land. If rain is sporadic, the rain becomes very dry, and when it does rain, it is a heavy downpour. Dry baked soils are simply easier to erode. The problem of sandbanks that was mentioned earlier in how it affects shipping. When the rains do come they bring with them malaria in some places with 90% of the deaths from Malaria in the world coming from Sub Sahara Africa. Then there is the issue of where exactly the rain falls. There is plenty of water where it cannot be used and little rain where it needs most to be used.

So, we can see how a tribe could not stay too long in one location. The example that I can give you is that of the Great Zimbabwe. The Great Zimbabwe kingdom was one such kingdom where its growth if sustained till today would have been a beacon in the Southern African region, but this simply could not be so because they ran out of land resources primarily. Africans in general have had to move from place to place which is why there were so many tribal wars over land in its history. African tribes simply did not have the luxury to build permanent land settlement as the continuously had to move. If you must move from place to place you will not make a substantial investment into the place you are now. You cannot build a permanent house if you know that you cannot permanently stay there.

There was a lack of literacy on the continent that made it hard to communicate with a different time and place. If you cannot permanently reside in a place, it’s very difficult to develop writing and reading skills because you are always on the move to survive.

The most devastating effect of these was the cultural isolation that destroyed many peoples and covered a very large land area. The fact that Africa is coming online with the internet, radios and cell phones is only over a very small fraction of time and was not possible over most of Africa’s history.

The accumulation of so many factors that stem from geography are the greatest reason why Africa has been left behind. I hope that by now we all have a deep understanding as to why there is poverty in Africa and why this poverty is not surprising. The geographic challenges that have been encountered by Africa are unique to Africa and are greatly understated. This is to no one’s fault as it is our responsibility as Africans to investigate the reasons why and present a case to be solved. Now that I have taken pains to explain the problem broadly, we can now delve into the “solutions.” What I write next is why I have an optimistic outlook on Africa.

There Are No Solutions, Only Trade Offs ?

The best quote that I have read and heard from Thomas Sowell in all his economic arguments is that “there are no solutions, only tradeoffs.” When I started this writing my analogy was the phone call you would make to your friend. ?All the above was a description of how we got lost because usually in getting lost, you see the path you take to get lost. The friend would then want to ask you one of two questions. These questions are, “where are you,” or “what do you see?”

The point of this article may seem to illuminate why the inability to trade is the reason why Africa was left behind. Yes, this is true, but if I walked away without giving some power over to you the reader to address the situation, then I would have done a great injustice to us all. At this point, I would like to draw a clear line in the sand. There are 2 buckets that can be fixed. One bucket can be addressed by our leaders and the other as you the individual.

Africa had been isolated for most of history evidenced earlier. However, there are technologies that are now unlocking our potential. I believe that a lot of the heavy lifting has now been done by new technologies and by literacy which has been highly up took on the continent. It’s a privilege that I have the capacity to share these ideas online at a fraction of the cost and that I was afforded the opportunity to get an education that allows me to articulate these ideas. In fact, I have come to realize that there are so many people who have great ideas but cannot simply find the words to put them down.

I need to take the time to write about the greatest tradeoffs that allows Africa to now develop. Have you ever wondered why it is that the Africans can now read and write? Has anyone ever explained it? If you go to any part of the African continent you will realize that most of all the languages have a Latin script Alphabet. This is thanks to the Christian missionaries who made their way to Africa with the intention of sharing their gospel. They were so serious about sharing their culture and values in the 15th century. They fought against all the geographic barriers in a way that led to Africa having a space for it to learn how to read and write.

I state this because an exchange of culture is the most significant factor that will allow Africa to catch up to the world. Our cultures as a continent now need to enter in a period of examination. A lot of what I have written about has the capacity to be easily interpreted into policy and strategy by leaders and enterprises. The next bucket is the cultures that we have come to accept.

I began this article by clearly stating that I got my information from the Austrian School of Thought in economics. I later borrowed the facts by an American called Thomas Sowell. I then acknowledge that the Christian faith did the most to promote literacy on the African continent. These are all exchanges of culture. We now have the capacity to go online at a fraction of the price and learn from the best. We now have the Chinese who dropped the price of solar energy so low that it allowed us in Africa to have electricity in the most remote areas of the planet. There is WhatsApp an American application that allows us to communicate with those around the world. It’s now safe to say that the period of isolation has finally come to an end.

With that I would like to ask that after you finish reading this article with everything that you now know. Isn’t it worth it to use this opportunity to learn better cultures than to focus on subpar cultures. We in this moment can learn from the very best due to the technologies we have access to. The trade of for this is your time and effort. If your culture does not allow for prosperity, you can always compare it to those cultures that do and adopt them for your own life. Look around, the answers are now available, what is now needed are the right questions and a drive to answer said questions. In taking the very best that the world offers and claiming it as your own at an individual level, I wholeheartedly believe that Africa will become one of the most prosperous places on earth in its entirety in due time.

I hope that my writing illuminated why Africa was left behind. Western education has never taught us this is not the fault of the west at all. African problems must simply be solved by African people, and we are those people who have the responsibility to fix them. Not only that, but we are also no longer powerless in our ability to fix them. I look forward to a future where our continent is the economic hub of the world.

I write for an audience of one. I simply hope that it is you.

Kind Regards

Mupharo