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Comment by im3w1l | Hacker News Reader

> Africa is a mess because of relentless Western imperialism

That's one hypothesis but there are many things it can't explain. We could compare African countries that were colonized to African countries that were not colonized. The hypothesis predicts a big difference but is there?

We could compare non-African countries that were colonized to African countries that were colonized. Hypothesis predicts a small difference, is there?

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This is explored by Francis Fukuyama in "The Origins of Political Order" and "Political Order and Political Decay". He presents compelling arguments for why we have failed states but more interestingly, he works through how we got successful ones. Non-failed states are far more rare in history, and they are the goal, after all.

Imperialism continued after the end of formal colonization, and takes place even in countries that weren't formally colonized. Capitalism and imperialism are global systems that affect every nation on Earth, there is no unaffected country to compare to.

But there was a time before colonialism. And the comparisons for sub-Saharan Africa don't look that great that way either.

Sub-Saharan Africa had some pretty advanced and successful civilizations before colonialism.

Such as? All that I'm aware of is Ethiopia and you could make a pretty good case that that's primarily because of Ethiopia's proximity to the Dar al-Islam.

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