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Comment by omneity | Hacker News Reader

Hot take. Europe cannot compete without working closer with african countries. Same time zone, geographic proximity, many existing commercial relations, economic complementarity, logistics etc. This will allow this hypothetical Eurafrican block to become extremely competitive with East Asia giants (China & friends, India), and with NA (USA, Canada, wait until Mexico wakes up).

I believe the balance of powers will change when the Nigeria-Morocco gas pipeline [0] opens up, connecting all coastal countries of West Africa (already working to a certain extent together as ECOWAS [1], with a unified currency [2], not without its warts of course) and significantly bringing down the price of energy in the region.

[0]: https://www.gem.wiki/Nigeria-Morocco_Gas_Pipeline

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Community_of_West_Afr...

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CFA_franc

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> Hot take. Europe cannot compete without working closer with african countries.

Why hasn't this happened in 60 years of post-colonialism?

From 1961 to 2015 <http://www.worldeconomics.com/papers/Global%20Growth%20Monit...>, real GDP per capita in Africa grew by 1.1% annually (!), compared to 3.9% for Asia, 1.7% for the Americas, and 2.2% for Europe. Growth from 2001 to 2010 of 2.9% is included in that figure; it was the first decade in that period in which Africa outgrew any other continent.

GDP per capita in US 1990 dollars <http://www.worldeconomics.com/Data/MadisonHistoricalGDP/Madi...> for several African countries:

  Country      | 1980 |  2008
  -------------|------|------
  Algeria      | 3152 |  3520
  Botswana     | 1765 |  4769
  Cameroon     | 1192 |  1212
  Gabon        | 6777 |  3811
  Ivory Coast  | 2041 |  1095
  Kenya        | 1051 |  1098
  Liberia      | 1162 |   802
  Madagascar   | 1054 |   730
  Malawi       |  630 |   744
  Mauritius    | 4367 | 14529
  Niger        |  810 |   514
  Nigeria      | 1305 |  1524
  Seychelles   | 4444 |  6109
  South Africa | 4390 |  4793
  Zimbabwe     | 1295 |   779

For every Mauritius, Botswana, and Seychelles there is a Zimbabwe, Niger, and Ivory Coast.

>wait until Mexico wakes up

Mexico is, while poorer than the US or Canada or Western Europe, so, so, so much wealthier than anywhere in Africa (including South Africa and Zimbabwe/Rhodesia, both once with more or less first-world wealth) that there is no comparison.

What would prevent this from becoming another round of colonialism?

No one said this comes without challenges, just like every great opportunity. But it can be handled with solid business acumen. Unlike the (bloody and disgusting) past, the african diaspora as well as the local actors have a much better education and understanding of various global dynamics, as well as (some) level of local infrastructure.

China did manage to improve its side of the trade equation, not without sacrifices for sure. Arguably, it was also already a unified large nation and it just needed to "direct" its energy. In the case of Africa, we're talking about 54 countries, organized in 8 regional communities [0]. RECs are functional at different levels (some are completely dysfunctional such as the UMA - the North African community), and there's a lot of coordination work to do.

But I believe working together towards a shared goal would do a massive uplifting job for the second continent in terms of land and population size and unlock an incredible future for the 1.3B africans today.

[0]: https://au.int/en/recs

I'd also hazard that global peer to peer information networks and the visibility they provide has increased the domestic repercussions of the worst external state-sponsored exploitation of Africa.

Colonialism seemed to work in large part on "You see diamonds appearing in your western country -- you don't see people being beaten, in poverty, and leaders assassinated in the places those diamonds come from."

Western media's eye is fickle, but the optimist in me likes to thing that western governments wouldn't get away with the overt shit they pulled in the 60s and 70s these days.

If east eu is any indication of how things will develop, then it’s guaranteed to end up with colonialism.

Indeed. EU should first fix the internal squabbles, turmoil and issues (rising youth unemployment, rising inequality, illegal immigration, housing crisis, rising extremism, etc), before expanding to other continents.

Which squabbles would you say it must fix?

Instead of negotiation and mutually beneficial arrangements what you get are threats, sanctions and slander. It’s not unheard of the eu meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign member states, not only east but south and in some cases north west european. It is usually those yielding disproportionate power that impose their will on the rest. Sometimes with deadly geopolitical consequences.

Austria who keeps veto-ing Romania's Schengen application with bullshit reasons that don't hold water, is the first example I can think of but there are many more. Also anti-nuclear Austria who sued Hungary over building a new nuclear powerplant. And there are several other examples between other countries, on other topics as well.

Basically the countries with veto power on certain topics that benefit the greater good of the union, abuse it to bully the others, in order to get concessions on non-related topics that only benefit their own agenda. It's basically a mafia shakedown because some want to have their cake and eat it too.

It's better than going to war against each other like in the past over such things, but this constant squabbling and the sheer pettiness, is holding EU development back compared to US and China.

The fact that Austria, a corrupt and putin controlled country can decide if a member state can or cannot conduction friction-less trade is appalling. Then there's poland constantly being sanctioned or threatened, the eu ignoring east european please for lower dependency on russian oil and gas, then there are the threats against south european countries if they elect the "wrong" people and so on and so forth.

Who is ultimately in control of this? (in your opinion)

I don't think there is a cabal of bros sitting in dark rooms plotting and scheming.

I think what we are seeing here is the good old european mindset in action and the defunct system it created.

The "founding fathers" of the EU wanted something completely different, yet toxic european habits keep resurfacing.

We see the same type of propaganda against the "lesser folks" (notice how europeans treat other europeans simply because of their ethnicity or country of origin), the desire for living space and expansion, coercion and control, splitting territories among powers, and so on. If you read european history books you will see that none of this is new - not even the war in ukraine and the us intervening to prevent europe from cannibalizing itself once again, and so on.

The old empires of europe have proxied via Brussels and are doing what they always did. And it will end up with the same results, over and over again. Europe never learns.

Can you expand on that, please?

East eu countries are essentially colonies. What started as european solidarity turned into exploitation and domination. Africa should learn from that and develop on its own. I personally think that it can and will reach an exponential growth stage soon, but it should absolutely stay away from eu “funding” and “solidarity”.

Don't send armies, only goods, services, and payments.

For one virtually nobody has any interest in colonialism, not just from a moral but even from a self-interested standpoint. Colonialism is a huge drain. One of the major reasons for France to unwind its colonial presence in the first place was to reduce political, military and economic burdens that came with maintaining an empire.

The negative consequences are arguably visible in Britain which stayed in empire mode quite a bit longer than its peers and lost a lot of global industrial competitiveness as a result.

You forget the part wher African countries have terrible political stability and no money. The only way of making this work would be neocolonialism, which is ok imo (in the end it benefits both parties), but it's frowned upon by some political circles.

Since 1-3 decades, Africa is developing quite nicely and peacefully.

I read somewhere that they're ~100 years behind economically, but are catching up 3 years per year

This is true of some countries in Africa and bot of others, so depends where.

Don’t forget the boost factor from new technology appearing. Even something as core and basic as farming benefits immensely from technology such as drones (better information), mobile phones and data (faster communication and coordination), and now AI (cheap personalized on-demand expert advice).

With the current progress of tech and barring any catastrophic event, soon enough it will become trivial technologically speaking to meet all human needs on any location on earth at a very low cost.

Many african countries are extremely resource rich. They do have money, but also corruption sapping a lot of it away.

That and I don’t think political instability is a fact of life.

I like to think of it through Maslow’s pyramid of human needs. As the lower layers start to be satisfied, even the conduits for violent impulses change in nature (from physical fights to toxic gaming behavior let’s say).

As Africa lifts itself and addresses the basic needs of its population, many of the challenges it is currently experiencing will start to fade away. It’s a bit of a chicken and egg problem but I also happen to be an optimist :)

>Many african countries are extremely resource rich. They do have money, but also corruption sapping a lot of it away.

Which is why they need their leaders replaced by Western puppets, which will divert all the riches to the West and leave some crumbs to the citizens. Since the current power structure doesn't leave anything to the citizens, leaving crumbs would be an improvement. See India for example.

There's also the underappreciated value of institutional inertia.

A large part of why mature democracies work is the historical mass of their institutions serving as ballast to keep the system from oscillating/crashing.

I.e. Courts work in large part because people believe they work. And they believe they work because they've historically worked.

Or, in individual terms in less stable countries: "Why should I act contrary to my individual interests when the state might be gone tomorrow?"

So a big part of creating stability is faking that stability until historical mass has time to form in everyone's minds.

Being resource rich is a well known path to poverty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse

It's no coincidence that the resource free Singapore and Hong Kong grew from desperate poverty to the richest cities on Earth, while the countries around them did not.

Sir, I thank you for your honesty. People hate it here if I even mention that term but you openly admit your acceptance of it.

See, the reality is, the strong will always desire to rule over the weak. The colonized should not have relied on the good conscious and will of the colonizers to begin with. They should have become strong enough to resist neo-colonialism, they only have their own weakness to blame.

What truly revolts me is when neo-colonialism is packaged as democracy, human rights, etc... instead of just like what you did, openly admitting that is your goal and the people who will be colonized will benefit from it, so that is your moral justification.

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