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> Which is why these countries are so much more prosperous when outsiders rule them, supressing the clan systems for anything more meritocratic.

That's generally not how colonization worked. Quite often, colonization intentionally created the large scale tribal identities. Allegiance to clans grows because of deep suspicion of extractive governments put in place by outsiders.

Lol I don't know if this is a dog whistle so much as a dog call.

There is nothing inherently unique to African culture that means Africans need western saviors to understand why their primitive clannish ways are holding them back. The same social unit is native to all human culture.

The problem is that the rest of the world wants African natural resources and a weak, distributed African power structure is good for that.

Hard to be a true state builder over the past 80 years without being capped by the CIA or else suborned to the soviets/bratva.

Which almost makes China's mercantilist foothold on the continent seem like an improvement.

When those countries were ruled by outsiders, the people who ran them weren't picking capable locals to have power, they were picking capable outsiders to have power. (And that's in the best case.)

The locals were only used for manual labour and filling out conscript armies (overseen by coloniser officers). This creates societies where, for generations, none of the natives have any experience with doing any of the jobs necessary to actually govern a country.

> And you can not have rule of law, when the primary state-forming institution is the clan-family

You can. See US (Boeing, Rockefeller etc), UK (Royal "family", house of lords, etc), Germany ( Porsche and others)

Well, a broader interpretation of this idea is that paradoxically there needs to be a certain level of authoritarianism in order to have a civil functioning republic.

In the 1900s this was communism. A lot of people (either disingenuously or not) interpreted this as anti-democratic. But if you look at what actually happened where conditions were right, it turned out to work well- China and Vietnam, and if you just look at authoritarianism, not just communist authoritarianism, then Singapore, S. Korea, Taiwan as well. Some would also argue that the USA falls into this category- that the same arm of the government suppressing corruption is also going after marginalized groups.

There aren't that many examples in history where the ideal balance is actually struck.

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> I can’t really think of anyone that has fit that bill over the last 75 years in Africa, the closest might be Paul Kagame in Rwanda.

Seemed to be at least a few in the immediate era of independence for certain African states. Unfortunately for them the cold war was raging and I think most of them were brutally murdered and replaced "strong men" who crippled their country with rampant corruption and cowardly paranoia.

And yet, here we are with one of our greatest legacies- The Roman Republic/Empire which did do exactly that. Cleanse a horridly corrupt system with liberal use of the death penalty. "Every man is always thinking of the Roman Empire" except when it explains what we don't want to know.

Maybe we should educate those corrupt politicians that by "spreading the wealth" they can become even richer. And that's no lie.

>The core culprit is that most people in Africa depend on the government, most are employed by it.

Just curious. What nations are you talking about when you say that "most people in Africa depend on the government"?

Only asking because this has not been my experience at all!

In fact I would say that most people in every nation I visited was dependent on themselves, their family and whatever support they could get from their larger clan. Poverty was rampant. Most of the middle class had clawed their way to that height through creating some kind of business. The degree to which these economies were dependent on remittances was alarming in my uneducated view. I would say far less than .5% of the people I interacted with had a government paycheck or even a government benefit coming in.

That said, I've never been to the wealthier nations like South Africa or Morocco or what have you. Maybe it's different in those places?

Most are employed by the government because there's no substantial business activity in those countries. Every successful business gets robbed by both the government and gangsters.

Only menial businesses like supermarkets exist in those countries (people have to eat no matter how corrupt a country is).

As soon as an entrepreneur becomes successful and makes healthy profits they'll get raided by leeches. Usually they'll have to pay government officials for "protection" and politicians demand that their family members become part of the Board or management enabling them to pilfer the company's wealth even further.

I’m a lot less worried about corruption in a country that has real elections. Trump is corrupt. He is exceptionally corrupt. But he won’t be President forever. If we elect Trump Jr. or something, well, that’s on us.

In Africa, the winner of elections is usually known up front because they’re not real. One clan/party rules until another one stages a successful bloody coup, and repeat on a 1/5/10/20 year cycle depending on the country.

OP is talking about corruption which is orthogonal to being a dictatorship. In fact the least corrupt subsaharan country is (by far) Rwanda, which is a de facto dictatorship.

And the impacts of corruption/cronyism/clientelism are not just money being siphoned at the top. It completely breaks any fair competition wether it's in economic markets or for jobs. Businesses don't succeed based on how competitive or innovative they are, simply based on who their founder knows and how much they're willing to pay in bribes, so your economic development stragnates. Important and influential positions are awarded not to the most competent but to the richest. Opening a small business requires you to bribe dozens of people, and good luck if you need to import or export goods.

The strongman approach, notably, never leads to corruption and warlords.

The specific problem solved by Bukele was criminal judges. Africa probably has different problems.

All of us foreign colonialists would much prefer countries to be run by competent adults. There’s far more wealth to be gotten by trading with a state that functions properly, like say, Australia or even India where plenty of corruption exists but is kept in check… compared to the circus that is countries ruled by warring clans and outright 100% corruption like the worst cases in Africa.

There is always someone else to blame for your failure.

A large Greek minority? Please share your sources for that because I'd be very interested in reading that.

AFAIU, Greeks were there, but as traders who came because it was a prosperous kingdom. For the same reason other groups from around that region also had a presence, and vice-versa. Prosperous nations tend to exchange populations and build economic, cultural, and political ties.

But if you're implying the presence of Greeks or an adoption of Greek culture was the reason for the rise of the Aksum empire... I'd certainly like to read those sources.

The very early adoption of Christianity might have had something to do with it, at least in terms of creating a unifying identity within and among the broader region. But Greeks weren't the only Christians. Ethiopia already had ties to non-Greek Levante and non-Greek Arabian peninsula communities, and probably Persian traders, as well--Persians were the Greeks of the Indian Ocean. Not coincidentally, the Horn of Africa sits at the nexus of multiple major economic spheres and sea routes. The Aksum Empire originated in the highlands, but for much of their time they controlled or had a strong presence along the coast.

Your other comments just seemed uninformed, but the thesis you are actually pushing is white civilizations are inherently better. Stop for a minute and think about other possibilities why you don’t know a lot about an empire that wasn’t part of what we in the west consider our lineage (Greece, Rome); is it not possible we didn’t value keeping other societies’ histories alive in the same way?

I’ll skip pointing out much of what you know about ancient scholars may be due to Arabic countries keeping them alive during the Dark Ages.

Ethiopia has been a great power since then too: under Constantine I (c. 1450) it was the preeminent power in East Africa, and while the kingdom subsequently fragmented it managed to recombine by the 1800s in time to take a stand against European colonialism. None of that was because of a "Greek minority", African people are perfectly capable of governing themselves (with the right social structures in place, as with all people).

Rude I may be. Wrong I am not.

What is the Songhai empire known for, apart from size, gold and slave trading? Any great architecture or scientific achievements?

Yeah what is so interesting about the past

What's your point?

I’m in this camp as well. I can’t stand the anti-intellectual trend, but the cultural elites in America got high on their own supply and just untethered themselves from reality, while our economic elites betrayed everyone by changing the economy into a machine that only benefits some people with college degrees while tricking another giant swath into buying useless degrees on credit. It’s more anti-elitism going on than anti-intellectualism. And they brought it on themselves. They should have offered something better.

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They will eat, they will skip on rent and they will do what they can with healthcare (be that public or NGO healthcare initiatives, or the local "wise person")

"But won't they be evicted?" Is a question that has several answers, but none of which you expect

First worlders perception of how to deal with 3rd world problems are interesting

Really bad inflation is obviously a full human catastrophe.

The absolute meltdown post-COVID where we traded moderate inflation in exchange for not having the economy basically seize up was, for most people on HN, an inconvenience.

Inflation in mentioned above example was 3.4% year over year for a professional at the higher end of the income scale. In that case it is inconvenience.

I agree that higher level of inflation might be brutal.

Why do they have to choose? That's not a problem of inflation, but of wealth distribution or, if you will, our system of economy.

That’s one of the reasons COVID got to spread. People in the West saw it as “a Chinese issue”. Me included. And I work with Chinese people every day. I would see them in lockdown and still think it couldn’t possibly affect me.

And then… well.

Attention is indeed weird.

Is that really true? Can't we feel compassion and mourn things happening far away? I don't think this is true.

I think the problem is that modern brain is overloaded with information. We can't care about everything fully, or we'd go insane.

other conflicts that to don't have any significant effect get plenty of attention like Ukraine or Palestine. the Russian Ukrainian conflict does have some effect on Europe but Israel Palestine has no tangible effect on the West and people talk about it frequently.

Why are we paying so much attention to what's happening in Israel then?

Italy colonized it for 5 years.

Fights were probably smaller and between tribes and not two monolithic groups? Also not quite sure about Ethiopia but the weapons were probably less bangy and more stabby pre colonization?

Ethiopia was Christian before a lot of northern Europe was...

Most everyone is indoctrinated into their faith as children. "Choice" doesn't really describe cultural programming.

The lore of the church is fascinating, the story is that the line of Solomon came to Ethiopia by way of the Queen of Sheba, and the ark of the covenant made its way there. And that figures into Rastafarian beliefs.

> Ethiopia, for example, adopted Christianity as a state religion in the 4th century, long before European colonization.

That is European colonization, possibly the most effective form.

>It assumes African Christians only hold their faith because of colonizers and denies us our own agency.

And they would be correct. Most people never "chose" their beliefs. It was systematically embedded by people who have had power over them.

Oh yeah that too now

Imagine the shit we're gonna see in 2100 caused from that..

But then that too could be arguably traced back to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars

People bully Japan for "not apologizing" for their crimes in WW2 and earlier, even though none of the people from back then are still alive. Has Europe ever "apologized" for the Opium Wars or anything really?

This is exactly the sort of comment the guidelines explicitly say not to write.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

No I dont think so, Im not being sensitive to anything other than censorship? I believe on total free speech so I think every comment should be visible and I am happy to take offence. I see so many dead comments that are not even rude or offensive, its hard to see why anyone would censor them.

I don't know man? This is Ethiopia.

Chinese can't fight themselves. So I'm pretty sure everyone is in on this one.

One side wants the dam gone.

The other wants the dam generating electricity.

Will be fascinating to see which group of puppet masters wins. It'll tell us a lot about how the global power hierarchies are shaping up in the twenty-first century.

I do feel horrible for the innocent people of Ethiopia, who only wanted lights so their kids could study at night. Instead, they'll get killed. That's what sucks about the activity of global powers in Africa for the past, what? 500 years? Probably longer.