Everyone needs to examine their biases and prejudices every now and again. So I read your article with interest to examine those within myself. However, I am still not convinced those biases are groundless, or for that matter an irrational prejudice on my part.
Here is my simple rebuttal to your counterfactual (a counterfactual in itself?)—South Africa!
SA was a first world nation when it turned itself over to the Black majority rule in the mid-nineties. I believe they even perfected a nuclear weapon, not to mention the world’s first heart transplant! Heck they gave us Elon Musk to boot. ;-) But that was then and this is now.
In the span of basically a quarter century (the turnover of political authority was staged and took a bit of time), they are a basket case—brownouts throughout the nation, water crises in major cities, farmers being killed in the middle of the night and their farms confiscated, inflation, White dispossession and White homeless encampments, riots and the like. Not to mention politicians running on “kill the Boar” platforms. This “grand experiment” is not yet over. It will become worse and certainly would be had it not been for the few remaining Whites they allow to remain in significant managerial positions within the general economy—this do to law requiring mostly Black hires regardless of merit. We call this here in the States, AA.
If Africa’s problem is less about the general (sub)African’s genetic makeup and more about their peculiar development timing and geographical predicaments, how do we explain SA before and after Black rule as described above? The answer—genetics—both wrt to IQ *and* behavioral proclivities (also tied to genetics). The economists’ excuses notwithstanding, Africa is Africa because of Africans. The experimental result of replacing the SA White controlling population with a Black controlling population is pretty good evidence of this as any measurement and experimental design person will attest to.
Finally, I’ll note that we too in the USA are also partaking in such an SA experiment here at home—only at a much slower rate—as we replace our White heritage population with non-White, diversity. And as we produce a generally lower national IQ, we too will test the limits of our “Smart Fraction” to keep and maintain a first world technological society. That limit is not yet known, but as we approach it, we will see signs—and they won’t be pretty. :-(
South Africa (which was a poor country by per capital GDP even in the 1980s) was not merely handed over to a "Black controlling population", it was handed over to Black Communists. Mandela himself was a card-carrying member of the South African Communist Party. So the relevant comparison isn't SA compared to the West, it's SA compared to White and Asian Communist countries such as Laos and the Eastern Bloc.
Of course, South Africa is arguably worse than the Eastern Bloc and THAT difference is probably due to race, but South Africa is actually a perfect example of my thesis that African poverty is largely attributable to Communist misrule.
Botswana has an almost entirely Black population but Botswana is richer than South Africa which has White and Indian minorities. How is that possible if South Africa's sorry condition is merely a product of its genes?
I accept and thank you for your reply, but don’t find your blaming communism persuasive because it does not explain sufficiently why SA dysfunction continues to happen. But I am hardly an expert in these matters, so consider the source.
The government of SA seems to hold elections on a regular basis, yet the people seem to continue to vote for the same socialistic/communistic government/party—which you dismiss as communist—but is that a sufficient explanation for why such government first rose to power and remains in power?
Seems the people of SA are too “stupid” to know that such a form of government has been pretty much discredited all over the world. India, China, Vietnam, and Russia seem to have gotten wise, albeit China still professes its communist roots (however, they are just authoritarian capitalists). SA, not so much.
If what you say—that their system doesn’t work because “communism”— is true, where is the change we’ve seen elsewhere from such? The deterioration I mentioned seems to continue unabated.
I can’t help comparing SA elections to what occurs in an eight grade classroom where the winning candidate promises rainbows and lollipops to fellow children in exchange for their votes. Of course we expect that. Given the level of intellect and understanding of an eight grade classroom, rainbows and lollipops wins every time.
Also, I am wondering why the government, at least the prior one that held control for so long, needed to make regular threats of genocide against the White minority? Is this a communist dictate? Or rather an appeal to a low IQ populace that believes in spirits, voodoo, and the White bogeyman rather than the correct assumption of a corrupt government which does not serve their needs?
I will readily admit however, we see the same wrt politics in my own country (USA), and I’d argue for much the same reason—a declining population IQ.
Yes. Thanks for the reference. My comments have often been based upon some video such as you refer to. However usually made by Whites, many formerly employed in some of the industries mentioned such as the national power company. There is also a videographer who specializes in taking some shocking “before and after” photos of well known spots in SA.
As we see here is the States, there is often a lot of confounding of the factors leading to my comments on SA decline as a functioning society. Perhaps the biggest one is that there are many “grifters” (politicians) who rise to power in these places and they compound the situation through their poor leadership and graft. We have this here as well.
It’s an incompetent kleptocracy that redirects wealth from producers to parasites, but the state doesn’t own the means of production and it’s not a one party dictatorship. Blacks just vote for bad policies because they are too dumb to know better.
Botswana has a very low population relative to their natural resources. It’s great they’ve done what they’ve done but you can’t really apply those lessons to the rest of Africa.
Botswana also has a white minority that's heavily involved in the business sector, and as forumposter mentions, was generously endowed with mineral resources relative to population size. Despite generally competent governance and heavy investment in education they have almost nothing in the way of a home-grown manufacturing or IT sector.
If the only way the South African success story could be maintained was by the total domination of the Black majority by the white minority, that system wasn't sustainable.
You’ve a point there. The proportion of Blacks to Whites was always high, and grew even worse after hand over. None the less, the “experiment” in sharing power in a democratic way seems problematic in SA. We’ve seen any number of examples across the world of two vastly different (in terms of ability) populations trying to live together peacefully, but not successfully. Diversity is not strength in those cases, but a liability. Such seems the nature of people. If the difference between two groups becomes too large…chaos and violence.
Africa is poor largely because of the quality and intelligence level of its inhabitants. What wealth or ‘development’ exists is the result of western or Chinese assistance and direct involvement. The author sounds like another apologist for our current economic and financial system. Africans should largely be left alone by people like the author to develop their own system to the best of their abilities. Africans like Asians will never be white or western. Different peoples different ways and standards. One economic or political model isn’t suitable for all people on the planet.
Having worked in Africa on projects over two decades, I came away dispirited there will be any last development. Even basic things, like primary school education, seem beyond the grasp of local governments. Perhaps it is our ideals in the West of what they should be.
Africa has a lot of natural resources. If it could solve its resource curse then some areas could potentially become a middle income economy by hiring high IQ people to build their civilization for them (this is basically what some monarchies in the Middle East have done).
The issue is that:
1) Solving the resource curse is hard for low IQ people. I suspect any solution is contingent and situational.
2) Your resources per citizen have to be pretty high to make it work (this is the case in Botswana but not other parts of Africa).
3) Birthrates and migration threaten anyone that is in position #2, and its really hard to stop that in Africa.
Relative to population, the richer gulf countries are extremely resource rich. Most African countries wouldn't fall into that mold.
It's a great accomplishment that their monarchies have managed the stability necessary to make something of it. Most states in Africa aren't monarchies with the same legitimacy though. And of course monarchies have an obvious failure mode.
The Middle Easts geographic position makes illegal immigration basically impossible. Its geopolitical security is basically guaranteed by the United States. In Africa successful countries have to deal with immigration and invasion from less successful rivals.
I would ask less "is it theoretically possible" then "would I bet my own money on it". People are very reluctant to engage in FDI in Africa.
"This view was put succinctly by the co-discoverer of DNA, James Watson, who said that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.”
Succinctly and correctly.
"Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that race differences in intelligence are largely attributable to genes."
No 'suppose' about it. It is a fact.
Without the extensive support from European and later Asian countries, sub-Saharan Africa would be even worse. Like many before, the author is making excuses for the terrible developmental progress in sub-Saharan Africa.
Botswana is a meme country. I will leave some relevant stats here, from an old comment of mine:
I used to fall for the idea there are somewhat developed SS African states but recently discovered both the nations I used as an example were not actually that. The main one was Botswana but I recently discovered they're significantly worse than Moldova wich is the worst European state. I used the following data points to arrive at that conclusion:
-Moldova has a murder rate of 2.2 per 100k against 10.5 from Botswana (source: UNODC)
-Moldova has about twice the median income of Botswana (source: Our world in data using world bank numbers)
-The unemployment rate in Moldova is 3.6% contra a staggering 30% from Botswana (source: world bank).
-The gini index, a measurement of inequality, is about TWICE higher in Botswana. It's about 0.26 in Moldova contra 0.53 in Botswana.
- Energy use per person is almost twice higher in Moldova
-The life expectancy in Moldova is 10 years higher than in Botswana¹ (source: WHO-GHO, 2024)
-Moldova has 4.06 doctors per 1k against 0.35. Literally. Over 10x the difference.
States like Botswana are only superficailly successful because they have infinity natural resources who's generated wealth is distributed among the general population in GDP per capita estimates. The country itself is miserable.
1- Sources disagree on this but most agree there is at least a 2 year gap favoring Moldova.
1- The "life expectancy" gap of 10 years is fully real and not result of sources disagreeing. It's just that the gap is in "healthy life expectancy" rather than regular life expectancy. This measure tells us how many years you can expect to live in a country unburneded by any major illnesses or disabilities. Given Botswana's large AIDS epidemic and lack of doctors this is not unexpected. You can see the comparisson between Botswana and Moldova here:
2- Botswana's lack of doctors is even more stark once you consider how little of the doctors they do have are from Botswana itself. "Only 21% of the doctors registered with the Botswana Health Professions Council were from Botswana, the rest being mainly from other African countries." (Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles /PMC4564932/)
If only there were some exceptions among the many countries in Africa, or even out of Africa like Haiti. There is an overwhelming lack of human capital, with much of what little there is emigrating to the West. Clearly, the flows will have to be reversed, somehow, some way. Or else the cauldron to evolution will grind out a new human race. But that will take centuries if not hundreds of generations. Here is an interview with a Cameroonian film maker I read years ago:
Renegade Cameroonian filmmaker and theorist Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama pulls no punches about his disaffection with the state of affairs in his native country. It’s time, he argues, to quit the hypocrisy and turn off the autopilot.
Chronic Q: You say that you are in favour of a recolonisation of Cameroon?
Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama: After fifty-two years of independence, the time has come for us to take stock of how we’ve been thinking the world over this past half-century and to draw basic conclusions from this. We have to face up to the fact that the ideologies of self-determination and, ultimately, independence born of the national liberation movements we all supported are no longer in synch with the realities of present-day globalisation. It’s for this reason that we are at an impasse. It’s become self-evident that we won’t get where we want to go by insisting on doing things on our own, because, in some regards, we’re just in over our heads.
Q: So you want the white man to come back and exploit us, whip in hand?
JPBO: The whip is already here. Just take a look at Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. Everybody’s pillaging, even the Chinese! We can’t blame them – we’re the ones who abandoned the notion of self-determination, so let’s admit it once and for all and make it official. There’s no doubt about it: 52 years after independence, Africa in general, and Cameroon in particular, have taken onboard key aspects of the colonial project they once rejected.
In the end, the colonial project turned out to be far more successful than its initiators could ever have hoped – the only difference being that, as he wasn’t well seen to be a colonialist any more, the pilot parachuted out of the plane. Another one took over – he’s the one at the controls now – and he’s a crappy pilot doing his thing without a real flight plan. He pretends that he knows his way around the cockpit, but it’s just an ego trip.
He’s a puppet pilot, whose only goal is to exploit for his own wellbeing resources that belong to the collective. What we need to do is turn the clock back to the moment when things started to go wrong, to the point where the lying and the hypocrisy began: that is, to the moment of so-called independence. If we get rid of the negatives – exploitation and oppression – the recolonisation project is likely to go over very well with the
people of Africa, who just can’t take it anymore. Even when it comes to safeguarding our cultures, it’s the white folks who care the most. Our art and our artists get more support from the West than from these parts and, meanwhile, we’re dreaming of Chinese doodads, second-hand cars and stuff white people buy. It’s like things haven’t changed since the days of slavery. Let’s thank Jacques Chirac for the Quai Branly museum: at least our heritage is being taken care of.
Q: You revere the white man?
JPBO: It’s not me: it’s Africans in general and Cameroonians more particularly. Give it a try: go into a public administration building with a white man, see how Cameroonians behave when faced with a European, today. In business, people often seek out a white person to act as a front, just to be taken seriously. If we’re going to play that game, then let’s get the best whities in here! It’s time we dealt with the real issues! Where are we now? That’s the question.
The white man may be gone, but the pillage and the oppression he brought are still there. That, we kept. The people in power now are proud of this government, this omnipotent blunderbuss of a thing they didn’t even create, whose sole goal was to oppress and exploit. In the eyes of this elite of ours, the country is a cake there for the eating, not a common project, something we all work at together.
The people who govern us owe everything to the white man: the diplomas they brandish to ‘prove’ their superiority; the high-ranking positions they milk for personal gain; the cars they drive; the suits they wear; and the kids they send abroad to get a decent education. Even the president is a product of the white man! He patterns himself on him – and he’s proud of it. Don’t we say of Paul Biya that ‘he’s a white man’? His whole entourage is expected to act white along with him. There’s little room made for Africa and its traditions in the state apparatus – except for those traditional dance troops that get trotted out at the airport whenever the president travels, as if the whole thing hadn’t been a colonial invention in the first place, created to cheer and stomp whenever some De Gaulle flunky showed up.
Q: You mean that Africans are incompetent?
JPBO: Let’s be honest: what really works here? Why do we need to inflict such pain on our people? Just as a matter of ego, so we can claim that we’re actually running our own country? You know, in life it can happen that you get in over your head. There’s no shame in admitting it. We may have tried to build a modern, democratic state that fulfils the needs of our citizens, but we failed. No one can claim otherwise. It’s time we quit with the hypocrisy and began moving forward. Let’s not forget that we didn’t create our countries. Cameroon is a Western invention: its territory, its laws, its cities – Yaoundé and Douala – all of it. Even its name. White people named it after the Portuguese word for shrimp (camaroes), and we’re proud of that name. How can we hope to make it when we live in a colonial shell, empty of all content, because those who made that content – our very state – have jumped ship?
Q: So you’re saying that recolonisation is a part of globalisation?
JPBO: In this age of multinational corporations, what government can reasonably claim to run its economy? The concept of self-determination
has become little more than a political weapon in the hands of a corrupt ruling elite claiming to face off with Western powers, while consigning its people to an ideological prison and robbing them blind.
So it’s time for Cameroon to shed its duplicity and hypocrisy because today, more than ever before, we need foreigners to help us resolve the many problems we face. Let’s say it loud and clear. Enough with the silence in which we shroud what the people already know: that we need all the outside help we can get. And let’s let the people decide how much of that help we want and if and when we want it to stop.
You are right. Colonialism provided the missing human capital for Africa. If Lynn's IQ data is correct, the entire SSAfrica region has fewer people with IQ>150 than even in Hungary, with ten million people...
The information on Zimbabwe's diamond mines is wrong. We didn't even know we had diamonds until AFTER the country had been destroyed by land reform. The diamond rush began in the mid 2000s and, to some extent, continues until now. Most of the diamonds, in any case, are not "mines" but alluvial fields.
"A higher standard of living for Africa really is possible… if the Left would just get out the way." The left is the side which is vaccinating Africans and implementing family planning and contraception. It is the right, with Trump, that wants to abandon Africa to be governed by Russia's Wagner mercenaries and China's overseas investment.
The history of England up to 1650 was one of warlords and selfish elites.
What changed in 1650? The country became governed by Parliament and Parliament was governed by fanatical puritans who put the People first. This Parliamentary rule was formalised in the 1688 Bill of Rights. (See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/the-history-of-england )
I have visited much of the world and it is clear that corruption visibly creates poverty. This is corroborated by various reports on the effects of corruption. Corruption is putting the interests of warlords and selfish elites above those of the People.
African countries know that corruption is the problem but the anti-corruption efforts become corrupted.
The biggest corrupters in our modern world are global corporations and banks.
Laughable explanation of Africa's post-colonial development failures. One need only look at the devolution of infrastructure and social institutions left by the colonial powers the middle of the last century. Ripped up railroad tracks sold for scrap, everywhere ruins of roads, hospitals, schools, and industry. Only government, military, and a rapacious Mabenzi overclass thrive.
Suggest a quick read of 2008's "Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart" which reprises in the year 2000 Stanley's 1874 arduous journey to find Dr. Livingstone (echoed years later by the author's mother's settlement experience in Africa). It's all there in Tim Butcher's well-written and heartbreaking prose.
I'm a Nigerian and I want the thesis advanced here to be very much true. But I just find it difficult to accept that the extreme and stubborn backwardness of most of black Africa has nothing to do, if not with our gene pool, at least with the sociobiological reality emergent from it. I've had to consider the thought that the typical black African society is not capable of organizing itself using the social principles and instrumentalities associated with the west and other developed economies. Botswana and Rwanda appear to me more as exceptions than the rule. And it's just wrong to base your theory on a few exceptional cases. Yes, perhaps you're right that the socialist-communist incursions are largely responsible for the damage wreaked on this subcontinent, but you also have to explain why this ideology is so appealing and acceptable there.
As a Nigerian who presumably lives in Nigeria, do you think if the larger ethnoreligious groups were to separate, that these resulting states would be more stable and prosperous?
No. There are 36 states in Nigeria which are more or less clustered around the major ethnic groups. The states are further grouped into 6 geopolitical zones: for instance, the southwest is predominantly Yoruba consisting of 6 states, the southeast predominantly Igbó consisting of 5 states and so on. Each of these states have considerable autonomy from the federal centre and gets monthly allocations from the centre in addition to freedom to create wealth for their state.
Yet none of the state, except perhaps Lagos (which is debatable) is able to match the economic and administrative efficiency of federal-controlled institutions and parastatals - and this is even setting the bar extremely low since the corruption and incompetence at federal level is gargantuan. The federal actors are selected through the states and so there's really no difference in human quality here.
In truth, things were a bit better in the period before and after independence (1960) when we operate a regional system consisting of just three regions - Western, Eastern, and Northern regions (which translated roughly into the Yorubas, the Igbos, and the Hausa/Fulani ethnopolitical groupings). But this success could very well be attributed to the legacy of the colonial regime whose accomplishments have never been matched since then.
The real problem is lack of elite human capital and cultural values. I have treated this issue in a longer piece published on Tove K's Substack. You can check it out for a more comprehensive treatment.
C’mon. Are you really suggesting it’s a coincidence that every black-controlled region - without exception - fails for a variety of different reasons? It doesn’t matter if it’s in Africa, the Caribbean (see Haiti and Jamaica), South America or US cities, it’s the same pattern: violent crime, substance abuse, domestic abuse, poverty, unemployment, zero entrepreneurship, poor academics, etc. I’m not saying it is necessarily about IQ. In fact, an inability to cooperate, follow rules and do the right thing when nobody is looking seem to be even more damaging to these communities than low IQ. Poor white Scots-Irish have many of the same deficiencies. Whether genetic or cultural, these societies simply cannot compete in modern civilization. And unless we sever our connection, they will drag us all (global civilization) down with them. This is precisely why Europe is swerving sharply to the RIght.
We don't need datasets going back to 1200 AD to show how countries develop over time. We only need to look at the 20th century.
Look at Singapore and Haiti in 1945 vs today. Look at the Australian Aborigines today. The Australian government has been giving them freebies for the past 70+ years and they still manage to live pretty much the same way as when Captain James Cook found them in 1769! If you're an Aboriginal person in Australia today, you can have any job you're qualified for because every company and government agency has to hire you. Unfortunately, most jobs require that you be able to read, follow directions, and actually show up to work on time and not get into fist fights with coworkers. They're genetically unable to do that so they don't work and wants to get welfare instead.
If a small minority within a wealthy White country cannot form any semblance of self reliance, how are they expected to self govern?
Everyone needs to examine their biases and prejudices every now and again. So I read your article with interest to examine those within myself. However, I am still not convinced those biases are groundless, or for that matter an irrational prejudice on my part.
Here is my simple rebuttal to your counterfactual (a counterfactual in itself?)—South Africa!
SA was a first world nation when it turned itself over to the Black majority rule in the mid-nineties. I believe they even perfected a nuclear weapon, not to mention the world’s first heart transplant! Heck they gave us Elon Musk to boot. ;-) But that was then and this is now.
In the span of basically a quarter century (the turnover of political authority was staged and took a bit of time), they are a basket case—brownouts throughout the nation, water crises in major cities, farmers being killed in the middle of the night and their farms confiscated, inflation, White dispossession and White homeless encampments, riots and the like. Not to mention politicians running on “kill the Boar” platforms. This “grand experiment” is not yet over. It will become worse and certainly would be had it not been for the few remaining Whites they allow to remain in significant managerial positions within the general economy—this do to law requiring mostly Black hires regardless of merit. We call this here in the States, AA.
If Africa’s problem is less about the general (sub)African’s genetic makeup and more about their peculiar development timing and geographical predicaments, how do we explain SA before and after Black rule as described above? The answer—genetics—both wrt to IQ *and* behavioral proclivities (also tied to genetics). The economists’ excuses notwithstanding, Africa is Africa because of Africans. The experimental result of replacing the SA White controlling population with a Black controlling population is pretty good evidence of this as any measurement and experimental design person will attest to.
Finally, I’ll note that we too in the USA are also partaking in such an SA experiment here at home—only at a much slower rate—as we replace our White heritage population with non-White, diversity. And as we produce a generally lower national IQ, we too will test the limits of our “Smart Fraction” to keep and maintain a first world technological society. That limit is not yet known, but as we approach it, we will see signs—and they won’t be pretty. :-(
South Africa (which was a poor country by per capital GDP even in the 1980s) was not merely handed over to a "Black controlling population", it was handed over to Black Communists. Mandela himself was a card-carrying member of the South African Communist Party. So the relevant comparison isn't SA compared to the West, it's SA compared to White and Asian Communist countries such as Laos and the Eastern Bloc.
Of course, South Africa is arguably worse than the Eastern Bloc and THAT difference is probably due to race, but South Africa is actually a perfect example of my thesis that African poverty is largely attributable to Communist misrule.
Botswana has an almost entirely Black population but Botswana is richer than South Africa which has White and Indian minorities. How is that possible if South Africa's sorry condition is merely a product of its genes?
I accept and thank you for your reply, but don’t find your blaming communism persuasive because it does not explain sufficiently why SA dysfunction continues to happen. But I am hardly an expert in these matters, so consider the source.
The government of SA seems to hold elections on a regular basis, yet the people seem to continue to vote for the same socialistic/communistic government/party—which you dismiss as communist—but is that a sufficient explanation for why such government first rose to power and remains in power?
Seems the people of SA are too “stupid” to know that such a form of government has been pretty much discredited all over the world. India, China, Vietnam, and Russia seem to have gotten wise, albeit China still professes its communist roots (however, they are just authoritarian capitalists). SA, not so much.
If what you say—that their system doesn’t work because “communism”— is true, where is the change we’ve seen elsewhere from such? The deterioration I mentioned seems to continue unabated.
I can’t help comparing SA elections to what occurs in an eight grade classroom where the winning candidate promises rainbows and lollipops to fellow children in exchange for their votes. Of course we expect that. Given the level of intellect and understanding of an eight grade classroom, rainbows and lollipops wins every time.
Also, I am wondering why the government, at least the prior one that held control for so long, needed to make regular threats of genocide against the White minority? Is this a communist dictate? Or rather an appeal to a low IQ populace that believes in spirits, voodoo, and the White bogeyman rather than the correct assumption of a corrupt government which does not serve their needs?
I will readily admit however, we see the same wrt politics in my own country (USA), and I’d argue for much the same reason—a declining population IQ.
To be fair, black south africans seem to be slowly coming round to the reality that apartheid was probably the more functional system.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smyuFxrxfek
Yes. Thanks for the reference. My comments have often been based upon some video such as you refer to. However usually made by Whites, many formerly employed in some of the industries mentioned such as the national power company. There is also a videographer who specializes in taking some shocking “before and after” photos of well known spots in SA.
As we see here is the States, there is often a lot of confounding of the factors leading to my comments on SA decline as a functioning society. Perhaps the biggest one is that there are many “grifters” (politicians) who rise to power in these places and they compound the situation through their poor leadership and graft. We have this here as well.
South Africa isn’t communist. Neither is Detroit.
It’s an incompetent kleptocracy that redirects wealth from producers to parasites, but the state doesn’t own the means of production and it’s not a one party dictatorship. Blacks just vote for bad policies because they are too dumb to know better.
Botswana has a very low population relative to their natural resources. It’s great they’ve done what they’ve done but you can’t really apply those lessons to the rest of Africa.
Botswana also has a white minority that's heavily involved in the business sector, and as forumposter mentions, was generously endowed with mineral resources relative to population size. Despite generally competent governance and heavy investment in education they have almost nothing in the way of a home-grown manufacturing or IT sector.
If the only way the South African success story could be maintained was by the total domination of the Black majority by the white minority, that system wasn't sustainable.
You’ve a point there. The proportion of Blacks to Whites was always high, and grew even worse after hand over. None the less, the “experiment” in sharing power in a democratic way seems problematic in SA. We’ve seen any number of examples across the world of two vastly different (in terms of ability) populations trying to live together peacefully, but not successfully. Diversity is not strength in those cases, but a liability. Such seems the nature of people. If the difference between two groups becomes too large…chaos and violence.
Why not? Most states throughout history have operated on those kinds of principles.
Africa is poor largely because of the quality and intelligence level of its inhabitants. What wealth or ‘development’ exists is the result of western or Chinese assistance and direct involvement. The author sounds like another apologist for our current economic and financial system. Africans should largely be left alone by people like the author to develop their own system to the best of their abilities. Africans like Asians will never be white or western. Different peoples different ways and standards. One economic or political model isn’t suitable for all people on the planet.
Having worked in Africa on projects over two decades, I came away dispirited there will be any last development. Even basic things, like primary school education, seem beyond the grasp of local governments. Perhaps it is our ideals in the West of what they should be.
Africa has a lot of natural resources. If it could solve its resource curse then some areas could potentially become a middle income economy by hiring high IQ people to build their civilization for them (this is basically what some monarchies in the Middle East have done).
The issue is that:
1) Solving the resource curse is hard for low IQ people. I suspect any solution is contingent and situational.
2) Your resources per citizen have to be pretty high to make it work (this is the case in Botswana but not other parts of Africa).
3) Birthrates and migration threaten anyone that is in position #2, and its really hard to stop that in Africa.
I'm not convinced that it's really so hard for low-IQ people to solve the "Resource Curse." All the oil-rich Arab monarchies have done it.
Relative to population, the richer gulf countries are extremely resource rich. Most African countries wouldn't fall into that mold.
It's a great accomplishment that their monarchies have managed the stability necessary to make something of it. Most states in Africa aren't monarchies with the same legitimacy though. And of course monarchies have an obvious failure mode.
The Middle Easts geographic position makes illegal immigration basically impossible. Its geopolitical security is basically guaranteed by the United States. In Africa successful countries have to deal with immigration and invasion from less successful rivals.
I would ask less "is it theoretically possible" then "would I bet my own money on it". People are very reluctant to engage in FDI in Africa.
Botswana has 2,6 million inhabitants with 2,8 TFR. Extreme outlier in SSAfrica...
"This view was put succinctly by the co-discoverer of DNA, James Watson, who said that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.”
Succinctly and correctly.
"Let’s suppose for the sake of argument that race differences in intelligence are largely attributable to genes."
No 'suppose' about it. It is a fact.
Without the extensive support from European and later Asian countries, sub-Saharan Africa would be even worse. Like many before, the author is making excuses for the terrible developmental progress in sub-Saharan Africa.
Botswana is a meme country. I will leave some relevant stats here, from an old comment of mine:
I used to fall for the idea there are somewhat developed SS African states but recently discovered both the nations I used as an example were not actually that. The main one was Botswana but I recently discovered they're significantly worse than Moldova wich is the worst European state. I used the following data points to arrive at that conclusion:
-Moldova has a murder rate of 2.2 per 100k against 10.5 from Botswana (source: UNODC)
-Moldova has about twice the median income of Botswana (source: Our world in data using world bank numbers)
-The unemployment rate in Moldova is 3.6% contra a staggering 30% from Botswana (source: world bank).
-The gini index, a measurement of inequality, is about TWICE higher in Botswana. It's about 0.26 in Moldova contra 0.53 in Botswana.
- Energy use per person is almost twice higher in Moldova
-The life expectancy in Moldova is 10 years higher than in Botswana¹ (source: WHO-GHO, 2024)
-Moldova has 4.06 doctors per 1k against 0.35. Literally. Over 10x the difference.
States like Botswana are only superficailly successful because they have infinity natural resources who's generated wealth is distributed among the general population in GDP per capita estimates. The country itself is miserable.
1- Sources disagree on this but most agree there is at least a 2 year gap favoring Moldova.
One small correction and addition:
1- The "life expectancy" gap of 10 years is fully real and not result of sources disagreeing. It's just that the gap is in "healthy life expectancy" rather than regular life expectancy. This measure tells us how many years you can expect to live in a country unburneded by any major illnesses or disabilities. Given Botswana's large AIDS epidemic and lack of doctors this is not unexpected. You can see the comparisson between Botswana and Moldova here:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthy-life -expectancy-at-birth?tab=chart&country=BWA ~MDA
2- Botswana's lack of doctors is even more stark once you consider how little of the doctors they do have are from Botswana itself. "Only 21% of the doctors registered with the Botswana Health Professions Council were from Botswana, the rest being mainly from other African countries." (Source: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles /PMC4564932/)
The actual life expectancy gap between Botswana and Moldova is 2 to 3 years
If only there were some exceptions among the many countries in Africa, or even out of Africa like Haiti. There is an overwhelming lack of human capital, with much of what little there is emigrating to the West. Clearly, the flows will have to be reversed, somehow, some way. Or else the cauldron to evolution will grind out a new human race. But that will take centuries if not hundreds of generations. Here is an interview with a Cameroonian film maker I read years ago:
Renegade Cameroonian filmmaker and theorist Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama pulls no punches about his disaffection with the state of affairs in his native country. It’s time, he argues, to quit the hypocrisy and turn off the autopilot.
Chronic Q: You say that you are in favour of a recolonisation of Cameroon?
Jean-Pierre Bekolo Obama: After fifty-two years of independence, the time has come for us to take stock of how we’ve been thinking the world over this past half-century and to draw basic conclusions from this. We have to face up to the fact that the ideologies of self-determination and, ultimately, independence born of the national liberation movements we all supported are no longer in synch with the realities of present-day globalisation. It’s for this reason that we are at an impasse. It’s become self-evident that we won’t get where we want to go by insisting on doing things on our own, because, in some regards, we’re just in over our heads.
Q: So you want the white man to come back and exploit us, whip in hand?
JPBO: The whip is already here. Just take a look at Côte d’Ivoire and Libya. Everybody’s pillaging, even the Chinese! We can’t blame them – we’re the ones who abandoned the notion of self-determination, so let’s admit it once and for all and make it official. There’s no doubt about it: 52 years after independence, Africa in general, and Cameroon in particular, have taken onboard key aspects of the colonial project they once rejected.
In the end, the colonial project turned out to be far more successful than its initiators could ever have hoped – the only difference being that, as he wasn’t well seen to be a colonialist any more, the pilot parachuted out of the plane. Another one took over – he’s the one at the controls now – and he’s a crappy pilot doing his thing without a real flight plan. He pretends that he knows his way around the cockpit, but it’s just an ego trip.
He’s a puppet pilot, whose only goal is to exploit for his own wellbeing resources that belong to the collective. What we need to do is turn the clock back to the moment when things started to go wrong, to the point where the lying and the hypocrisy began: that is, to the moment of so-called independence. If we get rid of the negatives – exploitation and oppression – the recolonisation project is likely to go over very well with the
people of Africa, who just can’t take it anymore. Even when it comes to safeguarding our cultures, it’s the white folks who care the most. Our art and our artists get more support from the West than from these parts and, meanwhile, we’re dreaming of Chinese doodads, second-hand cars and stuff white people buy. It’s like things haven’t changed since the days of slavery. Let’s thank Jacques Chirac for the Quai Branly museum: at least our heritage is being taken care of.
Q: You revere the white man?
JPBO: It’s not me: it’s Africans in general and Cameroonians more particularly. Give it a try: go into a public administration building with a white man, see how Cameroonians behave when faced with a European, today. In business, people often seek out a white person to act as a front, just to be taken seriously. If we’re going to play that game, then let’s get the best whities in here! It’s time we dealt with the real issues! Where are we now? That’s the question.
The white man may be gone, but the pillage and the oppression he brought are still there. That, we kept. The people in power now are proud of this government, this omnipotent blunderbuss of a thing they didn’t even create, whose sole goal was to oppress and exploit. In the eyes of this elite of ours, the country is a cake there for the eating, not a common project, something we all work at together.
The people who govern us owe everything to the white man: the diplomas they brandish to ‘prove’ their superiority; the high-ranking positions they milk for personal gain; the cars they drive; the suits they wear; and the kids they send abroad to get a decent education. Even the president is a product of the white man! He patterns himself on him – and he’s proud of it. Don’t we say of Paul Biya that ‘he’s a white man’? His whole entourage is expected to act white along with him. There’s little room made for Africa and its traditions in the state apparatus – except for those traditional dance troops that get trotted out at the airport whenever the president travels, as if the whole thing hadn’t been a colonial invention in the first place, created to cheer and stomp whenever some De Gaulle flunky showed up.
Q: You mean that Africans are incompetent?
JPBO: Let’s be honest: what really works here? Why do we need to inflict such pain on our people? Just as a matter of ego, so we can claim that we’re actually running our own country? You know, in life it can happen that you get in over your head. There’s no shame in admitting it. We may have tried to build a modern, democratic state that fulfils the needs of our citizens, but we failed. No one can claim otherwise. It’s time we quit with the hypocrisy and began moving forward. Let’s not forget that we didn’t create our countries. Cameroon is a Western invention: its territory, its laws, its cities – Yaoundé and Douala – all of it. Even its name. White people named it after the Portuguese word for shrimp (camaroes), and we’re proud of that name. How can we hope to make it when we live in a colonial shell, empty of all content, because those who made that content – our very state – have jumped ship?
Q: So you’re saying that recolonisation is a part of globalisation?
JPBO: In this age of multinational corporations, what government can reasonably claim to run its economy? The concept of self-determination
has become little more than a political weapon in the hands of a corrupt ruling elite claiming to face off with Western powers, while consigning its people to an ideological prison and robbing them blind.
So it’s time for Cameroon to shed its duplicity and hypocrisy because today, more than ever before, we need foreigners to help us resolve the many problems we face. Let’s say it loud and clear. Enough with the silence in which we shroud what the people already know: that we need all the outside help we can get. And let’s let the people decide how much of that help we want and if and when we want it to stop.
You are right. Colonialism provided the missing human capital for Africa. If Lynn's IQ data is correct, the entire SSAfrica region has fewer people with IQ>150 than even in Hungary, with ten million people...
I'm 32 years and I often chat with people over 75 years
Europeans who went to sub-Saharan Africa and who really discouraged me from hoping for anything from black Africa.
they all unanimously declare that the population is on average too stupid to do anything.
except for exceptions cited such as Botswana or others.
This is a Darwinian lesson we have.
Evolution has no purpose or meaning and Nature can create a population completely opposite to another... and completely stupid.
this is unfortunately the case.
there is nothing to expect from this population.
it's really a subspecies.
they will transform into distinct species...
This scenario is the most likely.
The information on Zimbabwe's diamond mines is wrong. We didn't even know we had diamonds until AFTER the country had been destroyed by land reform. The diamond rush began in the mid 2000s and, to some extent, continues until now. Most of the diamonds, in any case, are not "mines" but alluvial fields.
Other than that, fair argument.
"A higher standard of living for Africa really is possible… if the Left would just get out the way." The left is the side which is vaccinating Africans and implementing family planning and contraception. It is the right, with Trump, that wants to abandon Africa to be governed by Russia's Wagner mercenaries and China's overseas investment.
Well, I certainly applaud Aporia's commitment to fielding diverse ideological perspectives.
The history of England up to 1650 was one of warlords and selfish elites.
What changed in 1650? The country became governed by Parliament and Parliament was governed by fanatical puritans who put the People first. This Parliamentary rule was formalised in the 1688 Bill of Rights. (See https://therenwhere.substack.com/p/the-history-of-england )
I have visited much of the world and it is clear that corruption visibly creates poverty. This is corroborated by various reports on the effects of corruption. Corruption is putting the interests of warlords and selfish elites above those of the People.
African countries know that corruption is the problem but the anti-corruption efforts become corrupted.
The biggest corrupters in our modern world are global corporations and banks.
Laughable explanation of Africa's post-colonial development failures. One need only look at the devolution of infrastructure and social institutions left by the colonial powers the middle of the last century. Ripped up railroad tracks sold for scrap, everywhere ruins of roads, hospitals, schools, and industry. Only government, military, and a rapacious Mabenzi overclass thrive.
Suggest a quick read of 2008's "Blood River: A Journey to Africa's Broken Heart" which reprises in the year 2000 Stanley's 1874 arduous journey to find Dr. Livingstone (echoed years later by the author's mother's settlement experience in Africa). It's all there in Tim Butcher's well-written and heartbreaking prose.
I'm a Nigerian and I want the thesis advanced here to be very much true. But I just find it difficult to accept that the extreme and stubborn backwardness of most of black Africa has nothing to do, if not with our gene pool, at least with the sociobiological reality emergent from it. I've had to consider the thought that the typical black African society is not capable of organizing itself using the social principles and instrumentalities associated with the west and other developed economies. Botswana and Rwanda appear to me more as exceptions than the rule. And it's just wrong to base your theory on a few exceptional cases. Yes, perhaps you're right that the socialist-communist incursions are largely responsible for the damage wreaked on this subcontinent, but you also have to explain why this ideology is so appealing and acceptable there.
As a Nigerian who presumably lives in Nigeria, do you think if the larger ethnoreligious groups were to separate, that these resulting states would be more stable and prosperous?
No. There are 36 states in Nigeria which are more or less clustered around the major ethnic groups. The states are further grouped into 6 geopolitical zones: for instance, the southwest is predominantly Yoruba consisting of 6 states, the southeast predominantly Igbó consisting of 5 states and so on. Each of these states have considerable autonomy from the federal centre and gets monthly allocations from the centre in addition to freedom to create wealth for their state.
Yet none of the state, except perhaps Lagos (which is debatable) is able to match the economic and administrative efficiency of federal-controlled institutions and parastatals - and this is even setting the bar extremely low since the corruption and incompetence at federal level is gargantuan. The federal actors are selected through the states and so there's really no difference in human quality here.
In truth, things were a bit better in the period before and after independence (1960) when we operate a regional system consisting of just three regions - Western, Eastern, and Northern regions (which translated roughly into the Yorubas, the Igbos, and the Hausa/Fulani ethnopolitical groupings). But this success could very well be attributed to the legacy of the colonial regime whose accomplishments have never been matched since then.
The real problem is lack of elite human capital and cultural values. I have treated this issue in a longer piece published on Tove K's Substack. You can check it out for a more comprehensive treatment.
https://woodfromeden.substack.com/p/guest-post-the-global-iq-debate-a?publication_id=831683&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=1gxdk6&utm_medium=email
C’mon. Are you really suggesting it’s a coincidence that every black-controlled region - without exception - fails for a variety of different reasons? It doesn’t matter if it’s in Africa, the Caribbean (see Haiti and Jamaica), South America or US cities, it’s the same pattern: violent crime, substance abuse, domestic abuse, poverty, unemployment, zero entrepreneurship, poor academics, etc. I’m not saying it is necessarily about IQ. In fact, an inability to cooperate, follow rules and do the right thing when nobody is looking seem to be even more damaging to these communities than low IQ. Poor white Scots-Irish have many of the same deficiencies. Whether genetic or cultural, these societies simply cannot compete in modern civilization. And unless we sever our connection, they will drag us all (global civilization) down with them. This is precisely why Europe is swerving sharply to the RIght.
An accurate description of the situation in Africa. If the UN could withdraw from Africa, we would at least make progress.
We don't need datasets going back to 1200 AD to show how countries develop over time. We only need to look at the 20th century.
Look at Singapore and Haiti in 1945 vs today. Look at the Australian Aborigines today. The Australian government has been giving them freebies for the past 70+ years and they still manage to live pretty much the same way as when Captain James Cook found them in 1769! If you're an Aboriginal person in Australia today, you can have any job you're qualified for because every company and government agency has to hire you. Unfortunately, most jobs require that you be able to read, follow directions, and actually show up to work on time and not get into fist fights with coworkers. They're genetically unable to do that so they don't work and wants to get welfare instead.
If a small minority within a wealthy White country cannot form any semblance of self reliance, how are they expected to self govern?