Is this why the countries in the Sahel region are generally poorer than the countries in their immed
Sept 6, 2022 4:48:38 GMT
Post by justiniano on Sept 6, 2022 4:48:38 GMT
Before I start this, I am admitting my hypothesis COULD VERY WELL BE WRONG, I will GLADLY be proven wrong if done in a respectful manner. And I'd also like to clarify that when I say north Africa I am only referring to countries on Africa's mediterranean coast. Anyway, on to why I think this is...
In Pre-colonial africa, generally the further south one would go, the more primitive it would be. When the europeans colonized africa and built schools they were generally only for the children of the colonizers and the only africans they would allow to attend those schools were generally from the royal families of various tribes. However, before colonization catholic & protestant missionaries would often times get killed, after colonization it was much safer for missionaries to go to africa, and these missionaries built schools. These missionary schools weren't quite as good as schools in Europe but they were still vastly superior to indigenous African education (No offense) and ofc muslims in the sahel and countries on the north coast of africa would never send their children to missionary schools unless they were very secular. However, since north africa was already more advanced they're wealthier than the sahel countries. Not to mention that due to the racism of the European colonizers and North Africans being more european looking they allowed a higher proportion of them to attend the schools built by the colonizers (different from the ones built by missionaries) for e.g. the country where the colonizer allowed the highest proportion of their population to attend schools they built was Algeria. I can't recall if it was 5% of their whole population or just 5% of Algeria's students. And last but not least possibly natural resources.
Although, by this logic senegal should also be a very poor country like Niger, chad, mali, mauritania, etc. In my personal view it is because the leaders of Senegal have made more altruistic and smarter decisions, but again I could be wrong.
I also want to make this clear. I am NOT saying that in the parts of Africa outside of the sahel, colonialism did more good than bad. I don't even believe I am qualified to answer the question of whether the colonizing countries did more good than bad for africa as there are so many countries in Africa that I know very little about.
In Pre-colonial africa, generally the further south one would go, the more primitive it would be. When the europeans colonized africa and built schools they were generally only for the children of the colonizers and the only africans they would allow to attend those schools were generally from the royal families of various tribes. However, before colonization catholic & protestant missionaries would often times get killed, after colonization it was much safer for missionaries to go to africa, and these missionaries built schools. These missionary schools weren't quite as good as schools in Europe but they were still vastly superior to indigenous African education (No offense) and ofc muslims in the sahel and countries on the north coast of africa would never send their children to missionary schools unless they were very secular. However, since north africa was already more advanced they're wealthier than the sahel countries. Not to mention that due to the racism of the European colonizers and North Africans being more european looking they allowed a higher proportion of them to attend the schools built by the colonizers (different from the ones built by missionaries) for e.g. the country where the colonizer allowed the highest proportion of their population to attend schools they built was Algeria. I can't recall if it was 5% of their whole population or just 5% of Algeria's students. And last but not least possibly natural resources.
Although, by this logic senegal should also be a very poor country like Niger, chad, mali, mauritania, etc. In my personal view it is because the leaders of Senegal have made more altruistic and smarter decisions, but again I could be wrong.
I also want to make this clear. I am NOT saying that in the parts of Africa outside of the sahel, colonialism did more good than bad. I don't even believe I am qualified to answer the question of whether the colonizing countries did more good than bad for africa as there are so many countries in Africa that I know very little about.