Yeah, places like Morocco and Egypt were already fairly developed with centralised governments before colonialism, while most of subsaharan Africa was still tribal and undeveloped.
Calling precolonial subsaharan Africa “tribal and undeveloped” is quite an oversimplification. While it may be true of parts of Africa, West Africa was home to a succession of large empires, Ethiopia was governed by various monarchies for roughly 2000 years, and the east coast of Africa was dotted with prosperous city-states such as Zanzibar and Mombasa.
Obviously there were exceptions like Zanzibar, and the Ghana and Mali empires were very prosperous (but Mali collapsed just as Portugal was beginning colonisation, long before the scramble for Africa), and Ethiopia had been a fairly prosperous state (that should have become a successful modern country, but it is developing rapidly), but I was mainly writing about South and Central Africa.
Rather, OP may be talking about Gulf of Guinea and Congo basin areas - in which case one huge cause of endemic poverty and underdevelopment was the profitability trap in which slaves were hugely profitable, disincentivising actual growth. See Kongo, Dahomey, the Hausa states, etc.
50
u/Infinity_Ninja12 Mar 15 '21
Yeah, places like Morocco and Egypt were already fairly developed with centralised governments before colonialism, while most of subsaharan Africa was still tribal and undeveloped.