₦airaland Forum

If we have the right leadership yes, I do believe it is possible, not necessarily on the continental scale but at least on the
regional one like ECOWAS or East African Community with Swahili as their common language.
I've been trying to convince some nairalanders the past few days that this is the best course for Africans but it seems like many here are reticent. If there is ever a unification project, I will remember that Nigeria is where forces ought to be concentrated.

"Protect religion, Kill the Han and destroy the Hui", that is an Uyghur proverb.
50 people died 4 days in Xinjiang region of China.
Let's not forget the tensions between the Manchus and the Hans and the Tibetan conflict.
The difference is, the Chinese leadership is progressive enough to rid itself of those minor differences and lead the populace
whereas in Africa, politicians are the ones playing on them the most.

kingston277: EU/NATO isn't a state, though. It is a political organization that serves the interest of the various states of the continent that are affliated with it. I don't understand how you can confuse the two. Europe is just fine as it is with the EU it does not need a conferderation to destroy any remnants of Ethnic exclusive cultures and stability. A hand full of peripheral politicians aren't going to make that federation happen.

Did you forget the part where I mentioned how Nigel Farage is opposed to the EU because he believes its true goal is a federal Europe? For now the EU is an organization but make no mistake, its goal is in building a continental state.

kingston277: The time it would take to name the number of mono-ethnic nations would be time consuming, I'm sure you've heard of the success of Botswana as well as other world wide mono-ethnic nations. Face it, a mono-ethnic country is the safest route.

Bostwana isn't a monoethnic state. Thank you for bringing them up by the way, they are a good example of how a political system that ensure participation by everyone can built a cohesive society. Here is an extract from wikipedia.

"The advisory House of Chiefs represents the eight principal subgroups of the Botswana people, and four other members are elected by the subchiefs of four of the districts. A draft of any National Assembly bill of tribal concern must be referred to the House of Chiefs for advisory opinion. Chiefs and other leaders preside over customary, traditional courts, though all persons have the right to request that their case be considered under the formal British-based legal system."

kingston277: Did foreign forces invade our single-ethnic states, then?
And please read what happened to Songhai and Bornu as well. Multiethnic can only work with cohesion, that didn't last long enough for those two kingdoms.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songhai_Empire
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bornu_Empire#Decline_and_Fall

I have addressed the issue of the decline of these empires, particularly the Songhai empire. It did decline because the central authority at some point was unable to destroy trouble makers and it ended up in civil war. Deploying troops faster was a hassle we do not have now.Even the Moroccans that destroyed the empires couldn't rule such a vast state. It eventually split into dozens of kingdoms that were all weak and that's when things started getting really bad for Africans. But did you read the Economy part? How beautiful was that.
Even in monoethnic kingdoms there will still be conflicts, the Sokoto Caliphate exploited the differences among the Yoruba didn't it? Once you turn down to ethnic state then, tribes or clans become the new thing. Somalis are one ethnic group, look at their state?
My point: what is most important is a political system that allows everyone to participate.

kingston277: Where did you get the information to generalize that most states didn't place restrictions on the slave trading? And grow our economy? Why do you think states like Benin place restrictions in the first place? You think they were satisfied with letting their production levels fall because of whiteman?

And earlier you said this...

kingston277: To maintain the high production. No-one knows how high their production was prior to 19th century but we know the slave trade was a huge threat to (non-slave trading) industries. The rulers needed to look for new ways to combat potential decline in production so they restricted slave trading. Whats the issue again?

Walter Rodney would disagree with the Historians to quoted. I would like to clarify a one thing. Condemning slavery is not intended to make Africans guilty. After all the vast majority of Africans were not involved in the trade, and there were some opposed to it.
Going back to Rodney, here is quote from his book "How Europe Underdeveloped Africa"

Walter Rodney: The above changeover from gold mining to slave raiding took place within a period of a few years between 1700 and 1710, when the Gold Coast (modern Ghana) came to supply about five thousand to six thousand captives per year. By the end of the eighteenth century, a much smaller number of captives were exported from the Gold Coast, but the damage had already been done. It is worth noting the Europeans sought out different parts of West and Central Africa at different times to play the role of major suppliers of slaves to the Americas. This meant that virtually every section of the long western coastline between the Senegal and Cunene rivers had at least a few years experience of intensive trade in slaves with all its consequences. Besides, in the history of eastern Nigeria, the Congo, northern Angola and Dahomey, there were periods extending over decades, when exports remained at an average of many thousands per year. Most of those areas were also relatively highly developed within the African context. They were leading forces inside Africa, whose energies would otherwise have gone towards their own self-improvement and the betterment of the continent as a whole.

Basically here is what he is saying in this part of the book. Instead of gold mining, part of the African elite turned to slave trading because it was more profitable for them. The Europeans gave them in exchange "guns, ammunition, cloth, cooking utensils and alcoholic beverages". Not withstanding the fact that this cheap junk competed with the local economy, but also that African elite that willingly participated in the trade did not foresee the long term consequence for their economy.
Here is another quote from Rodney that corroborates what I stated earlier. The small states were just too weak to ensure stability just like how Liberia and Sierra Leone are unable to do it today. An epidemic is threatening the existence of Liberia. Break Liberia into Kru, Khran, Mandingo states and you'll have nothing, maybe states the size of a neighborhood of Lagos.

Walter Rodney: However, on the whole, the process by which captives were obtained on African soil was not trade at all. It was through warfare, trickery, banditry and kidnapping. When one tries to measure the effect of European slave trading on the African continent, it is essential to realize that one is measuring the effect of social violence, rather than trade in any normal sense of the word.

reedonne: Regional level:
West africa can have a NATO style military union(just like ecomog) run by West africa security council.
West africa can have a trade union which will be responsible for linking african state with each other, encoraging inter-state trade etc.
West africa can also have an organization that will take care of political problem and secession.

National level:
We can make re-organization of border if possible to allow largest ethnic groups like Hausa,fulani,yoruba,wolof and igbo have their distinct states. Other ethnic group can then merge to build their own state.
Ideal state population should be about 50million people.
Then multi-ethnic states should use parliamentary system(with a strong emphasis on sharing of power.)
Multi ethnic states should be organized like the spanish autonomous community and self determination should be out of the constitution. (Spain is unitary state with great amount of devolution(more devolve than our Nigeria). Each community have a deal with the national goverment over the amount of power they want to have. Eg a community may have power over security while another doesnt.(like the north which dislike state police while the south is in support)).
The autonomous community should be created along ethnic lines and any community can split from its autonomous community if they get 60% vote in a general referendum.

this is exactly my point of view. If people want to have their ethnic state so bad, fine they can have it but prior to that we need to make sure we aren't invaded in the process.
If we decide to do it otherwise, we will get overrun in no time. Images of hungry children from East Africa in the 1990s will be shown and they will claim it is in West Africa, they will throw numbers at their people. They will propaganda to justify their invasion and their people, ever so gullible, will believe it.
Dwight D Eisenhower used the same excuse to send the CIA to RDCongo and get Lumumba assassinated along with the Belgium and the African traitors that worked with them. Nkrumah was called an African Mussolini by the Belgium secret agencies due to his Pan Africanism , we know what happened to him too. It is servants like Houphouet of Cote d'Ivoire and Mubutu of Congo that will survive. At least Houphouet worked for his people and had something to show for.

kingston277: Where have you see Europeans uniting? [b]Other than EU/NATO I haven't. [/b]In fact the USSR and Scotland issues are suggesting otherwise.

Isn't it what we are talking about though? Uniting Africans under a state that will control foreign policy, currency and army. How is NATO+EU different from that? Why do people like Nigel Farage are opposed to the EU, it's possible they believe the true design is a federal Europe. That's what their goal is. And what do you propose meanwhile, that Africans, with ECOWAS economy not being the size of France to just remain in their ethnic states because it is more cohesive. Those would be overrun in no time. No African ethnic state can compete globally. Name me one if you can.

[quote author="kingston277]Good luck trying to unite people with no ethnic, historical, linguistic, or religious affiliation. The mass tribalism will surely keep that super-nation under Western thumbs.[/quote]And why couldn't foreign forces invade us when we had our multiethnic empires/states? Seriously though, every ethnic group will be diluted to such an extend that it would be foolish for a politician to play on those lines. Just like how during the independence movement, the Rassemblement Democratique Africain had no tribalism in it. Everybody was "African" that's it. You couldn't talk ethnicity because you had no incentive to do so. What defined the leaders was their ideas, their sense of leadership and devotion to the African cause.
I will tell you another thing. Francophone Africa had two zones, west and equatorial. The Afrique Occidentale Francaise (French West Africa) had all of the current french speaking states with a federal capital in Dakar. De Gaulle, the french president, in order to destroy that union proposes a new constitution that had to be ratified by referendum. Sekou toure, the president of Guinea along with some others asked that the Unions remain the same and to be recognized by the constitution. De Gaulle refused, a gave the states the "option to take independence alone or to unite with another whenever it wanted to take its independence". Guineans saw through the scheme, it was just another readjustment of their colonial policy. We opted for the NO and took independence, all of the other states still have their currency run by France. But what happened is that France was able to destroy that strong union that could have produced beautiful things for us. There was no tribalism back then, we could have used our larger economy to create a bigger tax base, use public debt to finance infrastructure projects. But instead we ended up with small states that couldn't do anything for themselves. We are still POOR. At the time, it was one currency, commercial zone, open borders, railroads connecting the capitals. Now everyone is in his little corner, calling himself a state, when they can't even finance their goddamn budget. How many of such states will pop if we go along ethnic lines?

[quote author="kingston277]Quite a few, along with Irish, Chinese and Indians. Africans were the largest but it remains under debate what lead to the scale the slave trade got to. We don't have all the answers.


Africans didn't need to buy any slaves, warfare allowed them to capture, enslave, and extract information from reversal Europeans. Look at King Agaja or the Kanem-Bornu Empire. Foreign slaves were very valuable in those days.


To an extent they did...
http://historum.com/middle-eastern-african-history/68815-slaves-brought-into-sub-saharan-africa.html
...But they also traded beast of burden, weapons and horses, too.[/quote]Between Africans selling millions and few Arabs and Europeans being caught in the trade is different my friend. No matter how you look at it, Africans lost this trade. Instead of using that labor to grow our economy. Well the others did that with the people they took from Africa.
And the evidence is there, just look at the Caribbean or go to the USA, you will see it clearly.

Fulaman198: That's very interesting. I wonder why they do it that way. What is your take on it?

it used to be worse actually. All of the teaching in formal education was done in French, then Arabic was introduced in social studies leaving Maths and Science to French. And progressively, Arabic took over primary and secondary education with French still being taught.
Who knows, maybe they'll get rid of French altogether some day.

Fulaman198: I don't see the reason why they learn in French when they all mainly can speak Arabic. That is still one thing today that confuses me. When you have countries in the middle east that are educated only in Arabic, the Tunisians, Moroccans, and the Algerians are educated in French....Does that also go back to the inferiority complex we discusses earlier?

I think they use Arabic for primary and secondary schools and French in Universities and Professional schools, at least in Morocco that's the case.

AmunRaOlodumare: They also use their own cultures and languages as foundation for their development.

that's it, we have to built off of what we already have.

Fulaman198: Forward thinking people does not mean withdrawing from one's culture to become westernised. Forgetting your own language, culture and tradition does not make you forward thinking. It just means you have a major inferiority complex.

Every nation needs the core essentials for success. This means Engineering, math, science. What Bandirawo OmarBah is saying is why can't those subjects which usually lead to a nation's success be taught in our native countries like in Asian and European countries that don't speak English.

Currently the only place that can be done is in Northern Nigeria within Nigeria due to the fact that many ethnic groups like my own speak Hausa as a second language. The only issue which isn't much of a big deal would be finding people that can teach these engineering courses.

I'm actually considering uploading some engineering tutorial videos in Fulfulde and Hausa on YouTube. I'm contemplating my teaching methods to make it easy for people to learn.

Yorubas could do the same in western Nigeria.
Again, nothing prevents them from teaching English as a second language.

kingston277: Which is why pleep suggested absorbing different ethnic groups into a state with one dominant ruling ethnic group like it was done in the olden days. Sounds difficult doesn't it? Well thats your only other proven to work option other than ethnic nations.

wrong, if the Europeans with their stronger economies are uniting why can't we? Good luck going through the war thing, what a sweet opportunity that would be for Europeans to come back.

kingston277: Only Africans? Where did you get that? My slave trade book im reading even has an example of Africans fighting and capturing Arab slave traders and selling them off to the West. Not to mention this: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25118876
https://www.indiacurrents.com/articles/2007/05/16/indian-slaves-in-colonial-america
Not sure where you got "only Africans as the human commodity" from.

You seriously aren't the enslavement of Indians with that of Africans are you? How many Arabs got sold by other Arabs as slaves to the Americas?
The issue here is very simple. Europeans did not sell Europeans to Africans but Africans did sell Africans to Europeans. Do you realize the difference here? They got human cattle and we received cheap junk. The same with the Arabs, they never gave us humans in exchange for something.

tpia1: My point of reference was fulanis from nigeria. I associate them more with the sahel, not the desert which is considered tuareg territory.

In addition, the people in the picture I posted, are malian fulani


https://www.flickr.com/photos/by-chris-g/4958238192/

However, you are right about the desert environment- the wodaabe and malian fula do seem to live in the desert however I don't know if they raise livestock.


Just wondering about the grazing question- how do the cows graze?

In Central Mali there are grazing areas, not that they are reserved but by moving around the Niger river, they do find livestock feed. Even in Timbuktu which is pretty much the desert, the Tuareg and Fulani find livestock, they also use irrigation for farming.

chulla12: There are countries with little to no resources (many in the northern hemisphere come to mind) that have done extremely well. It takes brains and inventiveness.

in the past, but today everyone is attaching himself to some union in order to survive.

reedonne: These are what african needs.
The universities
We have more than 100 universities in Nigeria but none of them have come out with a solution for our political problem, it is really disheartening. We have seen many report from foreign university about african problem, but african university seems to be dedicated to teaching us what have already been created by others.
If we want a cultural renaissance, we need to involve our education. Let us forget about western education type, and create our own system atleast it will encourage more people to read. Let us include our culture in our education.
I read about a NAZI propaganda subject during WW2, why cant we do something like this too. Encourage our young people to explore from their early primary education. Tell our people how we are superior to others and how we must show this superiority by innovating ideas. Use education and media to make europe looks like an immoral place where everything is bad.
We should use primary school to learn about culture, disscipline, community, national superiority, language,proper physical and health care, national language and mathematics.



We should use middle education to learn about law, civic responsibility, patroism, english, community order and discipline and business study.
We should use secondary education to learn about introduction to engineering, medicines, and other profession.
With this, our people have been orientated on community life since primary school (imagine our people learning to keep their house and community clean from primary school, learning community discipline from primary school and then proceed to learn law and civic responsibility in middle school, we wont need WAI lol).
They have also learnt about ethnic superiority from primary school and patroism from secondary school, so when they finish their university, they will try to proof their superiority to the whole world by inventing new things.

the educational system does need changes for sure specially in french speaking African countries. They put too much emphasis on government and not enough on entrepreneurship. No wonder even when Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana are starting to do good, those countries lag.
We definitely need better Universities , again specially in Francophone Africa. Students from that region are victims of racial slurs in Morocco all the time, strengthening the ones we already have and hiring foreign professors is better than sending their students in North Africa. Heck, studying in France is even better.

reedonne: English have already became an international language, even monoethnic states like korean and japan still learn english as a compulsory subject.
It is not about accepting an europian language, but about having a language that will make us understand each other and at the sametime help us to be able to communicate with the outside world easily.

yes to learning a European language, English in particular but NO to giving up your own. Like I said in my previous posts, nothing prevents an education system in native languages with English being taught as a second language. At the current pace, we will stop being Africans in the long term. We'd be another version of Akatas LOL

ezeagu: The argument is becoming convoluted. We've already established that we're talking about a common culture not mono-ethnicity or homogeneity. So to talk about Northern Nigeria doesn't hinder the point that people work better with a common culture. You seem to be in the 'what if' instead of focusing on what's happening now. Northern Nigeria's sense of cohesiveness away from wider Nigeria further serves the point that you generally need some sort of common culture to be cohesive.

Lol. Liberia and Cote d'Ivoire are bloody war torn.

Again , common culture can be built if the political power is shared and every group is represented. The common culture doesn't just happen, it is something built overtime. If all the regions of Nigeria were sharing power since its conceptions, ethnic differences would not be as strong as they are today. I gave you the example of Senegal which is ethnically diverse but does have a common culture built over the years.

Cote d'Ivoire is hardly war torn, yes they did have a civil war but that did not let to the massive destruction of infrastructure. Their economy grew by 9.8% in 2012 and 8.3% in 2013. And the African Development Bank just transferred its seat there from Tunisia, I don't think they would've done so if it was "war torn". Liberia on the other hand is in really shape. But that's besides the point, the war in those two countries did not oppose Fulanis and Maninkas. Both groups were treated as foreigners in those two countries. They actually had to work together.

chulla12: I would have to agree that mono-ethnic countries have a better chance of success than their multi-ethnic counterparts.
At least it's one less problem (i.e. ethnic tensions) to worry about.

True if they have a large population and resources at their disposal. Could you imagine just within Nigeria, how many tiny states will be born out of this? Let alone the whole of West Africa.

chulla12: If Western and Northern Europe can thrive with several small and ethnic countries (i.e. france for the french, sweden for the swedes, etc), I don't see why this should not be the case for Africa.

they did thrive but times are different today. None of those states except Germany due to its high end manufacturing, can compete thus the need to be a member of the EU.

chulla12: Is a Swedish president from a mono-ethnic country of 10 million people inherently more suited to UN trade deals than an Igbo or Yoruba president (with potential mono-ethnic national populations of 30-ish million)?

Not only there was a debate on whether or not, Sweden would do better by breaking out of the UK but even when independence became a probable outcome, they were talking about joining the EU. Being part of a bigger union is out of necessity.

pleep: Pretty much hits the nail on this head. Africa at the time of colonization was in its dark age, and remained frozen in that state due to artificial borders and colonization.

The only way for africa to break free of this state would be warfare and conquest, through which the stronger ethnic groups would incorporate the weak and grow strong in both national identity and size.
That is the natural state of human progress. This, however, would never be allowed to occur due to humanitarian concerns and western interference.

That is the reason i advocate unconventional methods of progres, because so long as africa looks like the map above natural progress will never occur.

and I am the one that has an idealistic view on things. Those days are long dead. The Europeans loved war, heck the dragged the world in two of their wars but even they have decided to unite through peace. Where Napoleon and Hitler have failed, the peaceful EU will gradually achieve success.
The last thing we need is war. South Sudan broke from Sudan, nobody thought that after decades of struggle against the North, they would start fighting each other and yet they are. Let that be a lesson.

pleep: Reading through the long drawn out debate between kingston and omarbah it is clear that kingston has a better grasp of the situation. Omarbah your viewpoints are very unrealistic overly idealistic.

This is my take on the situation.

Democratic multi-ethnic states do not work and never will work, the natural state of human progress is the strong consuming the weak and then incorporating them into larger states. At the time of the Romans Europe was divided into hundreds of thousand distinct ethnic groups, each with separate languages and customs. Germany alone was inhabited by the saxones, venedii, gepidi, burgondionii, bla bla bla and they each spoke a different language, had a different culture and hated each other. After hundreds of years of warfare they ended up as one people with one language.

Africa at the other hand was brought into modern times in its dark age, and the natural progression of history was halted via colonization and artificial borders. Now we are stuck in this archaic state with thousands of pointless ethnic groups, languages and nationalities in 2014 and it is a massive barrier to progress.

You either never stepped foot in Africa or you truly are a westerner, a black westerner that is. I realized that when you asked why Mansa Musa did not use his gold to conquer Arabs. Always thinking that greatness is achieved by forcing others to do something we'd like.
You can't take the example of the Romans or other Europeans and apply it to Africans, we are different people with different cultures. The way I see it, the utopia is in believing an monoethnic state would protect an ethnic group in Africa from foreign dominance.

tpia1: Fulani are not a desert people though, its tuareg who live in the desert.
And are the last set of photos fulani or models posing as fulani?

which ones in particular?

reedonne: We should forget about a common west african language because no ethnic will allow another ethnic's language to be value above its. We can only opt for an africanized english.

this surprises me with Africans, we can accept English, a foreign language from Europeans that used to dominate us and did us a great deal of evil, but we will refuse the language of another African ethnic group.

kingston277: As ezeagu stated it can work, but a single-ethnic set up is more economical, politically-friendly, an has yielded more examples of success.

sure it does but only if it is big enough and has the resources to compete with the outside world. Do you think a Yoruba, an Igbo state could compete with the rest of the world? There is not a single African ethnic group that control vast land and resources to do that.
Which is why I do believe giving up foreign policy, currency and army to a larger union is our best bet. The rest could be left to the ethnic groups.
Could you imagine, an Igbo president negotiating trade deals with the representative of the EU?

kingston277: Still doesn't excuse thte fact that you condem 19th century Africans for an extremely common world wide trade. Sure its bad now, but back then(and even now), their only real crime was the scale at which it took place.

world wide trade with only Africans as the human commodity. We lost on this trade, however you look at it. We did not get anything valuable from it.

ezeagu: That's the point, you can't force the mixing, either there's a general sense of oneness or at least cohesiveness, having a set goal in mind, or there isn't. Yugoslavia is a prime example. You're not going to get Kanuri people picking up actual Igbo culture or the versa.

that is due to the history of political "conflicts". Fulanis and Maninkas do not get along in Guinea, but cross the border to Liberia or Cote d'Ivoire, they act as if they are one community.
If every single person no matter the ethnic group could have a shot a ruling Nigeria since 1962, many of the so called differences between Nigerians would not exist. Doesn't Northern Nigerian society, despite the multiplicity of ethnic group has a sort of mainstream culture?

ezeagu: A common culture is obviously not the only way to build a successful society, but looking at all the examples we have it's obviously strongly linked with successful societies. The examples you have sent aren't really countries with a strong over arching culture. Better examples are Botswana, Tunisia, Cape Verde and to a certain extent Equatorial Guinea.

The current president of the United States is of Luo descent, it really doesn't change America's Anglo based culture.

A common culture is built in the long term with interactions from the different cultural groups. For this "mixing" to work, we first need a political system that represents everyone.
I take Senegal as an example because the "Wolofization" of their society has only worked because no ethnic , including the minor ones have felt discriminated against since independence, not even the religious minorities. And they did with peace too.

ezeagu: I think someone already clarified that the argument is more to do with culture than ethnicity, a view that I've shared. All the states you listed obviously had an overarching culture, and many of them were even ruled by a single ethic group like the Fulani. A society needs some kind of cohesive[b] mainstream culture[/b] to be successful in my opinion and many African countries don't have that.

Mainstream culture is built from the interaction of the different cultures in a society. What is truly important for people to live together in peace is for them to be subject to the same laws, for everyone to be represented in the institutions and have a voice. Mali has Bambara has common language used by almost everyone, but due to the exclusion of the Tuareg there has been frequent rebellions. In Senegal everyone is represented in the government. The Wolof are the majority but the first two presidents were Serer and the current one is Fulani. Only the third president was Wolof. Also did I mention that in a country of 94% Muslims, their first president was a Catholic? Now it is true that they have a mainstream culture borrowed from Serer, Wolof, Fulani/Toucouleur and Maninka. But that was possible because of their politics. But even there, the Jola that considered themselves "rejected" have a "rebellion" in their region. It's a mafia type thing though, it is considered a "low level" conflict.
Problems truly arise when one ethnic group or a religious group is excluded from power. When we developed a paranoia and hatred for a group of the population then things go wrong. Look at Somali, it's one ethnic group, same language , same religion but due their clans and the desire of some to impose their will on others, the country is in bad shape.
So I would say, a union of people of different culture would work, all is needed a political system to ensure everyone is represented.

Stillfire: Africa boasts of stark illiterate elites that are not visionaries. The remaining population entrenched in mass poverty perpetuate the recycling of these less than visionary elites.

In October 4th 1984, Thomas Sankara gave a speech at the UN where he denounced the "laziness" of the African elite that does not want to put in the effort to come up with new ideas and concepts to solve the problems of our continent. He also talked about how the commercial and political elite willingly perpetuate the "colonial" economy (sell of minerals and agro products in exchange for finished ones ) for their own profit.
If you speak french, here is a link to it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fHIi2mSpMs

kingston277: Only when Africans do it, is what it sounded like you said. And in the context of the 19th century world where no-one saw it as wrong, why do you criticize only Africans for participating in their trade. If anything, the West should be blamed for dropping in and milking it dry.

They do have their share of blame of course.

kingston277: Since you are sahelian yourself, it sounds like you are biased towards sahelian kingdoms by placing their morality and economic responsibility above the forest kingdoms simply because their culture/religion was different from yours. Nowhere in my post did I suggest that their economy was weaker than before the slave trade. On the contrary it may have been stronger or easier to build a strong economy without the slave trade meddling into resources. The "increased production" was a response to the slave trade and was to maintain the strong economies they had before to lessen impact of the slave trade. The slave trade did weaken some lesser forest kingdoms like whydah, but only because some of them didn't take action to counter this loss of human resources. Benin and Dahomey(and Asante I think) flourished during the trade with restrictions on slave trading.

Okay I am confused. Did they place restrictions on the slave trade to "increase production" or not? If they did wouldn't that mean that the slave trade itself was detrimental to their economies?

kingston277: As I said ethnic states worked before. State union doesn't always mean power, just look at the Congo, they should've never united in the first place. History in this instance is very important in drawing borders, if a bunch of ethnic groups never lived under the same ruler for as long as their history has been documented, why do we think it would work now? Thats like unionizing Canada, US and Mexico. There are actually proposals being done by obscure programs, but no-one takes these proposals seriously because these nations gain little from uniting physically, not anymore than just sticking with NATO.

Multiethnic states are not a new thing in West Africa. The Ghana empire, the Mali empire, the Songhai empire, the Tekrur, Futa Toro of Koli Tengella, the Sokoto Caliphate were all multiethnic and that did not prevent them from flourishing. So the argument about us having to bundle into our own kingdoms or states in order to guarantee greatness does not stand.
My point throughout this whole debate has been that monoethnic states won't protect their citizens from foreign influence and competition. Under one form or the other, we need to bundle up and let go of our differences and look at our common interest. Nothing prevents a multiethnic state from allowing the ethnic group to set up an education system using its language.

kingston277: Sure, which civilization on this planet did not sell slaves. Infact whats wrong with selling slaves? Kingdoms need to fuel each other with workers and people need to pay off their debts, after of which they are allowed to return home unless their owners refuse as seen in the case of US slavery.

No selling slaves is wrong, people should be instead put to work. You cannot justify the sell of people.

kingston277: Where did you read into that? It goes to show that you need to do away with your ethnocentric views while discussing this issue. I said level of production in thigs like pepper and palm oil, this is well known, no increase if an increase/decease in production occurred, it fluctuated and occurred throughout the history of Africa, it had nothing to do with Europeans or slave trade. The Banjeli were noted to have high production values in steel/iron in the 19th century but there is no documentation about when this high production in metals first began nor what their industry was based on prior. As As I said pepper and textiles among other goods was the main export. Before that, their economy was strong in mostly exports of tusks, textiles and slaves(between seigneurs).

You said this in your previous post "Some, like Benin, place heavy restrictions on the number of slaves sold to increase production and ceased to become a notable slave trading kingdom since. " There is nothing whatsoever ethnocentric about what I said.

kingston277: I think we are saying the same thing.
No. Before, you were saying West African nations needed to unite into larger countries as opposed to split into ethnic based countries due to your idea that physically larger states can protect themselves better than physically smaller states. I then told you ECOWAS and AU's job was to protect the interest of the smaller states while they sort themselves out. The size of countries mattered little as long as they had an economical and political joint similar to the EU serving their interests.

I am against states being formed on ethnic lines IF we have not built a stronger ECOWAS beforehand for the reasons I mention. If we do then due to the desire for many Africans to have a state with their ethnic brothers and sisters, I do see why energy and resources should be spent to stop it. It would counterproductive to do so. If ECOWAS is not to be become a strong union, then I would rather have the current states like Nigeria maintained and smaller countries like Senegal, Guinea , Guinea Bissau unite.
So these are two different situations. My goal is to have some state or union that will be able to protect our interests. Ethnic states won't do it unless they all give up some sectors (army, currency, and foreign policy) to a union where they will have representatives.

I do believe within Nigeria, the native languages can be promoted. If there is the political will, it can happen. One has to focus on the main three, national languages or 5 national and regional languages to achieve it. If Switzerland and Belgium with their small sizes can have three languages why not Nigeria?

@ kingston277,
are they going to apologize for something they have not done? Further in your post you mention this "Some, like Benin, place heavy restrictions on the number of slaves sold to increase production and ceased to become a notable slave trading kingdom since." So they did sell slaves right?

You mentioned how Benin placed restrictions on the slave till a certain level of production was reached meaning its economy was weaker. That's my point, these states could not stop the slave trade at first, it flourished because we did not have a stronger state.

kingston277: ECOWAS and the AU should also do their job and protect these interests until the "wars" blow over, then they can serve as economical, philosophical and continental uniters as opposed to political, better the nation-states remain notion-states with an African EU equivalent watching over them than one big english speaking war zone on the verge of break up anyway.

I think we are saying the same thing. We need a strong ECOWAS to protect us from a foreign invasion while we are making this transformation. Also the role that I want ECOWAS to play is that of managing the military, currency and foreign policy. The rest should be left to the "new states". And I am against English being used as a the language. Like I said in my previous posts, I am fine with Yoruba being the education language in the West of Nigeria where almost everyone speaks it, the same for Hausa in the North. In east Africa, they already have Swahili so their transition should be quicker. Eventually, the foreign language should stop being the medium of learning on our continent.

pleep: I'll say it again. THEY LIVE LIKE FUKING MONKEYS

Does this upset you? good, because its the truth. The average monkey in an American zoo lives better then these africans. A caged monkey has access to clean water, electricity and healthcare while Africans cant even get these things in a country with a friggin 25,000 per capita GDP.

I mean damn bro, open your gotdamn eyes.

LOL trust me, it's not the first time I am hearing such negativity from a black American. Call them what you want. As long as there is a difference between what you say and reality, I am fine.

pleep: On what evidence do you expect to see meaningful development in a country that has had 60 years of failure?

The population is only 680,000 and they Q-Guinea cant even manage give such a small number of people a decent standard of living despite all their oil wealth. This is in stark contrast to tiny non-black oil countries Qatar, Dubai, kuwait etc.

Black people cannot even achieve a basic level of development in the most favorable circumstances and this is a problem!

I just showed you the evidence of changes in the country. 60 years ago, you did not have social housing, NOW you do. Sixty years ago, you did not have roads that connected towns, now you do. Qatar started exploiting oil in the 1950s, Eqautorial Guinea just started. That country was even poorer before the discovery of oil and many of its citizens used to work small jobs in Cameroon. Now things are changing for them and I can only be glad.
Here is another video that shows how Malabo is providing electricity to its residents. With the housing, the infrastructure in water and electricity, more people are expected to come live in the city, as you might know, cities are a great tool for development.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOoy2j88r8s

the worst thing is you said they live like monkeys, are you serious? And you have the nerves to brush us these pictures. Do monkeys live in such homes?

pleep: "Equatorial Guinea is the third largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa and has a population of approximately 700,000 people. According to the United Nation’s 2013 Human Development Report, the country has a per-capita gross domestic product of US$32,026, which is the highest wealth ranking of any African country and one of the highest in the world, yet it ranks 136 out of 187 countries in the Human Development Index. As a result, Equatorial Guinea has by far the largest gap of all countries between its per-capita wealth and its human development score.

Despite the country’s abundant natural resource wealth and government’s obligations to advance the economic and social rights of its citizens, it has directed little of this wealth to meet their needs. Figures released by the International Monetary Fund in early 2013 showcase the government’s spending priorities: while half of Equatorial Guinea’s capital spending in 2011 was used to build infrastructure and another 22 percent was spent on public administration, health and education together accounted for only 3 percent of capital spending.

About half of the population lacks clean water or basic sanitation facilities, according to official 2012 statistics. A large portion of the population also lacks access to quality health care, decent schools, or reliable electricity. The government does not publish basic information on budgets and spending, and citizens and journalists lack the freedom to monitor the use of the country’s natural resource wealth."

http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/equatorial-guinea

Like I said, now the government is doing something about it. That's what count. A people could be miserable in 2012 but that doesn't have to be case in 2020 for example. That's my point.