re: South Africa is about to go full Zimbabwe

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Africa was always going to face issues with development in the modern world b/c it was so large it hadn't really faced modern imperial might. due to this, it had WAY too many cultures, languages, etc to develop

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I mean, large parts of Africa were conquered by Islamic Empires. While it's tremendous size did have an effect on modernization, I'd argue that war, famine, and one-party rule had more of an effect on development than the cultural or linguistic diversity. I mean, Europe had quite a bit of linguistic diversity as well, and modernization efforts in multiple countries required sidelining regional languages. African countries have only begun those sorts of efforts. African linguistic diversity is also a bit more neatly grouped, which will serve those modernization efforts.

I mean, large parts of Africa were conquered by Islamic empires, and the river valleys that developed agriculture also developed language. The geographic features of the continent, with a desert larger than the landmass of the US separating countries, meant that wide divisions would develop in terms of development before the industrial era. Still West Africa, North Africa, the Horn, and the Nile River Valley were highly developed before the age of colonialism.

One feature of colonialism that is consistent is that parts of the population sided with the colonizers. That's true in the Americas and everywhere else. It was also true of the Islamic invasions into Europe.