[MUSIC] Let's look this week at sub-Saharan Africa, and obviously not all of Africa, we will concentrate on the majority Muslim parts of sub-Saharan Africa. And following the practice we've established so far, now in the first we do let's try to get an overview of the region and what kind of societies we're going to be dealing with, but before I do that, I would like to have a little short prologue about the whole Idea of colonialism. You might have heard of the Danish writer Karen Blixen or Isak Dinesen, as she's also named for. And you might have heard of a book Out of Africa. You might have seen this movie with Robert Redford. The reason I'm talking about this terrible book so undeservedly remembered is because it's also a deeply racist book. It commits all the errors against which I have cautioned you so often throughout this course. It's essentializing the African Men and women that she meets throughout this novel. To the point of dehumanizing them, reducing them to some caricature of, of an exotic being that on a par with the landscape and the animals that she meets. The only interest she shows in the African human beings she meets is, as the projection screen, for her unfulfilled dreams of adventure and sexual liberation. And, one of the foremost African writers of a novelist that, I might have mentioned already before is Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, in a book of literary criticism. In this book, Moving the Centre that I bought about 20 years ago, when I for the first time went to Africa. And where I was struck by the predominance of British cultural. And institutional legacy and the basically absence of a true African indigenous identity. I came across this book, and in this there's a lecture that he held here at Copenhagen. A long time ago and in which he now, he describes the problems he has with Karen Blixen. So he has and let me quote you from this book now. He describes that there are three types of Africas in the popular imagination here in the West. There's the businessman's Africa. The Profit hunters Africa. There's the Africa for the pleasure hunter, the safari goer, et cetera. But, there's also, and here I'm quoting, But there's a third Africa and for me a most dangerous Africa, beloved by both the hunter for profit and the hunter for pleasure. This is the Africa in European fiction. The creators of this kind of Africa are best represented by the Danish writer by the name of Karen Blixen, alias Isak Dinesen. Karen Blixen had a farm in Kenya, which formed the basis of the book, Out of Africa. Out of Africa is one of the most dangerous books ever written about Africa precisely because this Danish writer was obviously gifted with words and dreams. The racism in the book is catching, because it is persuasively put forward as love. But it is the love of a man for a horse or for a pet. She writes, Kamante could have no idea as to how a dish of ours ought to taste, and he was in spite of his conversation and his connection with civilization at heart an arrant Kikuyu rooted in the traditions of his tribe and in his faith in them as the only way of living worthy of a human being. He did at times taste the food he cooked. But with a distrustful face like a witch who takes a sip out of a cauldron. He stuck to the maize cob of his fathers, even here his intelligence sometimes failed him and he came and offered me a Kikuyu delicacy. A roasted sweet potato or a lump of sheep's fat, even as a civilized dog who has lived for a long time with people will place a bone on the floor before you as a present. End of quote. Now as Ngugi continues, you could perhaps put down these views as the romantic notions of a young woman who does not know better and who is enthralled by the love and romanticism and the adventure she is living. But in the other book for which she's known and, the shadows of the grass, that she wrote as an aged woman, already back in Denmark, looking back at this, at her experience in Africa. She reiterated these views. So it's not a notion that she, that is due to youthful exuberance. So I'm quoting again Miss Blixen. The dark nations of Africa, strikingly precocious as young children, seemed to come to a standstill in their mental growth at different ages. The Kikuyu, Kawirondo and Wakambo, the people who worked for me on the farm, in early childhood were far ahead of white children of the same age, but they stopped quite suddenly at a stage corresponding to that of a European child of nine. The Somalia had got further and had all the mentality of boys of our own race at the age of 13 to 17 end of quote. I think it's enough to leave Miss Blixen and her racist views, but you see the reason why I cautioned you about essentialism and what it's does with you and your ability to comprehend the world around you, so I'm not actually taking a normative standpoint about her views to which she is certainly entitled to. But if you, and this is the object of my interest here, if you would adopt similar views, it would stop you from fully comprehending a complex reality that is around you if you essentialize and reduce people to caricatures of them self, as she does with the African. The Kenyan author Ngugi, who has criticized her now so deeply, he is also heavily criticizing his own nation. And the leaders who come to power after independence, for failing to create an indigenous, autonomous, constructive engagement with the challenge of governance, and the the challenge of modernity. And let's not forget lest you think that the image I gave of British colonialism in the course of this, these lectures might have been overly positive. It's just that unlike the Dutch in Indonesia or the French in Algeria who didn't want to let go of these settler colonies, The British were fairly willing to let go of the colonies in which they were not so heavily invested with people. Kenya, by contrast, was a settler colony; and here we see exactly the same, steadfast refusal to let go. And we have this very bloody Mau Mau uprising, Here you see Mau Mau female fighters of the time. Whom the British defeated, ultimately, using the same military means they had perfected in Malaysia in the, in putting down the uprising for 48 to the 1960s, that we just discussed last week, so it's the same military, the same tactics they use now in Kenya. And once they had defeated this nationalist uprising, they ultimately handed over Kenya into independence. But they, the people who took over, are now heavily criticized by Ngugi and people like him for basically following in a neo-colonial, Path of perpetuating that dependency. And we all know, or you probably have heard that the endemic weakness of African governments and the endemic instability that has happened after independence. That obviously raises the question, what was there before? And here is, we need to acknowledge that they, here you, on this map you see several precolonial African, kingdom states that existed at various times. Empires that had existed in history. By and large, you see, it's an area where not many, formal state structures had been established. However, and that is an important point, they are, in various places independent states that had existed, and there is a state tradition. So the colonial image of the African being unable to organize is, must be emphatically rejected, and anybody who has ever been to Ethiopia will be able to readily attest to the countrary, a very old, established, well functioning State, but what we deal with now is the whole question of colonialism, that we've raised several times throughout this course, but it's perhaps most glaring with respect to Africa. Here you see an image from the 1878 conference in Berlin where the scramble for Africa between the Colonial powers was resolved where, basically, under the guidance of Bismark, who had now just now unified the German nation, and who is a late comer to the Colonial game. Now, tries to mediate between the various Colonial interest and, in the process, carve out. An interest for himself. And here you see the map is the product out of the Berlin Conference. And you see the various colonial empires in different colors. The rose colors are the French, the yellow are the British. And then you have some German and Portuguese isolated settlements. So almost the entire African continent is now carved up into colonial possessions with the exception of Ethiopia. It comes under Italian short colonial domination very late in the 20th century. And Liberia, which in itself also colonial construct of the United States that creation to resettle, returned former slaves from North America, was sent back. So with these two exception the entire continent is colonized and we see here in this map, the relative date where the African nations now achieve independence. And one thing that strikes you immediately is, if you look at the lines of the borders, you'll see that many of these lines are very straight. And whenever you see a straight line on a map, you know that it has been negotiated somewhere. At a green table, it's an artificial line. And this is exactly, these are the lines that were negotiated in Berlin. These are the lines that were inherited by these states that are now achieving independence. And you see the different colors showing the different periods in which nations achieved independence and you see that. Some of them achieved it very, very late. The principle in international law is called Uti possidetis so that the successor states inherits the borders, the administrative boundaries that existed at the time of its independence and it's very useful principle in international law but, and that's leads always to problems in the classes when I teach it. Because, clearly, when you cut a straight line across the, the map, you are cutting through existing human communities, and that's exactly what happens on the African continent. That also happens elsewhere, but in Africa we have this problem most dramatically, most tangibly. And also these political units that are now coming into existence, they are all plagued by common ailments. They do not have common nations of political ethnic groups or linguistic groups that have much in common. They have very, there is very little institutional legacy bequeathed by the colonial powers. So, we're dealing basically with extremely weak nations. And now, one of the, and that's beyond just the question of Africa. One of the most enduring questions in sociology in political economy and macro economy, ultimately also in public law, is the one that motivated such thinkers, throughout history like Adams smith, David Ricardo or Max Weber, my personal hero that by now you've come to know him also as well as me. That was the point of departure, looking at society and trying to see why are some societies rich and why are, why do others remain poor? And that's a question obviously that now I will, dealing with Africa is very much on the forefront because we're dealing with now societies that have inherited a lot of problems, and that for a long time seemingly were unable to come to grips with these problems. And Ngugi that we just talked about and Chinua Achebe whom we described in the, talked about in the very first week of this course, and you might remember his book, Things fall apart, they described now this period of the colonial experience but also the period after independence and the inability of. These governments to form stable, government systems that could deliver on the promise of independence that was there. And here we are dealing with the hopes of these communities, being betrayed in the period of independence, and almost all of these units quickly falling into periods of chaos. So perhaps due to the relative absence of Institutions of governance prior to the arrival of the colonizers, and certainly due to the disinterest of the colonizer to actually create stable institutions and leave them and the their record of almost all of the colonizers is abysmal. It's particularly bad for the Belgians. It's almost as bad for the Portuguese. It's slightly better for the French. And it's again, slightly better for the British. But all of together there, it's disastrous for all of them. Particularly in Africa. And we do not see the relatively stable institutions that could then be used that we just saw last week with respect to Malaysia or Indonesia. So perhaps inevitably independence quickly descends into chaos and the massive social displacements and large degrees of violence. And if you see or look at this map here, it tries to show in a graphic sense, the number of years that different African nations have experience respectively military rule, single party rule or multi party rule. As you can see, you know, the darker the color the more years they have spent in that particular system. And you see that there's a preponderance of military rule. It's a large legacy of single party rule, which is often as you know, just a different way of saying autocracy and repression. And it's only very recently and very few countries that have, some years of multi-party experience. And likewise, if you look at these maps now, we have, they show the year of independence. You know the darker the color, the older the country is. The earlier it achieved independence. So we see most of them are relatively young nations. And the lighter the color is the later they achieved independence. And in the other, and again, you know, this tells you how young these nations are and how weak the institutions are. And if you look at the next map, it shows you how many years the countries have been at war. And again, the darker the color, the more years they have been at war. And you see it's not a very promising picture. See preponderance of war and chaos in these societies. So what we see is endemic underdevelopment, both in terms of institutions and in terms of the economy. And now I don't think writers like Ngugi are correct in attributing all of the blame at colonialism, and racism, and imperialism. That certainly plays a role, but leaving aside the question of causation, lets try to look at what are the origins of wealth. And it's a book that I have mentioned already at some point before in this course. And that I strongly urge you to have a look. You can freely download it from the world bank. It's a collaboratively effort and it's part of a longer term research project at the World Bank and at similar institutions. That try to go away from the traditional economic focus on the hardware of development. To the if you want to call it, the software of development. Trying to see what is as the book is asking in its title. Where is the wealth of nations? What are the sources of wealth? So if you look at a society like Norway, yes it's clearly richer than Somalia, but what makes it richer? Is it justice, the pastries, the cars? Or is it the education, that people carry in their heads? Or the functioning of the institutions that they use, etc. And if you look at this chart, and I have to be somewhat brief now, I'm quoting here from the book basically. The wealth estimates suggest that the preponderant form of wealth is intangible capital, an expected result and an insight that goes back at least to Adam Smith. So that is the relatively, simple but important insight that whatever you carry. The material, tangible forms of wealth. Are less important than the intangible forms of wealth investment you had put in education. The stuff that you, right now, you are learning and putting into your head and that you then can carry around and that cannot be taken away from you anymore. So it's, irrespective of the clothes you're wearing or the car you're driving, that's the kind of wealth that is already there, and what I'm trying to tell you now, and the World Bank economists agree with me on this, is that this stuff that you're accumulating in your head is actually more important and more valuable than the car you're driving. But what the point now that I'm trying to make and that I would like you to remember is that institutions that thing that we keep talking about throughout this course. They now matter, in your ability to manage both your physical wealth, and also this intangible wealth. The quality ofyour training, the quality of your legal system, the quality of your administrative system. So these institutions matter. And as they say, you know I'm quoting. There are no sustainable diamond mines, but there are sustainable diamond-mining countries. Implicit in this statement is the assumption that it is possible to transform one form of wealth diamonds in the ground, into other forms of wealth, such as buildings, machines, and human capital. Achieving this transformation requires a set institution capable of managing the natural resource, collecting resource rents, and directing these rents into profitable investments. Resource policy, fiscal policy, political factors, institutions and governance structure, all have a role to play in this transformation. End of quote. Standards of life are dependent not just on the material endowment and the quality of your institutions but also on population growth. The number of people among which that wealth is shared. And if we look here at the population growth in Sub-Saharan Africa we see an extremely strong rise in the overall figures. So we see here it starts in the 1960s and goes till 2010 and you have a, the population is tripling and you see here in this other map. You see here that the population is by no means equally distributed. The dark spots show stronger concentration of populations and here. You see the areas in the north where, in the Maghreb countries that we discussed a few weeks back, in Egypt, where there's a very heavy concentration in a very small part of the, the country. And also you see here that Egypt is, that large parts of the country are basically uninhabited. And then you see other spots of population growth, particularly in Nigeria. And around the great lakes. And this tells you that if you have already a very aggressive population increase for the entire continent, and that population increase is concentrated in a few localities. It's easy to imagine what kind of demand on limited state resources, and the delivery of services, and the delivery of healthcare, and the delivery of education in the simple practical challenge of governing these peoples is now cast upon these new states that are already rather weak when they start from, and have very fragile institutions to fall back to. And then if you now remember the period, the history of conflict and the disintegration of institutions that we described for all of Africa. And if you now add the population increase, you see a very toxic mix in certain parts of the country. The other thing now is the distribution of religion. And, it's as you see there's a relatively clear cut geographical spread between, you know, Islam in the north, Christianity in the south, and then the isolated pockets of traditional religion in other parts. And if you see in this map here, you see the distribution of the relative religions in the, on the African continent. And again, the darker the color, this, the higher the density in relative terms. So you have traditional religions in the left image, Islam in the middle Obviously, strongly focused in the North. And then Christianity strongly presented in the South. But, what we see now, and that's one of the things that we will now try to look at in this course, is these two religions particularly, Islam and Christianity, are now very much in competition on the African Continent. And the areas where the two religion and these two regions come together as you probably hear in Nigeria, and particularly in Sudan, we see conflict between the, as a result of the strong competition between the religion and the other thing we see, even in countries that are predominantly Muslim, the or by now well known conflict between traditional forms of rather moderate Islamic practices, as existed, pluralistic and now these new phenomenon of an aggressive politicized Islam. Here you see Islamic fighters in Mali that in the beginning of this year tried to take over the government. You might have heard that the burning of the library in Timbuktu, for example. And that's the flag of the Al-Shabaab in Somalia that we will come back to later. So what I'd like to end this lecture and this overview with is to alert you to the problems with following the relatively simplistic, let's call it the blame game that Ngugi whom I otherwise I greatly admire is doing in much of his writings. In putting down all these problems that we're now seeing solely at the foot of the colonizers and imperialism and while, I think should become clear, clearly there is a strong legacy and a negative legacy of colonialism. It's important that we also recognize the element that I ended with the last week's lecture when we talked about Indonesia, the element of self criticism, of self introspection, of accepting the failures that the societies are have brought on themselves. And the costs that the search for authenticity, after all the Al-Shabab and the Mali Islamic fighters, these are expressions of that search for authenticity. And that surge brings with it social costs, because it leads to the disintegration of institutions. And that was why, by now you have an understanding, that once institutions disintegrate, societies become poorer and they pay a price for it. And that is, the awareness of these two, this interrelationship, that's something that's, I'd like to explore it further with you as this course now unfolds, and in the next video we will look at the period of colonialism right up to the creation of new states in the predominantly Muslim nations of Africa. [MUSIC]
