Been seeing a lot of African leaders talking about a united Africa. No borders. One currency. Lot of talk about leveraging resources; minerals and so on.
One military too.
One example
Interesting.
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And one supreme warlord? Do you think it could actually happen?
I don’t know, it’s not my AO. Some of them sound like they want an EU type deal.
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Absolutely not.
Not any country there that is nearly powerful enough to unilaterally overrun the whole continent.
And the many ethnic tribes, like Hutus, Tutsis, etc., hate each other and would never voluntarily unite.
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Could it happen? Maybe. Not anytime soon. But in the far future? Maybe.
Many important African philosophers and national leaders have talked about it and attempted to implement plans for a “Pan-African” state since the turn of the 20th century, when the continent was colonized to its greatest extent by the Europeans.
Even a number of American and Caribbean black philosophers also talked about unifying Sub-Saharan Africa into a single Pan-African state. The idea being that all black people worldwide would have a right of return to the new Pan African state. Similar to all Jews worldwide who have a right of return to the state of Israel.
Marcus Garvey, a famed Jamaican black philosopher and African nationalist, in particular wrote heavily about it. It became his life’s work and he founded numerous organizations dedicated to the idea of a United Sub Saharan African state as a home for the black population of the world, for both the diaspora and native born African black people.
It’s interesting. I personally disagree with Pan-Africanism (contrary to some parts of Western myth, Africa is anything but a racially or ethnically monolithic continent) but the idea as expressed by black liberation ideology in the early to mid 20th century was interesting. I found the writing fascinating even though I disagreed with it.
I see myself as an American first, and a black person second. I suspect most members of the black diaspora have similar feelings about Pan-Africanism regardless of national identity. Fascinating to read about but unworkable and flawed since Africa is anything but a “black” continent.
The North African Arabs, the European descended White Africans (such as the Afrikaners and the Moroccan French), the Berbers, and the various black ethnic tribes all have equal claims to Africa as a continental homeland. Most of them have been there for a half a millennia or longer at this point.
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I suspect a new African Federation modeled on the European Union would be as far as it could go.
Africa is far too diverse to ever truly unify into a single nation state. Just look at the struggle of South Africa as an easy example. In theory it’s a multicultural and multiracial state based on equality between the various southern black tribes, the Afrikaners, and the Cape Coloreds (most of whom are of Indian or southeast Asian descent and have been there almost as long as the White Afrikaners have been) and yet there is hardly any unity or equality there. Rich blacks dominate the government to an overwhelming degree, the rich Afrikaners own the vast majority of the productive agriculture, and the Cape Coloreds are sort of caught in between but do dominate elements of the service economy.
The poor of all three racial groups are basically in a worse situation than they were during Apartheid. The entire public life is still segregated to all hell and back. And economic movement is nearly non-existent.
If you think Chicago is too violent… 
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Make Egypt look like the adult in the room.
The conflict between tribes goes back centuries, if not longer. The animosity would outlive any leader strong enough to impose it. And the break up would look like Yugoslavia after Tito’s death.
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Sure … if they could ever get over 10,000+ years of hatred, constant strife with each other, and their war-lord mentality of governenance.
Never happen. Perpetual wars.
Who knows. It certainly won’t be anytime soon. Thousands of years at best.
Europeans warred with each other for over a millennia following the collapse of Rome. The world for more than a thousand years was defined by Europeans and their love for killing each other on a massive scale.
Today, outside of a few outliers (like Ukraine and Russia currently and the former Yugoslav wars of the 90s) Europe is at its most peaceful period since Rome controlled half the continent.
But even the Europeans haven’t been unable to truly unify. They have an economic Federation, but that’s about it. So there’s no hope for a unified Africa if Europe can’t even do it.
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It’s an interesting subject. It’s just not practical.
Can I see a future where sub-Saharan Africa has advanced into second world status, similar to the post Soviet eastern bloc states? Perhaps. Despite all of the continent’s problems (and there’s a ■■■■ton of them) it is more economically developed than at any other time in its recent history. Some of the African nations aren’t total war zones and the tribes of some nations have found some peace between them. It’s better there than the in the Cold War, that’s for sure.
But a unified African superstate? The chances of that happening are so slim that I suspect you’d have a higher chance of surviving a bullet wound to the brain stem than that ever happening.
It won’t happen anytime soon, for all of the reasons you already pointed out. But there is a large contingent of people in the US who already think “Africa” is a country .
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In thousands of years, the entirety of world civilization will probably be gone.
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Thats what i was thinking. None of them will work side by side with each other.
They might surprise you. A good portion of them anyway.
id like to be here in 3023 to prove you wrong yet again.
not only will civilization be here, it will be thriving.
and africa will look nothing like it does today.
Allan
Yeah…why not…they’re all the same. If you’ve seen one African… 
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