Most parts of black Africa are terrible terrible societies. Almost nothing works: not physical infrastructure, or relationships between individuals, between groups of individuals, or between individuals and groups with the government. They clearly require fixing. So... why aren't sub-Saharan Africans trying to do anything about any of these problems?

We have, in the past, covered how one might seek to reform things in poor sub-Saharan African countries, both culturally, and economically, including the broader idea of seeking collaboration with one another for development.

If the things that need to be done do not require hidden knowledge, why aren't they being done? And if sub-Saharan Africans aren't doing them, what are they (sub-Saharan Africans) in fact doing instead?

What are people of sub-Saharan African origin doing?

(i) Complaining about and blaming racial discrimination, colonization and the trans-Atlantic slave trade

This is what most people people of black African origin both on the continent and in the diaspora are doing. Oh.. it is the white people. It is they who caused generational trauma so that no one can get anything done. It is they who killed all the leaders who pursue.. ah "pan-Africanism". They do not want Africa to be great because they do know that "we wuz kangz". Or some... similar... bullshit.

I think it is fair to blame this sort of thinking on the poor quality-of-thought culture, the general low-trustworthiness (including self-trust) in black African communities. I am so so sorry, dear black African. The white people do not give a shit about holding you back. No one has any time for that shit. Those pan-African leaders were terribly incompetent, narcissistic people who didn't know how to get shit done. If they did get taken out by certain people, it was part of general political scheming, not a peculiar white racist attempt to hold black people, as a people, back. There is no conspiracy against black people in the sense that hoteps talk about it. It is all very simple.

Let's be clear: it may be that there were other reasons for racial discrimination against people of black African descent in the past, but right now, in our current times, it is entirely because of the veritable poverty and poor culture of black Africans. And this low status of black Africans is why some descendants of slaves or multi-generation immigrants in the diaspora do not like to identify with contemporary black Africans.

Some black Americans for example claim that they are in a distinct category as "Black Americans", not Africans, reason being that they have no ancestral land to associate with, and wouldn't even be accepted in their ancestral lands if they could find them. But that is clearly not true, it is the excuse they make for being embarrassed to be associated with poor, underdeveloped people in poor, underdeveloped countries.

This is a thing every human knows: people enjoy associating with success and higher-status, not depravity and poverty. This is why the excuses are an easy position for them to take. Think for example about the buzz the fictional Wakanda country receives from the same black Americans of African descent. Clearly, they would love to associate with a black African country... only if it were not in a decrepit state.

It's the same reason some liberal progressive people of black African origin like to question the idea of race: they are embarrassed to be associated with poor, sickly black Africans.

But that's okay. That's a type of legitimate human reaction to a thing.

The only people in the diaspora who seem fine enough with identifying with existing and real black African ethnicities/countries are recent immigrants, or people with a sheer black African fetish.

Racial discrimination

Racial discrimination against people of black African descent is very poorly understood, and reactions to it are mostly idiotic. The ways to react to it are not any of the currently popular ways. There also aren't many thoughtful black Africans at the front lines. Especially as some of the people at the front lines are exactly the sort of people who are ashamed and embarrassed to be black African and deny the idea of race as a genuine concept.

The way to defend oneself against racial discrimination isn't to begin making demands for representation or DEI, or to indulge in protests, or beg for nondiscrimination (which is what appealing to political power to make laws is), the proper way is to think about the problem, what causes it, and fix it.

It is that simple.

What causes racism in our times is simple: a conception of people of black African origin as...

"poor, sickly, simple-minded people who, when not poor and sickly, are part of the thieving, unsophisticated elite in their country. And if resident in a developed society, are mostly anti-social, causing public disturbance and sometimes even worse — actual crime which causes serious damage to the lives of well-adjusted people. Of course there is a tiny percentage of them who are properly-behaved, but that is mostly what they are like."

Black people who are defensive about these alleged facts about themselves love to scream racism — but these stereotypes have lots of genuine truths to them. If black Africans aren't incompetent and unsophisticated boors, why are there are no thriving black African countries? Actual countries by the way, not tiny Caribbean islands.

What has happened to the yet white-controlled parts of the sub-continent after the colonial-independence era in southern Africa after coming under black African control? Have they gone on to greater heights, simply stagnated.. or suffered massive decline?

Why is it that nothing ever works in black African countries? Not physical infrastructure, relationships between individuals, relationships between groups of individuals or the relationships of individuals and groups with the government? Why?

Or.. even in the more developed non-African countries where black Africans are tolerated enough that there is a substantial number of black Africans ... apart from depiction in the media.. why do black Africans (western and central Africans especially) always top crime statistics... basically everywhere?

Pointing these things out almost always gets you called names by defensive black Africans. Oh.. a white pleaser.. oh a self-hating black... what you get is always something like that. And that is what you get only from the average people you encounter. The 'intellectuals' — the fancy people who give public opinion — never ever even talk about whether these things might be true.

But the truth is that they are.

So maybe it is that there is something seriously wrong with contemporary black African culture? Why do these things seem common to black Africans everywhere they are at this time? Is this just the nature of black Africans — even before the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European colonization? How did black Africans ever build civilizations then? Is it all lies and they never in fact built civilizations? Are black Africans just incapable of large-scale societal co-ordination?

How to end racial discrimination against people of black African origin

It's simple: solve economic and cultural underdevelopment in sub-Saharan Africa. That's all. There's nothing more to it. People think reasonably (absolutely, you would probably think the same thing if you weren't black. I probably would to) lowly of black people because of consistent underdevelopment everywhere there is a large enough group of black Africans.

Don't a people deserve dignity unless they are wealthy? It's not about wealth. It's about not being more underdeveloped, boorish, and more anti-social than everybody else. Of course everyone is going to laugh at you and refuse to take you seriously. This is real life. Any other arguments are cope.

Is that — ending being looked down on — the only reason black Africans have to work on developing black Africa? Nope.

Working on things is simply what humans do. There is literally nothing else to do in the world. To work is to be materially, sociologically and psychologically human. So that.. if you do happen to be black African, what is the most challenging problem you could spend your life working on?

(ii) Encouraging migration to thriving societies

This is one of those other things black Africans on the continent are doing. In Nigeria, it is called to 'japa'. Which... I believe literally means "swiftly fleeing from danger", or something close. "Japa" has taken up all of the conversation among the youth of southern Nigeria... everywhere they are. It doesn't seem enough for them to japa either. Some of the people with the leverage and theoretical ability than others — the exact demographic who could be working on solving the problems in their local sub-Saharan African countries — are not only... not embarrassed by fleeing, they have the nerve to take up protesting unfair treatment by the immigration divisions of governments in the West.

(iii) Working at the wrong level, and building the 1000th Fintech app

"Tech" is never going to successfully bypass the foundational tools of governance rested in the hands of a government which has a monopoly of violence in an area. The government has several tools in its armory, including the same "tech" too.

So... tech is only a tool to be used by people with power to get things done, not an independent power which can be used to get things done on its own. But it still doesn't seem like sub-Saharan Africans get it. An example from the recent past is the crypto ban in Nigeria from a couple of years ago.

There seems to be a contingent of young African people with a profound lack of understanding of how things work in the real world, who latch onto whatever new trend Bay Area libertarians think of as the new cool thing, as a platform on which African economies can bypass government control and begin to get things done. Crypto is a big example of this. Cc the vast array of crypto companies popping up across SSA.

EndSARS protesters in Nigeria shifted to accepting public donations via Bitcoin last October when the government instructed financial institutions to shutter accounts with them through which donations were being received.

The government allowed only a few months to pass before banning cryptocurrencies in the country 4 months later in February of this year, by instructing financial institutions to sever ties with crypto companies.

What this meant was that crypto companies could no longer have accounts with banks, making it difficult for them to buy cryptos from users (how can you instantly pay users for cryptos bought from them if you cannot operate a bank account as a company?) Or sell to them, since there's usually a low monthly FX limit ($100) on debit card transactions on individual local bank cards on foreign services.

I initially thought – that because cryptocurrencies are not normal goods with ends of their own, they are financial instruments (medium of exchange, unit of account, store of value) like stocks, cash, bonds, land – they needed licensing and regulating by a financial agency of the government, placing them under threat of their operating licenses being pulled if they refused to dance to the tune of the government. I believed this was the heavy hammer. This doesn't seem to be so as I have seen no specific mention of this in the press.

So it seems the inability by crypto companies to hold bank accounts of their own is what has affected their operations.

There are two ways crypto trading has usually worked:

(i) An incorporated commercial crypto company — with all the trust, legitimacy and accountability that may come with that — buying and selling cryptos to and from its users.

(ii) A P2P system where random strangers interact with one another, a seller and buyer agree on a price and conduct business between themselves. In this situation, there usually needs to be an escrow to mediate the relationship and hold a potential defrauding party accountable for their actions. If crypto companies who could serve as escrows in these transactions are banned meanwhile, then things begin to break down.

"Banning cryptos" by instructing financial institutions to sever associations with crypto companies meant existing crypto companies could no longer be (i) above. They couldn't work as escrows like in (ii) either.

This predictably results in the rise of only a few trusted individual P2P crypto 'merchants' who... yup can be easily picked off.

There are people who think smart tech can overcome bad governments. Not true. Never has been, never will be. Tech is a tool to be used by whoever is in control.

The government's political power is king. It includes everything in the government's power to getting things done: legislative regulation, prosecutorial authority, plain enforcement by a threat of violence etc

So... while tech cannot be used to bypass the government to begin to getting things done, the same tech even when allowed by governing power struggles to achieve anything in black Africa... because of all the cultural problems.

It should not be surprising that instead of enabling positive common culture and allowing for exponential development, the effects of technology are instead continuously hindered by poor coordination social infrastructure and general culture in sub-Saharan African countries. There is the example of how a culture of extortion or thinking of businesses as cows to be milked in Nigeria results in expensive Right of Way charges, directly hampering internet penetration, and all of the compounding effects of that. Or when the culturally glorified 'clever' behavior is how to take advantage of a fair system.

So.. what exactly are the "tech people" who claim to be interested in development in sub-Saharan Africa working on? Might it be that what motivates these people 'working' on these superficial problems which are definitely not going to move the needle in the long-term isn't an obsession with getting things done in the first place, but a more simple interest in scooping up some of the moolah bouncing around into their own pockets?

(iv) One other thing black Africans are doing?

Talking about doing, or actually going ahead to do, a direct copying of ideas that worked elsewhere, but are unrealistic solutions, given their own local context. There are so many examples of this that I am not going to bother giving an example. The thielian idea that all developing countries need to do is to simply copy the West technologically (or even politically/sociologically) is wrong. We are going to discuss this problem in a different issue of its own. Join the forum, and or subscribe to the newsletter to not miss that.