Week 2 – Why is Africa poor?Economic and Development Problems in Africa

Lectures

• All Tuesday 1-2pm lectures cancelled

New timetable:• Tuesday 8-9AM• Tuesday 10-11AM• Wednesday 12-1pm

Week 2 & 3 outline

• Why is Africa poor?– Complex question involving many disciplines

• Economics, history, geography, sociology, anthropology…

• Two prong approach:1. Guns, Germs and Steel – Jared Diamond (Week 2)

• Example of reviews

2. Institutions (Week 3)• Botswana case study + Robinson article (First review due)

Guns, Germs and Steel

• Why did history unfold differently for different countries?

• Why are some countries poor while others are rich?– Yali’s question

• How far can we push back the “chain of causation”?

• Why were Eurasian societies disproportionately powerful and innovative?

Guns, Germs and Steel

• How to understand history? Read the history books of great civilisations?

• Writing emerged around 3000 BC• Already by 3000 BC Eurasian/North African societies had

– Centralized governments, widespread use of metal tools + weapons, domesticated animals for transport, traction and mechanical power, reliance on agriculture and domestic animals for food.

• Need to go further back in history – preliterate past

• Diamond posthulates four main causes1. East-West Axis2. Differences in domesticable plant/animal endowments

Area Crop Type Cereals, Other Grasses Pulses

Fertile Crescent emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley

pea, lentil, chickpea

China foxtail millet, broom-corn millet, rice

soybean, adzuki bean, mung bean

Mesoamerica corn common bean, tepary bean, scarlet runner bean

Andes, Amazonia quinoa, [corn] lima bean, common bean, peanut

West Africa and Sahel sorghum, pearl millet, African rice cowpea, groundnut

India [wheat, barley, rice, sorghum, millets]

hyacinth bean, black gram, green gram

Ethiopia teff, finger millet, [wheat, barley] [pea, lentil]

Eastern United States maygrass, little barley, knotweed, goosefoot

New Guinea sugar cane —

• Domesticable plants were distributed unequally across the earth.

• Food production division of labour and specialisation

• Dense sedentery food-producing populations chiefs, kings, bureaucrats, armies, wars, conquest

• Writing has evolved de novo

only a few times in human history earliest sites of food production…the rest became literate by diffusion.

• Important for ideas and technological innovation

1. Food production

Area Crop Type Cereals, Other Grasses Pulses

Fertile Crescent emmer wheat, einkorn wheat, barley

pea, lentil, chickpea

China foxtail millet, broom-corn millet, rice

soybean, adzuki bean, mung bean

Mesoamerica corn common bean, tepary bean, scarlet runner bean

Andes, Amazonia quinoa, [corn] lima bean, common bean, peanut

West Africa and Sahel sorghum, pearl millet, African rice cowpea, groundnut

India [wheat, barley, rice, sorghum, millets]

hyacinth bean, black gram, green gram

Ethiopia teff, finger millet, [wheat, barley] [pea, lentil]

Eastern United States maygrass, little barley, knotweed, goosefoot

New Guinea sugar cane —

• Domesticable plants were distributed unequally across the earth.

• Food production division of labour and specialisation

• Dense sedentery food-producing populations chiefs, kings, bureaucrats, armies, wars, conquest

• Writing has evolved de novo

only a few times in human history earliest sites of food production…the rest became literate by diffusion.

• Important for ideas and technological innovation

1. Food production

“Peoples who, by accident of their geographic location, inherited or developed food production thereby became able to engulf geographically less endowed people”

{Both internationally and inter-Africa}

• Domesticable= sufficiently docile, submissive to humans, cheap to feed, immune to diseases, breed well in captivity. {Genetically modified to become useful to humans}

• Needed for draft animals, protein and military animals

• Buffalo, zebra, bush pig, rhino, hippo never been domesticated (even now)

• Earasia’s native cows, sheep, goats, horses, pigs

• Why not carnivores?• Interaction with plants?

(fertilization)• People that developed over time

with domesticated animals were largely immune to the diseases they carried (evolved with them) GERMS {S-America! + Khoi San}

• E-W axis – horses Tetsi fly,

2. Animal domestication Species Date (B.C.) Place – first evidence of domesticationDog 10,000 Southwest Asia, China, North AmericaSheep 8,000 Southwest AsiaGoat 8,000 Southwest AsiaPig 8,000 China, Southwest AsiaCow 6,000 Southwest Asia, India, (?)North AfricaHorse 4,000 UkraineDonkey 4,000 Egypt

Water buffalo 4,000 China?Llama / alpaca 3,500 AndesBactrian camel 2,500 Central AsiaArabian camel 2,500 Arabia

3. East-West Axis

• Africa = only continent with E-W axis

• Why should this matter?– Climate, Habitat, Rainfall,

Day length, Diseases of crops and livestock

• Difficult to move crops and animals

• Eg Egypt’s wheat and barley require winter rains and seasonal variation in day length for germination

• Human technology thus also slow to move

• Examples:– Bantu cows (from tsetsi free Sahel) didn’t

make it through tsetsi fly forests– Horses (Eqypt 1800 BC S of Sahara AD+– Pottery (Sudan 8000BC Cape AD 1– Writing (Egypt 3000 BC writing had to be

brought by Arabs/Europeans

Fertile Crescent

• Fertile Crescent (E + W) Egypt Europe

Factors underlying broadest pattern of history

• Ultimate (real cause)

• Proximate (closest to)

Implications?

• Food production and domestication development, yes, but also inequality.

• Opportunity to accumulate wealth in material objects

• Opportunity to accumulate new techniques, tools and knowledge

Questions…

• Do you agree with Diamond’s analysis of history?1. Are current differences in economic development simply

due to “differences in real estate” (i.e. geography)?2. Are there alternative explanations?3. How useful is this theory for modern times?

Be able to answer this question from a 13 year old Mozambican boy:

“Why are white people rich and black people poor?”“How come you guys have so much cargo?”

- 5% of FINAL mark (group-work mark)- 20 minutes

Things to discussi. Brief history/backgroundii. Political environmentiii. Economyiv. Social + cultural contextv. 3 main problems (+Solutions?)

Countries1. Botswana (Week 3)2. Kenya (Week 4)3. DRC (Week 6)4. Sudan (N+S) (Week 7)5. Ivory Coast (Week 8)6. Ghana (Week 10)7. Zambia (Week 11)

Marking criteria: Presentation (20%), Content (50%), Interesting (30%)

14

5%

Group presentations

Criticism of Guns, Germs and Steel

• “The World According to Jared Diamond”- J.R. McNeill

• 3 or 4 groups of five– Summarise your page.

• Do you think this is a legitimate criticism? Why? Why not?

– Provide a few (max 3/4) labels for the sections of your page. Each label MUST be less than 8 words

– Come together and put all the arguments in context • Pick max seven labels

– Provide feedback to class

My labels

• Page 1– Broad agreement but specific disagreement (Ch 20)– Summary of Diamond’s thesis

• Page 2– Long term and large scale framework– Statistically Eurasia should’ve succeeded anyway

• Page 3– Of Eurasia, why Europe?– Explaining temporary dominance using permanent factors– Fragmentation is not always a good thing (Africa)– Intra-country fortunes varied dramatically (Egypt)

My labels

• Page 4– East-West axis argument flawed (inter-Europe + inter-Africa)

• Dispersion of plants/animals/ideas dependent on more than geography– Cattle, Coffee

• Page 5– Inappropriate to compare continents – Societies aim to maximise wealth + power (false assumption)– Things are more complex than simply geography– Useful in that it forces us to acknowledge prehistory

More specifically...

Summary of McNeill’s criticisms

For next week’s assignment

“Botswana: A Diamond in the Rough”• 650 words • Due Tuesday 21 Feb 8-9AM lecture• Arial, 11 font, 1.5 line spacing• Answer the following three questions:1. Is Botswana a success? (provide reasons why and why not)2. What do you believe were the 3 main factors that made

Botswana successful?3. Do you think Botswana’s success is replicable elsewhere in

Africa? Why? Why not?