Sometimes i imagine how Africa would be if we were never colonized…
What if Europeans came to Africa and instead of the brutality and hostile take over, started trading with us as we were… selling us their manufactured goods and taking raw materials fair and square…
effects…my opinion
1.National borders would be totally different
2.The most forward looking and expansionist tribes would have acquired guns and started invading and assimilating the weaker tribes…
3.Maybe the black man would not be looking down on himself and thinking he is a lesser being
4.Most of Africa would be atheist, after discovering there is no God on the Mt Kenya for the GEMA tribes and that there is no God who gifted masais cows… religion would have been abandoned.
5.Africa would have had very brutal wars around 1920 - 1960 that would have formed nations around a common agenda…
6.Our languages would be totally different… maybe the maa language would be the most spoken language around the modern day place called Kenya
7.In the current Kenya, i think a country would have formed around the alliance of Kikuyu, Embu, Meru , Kambas, Masais and the coastal tribes…
The Kikuyus and the masais used to trade and inter-marry, The Kambas were long distance traders who ventured into the interior and traded with the tribes living around Mt Kenya and to the coast, An alliance of mutual benefit of defence and trade would have arisen out this interaction… the biggest enemy would have been the Somalis
9.The Somalis would be one huge powerful nation united by a common language and religion
Kisiis, Luhyas,Luos and Kalenjins and closer ethnicities would have formed another nation out of trade interactions, shared cultures and to defend themselves from the hostile tribes from north uganda and south sudan…
This alliance would have probably extended to the tribes living around the lake victoria…
The African Kingdoms, the ashanti, zulu, baganda etc would have evolved into stable Nation States with solid identities.
Kenya was created by the Europeans. It will take time to mould Kenyans from this mess
Wrong.
Religion did not start with Christianity or Islam.
Religion started in Africa thousands of years before Adam showed up.
Livingstone and Kraph found Kikuyu people and Luo and Maasai people having religion.
Also Maasai would be the dominant tribe around East Africa because they were dominating the region before wazungus showed up. Some historians opine that slave catchers did not venture into inland Kenya because the Maasai stopped them.
There would be no definite country borders due to constant wars among ethnic warlords over regions with more natural resources …still the white man would capitalize on that and finance the more powerful warlords to reap off our natural resources …Africa would have a low population due to epidemics, constant wars and being bought by the white men to fight their wars.
There would have been tribal warfare everywhere in the continent . Cattle rustling and death kila mahali . Famine & disease would ravage africa .
tribes would coalesce to form bigger tribes , bantus would have huge kingdoms …
Slavery would still continue chini ya maji , islam would have spread and somalis would be trading & keeping black slaves like they started doing in the 19th century …(remember slavery ships still took slaves to brazil in the 1860 , just imagine )
Things would have been worse… kama saa hii we have all this knowledge & education but tribalism still divides africa , then just know tribalism would play a bigger role in your alternative scenerio .
All this would happen but finally we would reach equilibrium and then one leader would emerge to unite small kingdoms into one kingdom per governable region. Then several kingdoms would either fight and coexist or get assimilated into a bigger kingdom.
It happened in Europe, America and Asia and had started to happen with people like shaka. However, Africa was still under populated thus the continent was still sustaining the small populations without the need for new innovation and coalitions.
Africa still proves to be a very resourceful and resilient continent. Without foreign interference with time, hawa propped up leaders will be toppled and new leadership regimes will come up.
Cheki Senegal producing 1 dollar test kits for corona and 60 dollar resporators. Hapa tukiachwa dunia itastuka.
Even without colonization, the truth is that Africa would still be heavily influenced by other cultures and civilizations. We would still take up Islam from the Arab traders and Christianity from the European missionaries. We would quickly learn the western languages and education system we would still be where we are now, or worse without the physical development made by the colonialists.
We should ask ourselves this pertinent questions;
1.Why did none of the African tribes build ships and ventured to other continents to trade and spread the African religions?
2. Why did none of the African empires/chiefdoms/kingdoms manage to control even half of the sub-saharan continent?
most likely the countries would likely be made around common langauge bantus would have taken a bigger chunk of africa, most likely central africa towards the south africa, nilotes would have stuck near horn of africa,cushites to the extreme of horn of africa.west africa would have been a cocktail of languages, epicenter of clashes.
Colonization advanced the African kitu 4000 years, yani we had not even invented the wheel or reached societal development level of Iraq 2000BC. It was not a favour but it sure did good for the continent.
They had been weakened but in the 1700 towards 1800s they were fearsome… the Arab slave traders never ventured deep into the east african interior because of that… they were told that a fearsome worrior tribe hunts the souls of men :D…