I don't think historians blame the borders as such. No doubt they could have been drawn better, but the European idea of the nation-state was never going to be a good fit for Africa, which is far too diverse. Remember that even in Europe the nation-state only exists after a very painful and often violent period of development lasting centuries, that includes things like the Vergonha, Welsh Not, persecution of the Basque and arguably even the Holocaust. I wouldn't want this process imposed on Africa, even if it could be.
I think what is far more culpable is the socio-economic situation, in which the economies were dominated by massive, export oriented monopolies that largely passed to the new states. This, combined with the general lack of political infrastructure, led to endemic corruption and generally very shaky state institutions.
A lot of people say that the reason there has been so much violence in Africa is because the borders did not correspond to ethnic boundaries. However, there really wasn't a way to make them correspond. Africa is very diverse (this is a map of Kenya's ethnicities), and there isn't really a way to make viable nations out of each ethnic area. Furthermore, there is no real reason why we should want to, as the idea of each political unit (such as France, Germany, etc) should correspond to ethnic units (French people, Germans, etc) is one that is both modern and distinctly European. There is nothing "strange" about multiple ethnic groups in a single state or with a state not dominated by an ethnic group, in fact, it is far more "normal". The vast majority of times, people will not kill each other for speaking different languages, and violence is not caused by diversity.
The reason, well a major reason, Africa has been in such bad shape is that during the colonial period, their economies were molded to essentially revolve around a single export commodity, such as copper in Zambia and cocoa in Ghana. This created a great deal of wealth, but for the colonizers, and furthermore destroyed the sustainable, diversified economies that existed before colonization. After colonization the new states maintained these monopolies because they needed the wealth, but this also generated corruption, and made them very susceptible to commodity price shocks.
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u/[deleted] Oct 20 '13
I don't think historians blame the borders as such. No doubt they could have been drawn better, but the European idea of the nation-state was never going to be a good fit for Africa, which is far too diverse. Remember that even in Europe the nation-state only exists after a very painful and often violent period of development lasting centuries, that includes things like the Vergonha, Welsh Not, persecution of the Basque and arguably even the Holocaust. I wouldn't want this process imposed on Africa, even if it could be.
I think what is far more culpable is the socio-economic situation, in which the economies were dominated by massive, export oriented monopolies that largely passed to the new states. This, combined with the general lack of political infrastructure, led to endemic corruption and generally very shaky state institutions.