ABSTRACT
Of all regional chapters, this chapter holds the third lowest number of cities qualifying for inclusion within the global network analysis. The relative share of connectivity that these cities hold is also comparatively small. There are several broad historical reasons for this:
Unlike Western Europe, Sub-Saharan Africa has only had a very recent history of state building and capital cities (Chandler, 1987), and hence arguably a much weaker share of global connectivity. During the Scramble for Africa at the end of the 19th century, European powers staked claims to virtually the entire continent. Before that, Europeans considered Africa more as a coastline than a continent, where besides the more established European settlements in South Africa, Rhodesia and Algeria, only small isolated trading outposts were known of. Only by 1910 had the previous terra incognita of traditional monarchies and chiefdoms been converted into a chessboard of 53 colonies/countries with designated capitals (Meredith, 2006). This means that modern African cities have only really existed for roughly 100 years, developed mainly in the interest of colonial and global powers, and hence characterized more by ‘incoming links’ than by ‘outgoing links’ (Wall, 2009).
Since 1910 Africa has decolonized, but most nations have retained the frontiers arbitrarily drawn by the late 19th century European diplomats and administrators. These geometrically laid out frontiers notoriously took no account of the myriad of African societies, often dissecting individual cultures into different colonies/countries, and enclosing various cultures of diverse and independent groups (Meredith, 2006). When African colonies finally attained independence in the latter half of the 20th century, the newly formed nationalist parties generally disregarded multiparty parliamentary systems and the existence of diverse cultures within their national boundaries. When these governments proved unable or unwilling to fulfil popular expectations, the result was often the full-scale rebellions and military interventions that have been widespread over the past three decades (Harber and Wall, 2001). In this sense, these political instabilities and corruption have been and still are detrimental to Africa’s development within a globalizing world (Kaufmann et al, 2005).
Fifty years after the beginning of the independence era, Africa’s future prospects remain questionable. Already the world’s least wealthy region, it is falling further and further behind all other regions of the world. Its average per capita national income is one-third lower than the world’s next poorest region, South Asia (Sutcliffe, 2001). Most African countries have lower per capita incomes today than they had in 1980. Half of Africa’s 880 million people live on less than US$1 per day and its share of global trade has declined to half of what it was in the 1980s (Meredith, 2006). It is the only world region where illiteracy is commonplace, and on a list drawn up by the United Nations Development Programme, the 25 least developed nations in the world are all African (Meredith, 2006). Naturally the scourge of HIV/Aids does not work in favour of African countries developing. Troubled by these unfortunate issues, Africa finds itself largely excluded from the process of globalization, generally lacking the skills and the infrastructure to attract the global headquarters and subsidiaries that drive it (Léautier and Mehta, 2006). Furthermore, the African economy is generally still centred in basic agricultural and raw material production, in which the demand for the more profitable producer services remains relatively small. The prospects of Africa escaping this precipitous decline, as former South African President Mbeki stated, depend heavily on Western assistance (Mbeki, 1998). Most states are effectively bankrupt, and since the 1990s Western aid has fallen dramatically due to scepticism whether Africa will ever deliver its side of the bargain. Furthermore, intra-African economic institutions such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) have not been particularly successful in improving the economic situation in Africa (Wall, 2000).
