I think colonialism gets blamed because it's the closest external thing in time that can be blamed. Counterexamples like Singapore get bandied around, but the difference between a state the size of Singapore and something like India or Bangladesh is staggering enough to make the comparison essentially useless.
It is an interesting thought experiment to imagine what the consequences would have been of a more gradual transition away from British rule in the Indian subcontinent. My imperfect amateur historical study makes me think it would have been a net positive, but potentially would have led to partition into at least 5-6 different independent states before they did leave for good.
You have a fair point that African countries have more diversity than Singapore, but that begs the question-what makes diversity a bad thing?
I don't say anything about African countries in my comment, that must be from upthread.
But I would think that most African countries are also at a scale different from Singapore's; enough to just make Singaporean solutions unworkable. This does not mean that it's a bad thing, just different. If one were to press the point, I'd say that scaling anything up is just harder – this applies to nation states just as it does to websites.
> India and Bangladesh were colonies as well, but they are quite a bit more functional than your typical African country.
I am not entirely sure this is true if you consider the rural parts. Rural India (with 65% of the population) has more in common with most African countries than it does with anywhere in the West. A large part of this is due to the fact that the British never had any interest in settling there in large numbers; and consequently never invested significant efforts into building infrastructure for the rural parts. They preferred to strike deals with existing power structures that allowed them to profiteer off the land. I could reasonably see African countries having similar problems given their relatively low population density in the 19th and 20th centuries.
For that matter, India gained independence in 1947; Singapore in 1959. Africa was colonized into the 1970s.
So is that the reason governments in African countries are unstable? Castrated rubber farmers?
The only authoritarian countries that overcome that hurdle are those lucky to get benevolent dictators who go undertake genuine reform to decentralize power.
Similarly, assassinating George Washington and the founding fathers would've affected the trajectory of the US and it would seem silly to ask why...
While it's certainly true that a number of new African states fell victim to the twists and turns of the Cold War (both sides having partook quite liberally), your theory fails to explain what happened to the states where there was little to no interference.
The Congo is actually a perfect example of having relatively soft colonial rule (the Belgian state took over from the king in 1910s and gradually made the colonial rule a lot less brutal than the horror of the Congo Free State) being replaced way too suddenly with... something. Since there was nothing that could pass for a semi-coherent national elite to speak of, even compared to most other African colonies, it's no wonder the Congo fell into conflict almost immediately. It would be rather odd if that didn't happen, Cold War or no Cold war.
Which ones would those be? If you could name a couple, I'd be willing to research and point out interference in the past 2 generations, if any.
I'm excited to hear about these African countries that had complete autonomy, please name some.
>While Belgians took part in the assassination, it wasn't like it took place in a peaceful country, out of the blue.
One must have an extremely warped world view to be able to look at Belgium and Congo on a world map and handwave away the assassination of a popular leader due to his antiexploitative economic views.
Some here buy the false narrative that most westerners are in Africa doing charity, I can tell... The reality is Africa is the largest net creditor to western nations and Africans have been forced to send charity TO Europe and the US for a few centuries now. Almost every foreign-funded assassination is tied to resource theft, your framing seems to ignore that Elephant in the Room on purpose.