How Economics Explained Gets African History Wrong

Further Research Recommendations below.

Book Recommendations:

Austen, Ralph A. Trans-Saharan Africa in World History. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2010.

Conrad, David C. Empires of Medieval West Africa: Ghana, Mali, and Songhay. Chelsea House Publishers, 2010.

Ehret, Christopher. Civilizations of Africa: A history to 1800. Charlottesville: The University of Virginia Press, 2018.
(This one is super long and a bit academic, but covers an extremely broad timeframe and area, and goes much further back than most history books on Africa.)

Fauvelle , Francois-Xavier. The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages. S.l.: Princeton University Press, 2021. (This book covers a lot of topics in African history over a pretty wide area, but isn't overwhelmingly long)

Gomez, Michael A. African Dominion: A New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2019. (Very good book on Medieval Sahelian history)

Parker, John, and David Adjaye. Great Kingdoms of Africa. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023. (This book features articles written by different scholars on a variety of topics from across Africa, and like The Golden Rhinoceros it's not too long. Great place to get a taste of history from across the continent)

Phillipson, David W. Foundations of an African Civilisation: Aksum and the Northern Horn, 1000 BC - AD 1300. Oxford: James Currey, 2012.

Thornton, John K. A Cultural History of the Atlantic World, 1250-1820. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2012.

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic World: 1400-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2007. (Probably my favorite book an Atlantic Africa)

The Cambridge History of Africa (Volumes 1-5 for Pre-Colonial History)

African History-Focused Channel Recommendations:
@FromNothing
@hiddenhist
@Bamise
@hometeamhistory806
@Mrminibagel
@medievalafrica
@ronuspirit

Video Recommendations from channels not specifically focused on African history:
Mansa Musa and Islam in Africa: Crash Course World History #16:
Int'l Commerce, Snorkeling Camels, and The Indian Ocean Trade: Crash Course World History #18:

My own videos on West African History:

Apparently my citations are too long to include in this description, so I'll put them in a pinned comment.

00:00 Intro
00:55 Claim: The Sahara Isolated Sub-Saharan Africa
01:25 Trans-Saharan Contact
03:45 Nile Valley and Red Sea Trade
04:10 The Horn and Arabia
04:41 The Swahili Coast and Indian Ocean Trade
05:26 Actual Possible Barriers in Africa
06:11 Claim: Africans Never Developed Farming
07:00 Independent Crop Domestication in Africa
07:58 Introduced Crops in Africa
08:07 Animal Agriculture in Africa
08:52 Spread of Farming in Africa
09:32 Hunter-Gatherer Populations
10:54 MIT Study
12:25 Claims About The Wheel
13:50 Wheel Use in Sub-Saharan Africa
14:14 Saharan Wheels
14:51 Non-Wheeled Transport
16:25 Reasons for the Decline of Wheeled Transport
18:54 Conclusion + Source Recommendations

Correction:
04:29 Muhammad sent his followers to seek refuge in Aksum, but did not go with them.

[SomasAcademy]

Citations:


[2] Fenn, Thomas R. “Contacts Between West Africa and Roman North Africa: Archaeometallurgical Results from Kissi, Northeastern Burkina Faso.” Crossroads / Carrefour Sahel. Cultural and Technological Developments in First Millennium BC / AD West Africa. Développements Culturels Et Téchnologiques Pendant Le Premier Millénaire BC / AD Dans l'Afrique De l'Ouest, 2009.










[13] Soukopova, Jitka. “Prehistoric Colonization of the Central Sahara: Hunters versus Herders and the Evidence from the Rock Art.” Expression, 2020.



[16] Sadr, Karim. “Livestock First Reached Southern Africa in Two Separate Events.” PloS one vol. 10, 8 e0134215. 21 Aug. 2015, ; Marshall, Fiona & Hildebrand, Elisabeth. (2002). Cattle Before Crops: The Beginnings of Food Production in Africa. Journal of World Prehistory. 16. 99-143. 10.1023/A:1019954903395.

[17] Law, Robin. (1980). Wheeled transport in pre-colonial West Africa. Africa, 50(03), 249–262. doi:10.2307/1159117

[oussamoor]

Common issue with any study or research about Africa is considering Africa as one entity

[XGamers]

as a person of african descent, thank you for dispelling all the myths even a five year old from senegal can debunk.

[youdontknowjoejo]

I’m glad your channel exists. As a Nigerian American I remember trying to find videos about African history back in the early 2010s and finding nothing but misinformation and Eurocentric propaganda about Africa. The west has a huge problem when it comes to understanding Africa and it shows. I remember having to correct a high school geography teacher, that Egypt isn’t the most populous country in Africa.

[topkwark]

As the child of an African history professor, I can't really begin to express how much I appreciate that someone is taking the time to do this work. So, thank you!

[fra]

Sadly that youtube channel tends to make absurd mistakes. As a European, I noticed the same tendency when they speak about the EU. Full of bias, simplifications and plain mistakes

[LoudWaffle]

"What is your source."
>"Here is the one single source I used."
"Okay I read it and it contradicts most of the things you said."
>"🗿"

[heyyourebeautiful]

Thank you. A lot of YouTubers give their thoughts on topics they are unqualified to speak about. I'm a civil engineer. One YouTuber claimed the bridge collapse in Baltimore was from failing infrastructure when the truth is that bridge wasn't designed to withstand a cargo boat hitting it's support column.

[georgekostaras]

It's unfortunate that so many big channels are just clickbait machines

[sasentaiko]

Finally the algorithm sending me sense instead of nonsense. Subscribed.

[ZMBRT]

the agriculture point is so funny to me because my dad’s side of the family is full of farmers and i’ve never heard anything about it being super hard to farm there

[HidalgodeAndalucia]

Soma DESTROYS Economics Explained with FACTS and LOGIC.

[sapientisessevolo]

I've made this joke before, and I'll make it again,

Merchants: We need infrastructure for trade!

Camels aggresively: We *are* the infrastructure!

[khornedmaple]

If feel like the central issue here is the notion that Africa is uniquely poor, which means it's poverty must be rooted in something inherent to the African continent.
One must only compare the development of the Chinese GDP per capita with, say, the Kenyan one to realize that African poverty is not all that exceptional.

And this is China we're talking about. Try arguing that their geographical conditions consigned them to poverty and people will rightfully call you an idiot.

[DinoCism]

The wheel thing comes from Murray Rothbard. It’s a staple of racist and libertarian discourse on Africa. Modern economics (neoclassical) is a straight up religion.

[mayorjoshua]

I am an Afro-American, and I was already sighing when I heard the first point about the supposed isolation of sub-Saharan Africa. I recently talked about this assumption in my art class that was implicit in one of our readings about how world peace could be reached through artistic sharing and preservation. The author only focused on the Silk Road linking Europe, North African and West Asia, and East Asia; so as the only person of black African descent in my class, I felt the need to question the place of sub-Saharan Africa and (indigenous) America in his view of world peace. I mentioned the Trans-Saharan trades and the Indian Ocean trades to show how sub-Saharan Africa was well-connected to the rest of the Old World art history. My ancestors came from the western Sahelian, Sudanian, and Guinean regions of sub-Saharan Africa and many aspects of Afro-American culture have roots in the products of the Trans-Saharan trade such as music (see banjo/folk lute and indigenous African fiddling traditions) and spirituality (Islam was not an uncommon faith amongst the enslaved and even impacted the magico-religious practices of the non-Muslim majority; it also provided a means of literacy for enslaved Africans in the Americas who could write in Arabic or Ajami). And to talk about agriculture, the indigenous knowledge of the sub-Saharan Africans with crops was a driving factor in the trafficking of certain groups to the American colonies!! Indigo and rice production in South Carolina and Georgia (where I have family from), for example, motivated the importation of Africans from the region where they were already engage in such business!! As an descendant of enslaved Africans in the United States, the idea that agriculture was not popular in Africa is very insulting to my history. Thank you so much for making this video and setting the record straight!!

[ElleDiablo]

As a South African always told (confidently) by Afrikaans descendants of Dutch settlers that 1) bantu people arrived at the same time/after the Dutch settled therefore we have equal claim, only the Khoi tribes were here and 2) we had no trade/technology/were taught to farm/were "civilised" by colonisers, despite archeological evidence to the contrary (despite the destruction of others), i REALLY appreciate this video.

I'd love for you to do a video debunking far right South African talking points, but I'm definitely saving this one for future reference. Excellent work with reference.

[FernandoMendoza-dwnz]

Economics explained only ever uses basic economics to describe the complexity of nations. Nothing of value is gained by watching the channel unless you've never learned basic economics.

[GTAVictor]

In the Western imagination, Africa is stereotyped as a continent plagued by corrupt dictators, with the supposition being that Africans are perhaps too "primitive" to appreciate the virtues of Western-style democracy. But the truth is that ever since the end of colonialism, Africans have been actively prevented from establishing democracies. The legacy of strongman rule in Africa is largely a Western invention, not an indigenous proclivity. Western powers have thwarted countless attempts at real independence, which casts a rather ironic light on the West's historical image as a beacon of democracy and popular sovereignty.

If you ever try to suggest that poor countries are poor because they have been disadvantaged by an imbalanced global economy, someone is almost certain to respond by pointing the finger at corruption instead. ...For anyone that isn't aware of the history of colonialism, unequal treaties, structural adjustment and trade rules, this seems as good an explanation as any.

...It is important that we expand our conception of corruption to include illicit outflows, anonymous companies, secrecy jurisdictions... ...And yet the mainstream definition of corruption does not encompass them... ...Instead, the corruption narrative diverts our attention away from these exogenous problems and places the burden of blame on developing countries themselves.

~ From "The Divide: A Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions"

[WhichDoctor]

Ive seen soo many EE debunked videos from so many different YouTubers with specialties in different areas that now I wouldn’t believe EE if they told me the sky was blue without getting independent and securely sited verification