Realities of Africa's Size and Diversity
The dreams of a one unified African country will eternally remain just that, a dream.
In line with the past 5+ centuries, away from the fear and hatred, we underestimate the dept of the pettiness of that went into representing the African continent on the world map. The larger-than-life representation of the rest of the world’s lands, especially Europe, shows an overcompensation for something.
Lip-service to “Beauty in Diversity”
Africans always lament their inability to be as unified as other nations in the world. This belief shows a chronic ignorance of the level of the concentration of our diversity as compared with others. It is disrespectful to compare Africa or its current (colonial) state structures to Ethnic/Ethnolinguistic majority or Monoethnic nations.
Below is an image depicting the comparison between Africa and other nations. It is important to study these with an appreciation of the circumstances we’ve found ourselves.
From the image above, it can be observed that Russia is big enough to encompass a little over half of Africa’s landmass, while it has about 20% of Africa’s population, 150 million people, of which about 72% are ethnic Russians. China is seen to occupy about 1/3 of Africa’s landmass, with almost the same numbers of souls, 1.4 billion people, of which 90% are ethnic Han Chinese. The same pattern can be observed for all other nations working with a relatively large territory but with a fraction of the population and diversity occupying it.
Europe, a continent of about 750 million people, occupies 1/5 of Africa’s landmass with 50 sovereign ethnic majority nations. With a fraction of Africa’s size and a fraction of the diversity, Europe, the leader in propagating the ideal of “Beauty in DIversity”, has about the same number of states as Africa, but its state are far more stable and they largely follow the ethnolinguistic model to form a series of ethnic majority nations.
Like “One Nigeria”, the dreams of a one unified African country will eternally remain just that, a dream, unless you figure out a way to manufacture a demography in line with the above mentioned. This requires a price many are unwilling to pay, as the process by which much of the world achieves their homogeneity is a well-documented history of forced assimilation and intentional genocides. In the absence of that, learn to appreciate your dilemma and respect your reality.
Sustaining the current reality is unreasonable for Africa. With the level of its diversity and landmass, no other continent can relate to its circumstance and reality. Africa requires not only more states but true nations built on the ethnolinguistic model with ethnic majority presence in each nation. Only through this can the dream of stability, prosperity a degree of unified reality be achieved.
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