How has Africa's physical geography affected its ability to use its resources for economic development?

Answer 1

There are many ways of answering this question.

1. Due to the presence of the Sahara Desert, sub-Saharan Africa was largely cut off from the global economy for millennia, which made "keeping up" as far as technological advancement very difficult.

2. Africa's societal advancement proceeded differently from that of other areas of the world due to the absence of certain useful "tools." For example, there are no plants in southern Africa that are suitable for domestication and use in large-scale agriculture, which is likely one reason that hunter-gatherer societies persisted in so many areas. Similarly, there are few animals that are suitable to be domesticated. Perhaps most importantly, there are no real pack animals (like horses, mules, llamas, etc.), a necessity for large-scale architecture. Thus, though Africans did independently build cities, make iron tools and build seagoing vessels, their technological advancement was hindered in other ways.

3. One could argue that the dense forests that cover much of sub-Saharan Africa have made the large-scale transport of resources difficult, though there are rivers and forests can be cleared (as they were in Europe and North America).

4. Really, though, the largest impact on Africa's ability to use its resources for economic development has not be geographical at all, but rather social and historical. During the colonial period, Africans were exploited and subjugated, deprived of freedoms and brutally denied sovereignty. Europeans developed industries to harvest Africa's resources, but little of the profit stayed in Africa. When colonialism ended, the small class of Europeans pulling all the strings was replaced, with some exceptions, by a new, equally small, black ruling elite that still controls the vast majority of resources. In almost all cases, profits from natural resources go exclusively either to European companies (yep, they're still around) or to the strongmen -- be they governments or rebel groups -- who happen to control the mines. The removal of most of the wealth from Africa and the concentration of the remainder in the hands of so few has, above all else, hindered Africa's economic development in comparison to the rest of the world's.