Lazy African didnt build kenya

Malians build many building when they were wealthy, but all that vanished and the archeologist rebuild that famous Malian mosque. If you don't have money to build mega building and project you would not have them. Italians had the money and hired the best designers, your average Somali state in 1880 could do that for the lack of money. Beside that, if you look at any big well desinged European city, you will find that it was financed with stolen money or slaves. St petersburg for example was build with slaves and serfs, without them, the Russian state would not have build such great city.
Yeah it is interesting that we admire the huge buildings and architecture of past large civilizations but realistically they were almost always built on exploitation and slavery.
 
British colonialists imported Indian populations that acted as a buffer between them and local Africans. Positioned them as overseers, giving them special education and passports for travels until they became the new masters.

They often played a secondary administrative roles, and held military roles and took charge of the economy on behalf of their British masters.

In short Indians prominence in Kenya/Uganda has less to do with idle/lazy Africans and more to do with their legacy as ''colonial vanguards'' as agents of the new economic order imposed by the colonial administration.
It never was frowned upon. Historically Somali craftsmen and stonemasons were concentrated in the major urban centers were they even formed formal guilds both on the coast and the interior cities. In the more rural and scarce areas they had more of a reduced role for economic reasons, where food production took priority to meet subsistence demand.

Compared to the olden times it was the introduction of capitalism in the 19th century which resulted in increased purchasing power and created a tendency in people to outsource and purchase cheap labor(slaves even) to do what they would traditional do themselves, to cut cost, cut time and increase profit. This would go in both directions i might add.



The infrastructure that the Italians built was for resource extraction from the area to Italy and to house a small Italian elite , it had no functionality outside of it. It did not benefit nor develop the country at all. Somalia infrastructure wise was lacking because of that and the Italians demolished many historic settlements and buildings.

Most of the significant infrastructural developments in Somalia took place during the Kacaan government 1969-1990. Anything from roads, medical facilities, apartment complexes, airports, deep ports, plants, electricity, factories, dams, public areas etc

And a number of vocational programs, workshops for: woodworking, construction, repair, handicraft, general mechanics, electrical, auto-mechanics and metal manufacturing facilities opened up as well:




And the horrible mismatch of buildings you see today is due to the lack of urban planning by a central government post-war collapse in the last 30 years. That's how a lot of towns/cities naturally developed elsewhere in the past before intervention.

Many of the current western countries you see today, during early/mid 1900s tore down entire towns filled with ugly crowded industrial buildings that made things polluted, created slums and bad atmosphere and made way for better planned architecture and landscaping and building of new urban centers. In what is called ''urban planning reforms'' in Europe/Australia and ''City Beautiful movement'' in North America



Some developed countries like the UK (particularly in London and Manchester) and Korea(Seoul) still suffer from the legacy of ugly housing to this day.

A good book to read on this topic : Urban Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa: Colonial and Post-Colonial Planning Cultures
 

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