if europeans hadn't colonized it. i mean they didn't have the wheel, i think the iron age (the use of metals in general) was limited to a few places. would it be any different today compared to how it was when the whites started colonizing it?

sensitive topic, in

yea and probably the worst day to start this thread with white guilt levels reaching numbers well over 9000.

lol well you make no secret of your agenda

This is either wrong (as use of metals was widespread, especially among coastal states), or so vague as to be applied to virtually any continent. The Bantu migrations spread iron-making techniques throughout most of central and southern Africa.

By c.1400, the Swahili city-states and established West African states like Benin and Mali had social development (as defined by material luxury and agricultural output) roughly on par with Europe. The diversity of merchant goods in East African ports was generally higher than in most European port cities (with the exception of a few major hubs like Venice) due to their immediate access to the Indian Ocean trade network.

I predict a short run for this thread.

so what would it look like today?

Are we also presuming the trans-Atlantic slave trade still took place? Because the depopulation and societal collapse of interior African cultures is still a pretty big variable here.

no, whitey had no negative effect on sub-saharan africa in this scenario.

If Europeans hadn't colonized it, you'd probably know that Africans had the wheel since the discourse of the primitive would not have been created.

Do you want to start the discussion from the rash of formal colonization in late 19th century, or contact, or what? 1600, they're fairly equal technologically. The discussion is going to be pretty speculative, lots of pulling things out of arses. But without Atlantic slave trade, African states don't organize around wars for captives as much. That would have had a big impact.

With no slave trade, West African States and Swahili Coast probably remain more active partners in their respective trade networks, but the long-term effects are difficult to speculate on.

Not to mention, Europeans would not have had the advantage of cheap labor for sugar/coffee/indigo/rice/tobacco/cotton plantations in the Americas, which means economic development probably goes more slowly there--it's not to say the Atlantic economy doesn't develop, but it probably skews so many variables that the effects by the 19th century look even more different than we can imagine.

"Best" case scenario: greater market development in a non-Eurocentric Atlantic to the advantage of all parties.

"Worst" case scenario: markets stall, meaning there's no Enlightenment, no Industrial Revolution, no modernity as we understand it, at least not at the same time or in the same fashion.

It's conceivable Europeans would not achieve global dominance in the 19th century without the boost from slavery. Certainly a different mix of power.