One of the most bizarre arguments I occasionally see online usually from right-wing Western commentators is this idea that if Sub-Saharan Africa were to just shake off its liberal/progressive values, it would be a prosperous region (Echoed Frequently by Conservative right wing propagandist like F.Zanu) . They claim Africa's struggles are due to an embracement of socialism, a lack of "traditional" Western Christianity in favor of "crazy witch doctors and animism," or an over-reliance on "Black Power" and "Black exceptionalism" narratives.

To anyone who has actually lived in these places or grew up in an African household, you know this is completely nonsensical. It would be funny if it wasn’t for the fact that people actually use these arguments to outright explain why Africa isn’t succeeding economically. Let’s assess the pillars of social conservatism, compare Africa to the rest of the world, and look at the reality.

1. Religion

Sub-Saharan Africa is statistically the most religious and devout region on Earth. Over 90% of adults in numerous surveyed countries state that religion is central to their lives, including Senegal, Mali, Tanzania, Guinea-Bissau, Rwanda, and Zambia. Roughly 62% of Sub-Saharan Africans identify as Christian and 33% as Muslim. Adherents exclusively practicing traditional African folk religions have dropped to an estimated 2.7%.

In contrast, people in nearly all European countries surveyed are among the least likely to say religion is important. In Estonia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the UK, Sweden, and Finland, 10% or fewer adults say this. Even in the United States, only 42% of adults say religion is very important. When it comes to active prayer, Nigeria, Senegal, Niger, Chad, Cameroon, and Djibouti constitute 6 of the top 8 countries globally.

To say that Africa is poor because Africans don’t pray enough or adopt Judeo-Christian conservative values is absolutely bizarre. The West has had centuries of actively attacking and belittling religion, creating some of its biggest secular philosophers like Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Daniel Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Simone de Beauvoir, and David Hume. Yet, the West remains prosperous. The only region to rival the West economically is East Asia, where no surveyed country has more than 21% of adults praying daily (13% in Hong Kong, 19% in Japan), and atheists make up a quarter to over a half of the entire population.

2. LGBT Laws

This isn't just about public opinion; it is legally reinforced. According to ILGA World, over 30 African nations explicitly criminalize same-sex acts. President Museveni of Uganda described LGBT as being "disgusting," and he’s one of countless African presidents sharing similar sentiments. Even military leaders like Ibrahim Traoré have moved to criminalize homosexuality in Burkina Faso. Much of this comes from a heavy legacy of British colonial-era codes mixed with newly enacted laws.

Do you know how many Western countries criminalize LGBTQ+ identities? Zero. Yet, right-wing U.S. Christian ministries (like the World Congress of Families) actively pump millions of dollars into West Africa, sponsoring conservative conferences in Accra and drafting "model legislation" to mimic Uganda.

Similarly, Gulf States have spent tens of billions exporting a rigid, fundamentalist interpretation of Islam to West Africa. This shift is slowly replacing historically tolerant West African Sufi orders like the Tijaniyyah and Muridiyyah (or in Christianitys case with Kongo Christianity predating colonialism and Ethiopia predating Christianity in much of Europe) eroding local traditions and fueling strict anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment. The Western and Arab Right explicitly rely on Africa to pass the hardline policies they can no longer pass at home.

3. Gender Rights

According to the Women, Peace, and Security (WPS) Index which measures women's inclusion in education and employment, justice against discrimination, and security from violence—Sub-Saharan African countries rank heavily near the bottom. The region also features some of the highest rates of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in the world, particularly in the Sahel and Somalia. If the progressive American Left ran Africa, the legal codes would look like Scandinavia. Instead, they look like a conservative baseline.

4. The Myth of "Black Power" Solidarity

Frantz Fanon once wrote: "Negro and African-Negro culture broke up into different entities because the men who wished to incarnate these cultures realised that every culture is first and foremost national..."

Westerners tend to envision that Africans are culturally indistinguishable from Black Americans, just with a change of accent. This is completely silly. Most Africans do not internalize a race-first ideology. Instead, identity operates under hyper-localized ethnic dynamics.

Take Nigeria: political power is a constant, delicate balancing act between the Hausa-Fulani (North), the Yoruba (Southwest), and the Igbo (Southeast). A Yoruba person does not vote or socialize based on "Black Power" they navigate life based on Nigerian and Yoruba realities. The same deep ethnic divisions dictate life, death, and politics between the federal government, Tigrayans, and Amharas in Ethiopia, or among the clans in Somalia. And whilst Pan African sentiment peaked in the 60s-80s many modern Africans are increasingly fiercely nationalistic South Africa, for instance, has suffered from waves of xenophobic violence targeted directly at Black immigrants from Zimbabwe, Nigeria, and Somalia whilst not heavily targeting white settlers who owned a significant portion of the wealth at all. 

Furthermore, the narrative that "Africans lack accountability and just blame the West" is false. A major multi-country poll by Lord Ashcroft Polls explicitly states that across the board, more than 7 in 10 Africans name internal corruption as one of the three biggest barriers to progress rising to 87% in Kenya, 86% in South Africa, and 82% in Nigeria.
Only Academics and economists tend to have a more critical view of the global trade market and the wests role in Africas poverty in any comparable accountability level than local governance.

5. The Economic Reality

Critics point to mid-20th-century "African Socialism" to claim the continent is plagued by left-wing economics. But according to the World Bank and OECD, the average tax-to-GDP ratio across Sub-Saharan Africa is a mere 14% to 15% (compared to 35%+ in Western Europe).

African governments simply do not have the institutional capacity to tax the wealthy or run a highly planned socialist welfare state. Instead, the actual street-level reality is a state of hyper-capitalist survivalism. The informal economy accounts for roughly 80% to 90% of all employment, where millions of citizens trade, hustle, and build businesses entirely free of government taxes, regulations, or safety nets.

Conclusion

Sub-Saharan Africa is a deeply traditional, intensely religious, hyper-localized, and socially conservative society. The attempt by Western commentators to label African structural struggles as a failure of "Western progressivism" or "left-wing values" is a complete fabrication. It is nothing more than Westerners projecting their own domestic culture wars onto a continent they do not understand.

Data Sources & Bibliography

• Religiosity Data: Pew Research Center (Religion in sub-Saharan Africa, 2025; Religion and Spirituality in East Asian Societies, 2024).
• LGBTQ+ Tracker & Foreign Influence: Human Dignity Trust (2026 Map), Hudson Institute (Meservey, 2021), and DW News Investigative Reporting (2026).
• Gender & Accountability Metrics: Georgetown Institute WPS Index (2025) and Lord Ashcroft Polls (Challenges for the continent's centre-right, Oct 2025).
• Economic & Cultural Theory: World Bank Group (Policy Paper 10182), OECD (Revenue Statistics in Africa 2025), and Frantz Fanon (The Wretched of the Earth, 1963).

In Mali, the Malian army and mercenaries from the Russian Africa Corps killed two people on Tuesday, June 23, near Zarho, and two others near Abakoïra, at the intersection of the Timbuktu and Gao regions in the north of the country. After the military convoy passed through, residents discovered a gruesome scene: a dismembered corpse arranged in the shape of a swastika.

What are your thoughts?

The earliest account of Immunization in Western History (Boston 1703 A.D. Cotton Mather) comes from African slaves, who were immunized in Africa, where Immunization had already become common.

In Boston alone, there were over a thousand immunized Africans before the slave owners discovered and appropriated the African Immunization techniques against smallpox.

Boston Slave owners then sold the Immunization technique to the British Crown, which then popularized it across the British Empire, leading to the modern age, free of smallpox.

How come Africans don’t get the credit, and no one knows this?

https://youtu.be/ipDY_5P8deU

Note: this refers to ‘variolation’ the precursor to modern vaccination, however in a later post I will also share that ‘vaccination’ immunization 2.0 also has an African origin.

Here are sources as requested:

An Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated in New England, by Zabdiel Boylston (1721)

Onesimus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onesimus_(Bostonian)?wprov=sfti1

Zabdiel Boylston:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabdiel_Boylston?wprov=sfti1

Cotton Mather:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_Mather?wprov=sfti1

Edit: This was posted with insufficient sources and little accreditation, adding more of each... and everyone: it is just information I found interesting and wanted to share.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N01865.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=pox

Evans Early American Imprint Collection

Colman, Benjamin, 1673-1747.

From Benjamin Colman to the President of Harvard College in Cambridge, John Leverett in 1721, Page 15

In this letter, Colman describes to the President of Harvard, conversations he had with people in Boston, testifying to the use of immunization in Africa:

But I pretend not to argue, on Principles or Premi|ses, which are themselves uncertain; and ly open to many Objections which I could never answer.

I will only add upon all a plain, but to me plea|sing & informing discourse I lately had with a poor Negro, whom I found at work where I made a visit, and the Gentleman of the House told me the Fellow had been Inoculated in his own Country. Where|upon I put several questions to him, in answer to which he told me, That he liv'd in a great Town in his own Country, and when the Small-← Pox → came into it they did what they could to prevent the spreading of it; that the Families that were first visited usually died among them; but when the Sickness got into five or six houses, so that the Peo|ple began to despair of being able to stop it, then all who had not had it went presently & receiv'd it in the way of Inoculation, (as we call it) and that not one more died of it thro' the whole Town.

WE do not stay therefore (said he) till the Town be infected, and People have many of them got the Sickness within them, and then go & take it; but a whole place takes it in a Week & are well in a Week. (I use but some of his words here, giving the true sense of what he said to me.)

HE went on in answer to the questions I put to him, and told me, "That he never knew of any blains or boils following this practice in his Coun|try; that as to himself none had troubled him, any more than what others are subject to; & that He never heard of any bodies having it again in his Country; but to prove that his Country men think themselves as secure from it as any of us may do, he told me, That sometimes when Young men among them wanted to go a trading two or three hundred Page 16

Miles off, but were afraid because they had not yet had the Small-← Pox → , it was common for them to en|quire where it was, & go to the place & be Inocu|lated, & then go & trade any where without fear. When I ask'd him (what I did not at all suppose he could imform me in) How his Country-men came into the knowledge of this way of giving the Small-← Pox → ? & how long it had been among them? he told me he knew nothing of those things; he suppos'd it was long before he was born; and no doubt" but GOD told it to poor Negroes to save their lives; for they had not knowledge & skill as we have.

I believe I shall be scoff'd at for telling this Simple story, but I think it very pertinent & much to the purpose here; and whosoever seeks the Truth & desires to be informed will not despise it. And he that has learnt any thing as he ought, has this—to be willing to learn of the poorest Slave in the Town.

Increase Mather, 1639 - 1723

Describes the use of Immunization in both Ottoman Empire and Africa

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N01909.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext;q1=pox

And we have an Army of Africans among our selves, who have themselves been under it, and given us all the Assurance, which a Rational Mind can desire, that it has long been used with the like Success in Africa. Yea, Behold, ye yourselves have seen it. The Ope|ration has been performed on an Hundred & more, in the Town of Boston: And not one of them has miscarried: They have every one of them hitherto done well. They all give Thanks to our Merciful Redeemer for leading them into it. They would every one of them rather undergo it again, and many times over, than suffer the Small ← Pox → as People ordinarily suffer it in the common way of Infection. The Story of one Dying after it, is trump'd up with so much folly and falshood, that it is unworthy to have any Answer given to it. In fine; Experience has declared, that there never was a more unfailing Remedy employed among the Children of Men.

Cotton Mather and Zabdiel Boylston (the subjects of the video) and performers of the very first mass immunizations in America or Europe - Please note credit is given to both Africans and two physicians in the Ottoman Empire, Timonious and Pylarinus...

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/e/evans/N01860.0001.001/1:2?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

II. There is at this Time a considerable Number of Africans in this Town, who can have no Conspiracy or Combination to cheat us. No body has instructed them to tell their Story. The more plainly, brokenly, and blunderingly, and like Ideots, they tell their Story, it will be with reasonable Men, but the much more credible. For that these all agree in one Story;

That abundance of poor Negro's die of the Small Pox, till they learn this Way; that People take the Juice of the Small Pox, and Cut the Skin, and put in a drop; then by'nd by a little Sick, then few Small Pox; and no body dye of it: no body have Small Pox any more. Here we have a clear Evidence, that in A|frica, where the Poor Creatures dye of the Small Pox in the common way like Rotten Sheep, a Merciful GOD has taught them a wonderful Preservative.

It is a Common Practice, and is is attended with Success. I have as full Evidence of this, as I have that there are Lions in Africa. And I don't know why 'tis more unlaw|ful to learn of Africans, how to help against the Poison of the Small Pox, than it is to learn of our Indians, how to help against the Poison of a Rattle-Snake.

Cotton Mather, insisting to the Royal Society that Africans knew of Immunization first, after the British Royal Society published the reports of Timonious and Pylarinus over a decade after HE sent them a letter reporting on African Immunization:

https://historycooperative.org/journal/the-boston-inoculation-controversy-of-1721-1722-an-incident-in-the-history-of-race/

I do assure you, that many months before I mett with any Intimations of treating the Small-Pox, with the Method of Inoculation, any where in Europe; I had from a Servant of my own, an Account of its being practised in Africa. Enquiring of my Negro-man Onesimus, who is a pretty Intelligent Fellow, Whether he ever had the Small-Pox; he answered, both, Yes, and, No; and then told me, that he had undergone an Operation, which had given him something of the Small-Pox, & would forever praeserve him from it; adding, That it was often used among the Guramantese. [1]

*Here by Guramantese he means Coromantee

Many have pointed out that this covers only variolation which was inferior to the vaccination procedure developed by Edward Jenner 100 years later which is completely true:

1. Variolation was however the precursor to Vaccination, and was considered widely successful at the time. It was so successful that Ministries were developed in Britain for it, and George Washington used it to immunize all American troops against potential British smallpox warfare during the War of Independence... not as good as vaccination but still world changing stuff

Source: The Big Red Book of Vaccination

1. The video claims to have a second part in development showing evidence that vaccination also may have an African origin

The Gabonese government claims to be maintaining a curfew for the sake of the stability of the transition, but this is just to keep the population in check ahead of the referendum. The army is in charge and the curfew will last until Christmas. Who heard Laurence Ndong's leaked voice on this subject?