Reader, a British writer and photojournalist who lived in Africa for many years, is particularly good at describing the theories about the evolution of Homo sapiens. He explains how modern man first evolved in Africa and then spread to the Middle East and from there to Europe, Asia, the South Pacific and the Americas. There were only a handful, probably not more than 50, according to calculations made from DNA, who took the daring step of leaving their mother continent. From this brave beginning came the entire population of the world outside Africa. Of course the descendants of these colonists eventually outstripped the population of Africa by a factor of 10, with corresponding gains in wealth and power.
Reader explains Africa's handicaps in terms of disease and climate.
The liberation of Africa from these enemies began with the period of European exploitation and has continued, somewhat haphazardly, as European drugs are exported to Africa. But it takes more than the potency of African diseases to explain why Africa south of the Sahara lagged so far behind other continents in wealth and power. Reader has an excellent chapter on early Ethiopia that puts the point well. By the fifth century A.D. they had not only conquered their African neighbors as far as the Nile, they sailed back to Arabia as colonizers and imposed their will on the states from which their ancestors had migrated. The Axumites traded with the Greco-Roman world, exporting ivory, rhinoceros horn, hippopotamus hide and slaves.