...Ethiopia was conquered by Fascist Italy.

This was just for 5 years (1936-1941); although you could perhaps also add on 3 years of British rule to that. I wouldn't really describe that as "colonialism" in the same way that e.g. Nigeria was ruled by the British for 160 years.

I did explicitly say "free from influence stirring internal conflicts", and in that regard Ethiopia has some history with Italy and communist regimes.

I stand by my statement: they'd be better off left to their own fate. But maybe you're right, it's not factual.

If you are convinced they would have been better off, in what ways would Nigeria be different now?

Well, for one, their infrastructure wouldn't be extraction-oriented. Right?

That doesn't seem obvious to me at all.

Most resource-oriented economies (oil states, Brazil, Australia, Norway etc) are extraction-oriented and this doesn't seem related to colonialism. "Dutch disease" is named after the over reliance the Dutch developed on their extraction-oriented economic sector - it's a very hard thing to avoid.

In this context "extraction-oriented" means extraction to a foreign power, ie building roads to ports and disregarding all other infrastructure needs that do not further the exportation of raw materials and goods to imperial ports.

Of course Brazil, Australia and Norway export their goods, but they also build other infra needed by their citizens. Colonizers, not so much.

Doesn't by definition doesn't an extraction oriented economy need a foreign customer to use the end input? If they used it themselves it wouldn't be extraction oriented.

And for it to be sustainable the end user needs to be able to get a gain from it (even if given some fantastic hypothetical world like being robots who depend upon crude oil to survive instead of food).

Essentially the combination of the two may be technically peripheral in that competive advantage results in a dutch diseased country and corruption leads to lack of investment in infastructure beyond what is needed. Thus colonial extractive economy is one cause but it may occur without any colonalism per se - just as a result of internal actions. Lets call this manifestation "pseudocolonial". The only involvement of the foreign in the pseudocolonial is a willingness to trade. One may assign guilt or morality in another nation for choosing to accept trade or boycott or embargo but either is just as much intervention.

To be pedantic I suspect the framework may be conflating aspects - this isn't apologetics towards actual horrific extractive colonies which short sightedly squander human potential and cause needless suffering.

In Brazil's case, it was a colony for sugar extraction(and other farm products) and later gold extraction.

Sure, when oil extraction started, Brazil has not been a colony for a century but the extraction culture was there.

Still, without colonialism, Brazil wouldn't be a thing, there was pretty much no commerce there, unlike with some african areas

Why wouldn't it? Assuming that Nigera was never colonized, there is no reason to assume they wouldn't extract the resources on their soil for their own economical development.

That much is obvious, every country extracts their resources. In this context "extraction-oriented" means extraction to a foreign power, ie building roads to ports and disregarding all other infrastructure needs that do not further the exportation of raw materials and goods to imperial ports.

So in other words the problem with "extraction oriented" is by definition it stops with the extraction as opposed to bootstrapping to other infastructure both humanitarian and foundational for more advanced economy?

Precisely. Since colonies are seen as money makers, there's little point in having expenditures that don't further your bottom line back home.

I actually don't know, maybe you are right. Do you have any ideas on what it would be instead?

I agree with the concept that you argue for, but don't see Ethiopia in particular being the clear cut case you indicate it is.

I think there a definitely places in Africa doing better than it but also plenty of places doing worse.

What's your view on Ethiopia

Could you perhaps elaborate on how Ethiopia apparently turned out compared to the rest of Africa?

Not much better, not much worse I guess

http://www.hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/ETH

Ethiopia was very successful - especially compared to other African countries - until the Marxist revolution in the 1970s - well after the colonial period.

The famine in the 1980s was disastrous, and then there were periods of civil war and war with Eritrea which lasted until the early 2000s. Ethiopia is landlocked, and the wars as well as civil wars in both Somalia and Sudan made trade very difficult.

But the economy has been growing well since then, and it is far from a failed state like neighbouring Somalia or Sudan.

I'm not really sure a single example like that can be projected to a pattern.

But a lot of countries were doing economically well under colonialism. Rhodesia was the 'breadbasket of Africa', a very rich state. When the British left they arranged elections, the first and the last. Mugabe took control and look at Zimbabwe today. A different kind of basket case.

The state of Ethiopia isn't so far different to other places, but that's mostly because after colonialism ended too many countries slipped backwards into the sort of tribal warfare, Marxism, corruption, economic mismanagement etc that typified the non-colonialist states. Do you think the British would have tolerated a Marxist insurrection in a colony, if they'd still been in charge?

The article alludes to this when it talks about how the illiterate man would prefer being ruled by a white man, because he thinks he'd be treated more fairly. Colonialism created many problems, but the state of these countries after it ended puts it in perspective.