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Fictional African Nation (San Angelo)


goldrushg

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Enjoy this draft.

 

Mingombe

 

The Kingdom of Mingombe (“ubukumkani buka-Mingombe” in Xhosa) is a sovereign nation in the continent of Africa. It is a member of the United Nations, the Commonwealth of Nations, and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The name Mingombe roughly translates to "people" (in Bentu).

 

Mingombe has a population of about four million. Its capital and largest city is Mbazi.

 

The two official languages in Mingombe are Xhosa and Bantu. Approximately 74 percent of Mingombeans speak Xhosa.

 

The Kingdom of Mingombe is located in central sub-Saharan Africa, bordered to the north by the Republic of the Congo, to the southeast by Zambia, and to the southwest by Angola. The country lies between latitudes 6°N and 14°S, and longitudes 18°W and 28°E. It is just south of the Equator. The size of Mingombe, 240,000 square miles, is slightly greater than the area of France.

 

The Mingombe government is a constitutional monarchy. The King of Mingombe, [To be named], holds formal authority and acts as a non-party political head of state under the constitution, with the government operating in the monarch's name.

 

Mingombe has vast mineral and petroleum reserves, and its economy is among the fastest-growing in the world. The standard of living remains high for most of the population, however.

Mingombe has a tropical climate, with high annual rainfall supporting several forest regions.

 

As a result of the geology of the region, a huge amount of mineral wealth has been exposed (and is thus accessible to mining) throughout the country. Cobalt, cadmium, diamonds (both industrial and gem-quality), precious metals (gold, silver, copper, zinc, manganese, tin), as well as germanium, uranium, radium, bauxite, iron ore, and coal are all plentiful, particularly in the eastern part of the country. Rarer metals, such as vitaenium and dynamium are also available, here.

 

In [Date TBD], a meteor landed in Mingombe, which contained a large deposit of edurium, the strongest metal known, making Mingombe the only source of the alien metal on Earth.
 

Mingombe country map.jpg

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A nice Wakanda homage.

I can see a couple of things that might be problematic, but I've had a couple of glasses of wine.
 

"The two official languages in Mingombe are Xhosa and Bantu. Approximately 74 percent of Mingombeans speak Xhosa."

Bantu is technically a language group rather than a specific language. And worse, Xhosa is a Bantu language. In other words, there is a possible gibberish factor here.

"The Mingombe government is a constitutional monarchy."

Just like New Zealand, Japan, Thailand and Belgium? In these cases, the important part of the government is the bit that isn't the monarchy. Obviously, in a Wakanda analogue, the monarch is the important bit, but the actual government matters.

 

A  general thought: as a small landlocked nation, its relationships with its neighbours matters.

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Well... not small. It's bigger than France.

 

While it sounds like a Wakanda homage, it also reminds me of Botswana. Botswana came to my attention in the 1990s when it asked the US to stop giving foreign aid, it didn't need the money anymore. It's the African country that both avoided the worst effects of colonialism and then used its mineral wealth and aid money to build roads and schools instead of presidential palaces and toys for the generals. All in all, a remarkable place.

 

I've recently mentioned Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail a few times recently, and I'll do it again here. The book includes a section on how Botswana's 19C leaders saved their country from Cecil Rhodes and laid the foundations for the country's current growth. One might adapt this for Mingombe.

 

Dean Shomshak

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Well... not small. It's bigger than France.

 

While it sounds like a Wakanda homage, it also reminds me of Botswana. Botswana came to my attention in the 1990s when it asked the US to stop giving foreign aid, it didn't need the money anymore. It's the African country that both avoided the worst effects of colonialism and then used its mineral wealth and aid money to build roads and schools instead of presidential palaces and toys for the generals. All in all, a remarkable place.

 

I've recently mentioned Acemoglu and Robinson's Why Nations Fail a few times recently, and I'll do it again here. The book includes a section on how Botswana's 19C leaders saved their country from Cecil Rhodes and laid the foundations for the country's current growth. One might adapt this for Mingombe.

 

Dean Shomshak

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9 hours ago, goldrushg said:

In [Date TBD], a meteor landed in Mingombe, which contained a large deposit of edurium, the strongest metal known, making Mingombe the only source of the alien metal on Earth.

 

I would suggest the meteor land no later than the Eighteenth Century, before the European powers started carving up the African interior. Edurium weapons and armor would give the Mingombeans(?) a counter to European guns, enabling them to avoid colonization and preserve and evolve their own culture and institutions.

 

The only issue would be an explanation for how a pre-industrial society would have the means to work such a durable metal. If the Mingombeans had that means, they could refrain from simply selling their raw edurium, instead developing a more profitable and socially-transformative industrial infrastructure based around manufacturing edurium weapons, tools, and machine parts for export as well as domestic use. Learning to adapt European technology to that purpose would accelerate the country's scientific and social modernization.

 

(Yes, I have such an African country in my own Champions game, following pretty much that course. :P In my case it was the use of magic which allowed its people to work its super-metal, which obviously doesn't apply to this setting. However, since in the San Angelo universe the effects of the Flux may be able to manifest through time, perhaps some phenomenon related to the 20th Century experiments translated to Mingombe in the past -- maybe even had been drawn to the edurium meteorite.)

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7 hours ago, assault said:

"The Mingombe government is a constitutional monarchy."

 


Just like New Zealand, Japan, Thailand and Belgium? In these cases, the important part of the government is the bit that isn't the monarchy. Obviously, in a Wakanda analogue, the monarch is the important bit, but the actual government matters.

 

In my own fictional country referred to above, the king/queen must be a member of the royal family and exercises significant but restricted power, balanced by the democratically-elected legislature and judiciary. But succession to the throne was not automatic. The king or queen could choose their successor, but that choice would have to be ratified by the legislature. If the legislature refused one candidate another would have to be picked from the royal family. Moreover, any candidate for monarch would have to have demonstrated competent education, training, and/or experience in a range of disciplines required of a ruler: military service, administration, law, diplomacy, economics, science, etc.

 

Neither is the royal family insular or classist. It's long been accepted for royals to marry "commoners," or even to "adopt" people into the family. Usually these outsiders were accomplished people in their own right.

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  • 1 month later...

Xhosa mostly live on the Cape, which is far distant. 

 

Are these guys cousins of the Xhosa who went in a different direction during the migration from the ancient Central or East African homeland? 

 

Or is this a case of Xhosa migrating far north from the Cape under pressure from other nations, conquering other tribes far from Xhosa country, and gradually assimilating the conquered/tributary tribes? 

 

I am by no means an expert on matters SubSaharan. 

 

Edited by Devolutionary
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