Man, I hate dynastic politics. If I wanted to live in an ostensibly independent country that can't let go of monarchy, I'd be like Thought Bubble and move to Canada. Oh, come on, Thought Bubble, that's not fair. Shut up and take back Celine Dion! All right, now let's move to the other side of Africa where there was an alternative model of civilizational development. The eastern coast of Africa saw the rise of what historians call Swahili civilization, which was not an empire or a kingdom, but a collection of city-states like Zanzibar and Mombasa and Mogadishu, all of which formed a network of trade ports. There was no central authority.