As Ernest W. Adams points out, most African countries got their independence much later than their American counterparts, and had longer and deeper periods of colonization than Europe’s Asian colonies. See below map:
It also doesn’t help that more of Africa has more Landlocked countries than anywhere else in the world save Central Asia:
Poor access to ocean shipping makes it much more difficult to build an export economy. Even some of the countries not listed above, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, lack the access that they might otherwise have if their rivers were navigable. The Congo has a series of huge, unnavigable rapids relatively close to its mouth that force goods to be shipped around them in order to reach the ocean. As you can see below, the river route terminates at Kinshasa, after which point goods need to be transported by highway or rail (in red and black, respectively):
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