Africa: Why does it continue to fail?
- Thread starter Quackers
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Lillefix
I'm serious. You can.
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Just wondering. For the common people in Africa, does democracy just slow down development? Should the Europeans and Americans do like China and just trade with them without nagging about democracy and human rights. Are we doing it the wrong way when we force Africans to adopt human rights and democracy before growth?
Mise, I think that you, especially, would enjoy the LSE podcast. I often think of your postings when I listen to them. Specifically, I think you'd enjoy the 3 part series by Lord Turner.
That specific podcast was 90 minutes long. The gist was that a decent portion of the economic growth was due to rapacious Chinese investment. The people were receiving less compensation than fair value, but at least they were getting investment. Additionally, the rapacious investment was compared to Western efforts, where the efforts to gain access to minerals was also packaged with 'aid' (note the quotation marks). Chinese rapacity, at least, is honest.
We should also be careful of growth figures, because some of that will be Chinese firms paying Chinese workers.
So, the call was that the African institutions need to increase their control over their own minerals, but that there's going to be concrete benefit from the Chinese efforts. The concrete benefits are much less than they should be.
Finally, we shouldn't be surprised if Chinese influence continues to spread there. They don't have the history of failure that the West does.
That is all. Go read a book before you start making threads with little to no value.
Came in to say this.
Africa has turned the corner, believe it or not.
Of course there are still a few hell-holes
NedimNapoleon
Weird Little Human
I think its cause Muslims are "obsessed" with hygiene, you have to always be clean,its a sin to use drugs and "immoral" stuff, but the hygiene part is the most, AIDS is also spread by common objects (needles, medical stuff) and good hygiene and the disgust with anything unsanitary just stops the disease to spread
For some reason, Islam seems to keep HIV/AIDS rates lower than what they should be. West-Africa has much lower HIV prevelance rates than say Southern Africa. Must involve something to with keeping women indoors and stuff.
I was half-joking...
Islam does keep AIDS down due to the nature of Muslim society. The spread of AIDS is simply poverty and lack of availability of health care.
I don't think that's really it because while Muslims normally take a shower after sex that wouldn't prevent infection with HIV. Guys I've dated in Turkey often say, "I'm clean, don't worry, we don't need a condom," and I'm thinking, you could take a shower 100 times it doesn't make a difference.
Also with needles, I'm not sure if just washing it in soap and water would make a difference but I'm no medical expert.
Also with needles, I'm not sure if just washing it in soap and water would make a difference but I'm no medical expert.
NedimNapoleon
Weird Little Human
Sterilizing it does, hell we sterilize knifes when we kill cows for Kurban Bajram
NedimNapoleon
Weird Little Human
From modern times but we are learned that everything at all times must be clean so when we figured out sterilizing we started doing that, but still it can't be just Islam, Bosnia is only 50% Muslim, 33% Serb and 17% Croat, it has to be something cultural
Because I guess you also have to factor in other issues, such as poverty, population concentration, etc. There are a lot of things weighing into this issue.
Cleanliness is probably one of the things Judaism rubbed off on Islam, because I know the Tanach preaches a lot of things regarding being clean n'stuff. I mean, one of the ceremonies before eating our passover feast involves everyone having to wash their hands.
NedimNapoleon
Weird Little Human
Cleanliness is probably one of the things Judaism rubbed off on Islam, because I know the Tanach preaches a lot of things regarding being clean n'stuff. I mean, one of the ceremonies before eating our passover feast involves everyone having to wash their hands.
True, this is like the medieval plague, the Jews and were the least infected because of that
innonimatu
the resident Cassandra
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Colonial governments definitely invested a lot into infrastructure (ports, roads, dams, railroads, etc). Most of the large cities (and capitals) in Africa were founded by european traders, settlers and colonial administrators. It was an inevitable consequence of those being the only ones with the technical ability and resources, at the time, to built these structures.
Renaming cities after independence does not change any of that, but it was a cheap expedient used by the new african rulers to deny this past investment and pretend that their new countries owed nothing to the colonial past. In this attitude one can start to understand why the post-independence was usually disastrous: the changers got political capital out of of promoting wasteful and very often directly destructive change. Not content with a staged transfer of power, they wanted everything immediately, and most of what they got quickly went to waste.
But in this the power hunger of the new african rulers is as much to blame as the obstinate possessiveness of the colonial rulers who would have an exploitative system last forever, for their own benefit, and resisted gradual change.
Actually, the despotic rulers were not weak. Despotism worked, where democracy failed, and the reason for that is the structure of african societies at the time of independence. Most of the population was illiterate and their political participation was structured through local strongmen and under traditional tribal divisions. Democracy cannot work under such conditions.
Not true. how can one have "over-reliance" on what is available? They had to start by exploiting those cash crops, because that was what they had. Only after building capital and/or attracting foreign investment on favorable terms could they diversify. And let's be realistic: foreign capital would not invest in Africa for its highly qualified labour... nor be directed to industrial production because the consumer markets around were weak and export markers were not open until the 1990s. So, foreign investment went mostly to "cash crops" and mining. The path towards diversification available to the new african states was narrow: carefully build capital for internal investment, but also promote internal markets for industrial production, meaning that the wealth from the "cash crops" had to be widely distributed among the population. But this slows the buildup of capital for investment. So this process necessarily had to be slow. Have a civil war, or foreign invasion, or corrupt government, during it and the progress of many years of hard work is suddenly lost!
Not all of africa went through population explosions. Not were these necessarily bad: more young population means more workers, should a state be able to take advantage of their labour. Ethiopia, for example, still manages to export food, the causes for its troubles must be found elsewhere.
This is true, but the lack of development was social, not infrastructural. And that's way more difficult to quickly overcome.
I know that they had plenty of wars. And yes, wars did improve infrastructure in Africa. Angola, for example, got a large investment in paved roads during the 1960s as a way to avoid road mines, and this after decades of colonial neglect.
Hard to say, the plague was arguably just as devastating in the Islamic world. I've noticed in Turkey and Azerbaijan people are usually very clean in their home but outside is pretty nasty. Maybe there were big heaps of trash or something that attracted rats.
People in Muslim countries used to be cleaner in their personal hygiene because they had public baths and people had to be clean because of religion but now at least in Turkey many people don't bathe every day or use deoderant so lots of people have body odor, I certainly notice it on the bus. People are supposed to wash before prayers but in my experience most people in Turkey don't pray regularly.
BasketCase
Username sez it all
Primarily Africa's problem is overpopulation.
Nope. Doesn't fly. Because white people have been conquering each other (and enslaving each other!) for all of recorded history. Africa's problems are due to other things (see that first line up top).
Elta
我不会把这种
Hans Rosling said:
Africa is not over populated, their farms are under producing due to a lack of modernization, if anything.
Communisto
Condottiere
I dont see how my pointing out the historical prevalence of examples of the rest of the world exploiting black populations makes me racist. I didnt invent eugenics. Its much easier to exploit people if theyre dark because it decreases the chances of the rest of the world noticing, caring or doing anything about it.
Dont shoot the messenger.
Son, the exploitation of black populations is a medieval invention of the arabs. If you want to tie this to racial subjugation we could have a long talk about the Irish and the Helots if you would like.
Communisto
Condottiere
What? That really is neither here nor there.
What I'm saying is that a lot of Africa's problems derive from indifference on the part of the global community due to the perfect storm of greed and an ingrained racist indifference to the suffering of far away black people.
That's possibly the worst thing you could have said. The world is hardly indifferent about the suffering in Africa. You'll find that the entire problem is economic and a very carefully made economic problem at that. Decades of colonial and post-colonial planning along with careful social manipulation went into the modern African situation. The quandary that was post-colonial Africa wasn't simply indifference, it was deliberate mismanagement and sabotage by both Africans, western governments, and to a lesser extent the eastern bloc.
