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*sub-saharan*Africa Thread - We can talk about the rest too!
VishNub
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So, Africa. The dark continent.
So, obviously, there are tons of problems over there. Multiple simultaneous epidemics, AIDS, Malaria, occasionally Ebola and Marburg, sleeping sickness, and a whole host of other ones. And civil wars. Oh man, lots of civil wars. It's sort of useless to list all the problems, but there's a lot of them, and not much is being done to fix them. Oh, and now they have zombies.
So, who's fault is it? Is it whitey's fault? Turn of the century colonialism?
Do we want to go all the way back to Guns, Germs and Steel? Not really, that's not very helpful.
But the real question is, what can we, as rich happy people, or as large western nations, do to help? Presumably pouring money at the continent would help somewhat, or temporarily. But the extreme corruption and lack of infrastructure and government makes that seem really inefficient. Should we invade? Uplift and Christianize? Or should we say, "Fuck it." And let them work it out on their own. But wait, we can't, because we love their resources. Coltan and diamonds come to mind. Not to mention oil. And all the other stuff we exploit the continent for.
A large part of what we need to do, I think, and this applies to the Middle East as well, is reduce global demand for the resources which allow the government of the moment to stay in power. By doing that, they'll have an incentive to improve conditions on the ground, allowing our monetary aid to have a real effect.
So, yeah. Let's talk about Africa.
So, obviously, there are tons of problems over there. Multiple simultaneous epidemics, AIDS, Malaria, occasionally Ebola and Marburg, sleeping sickness, and a whole host of other ones. And civil wars. Oh man, lots of civil wars. It's sort of useless to list all the problems, but there's a lot of them, and not much is being done to fix them. Oh, and now they have zombies.
So, who's fault is it? Is it whitey's fault? Turn of the century colonialism?
Do we want to go all the way back to Guns, Germs and Steel? Not really, that's not very helpful.
But the real question is, what can we, as rich happy people, or as large western nations, do to help? Presumably pouring money at the continent would help somewhat, or temporarily. But the extreme corruption and lack of infrastructure and government makes that seem really inefficient. Should we invade? Uplift and Christianize? Or should we say, "Fuck it." And let them work it out on their own. But wait, we can't, because we love their resources. Coltan and diamonds come to mind. Not to mention oil. And all the other stuff we exploit the continent for.
A large part of what we need to do, I think, and this applies to the Middle East as well, is reduce global demand for the resources which allow the government of the moment to stay in power. By doing that, they'll have an incentive to improve conditions on the ground, allowing our monetary aid to have a real effect.
So, yeah. Let's talk about Africa.
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I guess...
Um... I like the reduction of demand idea, but how do we go about doing that? And wouldn't a slightly more feasible idea be to... okay, maybe it's not feasible, but maybe some sort of policy put into place to prevent or reduce the incentive towards governments drifting towards oil dictatorships (or valuable resource X dictatorships)?
I dunno.
They need to quit fucking making so many babies
It's like they decided they needed to pick up China and India's slack
Well if your goddamn aid agencies would start handing out birth control instead of bibles and guilt, it'd be a start :x
Hey, don't blame me, I voted for Nader
I mean
Kerry
...although come to think of it, Kerry's Catholic, so he might be for abstinence-only crapola too
But for the majority of Africans, things are relatively good right now. We don't hear the Johannesburg's booming economy, or the tourist trade in Kenya, or the peaceful state of affairs in Rwanda. Take Sierra Leone: in crisis six years ago, this year they have held peaceful, democratic elections without the presence of any AU or UN peace keepers.
This is, of course, not to suggest that Africa isn't facing huge problems, or that we shouldn't help African nations. But don't think of Africa as a basket case.
And if you think that's not still happening...
Limed SO hard.
My stars... I get so angry that people would approach an issue so terrible and so tragic, as an excuse to further their own agenda.
Let's not forget the Chinese. They are shipping weapons and propping up the government of Sudan all to get that sweet sweet oil. Their retort is that they are providing funds for infrastructure but it turns out that most of the facilities built by the Chinese employ people at sweat shop level wages. Not to mention the amount that gets skimmed off the top. There is a more recent article (can't find it) how China is furthering its involvement by harvesting lumber and other commodities that sent to china and then shipped back in the form of cheap finished goods that strangle local manufacturing. Classic colonialism!
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/sudan1103/26.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A21143-2004Dec22.html
http://www.savedarfur.org/pages/china_sudan_and_the_darfur_conflict_fact_sheet
Granted, I'm mostly talking about central Africa. The Mediterranean countries have their own problems, but they're just not on the same scale. Same with South Africa.
Condoms would be nice. But is there a cultural aspect to it as well? I'm making shit up here, but in poor societies, isn't having more children to help with work a big plus?
As far as incentivizations... How would you go about doing that? Short of cash bonuses for increased standards of living, which would probably be cheated on and the money would go to someone's pocket anyways. Plus, how much money is it going to take to top the insane profits the guy at the top of the diamond industry is making?
Reducing demand? Educate people about diamonds. Find other sources, find other technologies that don't use the resources in question.
And it's kind of hypocritical of the west to demand African governments not subsidise anything when they're building themselves up, and to privatize everything, when we subsidise agriculture (in Europe and America) to ridiculous extents.
As it stands Africa gets tons of aid money, but its all in more individualized contracts between countries with massive amounts of technicalities and special interests in certain aspects of the African country which the aid is directed toward. Not to mention the ebb and flow of aid that goes into countries where one year they'll have hundreds of millions while the next year there may be 50 bucks. If there were to be a bureaucracy that had some sort of oversight or simply acted as an intermediary to get the best interest of the country focused upon, the massive amount of money being launched at the problems might actually start to work to improve them.
I knew a family that took out $5,000 USD to buy a thousand sheep. Fifty-five percent of the country's population base their income on agriculture. By having the whole family (and extended) raise these sheep and sell the sheep products (wool, meat, skins, etc...) they could pay off the loan and literally watch their investments grow.
Self-help and determination set my heart aflutter.
That's a good point. Infant mortality rates are still pretty high in most African countries, aren't they?
There's a great article by the Christian Science Monitor that lays out the problem with the cocoa cartel in Western Africa.
Breaking these cartels tops my list on reforming Africa. Although it'd be hard to discourage banks from taking this blood money.
As high as 50% is some of the worse off countries.
It seems this continent was naturally screwed long before we got there. It was taken advantage of because it lacked the structured civilization found in europe at the time. The only time these people seem to have evolved is when we've forced it upon them. And forced integration into a more modern socieity almost never goes well.
It's not all about colonialism. It isn't like Africa was the richest most advanced area of the world before the 19th century.
Jeffrey Sachs has a good book called The End of Poverty that outlines how Africa could be helped to climb out of the ditch it is in.
Man, what?
That's not very true. There were some pretty good sized cities and kingdoms along the southern border of the Sahara which were reasonably advanced.
LFT.
Check out the Presidents Emergency Plan for Aids Relief. One third of all money going to programs that work to teach people how to not spread HIV etc' MUST GO TO ABSTINENCE PROGRAMS. Clearly, Abstinence is working in Africa.
And just for kicks, don't forget about the fact that the majority of the highest AIDS ridden countries are predominantly Christian. Connect the dots and you start seeing a pretty grim picture of Religion's Role in Africa.
EG HIV Prevalence Rate % Christian (I am including all Christian Offshots in this number)
South Africa 21.5% ~65%
Swaziland 38.8% ~70%
I would drop more stats but I can't find my research project ;V
Then again, it's Africa, and I don't care.
Edited for some grammar.
The problems of Sub-Saharan Africa are as diverse as the region is, but there are some aspects that can be found back in most countries. I'll go over them.
(1) Corruption
No matter what you try to do, expect to lose at least 1/3th of your resources to bribing officials, the neighbours, their families, the guys from across the road, their families and whatever gang there is active in the area. Corruption is extremely prevalent in especially Nigeria. To get anything done there, corruption must be beaten first.
The first step on this road must come from the rulers, it is unacceptable that various presidents mess around with the elections every time. The population will look at this and they will say to themselves that if the president isn't playing by the rules, they don't have to as well.
(2) Diseases
most notably: AIDS, but also a whole bunch of other diseases make the population and, through them, the economy of Sub-Saharan Africa weak. Take for example a family in Namibia, they are farmers and they need every family member to do their job. Then father gets ill. He needs constant care, something the mother will have to do. Not only has this family lost their father, but also their mother. In other cases the daughters will have to drop out of school to take care of their siblings, further hampering the development of the country.
There are millions of examples, really.
(3) The outside world
It is very easy to blame everything on the Big Mean White Man, maybe because African leaders can point to it and go "if only they hadn't done such and such, then we would all be happy and rich". Maybe everyone would be a little happier and richer if that leader would stop being a corrupt piece of shit.
Anyway, western countries have screwed and are still screwing Africa up in many ways. Colonialism is an easy target, but that is not the be all end all argument on why Africa lags behind, take a look at Latin America for example, they are doing much better than Africa.
I want to explain three (of the many ways) ways by which western countries mess Africa up these days. There are many more, but these two I can remember without dusting off the articles I read about this:
HUMANA is an organisation that collects old clothing from Dutch families and ships those to countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. This is essentially a very noble thing. However, these pants and shirts are given out for free on the street corners, local producers are finding it harder and harder to sell their own products. Another problem with this is that gangs often steal containers full of clothing and make a nice profit on them to buy more AK-47s with.
Meat dumping: Until a few years back it was common practise for meat producers to sell their meat of low quality to companies in Sub-Saharan Africa, this influx of cheap meat made the prices of meat drop on the markets, making it less interesting for farmers to slaughter their cattle. This alone was disastrous for the economy in especially countries in West-Africa, but this cattle went right ahead and grazed so much that researchers noticed an increase in desertification.
Food aid: Bread is not really something that is common in Africa, but when Mozambique was struck by a food crisis they received a lot of grain. The government then subsidized the creation of mills and bakers, so the grain could be used to bake bread. When the crisis was over the import of free grain stopped, but the population had grown fond of a few slices of bread per day. This sparked a lot of grain farms to be created, even though the area wasn't very suitable for it.
--
I believe that corruption is the first thing that should be dealt with, it is hampering everything that goes on.
What these countries need are stable and responsive governments that are more-or-less directed towards the common good. Unfortunately, as it stands, mercenary-supported extraction industries and militia-supported religious or tribal movements seem to have a pretty tight grip on what passes for government in a lot of African states, and to be honest, this setup suits the needs of multinational corporations just looking for cheap raw goods just fine.
And you know what? You don't care either. Yeah, you. Right there, down in front. I'm talking to you, jackass.
You'll go about your day like everything's honky-dory while ethnic cleansing, disease pandemics, civil wars and countless other atrocities ravage African countries, then go on some pretentious little message board and make a post in some little snippit about how "We should fix that right away!"
Later you'll be driving your car to the local coffee shop an entire block away, leaving all the lights on in your 1000 square foot apartment, your high definition 61 inch plasma screen television stuck on one of your 500 channels you don't watch, getting your favorite extra-large mocha latte with non-fat milk (but extra whip with sprinkles!) all before you go back home, sit on your toilet, take a huge dump and flush it out to sea - because the fish can just deal with it.
It's a shame the funds used to purchase the coffee beans that made your cholestro-drink went to a warlord in Africa and allowed him to buy bullets. Which he used to kill a man, rape his wife and conscript his children into his militia. Also, he killed bunnies.
By "forcing civilization" on them you mean forming dozens of countries without any regard to ethnic or social groups then telling them to play nice? Hardly much of a surprise half these countries have been torn apart by civil wars for years. They never should have been nations to start with. Add on top of that that we took centuries-long conflicts and put assault rifles in the hands of both sides then walked away from it.
You're okay then...
On the other hand, resource-poor Mongolia is surprisingly harmonious and has some really eye-opening civic statistics considering how ass-backwards the country is in general. Things like one of the highest literacy rates in the world and one of the highest voting rates in the world in spite of the fact that many people still live in yurts and have to travel days by yak in order to cast a ballot.
If the west were really interested in stabilizing Africa, they'd insist on strengthening and providing strong oversight to central governments. Picking the right government has proven problematic (as in Iraq) - there are just too many points of self-interest to really be able to clearly and fairly answer questions of what is best for the people of the country in question. Also, oversight (and especially questions of enforcement) can be dicey.
And, at the end of the day, what you're looking at isn't too far off from imperialism and whatever that crap we did in the Cold War.
Either that, or we could actually attempt to fix their real issues. But we should be doing that anyway, even if our consumer preferences didn't trigger a symptom. We shouldn't feel any guilt about buying products that more functional regions could produce with no issues, assuming they have the resources.
There's just no reason under current price conditions for the people in charge to want things to change.
Also Mongolia has Bactrian camels. Africa only has elephants. I blame the elephants.
That's not what my rant was about at all. Maybe I came off that way. I'm in a really bad mood this morning, sorry.
Here's another go:
It infuriates me when people condense immesurable problems into a singular statement then aim them at a scapegoat. Whoever that may be.
The shitty part about the problems in Africa is that a lot of these things people rail against are necessary evils, that tend to hold what is there together.
In fact, when the Europeans got to Africa they found nothing but monkeys, whose economies were based entirely on poop.