What do you think has made Africa the poorest continent on the earth?

Colonialism?

Military juntas?

also: few navigable rivers that go directly to the oceans, many landlocked countries with artificially constructed borders.

... that latter one being a relic of colonialism.

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Acting under pressure, Niger's parliament banned the keeping or trading in slaves in May 2003.

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Originally posted by Coyote:
Look, I'm no fan of Mugabe, but the only way 'rich' and 'Zimbabwe' enter the same sentence is in conjuntction with the words 'white colonists of'.

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[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: Granola Girl ]

[ 05 April 2005: Message edited by: clandestiny ]

Liberia was never colonized. Ethiopia was only "colonized" for about 10 years in the 30s when Mussolini invaded - otherwise they were independent for over a thousand years and yet Ethiopia is as miserably poor as the rest of the countries in that region.

In the southern African nations, the white minorities managed to do well by monopolizing resources.

Sharing the same language as the centres of global finance and investment (London and New York) helped.

To talk about Africa, and corruption, one must remember that kleptocrats like Mobutu were installed by the Western powers. There's no telling what Patrice Lumumba might have accomplished without Western meddling.

We tend to install corrupt dictators in client states as a matter of course. Shameless, greedy psychopaths are usually the only humans able to betray their people and their people's futures to the former colonial masters.

A link to a biography of Lumumba, and another link about the forces behind his death.

For what its worth, David Landes has a book The Wealth and Poverty of Nations providing a mainstream account of this question. There's a lot of truth in it, but also a lot of ignorance regarding Anglo-European complicity in perpetuating poverty.

Here's a decent review: Landes Review

In his fantastic book: The Age of Consent: A Manifesto For a New World Order (Interview About) George Monbiot has a devastating critique of the present world trading order that Landes would do well to read.

But there is also, the fact that Africa tends to have less fertile and more fragile farmland than the Western world does, and not nearly as much resources or knowledge to proporly irrigate or preserve it (through crop rotation, etc.), leading to desertification and rendering the farmland useless.

Thirdly, a population boom is really pushing the Africans to create more farmland, and turn more once fertile land into desert.

Global warming is exaserbating all of this, starving the sub-saharan vegetation of water, or just burning them out.

So many Africans have no land to grow food on, and no money to buy it.

All of this leads to starvation, which leads to desperation, which leads to violence, war, genocide, implanted dictators etc., causing more loss of farmland.

This is at least the best explaination I can think of for Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, Sudan, Somalia, Ethopia...

Maybe we can fix this my preserving sub-saharan African farmland and start an intensive program to educate those in the countries above about irrigation and crop rotation, etc. and also introduce far more birth control programs to these countries to slow the population boom, rather than just giving out free food (athough this is still needed in the interim). The whole cut CO2 emmissions to stop global warming thing would help a little too....... there is a solution, and there is hope...

[ Edited to include smileys ]

[ 06 April 2005: Message edited by: West Coast Greeny ]

The theory details the heavy influence of sub-Saharan Africa's lack of domesticable animals, its relative lack of domesticable crops, its relatively small area suitable for cultivation, its relatively small and diffuse population, and its north-south axis which prevented crops from migrating to different parts of the continent. The same template is applied world-wide.

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All the white settler colonies did well. Canada, the United States, Australia.

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Malaysia has some oil, and under Mahathir has proceeded along the same lines of state-led growth (helped a long way by Japanese investment) as did South Korea.

Singapore is a very interesting case, a remarkable story.

I think the stability and pre-industrial level of development of the East Asian civilizations gave them an advantage, and they also benefitted from Cold War realities wherein the US allowed them to develop, so that they wouldn't look wistfully at the socialist autarchies. (spelling is all to hell i'll bet.)

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Have you ever noticed that with rare exceptions (like Singapore), the richest countries in the world have cold climates . . . .

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Temperate; not too hot, not too cold. Plants and animals thrive.

In spite of owning a cornucopia of natural wealth, Africa, Russia and Latin America are not faring very well with the economic long run toward capitalist economies.

Africa needs a red hot socialist New Deal as post-laissez faire America did in picking that nation up off its knees. Come to think of it, they could use another one today.

Somewhat socialist Libya is the one bright star in Africa. Moammar's people are donating physicians and aid to all parts of Africa as is Cuba with sending doctors to 67 wannabe capitalist nations world-wide. Apparently, globalism's long run seems to be all about maintaining under-development of whole nations. Maggie's son was caught ferrying mercenaries somewhere around the Cape. He should be strung up by the nuts for profiteering from human misery.

I think it's our western culture that's an oddity. A good deal of the rest of the world is struggling with economic efficiency and desire to be competitive for the sake of profit. It's just not natural. People are just not meant to be clockwork efficient as what capitalists suggest we should be. They're probably howling with laughter at us as we all march to the beat of their drum.

[ 17 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Somewhat socialist Libya is the one bright star in Africa. Moammar's people are donating physicians and aid to all parts of Africa

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One more vote for colonialism.

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Ethiopia was never colonized and its just about poorest African country of all.

And if anyone noticed the CNN images of US tanks rolling into Baghdad, they rolled into the city on four and six lane highways and past public housing complexes bombed out during shock and appall. Does Calgary have six lane highways leading into the city?. We do know they've got more than their fair share of homeless.

Ethopia was ruled by Haile Selassie from 1930 – 1974, when imperialism in that country ended. About 45% of the pop'n lives below the poverty line; 50% are children who suffer chronic hunger in a country that posesses abundant lush and arrable farmland, more than enough to feed the people. Cash crop colonialists export food from Ethiopia during times of famine and feast.

[ 17 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Ethopia was ruled by Haile Selassie from 1930 – 1974, when imperialism in that country ended. About 45% of the pop'n lives below the poverty line; 50% are children who suffer chronic hunger in a country that posesses abundant lush and arrable farmland, more than enough to feed the people.

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Originally posted by ctrl190:
What do you think has made Africa the poorest continent on the earth?

Colonialism?

Military juntas?

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This sort of thing probably helped, but I'd say the biggest thing that's made Africa poor is lack of investment.

Here's a table from someone who knows what he's talking about:

% of profits return
all 100.0% 8.1%
rich countries + Asian NICs 78.7% 8.4%
world ex rich + NICs 21.3% 7.4%
Latin America 13.6% 6.2%
Africa 1.6% 12.9%

http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/2003/2003-November/026579.html

The percentage of profits is a good guide to investment.

[ 17 April 2005: Message edited by: Oliver Cromwell ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Ethiopia was never colonized . . .

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The industrialized nations need raw materials, and don't want to pay for them, so they steal them. This has been going on since the inception of capitalism in Europe.

It is Africa's curse to be loaded with all sorts of mineral resources, and of course, oil. Thus, it was (and is) necessary for the industrialized nations to maintain satraps throughout the continent.

When they pick leaders, of course they want leaders who are willing and able to prevent the local population from benefitting from natures largesse.

For instance, Angola:

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Angola has enormous reserves of oil, gas and diamonds, as well as considerable hydroelectric potential, varied agricultural land, good rainfall and considerable marine resources.

Mineral resources etroleum, diamonds, iron ore, phosphates, copper, feldspar, gold, bauxite, uranium.

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Another wonderful resource Angola has is land mines:

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In 1994 the two warring sides in the Angolan civil war signed the Lusaka peace accords and subsequently have slowly retreated from
their entrenched positions.

However, due to the heinous number of land mines Angola will remain a country afflicted by the scourge of war for decades to come because the devices act as a silent enemy not allowing the population to progress and rebuild.

Estimates of the number of Angolan land mines range between 10 and 20 million which equates to at least 1 to 2 land mines for every person in the
country.

U.N. estimates put the number of Angolan amputees
resulting from the silent killers at 70,000.

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Angola doesn't manufacture land mines. Industrialized nations do.

http://www.american.edu/ted/landmine.htm

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The U.S. State department estimates that there are more than 85 million land mines scattered throughout 56 countries.

U.N. estimates are higher at as many as 105 million, one for every 50 people on the earth.

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Almost none of those land mines are in industrialized countries. Almost all of them are in countries with extensive natural resources.

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Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:
An alternative explanation would involve home-grown African warlords expropriating natural resources so that they could buy weapons and further their own ambitions.

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Africa needs debt relief from the G8. What they don't need are more loans tied to lowering import bans of GMO agricultural products from corporate-sponsored nations in the west. Dubya and the R's can keep their billion dollar aid packages say Africans in protest. The cold war is over now, and free market magic is way overdue in Africa.

Who would expect a country like Angola, with oil and natural resources up the wazoo, to be home to so much abject poverty ?. Three in ten Angolan children will die before their fifth birthday. Average life expectancy is 40. They were exporting more oil to the States than Kuwait at one point. Ronald Reagan's freedom fighter in that country, Jonas Savimbi, was a symbol of death for Angola which went from being Africa's breadbasket to producing almost nothing. Their most successful industry has been producing artificial limbs. May Jonas Savimbi's name be forgotten for all time.

Viva la revolucion!

[ 18 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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There is less personal freedom in Kabul today than during the Soviet era.

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Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:
An alternative explanation would involve home-grown African warlords expropriating natural resources so that they could buy weapons and further their own ambitions.

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This isn't an "or" question. There is plenty of that. But it is astonishing how frequently you find, if you look at the history of an African ruler who is venal, corrupt, and expropriating natural resources to buy Western weapons, that he was aided in reaching his position by some Western intelligence agency (or maybe a Soviet one). And you will find equally frequently that if you look at the history of an African leader who was considered a great man, farseeing, with the aspirations of his people as his guide, that his career was cut short by a Western-backed coup. After which he was replaced by one of the brutal, corrupt ones.
Look up the name Lumumba sometime, for e.g., and follow the links back in history to the genocide of the Belgian Congo, and forward to the disastrous dictatorship of Mobutu, propped up by the US, his eventual fall leading to disintegration to squabbling warlords, the UN aid mission, the US troops' insistence on trying once again to pick winners rather than keep the peace or give aid leading to Black Hawk Down.

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Originally posted by Stockholm:

How do you know? Did you live in Kabul as an anti-government dissident in the late 70s and in the last year and were able to make an informed comparison?

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Inside Afghanistan opens with an examination of the war as seen by the Afghan army. After a ride with an armored column transporting supplies from the Soviet border. We have tea with an Afghan captain, his Russian wife, and their two sons, as he explains the bond he feels with the other Afghan officers who trained in the Soviet Union. An Afghan colonel explains how these Soviet-trained army officers led the "revolution" that brought the Communists to power. At a tank training ground, an officer extols the "revolution".

The documentary then looks at the educated, urban modernizers and reformers who saw the "revolution" as a way to bring Afghanistan into the modern world, even if on the Soviet model: women teachers and medical students, doctors at a children's hospital, boys at a Soviet orphanage, government officials, party members, and a rare interview with then- President Najibullah himself.

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Inside Afghanistan during the Soviet era

I'm almost sure that not everyone in Afghanistan was pro-Taliban or pro-west when US-made rockets rained down on Kabul, fired on by hillbillies friendly with the CIA. Remember, Osama bin Laden wasn't always a bad guy, according to the CIA themselves.

zeig heil!

[ 18 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

How could he lose against a bunch of inferior peasants ?. How could the highest tech weaponry in the world come up so short against low-tech warfare in Viet Nam ?. You're right, I think we had to be there to really know.

[ 18 April 2005: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Stockholm:
Afghanistan was the doing of that pig Leonid Brezhnev who crushed Czechoslovakia in 1968.

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{Sarcasm}How do you know, Stockholm? Were you there?{/Sarcasm}

Even though many African states won "formal" independence in the 1950's and 1960's the economies of those countries remained largely in the hands of U.S. and European multi-national corporations and of course most African governments were largely puppets of the west.

Patrice Lumumba of the Congo has been mentioned along with Angola, but it should also be mentioned that former Ugandan president Idi Amin was installed by British and Israeli intelligence services who were concerned about previous president Milton Obote's plan to nationalize the oil industry.

Also, many of the so-called "ethnic" conflicts are the legacy of colonialism. The whole "Tutsi/Hutu" thing in Rwanda and Burundi as I understand was a total fabrication of Belgian colonialists. From what I understand, prior to Belgian colonialism there was no "difference" between a Tutsi and a Hutu.

In East Africa, the British setup the conflict between the descendents of former indentured Indian labourers and Africans.

In Liberia and Sierra Leonne...both created by descendents of slaves who returned to Africa, the westernized "returnees" tended to become the local elites.

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Even though many African states won "formal" independence in the 1950's and 1960's the economies of those countries remained largely in the hands of U.S. and European multi-national corporations and of course most African governments were largely puppets of the west.

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Back to your first attack on my own comments, I've just planted an image of women in Soviet era Afghanistan being trained as doctors, teachers and engineers, and then a contrasting one of women living miserable lives under militant Islamic rule. I admit it's propaganda in and of itself. But at least now you have time to decide whether it's true or not since I did nail-up a rather weak web reference of unknown quantity. And remember, this is your brain on my propaganda. I'm messing with your mind Stockholm [insert sinister theme music]

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