AFRICA - the abandoned Continent??

[stevemacdonald]

Among the many struggles Africans face, one looms largest: over-population.

Africa's population has quadrupled since 1950 and shows no sign of slowing down. Historically, the African continent has never had to support a billion human beings as it does now. The resources to feed the population simply aren't developed and what economic growth there is cannot keep up with the rate of population growth. At the same time, wild animal's numbers are shrinking radically as farming and development encroach on their natural habitats.

Sadly, the suffering and sorrow of impoverished peoples in Africa will not lessen, except if the sheer number of individuals residing there shrinks back to sustainable levels. That can come about only with birth control - a tough sell in a land where having many children is still considered an asset to one's family status.

[fusilier23]

Hmmm, corruption and re-primitivization might have something to do with it too. Like it or not, the "empire on which the sun never set" did frequently bring hospitals and literacy where none were before. Not as much the French, and not at all the Belgians, whose policies were based on absolute exploitation, but when those influences departed, with freedom came accountability.

I have to say a lot of the African nations did not handle that freedom and accountability very well, witness the brutal terrorist uprisings in Kenya, which the British had to go back in and suppress in a heavy-handed manner, the anarchy and cannibalism in the Congo led by a former postal-clerk turned would-be-Marxist dictator named Patrice Lumumba, not to mention the rise to power of the vicious Robert Mugabe, whose policies consist of suppressing every opposition group and grabbing land from anyone he doesn't like.

There is not a nation in sub-Saharan Africa to this day where there isn't a much higher level of corruption than anywhere else in the world. The continent also has had more civil wars than Europe and the Americas combined. What's really pathetic is that it ceased to be about any kind of political question a long time ago, with the collapse of the Soviet Union. It's now simply gang warfare over who will control each nation's assets. Like South America, where a lot of nations can't seem to get over their affair with thug-leaders who promise everything and deliver nothing, Africa will never reach its potential until it can get honest leaders who are interested in something beyond enriching themselves and their friends.

Until that day, anyone who tries to aid this mess is simply bailing out the ocean with a teaspoon.

[fusilier23]

Well, I can buy that there are lots of available resources in Africa, and it's an open secret that the diamond sellers make diamond out to be more valuable than they are so that they don't make their way back into the market and push prices down.

And, as I recall, the US and other nations have poured money into Africa through aid, but this has actually stirred up as many conflicts as it has quieted as this or that political group tries to seize power and get their hands on the grant money. And I do seem to recall the transfers of a few colonies, such as India and Canada, being relatively peaceful, and many others, Ireland, Indonesia, Korea, Singapore, Malaysia, after a period of upheaval, settling down into becoming productive nations. The problem is where the revolutions don't stop after achieving their purpose or the revolutionaries are by nature violent people who want power rather than those who want to lead.

The list of those goes on and on: Pol Pot and his attempt to impose "pure" Communism in Cambodia, Ghadaffi and his tyranny in Libya, Idi Amin and his reign of terror in Uganda, even, dare I say, Mandela and his corrupt regime in South Africa, which has not handled the nation's problems at all.

In the end it is a nation's people who are responsible for their leadership, and if that leadership becomes corrupt or only interested in lining its own pockets, it's on the people to rise up and get leadership that isn't.

More later, but I gotta go shovel