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Ummmm... Oregon and California are in the same country. It's annoying when people don't understand that Africa is not a single entity.
and that many of these newish countries created by france, england, portugal, belgium, italy, ... contain multiple nations, ethnicities, tribes, ... that have been warring for centuries/melenia.
People continue to reproduce without the means to support said offspring. Typically in areas without resources or infrastructure to support the young. We are no different than a bee hive or mosquito larvae when in comes to reproductive intelligence. This is not an Africa problem but a global pandemic.
Right, that is true, and men have multiple wives so it just never ends. I remember "60 Minutes" did a feature on "PlumpyNut", a peanut-based paste that is cheap to make and used to treat malnutrition in Africa. It showed lines of women with scores of babies waiting to get their supply. I thought I was horrible for thinking, WHY are they having all these kids???!!...but then I saw the comments and I sure wasn't the only one thinking that. They need birth control, not PlumpyNut.
- Uneducated and lack of availability of contraception
- More children = easier to work the farms for food
- More children = more to look after their parents, in many African cultures, the children care for the parents and financially support them. If you have 6 kids, they all won't reach adulthood and the ones who do won't all be successful. By having 3-4 reach adulthood you've spread out the odds that between the 3-4 you'll be taken care of.
I don't know how serious your question is. It is a deep topic, linked to neocolonialism. I can't give you a bibliography here, but if you really want to know, you'll have to do some homework.
European powers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting dictators in Africa who will give them carte blanche to rip off natural resources for their own profit. The dictators supported by western powers are given weapons, training, and information to destroy local competitors who might be more interested in developing Africa for Africans than for western corporations. As the latest example, look at Libya, to see what happens to a leader who dares to try to make things better for Africa. But he is just the latest in hundreds of years of targetting African development, to make sure it doesn't happen.
Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to watch a YouTube video to get a real picture. There are many books written about the nefarious doings of the UN, the CIA, Shell Corporation, DeBeers, et al, but you're going to have to do some homework if you really want to get an informational answer.
One place to start is Dirty Work 2, https://archive.org/details/CIAInAfrica. From there, you can get some words to put in a search engine to do more research.
I don't know how serious your question is. It is a deep topic, linked to neocolonialism. I can't give you a bibliography here, but if you really want to know, you'll have to do some homework.
European powers have spent hundreds of billions of dollars supporting dictators in Africa who will give them carte blanche to rip off natural resources for their own profit. The dictators supported by western powers are given weapons, training, and information to destroy local competitors who might be more interested in developing Africa for Africans than for western corporations. As the latest example, look at Libya, to see what happens to a leader who dares to try to make things better for Africa. But he is just the latest in hundreds of years of targetting African development, to make sure it doesn't happen.
Unfortunately, you're not going to be able to watch a YouTube video to get a real picture. There are many books written about the nefarious doings of the UN, the CIA, Shell Corporation, DeBeers, et al, but you're going to have to do some homework if you really want to get an informational answer.
One place to start is Dirty Work 2, https://archive.org/details/CIAInAfrica. From there, you can get some words to put in a search engine to do more research.
None of this really makes sense though when you look at the massive economic development that has taken place in Asia and the two African countries of Botswana and Mauritius over the last 50 years.
Countries anywhere have always contained multiple tribes and ethnicities. Country borders anywhere usually follow geography like rivers or mountains because of geostrategic power struggles between nations.
Economic growth and progress means CHANGE. And the ruling elite in any country does NOT want change. They can figure that out all by themselves, no external power is needed. They will deliberately inhibit change and development. A country can only progress if the local elites actually give up some of their power, privilege and status and open up for reform and change. I am not talking about dictators here. Most of Africa is not run by dictators. The reason Africa is poor is because the local economic elites do not feel the need to give up their power and give economic freedom to the people.
Europe had disease like the Black Death that killed a huge percentage of the population. Many European countries, like Germany, rose and fell several times. Europe was practically leveled after ww2. Japan's cities were fire bombed relentlessly, and even had two nuclear weapons detonated. Yet, they too came back.
The Black Death also reached Africa along the trade routes and in some ports. A good book to read about why some cultures advanced and why some didn't is "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by Jared Diamond.
One thing about crops in Africa - don't forget that Central Africa is tropical and that the crops that grow in Europe which can feed Europeans can generally only grow in South Africa. South Africa is about as far south of the equator as Europe is north of the equator, so the climate and growing seasons are similar.
You can't ask people in Africa why the women have so many children because they don't deliberately have that many children. Instead, they just don't practice any kind of birth control except for maybe nursing. And the reason for that is just a cultural preference, in the same way we have a cultural preference for eating cheese (Native Americans couldn't stand the smell or taste of cheese when the Europeans brought it over).
We think it's a no-brainer to us that people who are starving should have fewer kids, but that's not how they see it. Likewise, people who are Muslim and starving won't butcher or eat pork and Hindus won't eat cattle. We can't judge other people by what is familiar and sane to us. Others may look at us and not be able to understand how in the world a family can be a family with only one or two kids. Having more is familiar and sane to them.
This is pretty uninformed. Africa has been the victims of tons of resource theft by countries, especially China. The resources taken out of Africa are far greater than the aid sent into Africa.
It's not because they are black, it's way more complex. Colonialism, warlords, terrible soil, intense heat, etc.
Seriously, read a book.
Africa was "the darkest continent" long before colonial rapine and destruction. My theory is that its poor soil and poor climate have, from the start of mankind in the Great Rift Valley encouraged people with more initiative to get out, leaving behind a more languorous and less energetic group. If you read Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors by Nicholas Wade you will read that soon after man's birth man starting migrating first to Asia, then Australia and then some backing and filling towards Europe. my theory is that the smarter people left and the less smart stayed.
The corollary to that is that the Americas are generally ahead of the Old World for the same reason; as Europe descended into endless war after the fall of the Roman Empire, the most ambitious left when Columbus paved the way. This is not a racial theory; it's does recognize that some intelligence and initiative is genetic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by hellob
This is pretty uninformed. Africa has been the victims of tons of resource theft by countries, especially China. The resources taken out of Africa are far greater than the aid sent into Africa.
It's not because they are black, it's way more complex. Colonialism, warlords, terrible soil, intense heat, etc.
Seriously, read a book.
I partially agree. However, only Norway and Britain have used resource wealth in a productive manner. In most countries that wealth is treated as the leaders' patrimony and the proceeds go not to the people but to Swiss bank accounts.
Africa has, overall, a tribal culture where any aid that comes in or wealth that is somehow created goes to the chiefs. That totally destroys incentives.
There was never a time when this didn't happen. Even casual reading of books such as Born Free discuss the problems of rainy and dry seasons. This is not caused by some oil companies in the West.
Born Free as a reference You missed 50 years of updates, climate change has made matters much worse.
I would disagree with "limited natural resources". I doubt any continent has more abundant natural resources.
Not when you consider the resources of each country. Sure there are plenty of minerals, diamonds, salt, etc. but mundane resources like water and fertile soil are lacking or barely existent in many African countries.
I lived in Thailand for a couple of years -- yes, I know, not Africa -- and I quickly came to the conclusion that Americans have no concept of what corruption really is, and how endemic it can be in the 2nd and 3rd worlds. It permeates everyday life.
The one thing I would add which is, apparently, very true in parts or all of Africa is -- I mean this literally -- tribalism. It was rampant, for example, in South Africa in Nelson Mandela's time. I am reading Trevor Noah's autobiography right now, and although one wouldn't expect it, it probably tells the story of tribalism (and apartheid) better than most sources from an everyday perspective, rather than only from a political perspective. Any idea of uniting many African nation's citizenry seems bound to collapse.
What you said and the boundaries imposed by the colonial powers led to much of the conflict seen in Africa over the last few decades. Boundaries divided peoples and combined adversaries. Civil war was the result.
I've concluded that corruption is a greatly under appreciated problem. It's bad enough in developed societies: Italy, Greece, some in eastern Europe. It's responsible for a lot of the economic trouble these countries and their poor people have found themselves in. (By contrast, it is practically unknown in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and the Scandinavian countries. Or course it is there (VW) but it's minor and met with outrage when discovered.)
But in Africa and South America it is positively devastating. It is impoverishing whole nations. And there seems no way out. Those out of power are just as bad as those in and just waiting for their turn at the trough.
I hate to say it but China may be Africa's best hope. Western attempts at aid, development, etc., have done nothing. At least China is trying something different: hard nosed instead of starry-eyed.
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You missed 50 years of updates, climate change has made matters much worse.