01-22-2004, 11:50 AM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Jun 2002
Posts: 2,728
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Nice to see someone intelligent who can combine several disciplines, a historical perspective and current G7 economic policy per the cancun trade round.
Quote:
Originally posted by punkworld
Africa has known several fairly advanced civilizations, especially northern Africa. Some of those have lasted for quite a bit longer than the 228 years of the US. Civilizations aren't lineair. They tend to rise and fall.
No African nations had thousands of years to develop themselves into greatness. The African *nations* of today were formed by European colonialism, not by Africans themselves. That's one of the main reasons things aren't working out over there, opposing tribes were put in countries together, while other tribes were spread out over several nations. Note that this happened a very short while ago from a historical perspective. They haven't had much time to recover from it yet.
Another problem are the trade barriers the western world has set up to prevent cheap products coming in from Africa. Most African products that are imported into western countries are taxed several times as much as products from other western countries. For instance, certain agricultural products from Africa are taxed 80% when being imported into Europe. This makes it very hard for those countries to build up a strong economy. Note that they do import a lot, so their cashflow is negative.
Ofcourse, there are far more reasons for the current state of Africa. For instance, crude resources are taken by western corporations with very little of the proceeds actually benefitting those countries. These western corporations actively support corrupt regimes by giving them financial aid. Also, they avoid using African workers as much as possible (which often means entirely), so it doesn't benefit employment either.
Yet another point that keeps Africa from achieving a decent economy is the debts which most African countries have. These debts often are many times the countries' GDPs, and even paying a portion of the interest on them takes up more resources than these countries can spare.
Most of these debts were racked up by dictators and corrupt regimes, and almost always none of the money actually reached the inhabitants of the country. Oh yeah, many of these dictators and corrupt regimes actually received support from western countries.
There are about a thousand other factors that play a large role in what happened to Africa and is still happening. Suffices to say, stating it's because of the "ignorant Africans" only reflects the ignorant of the person who makes the statement.
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