(01-12-2016 01:28 PM)vandiver49 Wrote: (01-12-2016 12:58 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote: (01-12-2016 12:52 PM)vandiver49 Wrote: (01-12-2016 12:07 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote: (01-12-2016 11:56 AM)shiftyeagle Wrote: Hope you're right HoD, but it's quite hard to any see progress there. At least on the surface.
I don't think that is fair to say.
You have to understand that while their progress can be considered modest from our viewpoint it is astronomical from theirs.
Most of Africa have, until the last 20 years, lived at a technical, social, economic, and political level of like 5000BC.
Their problems center around education and that level of development.
You can go across Africa and find an individual that can get an 80s Peugeot to run but you'd be hard pressed to find an individual who can build a simple bridge. You have modern farming techniques right next to people who are barely in the horticultural stage.
That's changing. The key is that they are coming from so far behind. Rome is several thousand years more advanced than a lot of parts of Africa.
The know-how is starting to reach some of these countries and areas though. Equatorial Guinea is a great example; 20 years ago there was no university in the entire country and now they have over 20,000 college students training.
E.G. went from one of the poorest nations on Earth with a GDP of like $300 per person to a GDP around the same as Mississippi. In terms of real income the people of E.G. have gone from less than $1.00 per day to over $3.00 per day. While that may seem comical it is huge in person and on the ground. What would a tripling in real income in the United States look like and feel like?
You simply can't take people out of huts and have them run modern economies. That's where 90% of Africa's problems come from. It drives corruption, inequality, and hampers economic growth. But, it is changing and at an astounding pace.
They may not be at a point where they can sustain organic economic growth but in 15-20 years they will be.
If America ignores that based on our experience in the Middle East, which is entirely dissimilar in every conceivable way, we will ensure our decline. Africa is the Wild West and it is where the world's economic future lies entirely.
You are far more positive about Africa than most. That said I think you are glossing over the multitude of failures the West has suffered with regards improvements on the continent. Many of those nations feel that the West simply giving money with high interest is an inferior model to China's plan and are moving more towards them.
I'd strongly disagree with that.
African relations with China are on a downward trend. Public opinion in regards to the Chinese are worse than their old colonial masters. Most African nations possess a love-hate relationship with their old colonial masters. They dislike them strongly but trust them more than any other.
The Chinese are viewed as possessing all of the Imperialist disadvantages with next to none of the advantages. They want modernity and the Chinese don't offer that.
More importantly, the countries that aligned with China over the West have come out worse than those that aligned in the other direction.
The African populace are pragmatists to the extreme. They buy what works and what the Chinese are selling doesn't work, for long.
The nations on the Horn of Africa seem to have an amicable relationship with the Chinese but my info might be dated.
That said, if modernity is the desire, it's not as if the tools to attain those goals are a state secret. It simply requires that people agree to plan the minimizes corruption and nepotism that is in opposition to advancement.
It's important when discussing Africa to throw out all the measuring sticks and tools.
We are talking a different world.
We can say, sitting here in our world, that in order to develop country X must do A, B, and C and that will be reflected in their rates of A, B, and C.
The truth is that doing A, B, and C in Africa is not possible because the fundamental foundations of political, social, and economic thought which encompass those things, or tools, do not exist.
We can break down any policy argument and find holes in its foundation in Africa. Political thought, capitalism versus statism, in Africa is a facade. It's analogous to a mechanic who can fix a car but not build one because he has no understanding of the principles which make each part work. He certainly knows which box connects where but has no real depth of knowledge.
That's much of Africa in a nutshell.
However, if you view it from their perspective, they are backfilling those holes at an extraordinary pace. As I said, the administrative capacity of the E.G. government doubles every few years. Sure, they have a few thousand years worth of knowledge to backfill but they are doing it.
We, in the West, have a tendency to not understand them because we are seeing everything our way.
Africa wants modernity, and modernity in their eyes means filling those technical and academic holes. We simply think of them, for the most part, as stupid or ignorant. They most certainly are not.
You can also see it from an economic perspective. What we view as corruption is largely caused by the fact that there is a gap between the top and bottom with no connecting socio-economic tissue.
You simply can't take a man out of a hut and tell him to operate machinery. There is an underlying need for a certain level of civic, social, and educational knowledge which is not available, yet. Also, you simply cannot take a man out of a hut and make him a government official for the same reasons.
The end result is wealth accumulates at the top because it has nowhere to flow.
A release valve for that accumulation also appears as corruption to the Western world in local partner rules.
In order to do business a company or individual from outside the country, whatever it may be, is required to have a local partner. In practice it means signing up a useless mouth to pay. In theory, it helps money penetrate the social orders and reach the bottom. In reality, it actually does that. E.G. has more than tripled its real income to its bottom 25% of the population. Many other African countries can lay claim to a 50% to 150% increase.
We also view "palace building" as corruption. This is when a government spends money on government buildings in the middle of nowhere which serve no purpose or when they seem to expend money in frivolous ways on buildings and such. Well, construction is one of the few areas where locals are prepared to work and can learn on the job. It's a low tech way of spreading money through the social strata.
Westerners for the most part don't appreciate Africa because we cannot conceive of a world view which doesn't include 5000 years of built upon knowledge. But, that's Africa.
African nations are still as corrupt and violent as they've ever been. You've lost your damn mind.![[Image: cpi-2014-small.jpg]](http://media.transparency.org/maps/img/cpi-2014-small.jpg)
