Africa...why is it the poorest continent?

Originally posted by Herodotus For a full explanation of all the ecological facotrs that led to the inequities of african and eurasian civ., i reccomend "Guns, GErms, and Steel" By Jared Diamond. Brilliant book; Diamond explains how enviornment determined a civilizations general status more than anything else.

 

I agree with DIamonds opverall theme but its apparent he is negligent of African history, he basically writes off anything outside of EUrasia as doomed, which does not mention that there where many powerful and wealthy kingdoms in the past.  ALso his theories will not apply as much now as natural spreading of agriculture is much easier.  Africa lagging behind significantly is only really something thats been going on for thee last 400 years about, by no means a constant of permanent factor. 

Its also not right to heap all the blame on colonialism but there is one thing that is the fault of Europeans, the nations borders drawn by retreatin gpowers with no regard for language, ethnic, or religious groups, just random lines drawn on a map much like th emodern day Middle East.

In Hindi it is said, 'Jatha Raja, Thatha Praja'. Which means 'The nature of the king will determine the nature of his subjects'.

Africa is poor because of a lack of leadership. And maybe ethnic/cultural/racial reasons.

 

i think the Governments are Corrupted and people are not educated

otherwise Africa is rich with its natural resources.

 

how come Somalia was Starving while it had a very large number of sheeps and camels compared to many countries???

 

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Originally posted by phoenix_bladen africa..... it's the poorest continent in the world...why is that?  What keeps africa from prospering as much as other continents are?  And why can't africa became rich and prosper like in most western and east asian nations? what's keeping them back ?  I myself would like to see africa prosper but that is probably unlikely in my life time.

 

 

 

Political coruption, civil war and Viruses

Not to sound racist here but i feel Africa's woes are caused by its attempts to live like westeners when they cannot.

Western civilization and most civilization emerged from agriculture which produced surplus which allowed men to do other useful things. This freed man power helped eventually kick start the industrial age. The Africans on the other hand  for the most part remained a hunter gatherer people. This was fine for them and if they had continued living this this way they may still be fine today but the Europeans decided their way was best and forced a western way of live on a people who lacked a solid agricultural base. This has led to the famines of today as large parts of Africa are not made for farming. Put simply a culture which evolved in acordance with the local practicalities was abandoned in favour of a culture which evolved under completely different conditions and as such is inconpatible with the realities of the African environment.

Edited by Vercingetorix

One of the reasons of the great famines in africa in the previous century has now been proven to have been caused by Europeans (it always leads down to them if in doubt).

The soot and some other of the impurities was blocking out some of the sunlight,which in turn made the african monsoon weaker and some times non-existant.

The above theory is part of global dimming, which i first heard about a few months ago on a BBC documentry.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn What great famine? Link? (And please spare the pompous remarks in the future, in doubt or not)

what great famine? where have you been in the last century? To name one:
The decade long draught in Ethiopia in the 70s and 80s.

a link: http://www.falasha-recordings.co.uk/teachings/ethist.html

not a perfect website, but if u look down you should find  it talking about famines in ethipia in the 70s and 80s in which over 200,000 people died

Originally posted by Styrbiorn (And please spare the pompous remarks in the future, in doubt or not)

Havn't been called pompous in some time. I appoligise if thats they way my post sounded.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn dit: wait, you believe the "soot" part caused the famines? Then you'd better blame Krakatoa instead since it spewed out a lot more than any European nation. There are much more pollutants in the air today, and that doesn't stop the monsoon...

I expected somebody to say this so i've been looking for sites all day. To tell you the truh if you just go to google and type in global dimming you should find a large number of sources backing me up.

Here are a few links on global dimming:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,11088 53,00.html
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4171591.stm
http://www.globalissues.org/EnvIssues/GlobalWarming/global dimming.asp#MillionsfromFaminesintheSahelinthe70sand80s
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/global_dimming.html
http://www.contrails.nl/contrails%20research/Contrails%20G lobal%20Dimming%2002.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dimming _prog_summary.shtml


keep in mind most of the links have all got their information from the same website, however quite alot in google do not.

Here's a transcript of the documentry i was talking about:

http://www.tamegoeswild.com/thedailymumble/2005/images/01/ dimming_transcript.htm 

The part i am refering to is near the middle, but to save time i've quoted to part i was refering too

At the time some scientists blamed overgrazing and poor land management. But now there's evidence that the real culprit was Global Dimming. The Sahel's lifeblood has always been a seasonal monsoon. For most of the year it is completely dry. But every summer, the heat of the sun warms the oceans north of the equator. This draws the rain belt that forms over the equator northwards, bringing rain to the Sahel. But for twenty years in the 1970s and 80s the tropical rain belt consistently failed to shift northwards - and the African monsoon failed. For climate scientists like Leon Rotstayn the disappearance of the rains had long been a puzzle. He could see that pollution from Europe and North America blew right across the Atlantic, but all the climate models suggested it should have little effect on the monsoon. But then Rotstayn decided to find out what would happen if he took the Maldive findings into account. DR LEON ROTSTAYN (CSIRO Atmospheric Research): What we found in our model was that when we allowed the pollution from Europe and North America to affect the properties of the clouds in the northern hemisphere the clouds reflected more sunlight back to space and this cooled the oceans of the northern hemisphere. And to our surprise the result of this was that the tropical rain bands moved southwards tracking away from the more polluted northern hemisphere towards the southern hemisphere. NARRATOR: Polluted clouds stopped the heat of the sun getting through. That heat was needed to draw the tropical rains northwards. So the life giving rain belt never made it to the Sahel. DR LEON ROTSTAYN: So what our model is suggesting is that these droughts in the Sahel in the 1970s and the 1980s may have been caused by pollution from Europe and North America affecting the properties of the clouds and cooling the oceans of the northern hemisphere. NARRATOR: Rotstayn has found a direct link between Global Dimming and the Sahel drought. If his model is correct, what came out of our exhaust pipes and power stations contributed to the deaths of a million people in Africa, and afflicted 50 million more. But this could be just of taste of what Global Dimming has in store.

Originally posted by Styrbiorn Then you'd better blame Krakatoa instead since it spewed out a lot more than any European nation.

keep in mind i said it was just a theory, i'm not going to pretend that i know it, i just thought that it suited this topic.



Edited by Anujkhamar

So why are the areas virtualy unaffected by the slave trade also so poor? Its not that simple me thinks. It has much more todo with the socio-economic circumstances forced on the continent through out the later part of the 1800s.

As for global dimming, volcanic eruptions have been tied to droughts in the past, but then they are sudden and more dramatic, a sustained soot cloud would be less intense, but gradual and could i guess nudge the climate this way or that.
Though theory does not equal 'proven', so your claim is a little too bold me thinks, not to mention bigoted.

But thats really just a possible cause for drought, and not famine, which is more down to politics, in the case of Ethiopia, the areas worst affected by the famine of 1974 were the areas that opposed the ruling government the most, even though the drought was spread much wider. SImilar situation in 1980s, again with the government being unpopular. And Ethiopia had a few major famines in the 1800s as well.

Africa isn't developping because the western world won't let it. I dont' think anyone here mentionned debts.

See in reality Africa is still a colony of Europe and America, because it is so in debt to European nations and such their entire economy goes to paying off the interest, except now the Africans are paying for their own enslavement istead of Europeans having to enforce it with military occupation, and the bonus is no one knows it, the mind of the capitalist eh? tHere was a really good quote on that but sry I forget how it goes

Wars and no education  and epidemic spread are all a results of this. When I said we are the cause it is because if western nations and coorperations control debts we also control their governements which then do everything to our favour. Puppets. The civil wars are usually freedom fighters verses puppet regimes.

Course this is all generalized and I'm sure you ppl can find examples where there are civil wars which have no relation to puppet regimes but it's the basic principle of what's going on that I'm trying to get through.

And yes, the sahara desert is a set back but africa is jam packed with ressources, there's nothing about it's actual terrain that should be keepign it back, it's mostly political reasons and guys, I was gonan ask,

how do u define developed?

Almost every coutnry on this earth has top technology its just the middle class that is non existant. African nations are developed in urbain centers just the ppl are poor. South africa and China and india are all developed, for the rich, just like 17th century europe, there is liek a nobility and then the mass at thebottom. My family had a student from south africa live with us for a year who was white and see she lived at teh same standards as canadians except the other 95% of the country lives in slums....And liek I said earlier, I blame thsi on our policy on these nations.

If we would jsut stop interest for 10 years on these countries we'd already see radical imporvement, mabye even a revolution or two.

 

dammit, people intrested in history need to learn more science, geography is more imporant than history in explaining why Africa is the way it is.