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SnowFire
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New York City, NY
Jan 1970
time: 00:20
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There are two ways to deal with clashing ethnic groups:
A) Separation. The easy way, build a wall, Germany for the Germans and France for the French, blah blah blah. Still, perhaps better than conflict.
B) Like Madison & political parties- have so many of them that they all play off against each other and are irrelevant.
The problem was that many of the European boundaries had things like 2-3 ethnic groups in them, so they became the 2-3 political parties with the interests strictly in the advancement and cronyism for their group.
Anyway, I don't see how strict protectionism would help Africa a bit. Just as an example: Mobile phones. Phone lines had always been hard to set up in Africa, being expensive to insulate against the weather, rebels, disasters, etc. But thanks to wireless technology, mobile phones are extremely popular in some African countries. But how many factories for them already exist inside Africa? Massive protectionism would kill off the new supply of them, quite simply. Same with lots of neato gadgets that Africa is a minimum of 15 years away from developing on their own, but would be quite useful to them right now.
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Dr Strangelove
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Yes I do care.
I give when I can.
I hope the new African Union will be more effective than the old OAU.
The AIDS epidemic is clearly no longer growing geometrically, so maybe something is going right for Africa.
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Caligastia
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Africa is a basket case. Why is it everyone elses responsibility to do something about it? They need to help themselves by choosing better leaders for one thing.
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Flubber
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With a view of the Rockies
Aug 2000
time: 22:20
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I care but am never sure exactly what the west is supposed to be doing
1. Give money-- it seems that a disproportionate amount of this is skimmed off by corrupt leaders to keep a small group of military happy and keep their support and thereby retain control
2. Military intervention to set up democratic governments-- Many western dead and it just does not seem to work -- - democracy only seems to work when enough locals in the populace are willing to fight and overcome their despotic leaders. There was a book by Dahl ( Polyarchy) that had a good discussion of the preconditions for a successful democracy. Suffice it to say that may African states seem to lack the preconditions or even a basic belief in democracy is absent in many places
We have seen the impotence of major military might to curb groups that want to fight.
3. Give AIDS drugs and education-- this might be more promising and education on birth control would also seem appropriate
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Dr Zoidberg
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Communist Party of Apolyton
Jan 2002
time: 06:20
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Solution to the african problem (IMHO):
1) For starters the west (north) needs to recognize the ecological debt!
The production and consumption patterns that drive and sustain northern economies cause environmental deterioration all over the world. It is unjust that the richest 20 percent of the population consumes 80 percent of the planet's natural wealth. The extraction of this natural wealth for industrialized countries also causes social and environmental damage in the South. Northern governments must recognize that poor southern countries are owed an ecological debt, and that this debt must be repaid.
Some objectives:
#To stop the increase of the ecological debt.
# To restore the areas in southern countries affected by the extraction of natural resources and export monocultures so that local and national communities are able to recover their capacity for self sufficiency.
# To repatriate cultural and natural heritage.
2) Also world trade must be more fair. As Oxfam writes in "Rigged rules and double standards - trade, globalization and the fight against poverty."
"Trade is one of the most powerful forces linking our lives, and a source of unprecedented wealth. Yet millions of the world's poorest people are being left behind. Increased prosperity has gone hand in hand with mass poverty. Already obscene inequalities between rich and poor are widening.
World trade could be a powerful motor to reduce poverty, and support economic growth, but that potential is being lost. The problem is not that international trade is inherently opposed to the needs and interests of the poor, but that the rules that govern it are rigged in favour of the rich.
If Africa, East Asia, South Asia, and Latin America were each to increase their share of world exports by one per cent, the resulting gains in income could lift 128 million people out of poverty. In Africa alone, this would generate $70bn - approximately five times what the continent receives in aid.
In their rhetoric, governments of rich countries constantly stress their commitment to poverty reduction. Yet in practice rigged rules and double standards lock poor people out of the benefits of trade, closing the door to an escape route from poverty. For example:
Rich countries spend $1bn every day on agricultural subsidies. The resulting surpluses are dumped on world markets, undermining the livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers in poor countries.
When developing countries export to rich-country markets, they face tariff barriers that are four times higher than those encountered by rich countries. Those barriers cost them $100bn a year - twice as much as they receive in aid.
While rich countries keep their markets closed, poor countries have been pressurised by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to open their markets at breakneck speed, often with damaging consequences for poor communities.
The international community has failed to address the problem of low and unstable commodity prices, which consign millions of people to poverty. Coffee prices, for example, have fallen by 70 per cent since 1997, costing exporters in developing countries $8bn in lost foreign-exchange earnings.
Powerful transnational companies (TNCs) have been left free to engage in investment and employment practices which contribute to poverty and insecurity, constrained only by weak voluntary guidelines. In many countries, export-led success is built on the exploitation of women and girls.
Many of the rules of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) on intellectual property, investment, and services protect the interests of rich countries and powerful TNCs, while imposing huge costs on developing countries. This bias raises fundamental questions about the legitimacy of the WTO.
Reform of world trade is only one of the requirements for ending the deep social injustices that pervade globalisation. Action is also needed to reduce inequalities in health, education, and the distribution of income and opportunity, including those inequalities that exist between women and men. However, world trade rules are a key part of the poverty problem; fundamental reforms are needed to make them part of the solution."
3) The foreign debt of African countries must be dropped. There can be no economic progress in Africa if they have to pay obscene amounts of money to already wealthy countries in the north.
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WhiteElephants
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Toledo Ohio
Mar 2000
time: 00:20
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I think what most are assuming here is that African's want the same things we do. They want jobs, cars, families, homes, cities, techno convienecies, industries, etc.
Who says they want any of this? How is imposing our values on these cultures any different for the "re-education and relocation" of the South Vietnamese during the Vietnam Conflict? How is it any different than the "re-education" of Native American's during the 18th and 19th century? Why stop with African's? Why not bring WalMart to the Aboriginies while you're at it? Why not reign in the Innuites too?
What makes you so certain the your/our way of life is what these people want?
Native American's have the highest rate of alcoholism in the United States, should we go in there and drag them off their reservations then because we as so sure of ourselves?
Isn't our forefather's very same meddling that got us into this situation?
Do they need help? Sure, but most of all they need to help themselves. They need to decide a future for themselves, not what we think they're future should be.
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Stiby
I've seen only one Africa-related discussion which was at the time Mugabe "stole" the Zimbabwe election. |
I started a thread about the drought and meltdown of Zimbabwe's agricultural sector increasing the risk of starvation in southern Africa last week.
quote:
Originally posted by Dr. Stiby
The last link shows some of the conflicts Africa has faced or still faces. The numbers of victims of the Angola civil war (which thank God is over) exceeds the numbers of deaths on for example the Israel-Palestine conflict dozens of times.
In short, IMHO, the problems Africa is facing makes the conflicts we are discussing on the OT mere futilities. I think that media should cover African issues way more often. Furthermore I think that a LOT more needs to be done to help spread the AIDS disease in Africa and prevent millions of people from facing starvation.
Please discuss..... |
While I too am interested in Africa and would appreciate more and better coverage of the world's second largest continent, I am less sure about how much we can really do to help. Africa below the Sahara was probably the most backward large area of the planet, and had very little contact with Europe even during the colonial period. Thus it was exposed to more modern technology without being very exposed to the modern culture which helps to deal with the effects of that technology, namely increased population. This leaves whatever cultural institutions remaining in post-colonial Africa in serious straits, and is the prime reason why there have been so many failed governments and bad governments in African post colonial states.
Efforts to help from the West are often stymied by a number of problems. There is often a suspicion of the West due to the colonial legacy and the tendency for Westerners to step on the toes of the current people in power in the name of getting the most out of the money and effort spent. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that weak African governments are desperate to take control of western aid in order to prop up their own position, while there is little respect for many of these governments in the west as this post and others on this thread are proof. Therefore the west often prefers to bypass local government corruption / favoritism in order to be more efficient in the delivery of aid, while local governments have the opposite idea in mind, with the "waste" not really being wasted but used to prop up the government at the expense of doing the most good for the most people.
Lack of democracy and in fact the location of some of the worst governments on the planet (in this case their relative weakness is a blessing) is thus a multifaceted problem for western "donor states". Relief for Zimbabwe in the near future for instance forces the west into a position whereby it must either stand back and watch the starvation from afar and hope that the media doesn't make the issue into another Somalia or Ethiopia, or it forces the west to swallow many of it's core beliefs in order to deal with and in fact prop up and support Mugabe and company whose violence, lawlessness, racism and upcoming genocide infuriate almost every segment of western political society.
For the west to tackle these problems it has another set of uneasy choices. It can try to impose order in a sort of neo-colonial manner, which in almost no case is palatable to either side. Even utilizing the U.N. is difficult due to the weakness of that organization and the squeamishness that leaders of wealthier and more functional states have for the seemingly endless and often dangerous deployments common in Africa, which in turn are a good deal more difficult to push through politically in the democracies that control much of the world's wealth and military power.
Our best hope is for African states to rapidly improve in quality. There is actually some reason to be hopeful here, as many of the worst governments which appeared at the end of the colonial era are replaced. This of course is still a patchwork solution, and there is no reason to believe that improved governance is neccessarily going to last in the few places that it has managed to gain a foothold. Still, the tendency is for these governments to improve over time. Considering the fact that it took decades for more advanced post-colonial states (such as those in Asia and South America) to reach the fairly prosperous level they are at now, I am actually somewhat impressed with the rapidity of Africa's progress from a continent of mostly primitive colonies when I was born to it's current situation. Of course in a world where images of suffering are transmitted at the speed of light the situation seems more than a little daunting, which is why having a little historical perspective can be so useful.
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08-07-2002 19:01
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