How would you fix Africa?

The OP is asking what you would do in Africa.

You answered with a somewhat unclear response and slammed the basic premise, as well as current policies.

Your original post was, quite frankly, off topic.

If you would send more peacekeepers and regulate international business (both good ideas, imo), say that. Don't slam the premise of the thread.

edited 8th Sep '11 11:06:04 AM by deathjavu

Look, you can't make me speak in a logical, coherent, intelligent bananna.

Well, you can bully that kind of support, but you'd have to have total control of the country so that you can really brainwash the people. (Brainwashing counts as bullying, right?)

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

Not if they think its not bullying. Unless that means... okay, I'm not going to go into some Mind Screw here.

By bullying I mean threats and general dickery or imposing a dictator. Those give, at best, short term solutions (really, they create even more problems down the line, but let us assume American foreign policy is single-minded. Oh wait...). Thats the majority of anti-Americanism right there.

When you buy the support, I also don't mean bribes to the dictators, I mean the Chinese model of paying for crap they actually need, or giving them jobs, etc.

And an even better way than the above two would be to treat them as equals and do business (rather than nation-building by proxy which is also what the Chinese are doing), but that requires long term thinking and multidimensionalism.

As for brainwashing, that doesn't count because even if it works, it requires far more resources than even bullying does. The sheer expense would not be worth it.

And I answered exactly what I would do in Africa. I would treat them like equals. I think it's way too much to expect a bunch of non-Africans to talk about anything more specific than that in terms of domestic policy when you know nothing of the culture, the ethnic groups, the local history etc. So all I can say is if the West offered them proper contracts for their resources, followed through with them and cut proper business deals, Africa will get better on it's own in a timescale of 50-100 years.

I mean what else do you want me to say? Vague statements of infrastructure building or corruption clean up? I can barely name more than half a dozen political leaders in the continent, let alone a single political party beyond ANC.

edited 8th Sep '11 3:38:01 PM by breadloaf

Treating them like equals also comes from helping them out in the correct ways (such as how the Chinese are doing, rather than mere aid or half-assed stuff), not merely by making equal contracts with individual businesses.

The way I see it, the problem is simple. The countries are not able to develop further, because they don't have their economy of a steady basis. They rely on unfair loans that stipulate counter-intuitive policies *

, overreliance on import farming, and lack of trade protection, meaning cheap imports undermine any local industry.

Well it's a mutually beneficial relationship I think if we were to top what China is doing. So China doesn't care about human rights, just business deals. We treat them as equals at the same time as extending them trade like we would with other western nations. This increases their job opportunities (any construction we do there, we'd use local labour instead of importing people), we increase a market in which we can sell our stuff while we buy their stuff (and because we are competing with the Chinese on prices, they get an even better offer), and also we eliminate our anti-competition practices (such as enforcing laws on our corporations, so if they do something dastardly in a foreign country, they're still liable for it under our domestic laws), as well as blow away certain market-killing practices like agricultural subsidies and import taxes.

IMF: "Right, guys, so if you want a loan, you can have 20 bears for every 1000 people, no more than that."

Australia: "You know the koala isn't really a bear, right?"

Norway: "Polar bears don't count, right?"

Russia: "Yeah, so I'm just gonna extend the hunting seasons a bit, right?"

Finland: "...We're so screwed!"

(Couldn't resist...)

Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.

End things which don't give the Africans a fighting chance. I'd end things like subsidies for western goods and put an end to African debt ASAP. This gives the stable countries a chance and gives dictatorships less of a leg to stand on when they point to those evil westerners and scapegoat us for their countries hardships.

For areas that are completely fractured I'd consider sending peacekeepers with full authority to drive hostiles out of areas they are terrorising. Somalia, in my view, is an area where intervention is needed. No amount of aid is going to change the fact that there are bastards with guns, just about all of whom need to get shot so the people they are terrorising can get on with their lives.

edited 10th Sep '11 3:08:14 PM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Agreed about Somalia.

As for ending subsidies, what takes their place, in the case of staple items or medicines? What prevents the black market for those same goods that would come up from not destabilizing the local economy? Honestly asking here.

Can we just glass the whole of Africa south of the Sahara and be done with it?

"This thread has gone so far south it's surrounded by nesting penguins. " — Madrugada

Can we glass everywhere that is morally reprehensible? Oh, wait, that would amount to the whole world.

Please, now, don't get pretentious because your society isn't almost uniformly poor...

I am now known as Flyboy.

I don't understand how ending subsidies which hold European, American, Indian and Chinese prices down (amongst others) in comparison to African countries and other nations which don't have the wealth to take such measures, will cause a black market to spring up.

The whole point of ending subsidies and debt is to level the playing field so that goods coming out of Africa can fetch the same price as 1st and 2nd world goods. This allows development in these regions.

Right now, the countries that use such measures are effectively locking everyone else out of the competition. It creates what I call a "tyranny of borders", a situation where there is a permanent divide between people simply because they were unlucky in what nation they were born in.

What I see is little more than a continuation of colonialism.

edited 11th Sep '11 12:51:43 AM by GameChainsaw

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Although, on the other hand, it doesn't make sense for those governments to put the people of Africa over their own people. That would be counter to their actual, stated goal... well, or at least, in theory...

I am now known as Flyboy.

Its the bad kind of nationalism; putting your own people first is fine. Putting your own people first in a way that causes poverty and instability for decades to come is not.

Good nationalism: Being proud of your country and wanting it to succeed through good governance.

Bad nationalism: Wanting your country to succeed at the cost of everything and everyone else around.

To use something less dramatic than ending subsidies... well, as mentioned, ending debt would be good. Agricultural development in areas suffering from land exhaustion and the like would be important for keeping everyone fed. Funding education up to the secondary level and allowing free scholarships for Africans from poor backgrounds to come to Western universities, and encouraging the foundation of their own universities (and the improvement of those that are there) would be a start. Focus on building up infrastructure and industry as well so these countries start to get an economic base to climb from. Get people above the subsistence level and poverty lines so they can start making serious money and entrepreuneurs start to get going.

General economic and social development across the board. Also, I'd do everything possible to build relations between Europe and Africa. This is so that bad leaders can stop using Europeans as bogeymen.

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

There is no good nationalism. That's called "patriotism."

My point was less that I agree with that and more that it has to be framed in a "this will benefit you in this way and this way and this way," and less in a "this is the morally right thing to do, so do it."

I agree with the latter, but the former will work better...

I am now known as Flyboy.

@Game Chainsaw

I never said I was against the idea, I was just asking. But anyway....

The black market would come about because of quality problems. If what is being created locally isn't as good as the western product (which would take years of development to accomplish) the people will go back to wanting the Western good. Said good, without subsidies, would be far too expensive. And so you will get the black market. Especially if any of the neighboring countries is still subsidizing, but even if they all removed subsidies, it would still happen.

There is also the problem of the people revolting against you for removing the subsidies, but thats a different issue.

I agree about the tyranny of borders though.

Africa is, um, kind of big. I seriously doubt that there exists a magic bullet which would fix all the different problems of all African countries at once and forever. And, to be honest, I am not familiar enough with the cultural, political and economical situation of any African country to be able to have a meaningful opinion about how to fix it — heck, I don't even know how I would fix Italy, despite the fact that it is my home-country and that its current situation is nowhere as dramatic as that of most African countries.

This said... I think that education is key. Give as many African people as possible the possibility to get as thorough an education as it is possible, and they will fix their own problems themselves. And, who knows, their solutions might be quite different from anything that we would guess — quite possibly, we would eventually learn a lot from their solutions.

So, I think that one thing that should be done, and a lot, is teach teachers to teach teachers to teach. Offer generous scholarships to the brightest Africans as long as they take some sort of seriously advanced education science degree (along with some other degree, perhaps) and pledge to return to their home country to contribute to the education and the welfare of their countrypeople.

Then let them go nuts — after all, I expect that they have a much better grasp on its culture, politics and economics than a clueless westerner like yours truly

edited 11th Sep '11 10:17:26 AM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.

i would fix it the same way the rest of the world needs to be fixed- encourage them to have few childern until the enviornment can easily support the world population. Things were simpler when you didn't have to worry about running the world out of fish and fresh water. if the pop had stayed around ~1 billion, maybe even 2 billion, many of the world's problems simply wouldn't exist. im not saying people need to be killed, but stop having 20 children when theres wars being fought for water and farmland!

I'm baaaaaaack

No, how about we glass your house instead?

RE: Importing medicine etc. Well, first of all good job Clinton /sarcasm, and as is apparent from the fact that there was a medical factory to bommb, African nations do have the resources to produce medicine. Of course, patents stand in the way a lot of the time. I'm also for UN medical aid, which has a measurable benefit, and doesn't hold back the local industry, just does the job until local infrastructure gets on its feet.

Well, about the farming subsidies, there's plenty of much less "beggar-thy-neighbour" policies we could employ than artificially deflating export prices (while simultaneously, inflating domestic prices). Well actually, we could just let farmers sell their goods abroad at market price, but domestically it is controlled.

An end to export subsidies?

The term "Great Man" is disturbingly interchangeable with "mass murderer" in history books.

Well the agricultural game is like this:

Domestically, we inflate prices because otherwise farmers would earn nothing for their crop. Each country does it differently.

In export trade however, we deflate the prices super low to undercut everyone else.