Africa: A Tragic Continent

Guest Post by Walter E. Williams

Here’s how my Aug. 11, 2003, column began: “Anyone who believes President Bush’s Africa initiative, including sending U.S. troops to Liberia, will amount to more than a hill of beans is whistling Dixie. Maybe it’s overly pessimistic, but most of Africa is a continent without much hope for its people.” More than a decade has passed since that assessment, and little has changed to suggest a more optimistic outlook. Now Ebola threatens the very existence of the West African nations Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea. Moreover, the deadly disease is likely to spread to neighboring nations.

Each year, The Wall Street Journal and The Heritage Foundation publish an “Index of Economic Freedom,” which measures economic liberty around the world. Mauritius is the only one of the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to rank among the 10 freest economies in the world. Botswana is the second-freest African country, followed by Cape Verde. South Africa used to be near the top but has since declined. Of the other sub-Saharan countries, 11 are rated as “repressed” and 26 are “mostly unfree.” Eight of the world’s 20 least free economies are in Africa’s sub-Saharan region.

Poverty is not a cause but a result of Africa’s problems. What African countries need the West cannot provide. They need personal liberty. That means a political system in which there are guarantees of private property rights, free markets, honest government and the rule of law. Africa’s poverty is, for the most part, self-inflicted. Some people might disagree because their college professors taught them that the legacy of colonialism explains Third World poverty. That’s nonsense. Canada was a colony. So were Australia, New Zealand and Hong Kong. In fact, the richest country in the world, the United States, was once a colony. By contrast, Third World countries such as Ethiopia, Liberia, Nepal and Bhutan were never colonies, yet they are home to some of the world’s poorest people.

There’s no complete explanation for why some countries are affluent while others are poor, but there are some leads. Rank countries according to whether they are closer to being a free market economy or whether they’re closer to having a socialist or planned economy. Then rank countries by per capita income. Doing so, we will find a general, though not perfect, pattern whereby those having a larger measure of economic freedom find their citizens enjoying a higher standard of living. Also, if we ranked countries according to how Freedom House or Amnesty International rates human rights protections, we’d find that citizens of freer market economies enjoy a greater measure of human rights protections. You can bet the rent money that the correlation among free markets, wealth and human rights protections is not coincidental.

With but few exceptions, most African countries are worse off now than they were during colonialism, both in terms of standard of living and in terms of human rights protections. Once a food-exporting country, Zimbabwe recently stood near the brink of starvation. Sierra Leone is rich in minerals — especially diamonds — has highly fertile land and is the best port site in West Africa, but it has declined into a state of utter despair. Africa is the world’s most natural-resources-rich continent. It has 50 percent of the world’s gold, most of the world’s diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world’s potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, and millions of acres of untilled farmland, as well as other natural resources. Before independence, every African country was self-sufficient in food production; today many depend on imports, and others stand at the brink of famine.

Though there’s a strong case for us to help with the Ebola crisis, the worst thing Westerners could do to Africa would be to send more foreign aid. Foreign aid provides the financial resources that enable Africa’s grossly corrupt and incompetent regimes to buy military equipment, pay off cronies and continue to oppress their people. It also provides resources for the leaders to live lavishly and set up “retirement” accounts in foreign banks.

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backwardsevolution
backwardsevolution

Westerners paying off corrupt regimes in order to get into these countries to exploit their resources or farmland, and westerners sending foreign aid money which ends up in the hands of corrupt politicians. These two practices ensure corrupt politicians will stay in place and the people of Africa will suffer.

If even one of these countries happened to come by (yeah, like that’s going to happen) an honest leader who wanted to feed his people, well, he’d be bumped off before sundown. It is sad that these countries, so rich in resources and farmland, cannot even feed themselves.

But if I was a multinational corporation and wanted to exploit their resources, like so many do, I wouldn’t want it any other way. If I wanted to make really big money, I might make sure there was further chaos, just so the natives couldn’t get organized.

Lost continent.

llpoh
llpoh

“Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo, initially by the collection of ivory, and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the natives to harvest and process rubber. His regime was responsible for the deaths of an estimated 2 to 15 million Congolese”

Sensetti
Sensetti

“With but few exceptions, most African countries are worse off now than they were during colonialism, both in terms of standard of living and in terms of human rights protections”

A friend of mine who lives in Ghana says his country was far better off when the Brits were in charge, he longs for their return.

Hope
Hope

This guy nails it on the head – the problem with Africa is their “governments”. That is, after colonialism (which did not last long enough IMHO), the managment of African resources and people devolved to less-than-Stone-Age systems of governance.

A HUGE player here was the instillation of cultural Marxism, sponsored by the USSR, into the highest echelons of African governments. This, melded with the native tribalism and enabled by the toxic liberal progressivism of the international cultural elites, managed to cement into place totalitarian regimens of unprecedented corruption, savagery and sheer incompetence on a scale never before witnessed in human history.

See: “Robert Mugabe”, “Idi Amin Dad”, etc…..

Africa, even more than Detroit, will be studied by future generations (if there are any) as a case study of “Why Liberal Progressives and Cultural Marxists Should Never Be Allowed to Manage More Than A Land Fill and Even That Only With Close Supervision”.

With the possible exception of Kenya, NOT A SINGLE African country has improved in the post-colonial period, not one.

See: “Liberia”, “Sierra Leone”, “Nigeria”, “Guinea”, “South Africa”, “Zimbabwe” for starters.

The problem with colonialism, at least as practiced by the British and French (and not the Belgians home of the EU), is that it didn’t go on long enough.

Flame away, the facts speak for themselves.

llpoh
llpoh

Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) went from the jewel of Africa to asshole of the world within a couple of decades under black rule. Go figure. It really cratered around 2000, when its take from the white farmers and give to the black farmers policy finally bit in. Come to find out, the black farmers did not know how to grow anything. Amazing, isn’t it.

llpoh
llpoh

This diagram shows how Zimbabwe and South Africa have faired since black rule. Note the exception to the rule: Botswana. The author mentioned Botswana as being a relatively free economy.

The warlord mentality does not make for economic opportunity and progress.

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ASIG
ASIG

Second sentence of the second paragraph:

“Mauritius is the only one of the 48 countries in sub-Saharan Africa to rank among the 10 freest economies in the world.”

WRONG! –Mauritius is an Island in the Indian Ocean more than a thousand miles east of Africa. It may well be among the freest economies in the world but it is not in Africa.

I suppose he was trying to say Mauritania. And it is probably no freer than any other part of Africa.

Southern Sage
Southern Sage

Oh, come on. The problem is the Africans. Their average IQ is 70-80. Case closed. Get real.

Olga
Olga

Perhaps a more reasonable comparison would be to pre-colonial Africa – before the arbitrary “national” boundaries were constructed by resource hungry Europeans.

Mark
Mark

The problem is culture .

Africans are patriarchal and philanderous. What nigger is going to want to take care of another mans child?

Think of Obolas father or Adrian Petterson if you will. Better yet, Bill Cosby. At least Cosby had the smarts to use some form of birth control before drugging and rapping all those women.

OUTTAHERE
OUTTAHERE

Whether Africa is some grand cosmic experiment or just the luck of the draw, I think it is safe to say that it a failure. Why? Because it is inhabited with Black people. Any way you look at it, Black people are incapable, for the most part, of improving themselves or excelling at anything as a race. Never have and never will. Why? Because they lack the capacity to do so.
Is there any where in the world that the Black race has produced anything of significance? No matter where they live, they are always at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. Even when placed in environments other than Africa and given opportunities of education and employment they fail to excel at anything, except for a very small percentage. As a race, they are a failure and inevitably they are exploited in one way or another either by other races or especially by their own. Unfortunately, they are easily subdued and controlled for someone else’s desires.
Another point. All of my life I’ve seen pictures, movies or videos of poor Africans either starving or living a existential life of poverty. It’s still the same today; nothing has changed. I’ve always wondered if someone is living somewhere and they have little food or drinkable water then why in the hell don’t they just MOVE SOMEWHERE ELSE? Is that so freakin’ hard to figure out? Instead, they just sit in the same place, have more babies and then just starve to death due to malnourishment.
These observations are just that — observations. There is no racial malice intended here. My point is that they never have and never will succeed at anything as a race because they lack the basic capabilities to do so. Period.

Billy
Billy

Meh…

More excuse making and ignoring the elephant in the room.

“It’s because they’re not economically free.”

“No, no! It’s a “legacy of colonialism.”

“No! It’s because of their “governments”.”

The only ones who come close are Llpoh and Sage.

The problem with Africa, is that it’s full of Africans: a race of sub-60 IQ retards and crappy failures. Africa has been a basket case of violence, superstition, animism, genocide, witchcraft, cannibalism and failure since forever. Long before the western powers ever got there.

There were no great cities. No written languages. No technological or engineering wonders. The sum total of the advancements of Africa is probably the pointy stick and a hut made of shit, mud and sticks. Even their tools are made on the spot and not much good after one or two uses, so they are discarded.

The fact that they are mentally feeble is reflected in their language. One African was amazed that a white linguist in Africa needed a dictionary for English – the linguists native tongue. The African was amazed because he already knew all the words of his own language – which amounted to only a couple hundred words – and could not conceive of anyone needing a book to know their own language. In fact, the languages in Africa that have available dictionaries only have them because whites produced them. There is a fascinating lecture on SpewT00b given by a white linguist about African languages. If I can find it, I will post it.

Eskimos were more technologically advanced than the Africans, and all they had to work with was snow and fish….

A race of crappy failures…. Nothing we do will ‘fix’ Africa, short of outright recolonization. It is designed to be unfixable, and anyone trying is just wasting their time, if not making things worse.

Anonymous
Anonymous

Here… well worth your time… if you want to understand why Africa is right fucked, then you need to understand it starts with the Africans themselves..

indialantic
indialantic

Agricultural products used to be one of the main exports of South Africa and Zimbabwe (Rhodesia). Not any more. Many white Afrikaners were driven off their farms or murdered after the communist revolution restored freedom in the region in the 80’s. No farmers. No food. Simple maff.

Stucky

“There were no great cities. No written languages. No technological or engineering wonders.”
———- Billy

What about this? Or is Egypt not part of Africa?
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John the bruce
John the bruce

Missing link hiding in plain sight. Would you expect progress from a monkey or a neanderthal?

Bostonbob

Stucky,
I do not think the Egyptians consider themselves to be “African”, though technically from the continent. They certainly look different, more Nubian than African.
Bob.

A. R. Wasem
A. R. Wasem

Regarding Stucky’s question: the Eqyptians certainly do not consider themselves to be “African” and, in every way in which humans are categorized, even geographically (Egypt, Algeria Libya, etc. are all considered “North African” or “Saharan” countries), no one else does either. Stand with Rand and BC-LR to all

Billy
Billy

Stucky,

I can’t decide if you’re posting that because you want to piss me off or…

Yeah, yeah you are… just to fuck with me. Nice try.

You know damn well that ancient Egyptians were, and still are, a Mediterranean people and NOT sub-Saharan Negroes…

You posting a picture of the great pyramid of Giza is the same as the negroes claim of “Weez ams ‘Gipshuns! Handibal wuz Blakk! Weez cud fly and builded da pyr’mids wiff mind powahs and da Whyte Debbil stoleded our knowleges… dey wuz libbin im da caves wen weez wuz teachin maffs to dem Greek muhfuggahs…”

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How the niggers view Hannibal of Carthage.

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How the alleged “History Channel” portrays Hannibal of Carthage.

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What Hannibal of Carthage really looked like…

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But hey, don’t let any of that shit stop you from stealing the history of other people and attributing it to the niggers… they’ve been doing it for decades, so why not join in?

Hope
Hope

@Stucky: The Egyptian civilization is a Mediterranean one. The only black people you see in the hieroglyphs are fanning the royal family. Don’t buy into Cornel West’s bogus “scholarship”.

People look to Africa and wonder why, with all the animals, land and varied habitats, was there no great civilization, no writing, no large scale agriculture?

Part of the problem is the environment itself.

None of the large animals have been able to be tamed (meaning you can work with the animal without it killing you), much less domesticated (breeding desirable traits into a species). That means you have to spend a LOT more time and energy chasing after your calories than if you can walk over to the cattle/sheep/pig pen and kill what you need. In Africa, in fact, most of the big animals like Cape Buffalo, hippo, elephants, rhino, and wart hog will stomp a human into a greasy patch on the veldt in 2 heart beats.

This may be one reason why Africans produce so many world class track & field and marathon runners, I dunno.

There is abundant fresh water in Africa, certainly. Unfortunately it is full of creatures that love to eat people (and still do) like crocodiles, carnivorous fish, hippo, etc. This is one reason you almost never see Olympic swimming teams from Africa.

And finally, while the amount of land in Africa is staggering, very little of it is suited for large scale farming – it is desert, scrub, jungle, etc. What is suitable was only able to be farmed on a large scale when Europeans came in with modern (Iron Age) tools, irrigation techniques and wheat. Wheat is key because due to a mutation thousands of years ago, you can readily separate the germ from the chaff – and thus work less hard for your calories. It is also a crop that grows quickly so you can readily breed new traits into it, unlike, say acorns which takes you 20 years just to produce 1 acorn. There is no high protein crop native to the African continent that gives you the work/protein yield advantages of wheat.

The last issue is the disease one – malaria, sleeping sickness, Rift Valley Fever, Ebola, etc, that affect both man and animals.

Now, what I can’t understand is why Africa, when all the above challenges have been ameliorated by the blessings of Western Civilization, still can’t get their collective shit together and seems to have devolved to a less-than Stone-Age level when the white people left.

Because raaaacism, or slavery, or eleventy, I just don’t know.

Billy
Billy

@ Hope

Re: “None of the large animals have been able to be tamed (meaning you can work with the animal without it killing you), much less domesticated (breeding desirable traits into a species). ”

Read recently that all cattle currently bred for beef or milk in the world today can all be traced back to a large herd of ancient cattle that were first domesticated near what is now Turkey.

Prior to the domestication, these cattle were much like the Cape Buffalo of such renown. Largely solitary animals, very tough, large horns, very territorial and very, very cranky… they were so deadly, going by what little we know – cave paintings and such – that to kill one single-handed was a mark of manhood, a rite of passage.

Still, the ancients bred out the aggressive streak and domesticated them, though they were every bit as violent and deadly as their Cape Buffalo counterparts.

Any animal can be bred for any trait desired, humans included. I don’t think that there are animals that are incapable of being bred a certain way and domesticated, I think nobody ever bothered to try to do it. Especially the sub-Saharan Africans themselves. Given their notoriously low IQ’s, this is not surprising. And why would they? There are still great swarms of animals right there for the taking. Add both together and no wonder there never were any animals domesticated…

Curiosity motivates this next comment of mine…

Your argument that only after Europeans arrived with tools and techniques – plus seed – were crops able to be cultivated and grown in Africa.

I disagree.

Even as late as the 1970’s/80’s, after the Belgian Congo was given back to the locals, an adviser to the President who had been in the Congo both before and after the handoff, made the observation that the rich plantations (that were so hard to establish) were being overrun with weeds and jungle – nobody was maintaining them, despite the investment of time, labor, treasure, etc just getting them going. Maintaining is much, much easier than establishing something from scratch. Yet, they sat there, going back to nature, the buildings slowly mouldering and falling down and the locals living in squalor…

Even when given a going concern outright, they prove incapable of even maintaining that which we create… Europeans learned how to cultivate crops in the pre-Bronze age era. The American Indians knew how to cultivate crops and had literally no knowledge of metals whatsoever when Europeans first arrived…

Even in what used to be Rhodesia – a food exporter – they are incapable of taking care of themselves and now depend on Western aid to simply keep from starving… it has nothing to do with “free economies” or a legacy of colonialism or raaaaycisssms or what particular government they happen to have (or not).

It’s about time folks recognized the truth.

Stucky

“I can’t decide if you’re posting that because you want to piss me off or ….” —- Billy

Bada Boom! Bada Bing!!

Billy
Billy

Hey Stucky..

You know that dessert recipe you posted? The New Orleans Bananas Foster Bread Pudding?

It calls for 6 cups of “brioche”….

You had me running all over Hell’s half acre looking for some surrender monkey bread that nobody around here ever fucking heard of before… I had to call a bakery in Lexington before I found someone who even knew what it was!

Then dude – who sounded a bit light in the loafers – told me they didn’t make it, but they made something close to it called “Challah”… said it was popular with folks who want to make bread puddings and the like..

Soooo, tomorrow I get to go see Mr. Light Loafers and get my fucking bread so I can make this fucking dessert of yours…

It better be worth it… driving all the way to Lexington for a loaf of goddamned bread… I must be out of my mind….

Stucky

Way to go, Billy!!!! All I can say is, we LOVED it.

Challah is an excellent substitute …. an airy sweet bread. In the future just enter the search phrase “what is a good substitute for name-of-item”. Had you done that, you would have immediately stumbled upon Challah.

Speak of food … check out the vid below. Emma Dalton became the first person EVER to eat the 8,000 calorie breakfast “Hibernator”
—- 8 pieces of bacon
—- 8 sausages
—- 4 hash browns
—- 4 fried eggs
—- 4-egg cheese omelette
—- 4 waffles
—- 4 pieces of toast
—- 4 pieces of fried bread
—- 4 helpings of black pudding
—- 2 ladles of beans
—- 2 ladles of tomatoes, mushrooms, and fries
—- 2 pint milkshake

She did so in under an hour, and won $160 for her efforts

Stucky

BTW … this took place in England ……… and “blood pudding” is NOT pudding as we know it …………………. it’s fuckin’ pigs blood and oatmeal ……….. one of THE most disgusting things I’ve ever eaten ….. and that’s coming from someone who actually likes Blutwurst (you know what I mean)

It’s the black thing …. that looks like slice shit
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Thinker

Guys, brioche (or challah, for that matter) isn’t that difficult to make… although I hear Lexington is beautiful this time of year, so maybe Billy wants to drive that far.

http://www.food.com/recipe/brioche-51546

http://www.food.com/recipe/the-best-bread-machine-challah-142387

Stucky
Stucky

Sorry but I am off for a while. It is my time of the month.

Gubmint Cheese
Gubmint Cheese

Actually, the grain Millet is native to Africa, has a similar protein content and has a higher energy content than rice or wheat. It does well in stressed climates and poor soils.

I think Sorghum is up there too, but not sure if its native to the dark continent or not.

Billy
Billy

Stuck – our cycles must be in sync! I feel some cramps coming on myself! What do you use to control them? Which reminds me, I am out of Kotex.

Thinker
Thinker

We need to meet up for tea and a little chat! I saw some great recipes in Women’s Weekly!

Thinker
Thinker

How does next Tuesday sound? Right after my Brazilian at 9?

Thinker

Cool… my first dopple!

Stucky

fuckin Chief Llpoh is going batshit dopple crazy.

Hope@ZeroKelvin
Hope@ZeroKelvin

@Billy:

No one in Africa has been able to tame or domesticate the Cape Buffalo or any of the Ibex, springbok, wildebeest, whatever. The Cape Buffalo is too damn dangerous, and the other species have no “heading” instinct. When you try to pen them, they batter themselves to death trying to escape.

As to the ancient ancestors of the modern cattle, those were aurochs. While they were bigger than today’s cattle, they also had the herding instinct and thus were more amenable to being tamed, if you caught a young one, and later domesticated.

While Muslims have been slaving in Africa since at least the 900s, and contributed nothing but misery/poverty/enslavement (which is all Islam ever produces), it was only the white Europeans, coming in the 1500-1600s that brought any kind of settled agriculture to the area, mainly in South Africa.

I lived in Kenya for a 1 year in college. It was striking to me how many of even the college students (who were the elites in their society) accepted the status quo and had no real idea/drive/gumption to improve their lot. All they cared about was: 1) how to get out of Africa, and 2) how to make a lot of money for them selves and their tribe.

The evidence for some kind of inherent deficiency for Africans to live/co-exist in modern society seems rather, well, obvious, sadly.

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