Most of Africa’s nations are younger than 30 years. Several African countries still pay taxes to France. Nearly every African country doesn’t have sovereign control over their natural resources. So Ya, not to even mention the millions of people stolen from their countries. Africa is poor purely because of outside influences
Africa is poor purely because of outside influences
This is simplistic and naive to the point it feels like propaganda.
Your view is going to be unpopular with people here. Most on Lemmy would rather blame the outsiders for problems in Africa. However, I don’t see anyone mentioning China investing hundreds of millions into infrastructure of African countries and attempting to lift many African countries our of poverty only for these countries to remain where they were. At some point it becomes hard to continue blaming hundreds or dozens of years old events for the current situation when the current people contribute to the presently poor state of things.
You are literally voicing the white nationalist “honorary whites” and the “model minorities” that pits Asian cultures and communities against African cultures and communities. To simplify the African continents experience with colonial exploration to Asias is laughable at best and out right racist at worst.
You must be imagining something because I’m simply stating a fact of a event that has been occuring and observed. If you’re projecting some racial issues onto that - that seems like a problem you’ve gotta deal with yourself.
I don’t know what you’re on because I’ve not mentioned whites or Asians at all. It seems you’ve got some repressed anger you’re projecting at my statement of fact.
No the facts you are saying are Historically incorrect, and are an outright white nationalist talking point word for word. You don’t just “observe” the “facts” you stated. You either are a white nationalist or heard their arguments and are just parroting their lies.
You are assuming an awful lot, making an ass out of yourself. I am neither, but the fact that China has invested over $300 Billion is very well documented and is a fact. China is also African biggest trade partner with total business investments in Africa totalling over $2 Trillion. The issues causing their current economic situation are also a fact. You might not like facts, but you’re welcome to read more and expand your horizon, instead of making an ass of yourself on Lemmy assuming things about strangers.
Lol you should actually look into those China investments. Not exactly high quality infrastructure builds and come with strong Chinese authoritarian controls that treat the locals as slaves. And that still means the African nations still don’t have control over their natural resources. Which is vital to build a strong and independent nation.
Similarly, I love when Europeans complain about the Americas having no distinct culture or ancient structures when they kinda killed and burned the ones that existed here for thousands of years.
Alt caption: “Why do we have so many refugees and economic migrants?”
Beginning to think that if we helped Africa prosper, we wouldn’t have whole fleets of boats and dinghies crossing the Mediterranean.
After we killed Gadaffi in 2011 suddenly everyone from Lybia started hopping on boats to Europe. Don’t they like their new
war-torn countryfreedom?
Well, party because of colonization, slavery, and genocide (because cultural genocide counts as genocide), partly because of geo-political meddling, but also massive corruption, coups and an pan-African oligarchy that installed African protectionism 2.0 (or Afro-Reaganomics 1.0, take your pick), ensuring ordinary Africans can’t do any international business without the government holding their dick - as well as the foreign businesses dick. This in turn means only the big boys get to play, like multinationals, because lumps of money gets fed to end up in Cayman island bank accounts.
To blame Europe today is stupid, because it not only serves to deter whatever support common Europeans (I.e not the elite) could give to Africans in diaspora, but it also enables corrupt African officials, who hold speeches about how they criticise the west, only for them to go to some backroom deal with eastern AND western multi-nationals, who really want to exploit Africans, and ofc they’ll be allowed - because of the affirmationed Cayman island bank accounts.
Also, the “employment agencies” in Africa have 50/50 chance of being slave operations - because slavery never disappeared, it just got more “official”, and it’s also been common in Africa for thousands of years.
But yeah, history is cherry picked for the sake of “owning” people in debates and discourse. Again; it only helps to take away the spotlight from African officials, but also: we can’t ever ignore what effect colonization, slavery and genocide has on not only nations, but geographical areas.
This has been nuance. You may hate and downvote me now.
My take is that our ancestors definitely fucked up bigtime by leaving several parts of the world with arbitrary borders that have no regard for existing ethnic groups. Just take a look at any ethnic map of africa, eurasia or the middle-east and you’ll see.
Turns out that colonizers have little interest in local culture. Who would have guessed?
Adding insult to injury: When colonizing land where people mostly lived in tribal social constructs, you actually force them to adapt to your own developments. Essentially skipping the feudalism and micro-states step that has taken Europe literal centuries to get out of.
So you have all these ethnic groups that should have found their way to modern societies without outside interference, and you subject them to slavery, the introduction of guns, mining operations and you crush any form of revolt by committing various atrocities.
Development of nations is never going to be fair, with the strongest group eventually elbowing out the weaker ones. The current status quo definitely doesn’t help in finding stability. Foreign interests are still meddling, financial and food aid is causing ridiculous population numbers that can in no way shape or form be supported by the local economies, and as you said, slavery is not truly gone.
Africa can only be an unstable mess as long as we’re still fucking around. Ideal (though not particularly empathetic) solution is to GTFO, use magic to disappear all firearms and modern weaponry from existence, redistribute all wealth truly equally and go from there. The actual way this will play out is that we’ll see war, instability, destruction of natural resources and a lot of pain and suffering until everything stabilizes or until the land is no longer habitable, whichever comes first.
Africa can only be an unstable mess as long as we’re still fucking around. Ideal (though not particularly empathetic) solution is to GTFO, use magic to disappear all firearms and modern weaponry from existence, redistribute all wealth truly equally and go from there. The actual way this will play out is that we’ll see war, instability, destruction of natural resources and a lot of pain and suffering until everything stabilizes or until the land is no longer habitable, whichever comes first
This is that typical defeatist schpiel, used by both “woke” white people in the west, as well as African self-defeatists. You’re not helping, and here’s why:
Not only are you robbing African people of any agency, but you pretend like they can’t actually do anything about their situation, i.e the corruption and exploitation, by blaming some “super powerful foreign force” that itself must give up for Africans to be free.
When in fact, the French presence is almost fully gone, the US military is there at the behest of local governments, and the ones making the most money is not solely multinationals, but the corrupt officials who invite and enable them. These officials are all black and brown, they are all ethnically African.
That’s why you should support democratic movements and help to spread awareness of the goings on in Africa, or else you’re HELPING the corrupt by providing them a scapegoat. Here’s an example, without doxing myself:
In my city, last year, there was a violent protest by certain Africans. People in my city were generally not even informed what the issue was, but gladly speculated. After a day or two it became apparent, that they were citizens in diaspora who were angry that a supposed “youth organization” from their country was given a venue to speak to politicians. This is because this “youth organization” was an astroturfed organization by an authoritarian regime who sought to get more western money.
Now, we can fully pull out all that money, but those despots and oligarchs don’t give two fucks about the people they rule over, which would lead to even more famine. But then we’d also have more blood on our hands.
It’s therefore important that we either A) talk directly about who, what and where, or B) defer to someone who knows what they are talking about.
Judging by your glib, defeatist and condescending schpiel, I’m guessing you don’t know that you’re talking about.
Please defer to people who actually know what they are talking about and throw away whatever old school, defeatist, glib talking points - because you’re not helping. In fact, you’re enabling the talking points of these despots, oligarchs and regimes.
Please do better.
If you’re insist on nuanced and gray toned conversation on Lemmy, you’re going to have a bad time. You got away with it this time; don’t let it become a habit.
