What if we moved Iraq to Africa?

Great Debates
21

Those aren’t the only two choices. The preferred one right now is just to leave it alone while providing some limited aid and occasional military intervention if a real hot spot develops.

Dumping huge sums of money and personnel on Africa cannot be done there (or anywhere) without it becoming something like colonialism. We would need to have a huge hand in all applicable governments to make sure the efforts aren’t thwarted from within, we would have to keep the personnel safe and free to build things or intervene whenever needed, and the voters at home would want some assurance that we are just plain getting our way. Once you look at the money, people, resources, and accessibility needed, it would be like Iraq and we would just have to try to take over large parts of the continent temporarily. Again, they already had that and usually wanted to get out from under it.

22

How about offering the aid to whatever reasonable governments are out there? I am sure a couple of solid bastions of progress would be real eye openers for the rest of the continent.

23

There has in fact been a renewed emphasis on accountablity in international development. This article may be of interest:

Accountability in International Development Aid

24

I’m unclear at how throwing US$100B (or any arbitrary amount of money you choose) at governments known to be corrupt, either in the form of official aid or bribes, it going to make any situation better. As Colibri has repeatedly noted, the problem isn’t cash–far less than one hundred billion dollars would represent an increase of GNP and per capita income of all of subSahran Africa–excluding South Africa–by several times the current amount. And it’s not manpower, either; the continent is swarming with Peace Corps volunteers, UN-sanctioned NGOs, former colonial powers offering remediative aid, et cetera. The essential problem with Africa is education; the majority of the populace still lives that the sociological level of hunter-gatherers, even though they have population densities that demand industrialization.

Paul Theroux, in his informative but depressing Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Capetown notes that there is no dearth of wealth in Africa; there are plenty of Europeans driving around in shiny white Land Cruisers; there are hospitals and apartment projects; several African nations have effected siezure or nationalization of property belonging to former colonists/persons of European extraction and have apportioned it to ethnic Africans. However, the NGOs end up being self-serving and protectionist; they seek to perpetuate their own existance and maintain a distance (he sorrowfully notes that they won’t even give a fellow “white man” a lift, much less help the natives, and claims that this is different than his time in Malawi in the 'Sixties); the hospitals and residences have insufficient infrastructure and fail to fit the life style of Africans; siezures have resulted in formerly productive farms becoming barren, as natives detached from traditional tribal education lack the skills to farm.

Most of subSaharan Africa exists as a dependant cargo cult society, divorced and too big for traditional sustenance off the land, lacking in development for industrialization. This is a result of colonization, which brought them the benefits of industrial society without the capacity to sustain it themselves. If you want to “fix” Africa, you first have to realize that no fix will be simple, and throwing money at the problem or bribing away corrupt officials is a hopeless task (however many you send into retirement in the Bahamas, ten more would show up to take the place). Fixing Africa means bringing it into the 21st Century, and that means educating the populace (particularly the children) and then (and only then) building the infrastructure for them to build a modern civilization. There is great resistance to this; any medical doctor who has spent time working in Africa will tell extensive stories about how the natives prefer to believe their own “witch doctors” and superstitions than to accept aid and advice from Western science.

Africa isn’t a write-off; though; there’s nothing innately wrong or degenerate about the population, and as Colibri notes, they don’t lack for natural resources. If you could bring a critical mass of the population into something resembling modern industrial society, the rest would follow or at least be marginalized. But this is a daunting task made all the more difficult by the pervasive corruption and ignorance. It would certainly be a more noble effort, even in failure, than the current Rumble in Mesopotamia. But just throwing money and expecting the problem to correct itself, automagically, is a recipe for failure.

Stranger

25

I still think some kind of modified Neo-Colonialism is the way to go vis a vis Africa. The continent has a lot of problems and they’ve only gotten worse since the '60s.

26

Neo-colonialism? I thought that got sufficiently smacked down the last time you brought the stupid idea up. Africa’s problems are largely because of colonialism. How’s a second go supposed to fix things?

27

In the 1980’s, a group of doctors from the Center for Disease Control arrived in Nigeria, to help in AIDS & Ebola research. They identified themselves as being from the C.D.C.

The Minister of Health, in a paranoid tone, immediately inquired if “C.D.C.” stood for "Colonial Developemental Corporation.

I cite the Hot Zone as the source of the account.

I think that any large-scale effort, like that in the OP, would be interpeted as Colonialism, with no goddamn “neos” in it, & would spawn a huge wave of guerillas to “repel the Colonial devils”.

28

That’s just what the British thought. You’ll note the difference between the extent of the British Empire at the beginning of the 20th Century and at that at the end. Africa needs (and should) to be able to solve its own problems, ultimately without foreign aid from Europe and the United States. Save for Japan (which was a special case in the post-WWII era) and Hawaii, playing colonial power, even for just a limited amount of time, has gone very poorly for the United States, and generally even more poorly for the intended “colonial clients”.

Stranger

29

For the sake of illustration, let me offer a couple of programs that have worked wonders in Venezuela. They are all education programmes to teach people to do what they do, with the tools they use, in a more efficient way. Appropriate technology, if you are not naturally predisposed against the term.

Spiral latrines. Forget the pipe dream (no pun intended) of sewers all over. This is just a hole in the floor where people evacuate. With the same tools, materials and effort you needed to make a traditional (and unhygienic and unsafe) latrine, you can make a modern safer, cleaner latrine. People picked on it in no time.

Worm cultures. In its most basic form, a compost pile in a half drum of oil with a hole in the bottom. Add some earthworms. It leaks an excellent (100% organic and all) “liquid manure” that can be used on all crops. In most farms I have seen them, the “problem” they have is that it does better than needed and eventually you have to start throwing the stuff away.

Fish farms. Inland. In the low savannas, people do “land loans” where you dig a hole on the ground to raise roads, house foundations, etc. (think Miami). There was a program to give fish “seed” to stock these ponds. Not only they are good food, they also eat mosquito larvae. Once you have a pond going, it keeps itself. No built-in dependence.
Just three very basic ideas that have improved the life of people in the Venezuelan lowlands. They are not handouts, they do not create dependence, the thugs in power see no objection to them, even if they cannot directly benefit from them. There have been several others in water storage, domestic hydroelectric power generation, etc. There are studies in progress to design better rural homes, low tech food preservation, etc.

None of these will take Africa out of poverty, but will certainly improve the quality of life for the poorest over there. Real, possible, measurable, lasting contributions to a population that is living in conditions worse than humans at any stage of their history ever lived on their own.

A population that is not dying has a better chance to fight for their rights, I believe.

I think it can be done if the right people put their thinking caps on and don’t just give up on an entire continent.

30

The essential problem with Africa–even moreso than the corruption and lack of infrastructure–is the entitlement attitude that came from living off the wastage of colonial powers. Many of the things the European nations did as part of their efforts to colonize Africa were intended both to mitigate the guilt of slavery and improve the quality of life of Africans (as well as often robbing them blind of natural resources–see the De Beers cartel as an example) but resulted in a cargo cult-like mentality, a dependence upon import goods. Aside from South Africa, there is essentially no industrial manufacturing in Africa, and little political support in most nations to develop anything like a merchant/manufacturing based middle class. Idi Amin’s forced emigration of Gujarati Indians (who comprised the bulk of the merchant and financial services sector) and “distribution” (i.e. outright theft) of property owned thereby is typical of African attitudes toward property and commerce. Having no history or law/common practice in commerce and real estate, everything they have and know was imposed by, and essentially disappeared with, the colonial powers. A written contract in Africa is worth far less than a handshake in Europe or a nod in Asia; the courts–what of them exist–have a long history of capricious judgement even before you factor in dictatorial whims that sieze property and displace owners without even a nod toward formal eminent domain and just compensation.

Africa is not a write-off, and it would take mere dollars per head to manifestly improve some of the worst quality of life issues there (disease, clean water, basic nutrition); it’s going to take far more than money, however, to seriously improve many of the underlying problems.

Stranger

31

  1. Spend the money proccessing all those immigrant visas that no one seems to be able to get.

  2. Use the manpower to do the background checks for the above.

  3. Move as many Africans as you can to the US. Give them training in English and scholarships for education.

You could do the same for Iraq, but since you don’t like them as much as the Africans, I guess not.

What, you want to help Africans, right?

32

You know before we try to discuss helping anyone we should first find out a little about Africa’s development status in the world and the trends of development throughout the world.

http://hdr.undp.org/hdr2006/statistics/flash/statistics_trends.cfm

this chart puts the development trend of Africa exactly on par with south Asia (India etc…) until 1983, when Africa abruptly stopped making any significant upswing in development.

Why did this happen? AIDS? Political instability? Conflict? Who knows? However, I do know that for any society to grow it needs a few things

Health:
Basic sanitation (clean water, proper toilets…)
Basic health care (local medical clinics, malaria/AIDS/etc drugs, equipment, trained staff…),
Disease prevention (fly netting, HIV awareness…)

Education:
High Literacy level (basic)
Free flow of Information (newspapers, internet, radio)
Access to higher levels of education (High school, College, university)
A Universal language (not required but it enables communication)

Wealth:
Jobs (skilled labour, manual labour, anything that can bring a paycheck)
Fair trade practices (something rich countries can change tomorrow if they wanted)
Fair wealth distribution (often: rich=kings, poor=surfs; it’s an unbreakable cycle and sadly often a legacy of colonialism 'see land issues in Zimbabwe and South Africa ')

Gender Equality:
Lower birth rates (bigger families is a bigger burden on developing infrastructure)
More healthy society and greater production within a populous (women can work, develop, and contribute to society instead of being a burden)

Food:
Proper nutrition (famine kills and hunger prevents a population from doing anything)
Better farming techniques (more production)
Access to farming equipment (more production)
Allowing genetic engineering (more production)
Good food preservation (production lasts longer)

Political freedom:
Free and fair elections (proper representation insures good development for a country)
Free media (kills corruption)

This is just a laundry list of things that a population (city, region, country) needs to have to function properly (IMHO). If you want to help Africa I would suggest to try to give it all (or even some) of these things. Not impossible, but difficult.

33

http://hdr.undp.org/docs/statistics/data/flash/2005/2005.html

This link is excellent in outlining the situation of the world in regards to current/previous development and the trends. SERIOUSLY CHECK IT OUT.

34

No, Africa’s problems are largely because they told the Colonial powers to clear off, IMHO.

At the very least, a lot of the African countries have proven that they can’t run their affairs properly. I’d say a form of Hegemony/Colonialism would be a massive step up from their current situation, although a lot of people seem to disagree with me.

35

Africa’s current problems started at the end of colonialism?

Political authoritativeness, Poor Health Care, Poor Education, Famine, Gender Inequality, Wealth Inequality, and lack of clean water all existed during Africa’s colonial time; most European governments (much like the current African ones) didn’t give a damn about these issues. The only infrastructure that was set up was to either service the European settlers or to suck out the natural wealth out of their colonies.

There was no ultimate plan for these colonies to function as any thing close to self-governing nation states, they were created on a whim.

Many Africans had seen this and correctly believed that the end result of long term colonization is the natives becoming marginalized in their own land to the point of irrelevance (see USA/Canada/Australia/New Zealand/Brazil/South Africa), and wanted nothing of it.

“Step up”, my foot.

36

That is very much just your Humble Opinion. The colonial powers weren’t interested in advancing the local population, what makes you think anything would have changed?

The only reason South Africa isn’t quite as bad as the rest of Africa developmentally is because we actually went from being a pure colony to a country with a large “indigenous” Euro-derived industrial/citified population who owed no real allegiance to any European Motherland. Even though nominally a British colony, most whites were Afrikaner, and considered themselves African first and foremost. So they built for here, not there. Sure, they were racist pigs who oppressed the natives, but an unintended consequence was the superior infrastructure and manufacturing base we enjoy in SA.

In fact, if the OP really wants to get bang for the buck, I’d suggest spend all that money and human capital right here in SA. Fund the police, teachers and medical staff of the country, have those 100 000 people working here in the townships and rural areas as nurses, teachers and policemen. Then when their 4 years are up, have them go back to the US and then bring their families back here as tourists. Build nuclear power plants (we are amongst the world’s prime uranium sources, after all), build better dams. End subsidies for your farmers so ours can compete on an even footing. The trickle-down effect to the rest of Africa would be worth it.

37

To be fair, the standard procedure here is to go to the hospital first, and if you don’t like what they have to say, to go see the traditional doctor. Considering the poor state of many hospitals and the level of medical care recieved in them, your chances of getting sick from the hospital itself is pretty high. I know a cute little kid who is blind because the doctors gave him the wrong medicine. Stories like this are not rare.

As for shoveling money into Africa- too late. China beat us to it. America sent one teacher to this town and China sent a hospital and 13 doctors. China is up to something here, and I can’t figure out why Americans arn’t at least interested.

It’s hip to be anti-aid, but here are programs that help. America could start, for example, by putting funding back into the Peace Corps (which is basically putting skilled people here for two years, with an emphasis on training others), which is surprisingly (to me at least) very effective. Take a look at the history of Peace Corp’s funding one day. The money spent out here is miniscule and the work done is huge. With a little more money, we’d be able to do things like small infrastructure projects (wells, computer labs, et.) and extras like youth camps, women’s conferences, etc.

38

Add an “again” to these sentences. Funding cuts since the Regan era and beyond have made anything needing outside resources (even of a few hundred dollars) very difficult.

39

We seem to be getting more in line to what I was thinking. I never envisioned “regime change” (at least of the imposed type), no miraculous swissification of Africa in 4 years, or anything of the sort. I am thinking food, water, shelter, medicine. Giving the poorest the tools they need to help themselves to a less dire standard of living.

**MrDibble’s ** idea, I find intriguing. I have always believed in that type of approach. Give a lot to a minority and hope that expands on its own. Never seen it really work, but interesting to consider.

**kawaii’s ** approach is not without merit, either (in moderation). Training some people so they can go back and help from the inside is an attractive idea. My experience with it (in Latin America) is that those people rarely want to go back, though. Or if they do, they have become so detached from their native reality that they struggle to adapt and marginalize themselves.

Whatever approach is taken, has to take into consideration that the help must eventually come to an end but its effect must perdure. This is why I am all against dropping computers and high-end hospitals and all for appropriate technologies and basic sanitation.

It is a pity that some many people die of diabetes, but screw that, insulin handouts create dependency (just for the example). I will rather focus on malaria, parasites and infections.

What Africa needs is, mostly, education. Not reading and writing, that comes later. I mean health education so they can prevent so many easily preventable infections that kill so many.

Forget a solar-powered reverse osmosis water purificator. Give me a distiller you can build with dead auto parts and burns old tyres. Something African Joe can build and maintain looking at his neighbour’s and using only scrap parts.

Forget organ transplants and lasik surgery, give me good hand-washing techniques, clean water and safe latrines.

Forget internet, give me a safe dirt road that is travesable all year round and can be repaired with shovels.

Keep your tractors and high-yield seeds. Show me techniques to keep local crops alive through drought and plague.

Let’s take them to the 20th century. They can take themselves to the 21st if they want to.

40

China is cultivating a future customer base for goods and weapons, plus trade partners for foodstuffs and natural resources that they don’t have at home.

The Peace Corps is one of the unsung successes of U.S. foreign policy. If we put 1% of what we spend on foreign military aid on the Peace Corps, we probably wouldn’t solve Africa’s fundamental problems but we’d contribute greatly to improving basic quality of life and have a much better reputation on the world stage.

Stranger