Why is Africa still so poor?

Question

KostasKouvalis · Accepted Answer

The incompetence and stubborness of the people. Because there were other regions that were colonized and are doing fine.

Even in the Caribbean, most blacks have put their egos and history aside and have recognized the importance of working together. Black people in the Caribbean at least don't hide the fact that they're lazy and want other countries to build things for them. They've accepted economic niches. They're perfectly fine having White people run the hotels and tour companies, the Chinese running the grocery stores, the Indians running the higher end stores and the blacks working as drivers, farmers, street vendors or manual laborers. Everyone knows their place and have accepted that it's a team effort.

The blacks in Africa on the other hand, want to have their cake and eat it too. They strongly support the idea of black nationslism/empowerment and want black Africans to be self-sufficient, yet deep down they know they can't survive without the Whites or Chinese holding their hand. But their massive egos won't allow them to admit this. In addition to being lazy and poorly educated, they see anything associated with Colonialism as a symbol of oppression. Which is why so many of them let European built infrastructure crumble, instead of maintaining it. And when it comes to leadership, they've basically swapped White oppressors for black ones. There is a strong tribalism mentality. If someone comes into power, they only work to benefit their own tribe.

They also feel entitled because of what Europeans have done to them. They don't want White people in their countries, but they want White people's money and to be have the right to live in Europe.

There are former French colonies in Africa who are being praised for stopping French influence in their countries and kicking the French out, but these same countries are then blackmailing France by telling them they'll send all their criminals to France if France doesn't give them money.

Like I said, they want to have their cake and eat it too.

The reason South Africa and Namibia haven't completely collapsed is because there's still a large White population there. But this is quickly changing with affirmative action laws that are putting black people in fields they have no experience in. Angola is also quite successful because they've allowed Chinese investment.

North African countries were colonized and oppressed too, but at least they built off what the Europeans left, while the blacks have gone backwards instead of forwards.

If Africa wants to get somewhere, black Africans either need to get their act together and actually start making things happened for themselves, or swallow their pride and acknowledge that they can't survive without White people holding their hand.

If you study history, everything from colonies to freeman towns, and even modern day reverse gentrification, you will notice that black societies collapsed very quickly when they were left to manage things on their own.

Blacks contributed a lot to sports and culture, but they lack work ethic and experience in leadership. They never had any major empires or famous explorers or inventors. Even in Africa, most of the famous successful Africans are White. While the majority of famous black Africans are war lords.

Syntosi · Accepted Answer

Why is Africa so poor? Mostly geography and history. Civilization has required a few different things depending on the era to prosper. While Africa was an early winner with the river Nile, it fell off because it has issues developing stable nations with defined borders.

It is hard to build up a society when you have to pick up your house and move every once in a while because your farms has used up all the nutrients in the ground or the local sources of clean water has dried up for example.

As such Africa has had more of an emphasis on nomadic lifestyles which while cool and interesting does not build mega cities or great industries.

And then we have historical events such as slavery and colonization that took what stable governments that had been established and destroyed them. What we end up with today is an Africa that tries to recreate its nations from basically scratch while at the same time being destabilized by countries like USA, France, Russia and China for their own benefit as well as being exploited for its resources by private corporations.

While there are a lot of factors even beyond what I described, it all sort of boils down to there never being the stability required for a government to truly form and enforce order within its national borders, and anytime there is such a government there is something that comes by and knocks it all over again.

That said, this is a temporary setback. Africa will recover at some point and will most likely have a meteoric rise to the top. There are just too many things going in their favor in the future. Not sure if it will be in my lifetime or not though.

malarkey · Answer

Africa lagged behind other areas of the world technologically by significant margins, and as a result Muslims were able to conquer much of the continent and enslave many people. European colonization of Africa in the late 1800s to early 1900s broke up the Muslim slave trade significantly and brought initial development to the continent with roads, railways, modern buildings, schools, modern agriculture and mining, and the Christian religion which gave the continent a boost in development for a bit. That said, many European powers were over extended at the start of WWII thus found it challenging to defend their claims in Africa. This lead to instability in the region and hostility of the natives, eventually leading to decolonization after WWII ended. In the power vacuum that was left behind many corrupt local war lords fought for control over territory. The socialists/communist (Russia, China, etc.) trying to take advantage of this power vacuum funded a number of rebel leaders and supplied them with weapons in various civil wars which lead to western powers funding opposing rebel leaders to fight communism in the Cold War era via proxy wars. Those proxy wars are still ongoing to this day in many areas of the continent as Russia, China, various European powers like France and Germany, and the USA vie for influence to maintain national security and obtain trade agreements. Culturally Africa is corrupt, they have lagged behind other continents because they lack internal ability and talent, and a result they put their hand out to who ever offers the most free shit to help them fight their neighbors for power. This leads to a lot of shady deals with many world powers.

hahahmm · Answer

First off, some people in Africa are filthy rich. Then there's lots of poor people. You see the same in all 2nd world countries whether in Africa or not. In 1st world countries the middle class has the illusion that they are doing okay (and it's better than being poor in 2nd world places) but at the end of the day you are dirt poor compared to the real rich people. So it's relative.

2. I heard some history/economics expert say Africa's biggest problem was it had almost no rivers that could be used for trade so moving stuff around within the country was much harder than in a lot of other countries. You noticed there was massive development along the Nile river.

3. Africa is not poor. It has vast resources. Most of the population is poor.

Darklydarkened · Answer

Africa is not a continent that supports stable climate, it has too many disease tendencies, it's climate is mobile, its microclimates can shift within a couple of years so settling in anywhere of it is not as easy as Eurasian belt

If there's a consistent poverty in a place, it's hardly about the people living there, it's always geographical factors coming in

RingOfFire · Answer

Blacks in America have awakened. The party is over for the Democrats, the party of slave owners.

AviatorTom · Answer

Most of Africa was colonies of European countries until the 1960s, and were exploited for their natural resources. Since then, there have been numerous power struggles and corrupt leaders in many countries, making development difficult.

beefcakebradybatson · Answer

Poor location, centuries of white exploitation followed by decades of post-liberation kleptocrats who rob their compatriots while enriching themselves, geriatric leadership.(The average African leader is eighty;the typical African is about twenty, meaning African leaders cut their political eyeteeth on the de-colonialization battles of the sixties and haven't grasped the reality of twenty-first century global and continental politics and how they affect their far-younger compatriots.)

ProbablyClueless · Answer

I mean... it takes time to recover from something like colonization. But African governments are notoriously corrupt. The continent would be much better off if there weren't so many thugs in power.

Dargil · Answer

Corrupt governments playing into the hands of corrupt "investors". Green politics and islam are crippling African development.

DrPepper12 · Answer

Racism? Plunder? Rape? War? Slavery? Proxy wars? Poverty? Climate?  What does Africa have to do with us black voters?

Pohjolan · Answer

African states are mostly too artificial. There are too many competing tribes to make the leap to a working nation state. Civil war in Africa, pick any day.

Smegskull · Answer

Couldn't develop anything in the past because of geography and climate. Can't develop anything now because it couldn't develop anything in the past to negotiate trade in the present.

Anonymous · Answer

Kind of both given the inhabitants are the oppressors too.

Aiko_E_Lara · Answer

they were left uneducated by their colonizers. Not all countries are colonized similarly.

NicholasRedone · Answer

You mean America is Africa?

exitseven · Answer

They have no industry.

Anonymous · Answer

C) Combination of A and B.

Anonymous · Answer

Slave wages

Why is Africa still so poor?

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