• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Are we to blame for Africa's current state?

Are we to blame for Africa's current state?

  • Completely - it is entirely our fault

    Votes: 1 3.3%
  • Slightly - it's partially our fault

    Votes: 11 36.7%
  • Neutral

    Votes: 2 6.7%
  • Not our fault at all

    Votes: 16 53.3%

  • Total voters
    30
Who's we?

If you mean Europe, yes.

But some of the blame goes to the Africans themselves, that is, the ones who screwed things over even more.
 
Last edited:
true-colonial powers created artificial borders (like Gambia which was based on how far the British navy could extend its might into the French colony of senegal) or divided tribal nations.

Chinua Achebe's books like No longer at ease and THings Fall Apart are edifying as to the influence-and problems caused-by British influence in Nigeria. Both excellent books, I recommend them highly

I never read No Longer at Ease, but Things Fall Apart is one of my all time favorites. Seems like a response to Heart of Darkness, which I also hope to read.
 
No, Africa has been a jacked upnation of tribal fighting for thousands of years. Even the Egyptians considered those from "upstream" of the Nile to be savages.

And you can't blame the borders or anything else either. Long before the modern borders were ceated, you had tribal fighting and tribal savagery. It has gone on for thousands of years, and will likely continue for thousands more. Even the Slave Trade started because tribes would raid neighboring tribal enemies and sell them off for money. Now they just slaughter them as in Darfur. Lyberia was a nation created for freed slaves, but once back in Africa they simply made slaves of the tribes that lived in that area.

Until the people stop putting all their allegiance into tribes and start putting it to themselves as a nation, it will continue.

And before anybody thinks this is some racist rant, it is not. This is a rant against "Tribalism", be it the Tribe of Afrikaners, Iraq, Afghanistan, or Somalia and Uganda. When some group decides another group is not fit to live, or slaughters them for some imagined or real insult 300 years prior.

Tribal fighting existed in Medieval Europe. I fully acknowledge the horrors of tribalism, but European borders did not regard tribal distinctions and forced Hutus and Tutsis to live together with the Tutsis in charge, which led to the Rwandan Genocide. There were also glorious African empires that were destroyed by the Europeans.
 
Tribal fighting existed in Medieval Europe. I fully acknowledge the horrors of tribalism, but European borders did not regard tribal distinctions and forced Hutus and Tutsis to live together with the Tutsis in charge, which led to the Rwandan Genocide. There were also glorious African empires that were destroyed by the Europeans.

Actually, by the time the Europeans came, those "African Empires" were almost all dead and burried already. Crushed by the Islamic Empires of the 8th-17th centuries.

And the only "African Empire" that actually successfully resisted the European colonization and remained an Empire was Ethiopia. But that kingdom was overthrown by a Communist coup.

And since you mentioned Rwanda, there is more there then apparently you know. When the Germans took control of the area, the area was already a mix of Twa, Hutu and Tutsi. The kingdom in the area was ruled by a dynasty of Tutsi rulers, who pushed all the Twa and Hutu subjects into a position of little more then slaves (some anthropologists believe the Tutsi and Hutu are the same group, just different castes). And of course the Germand and later Belgians used te pre-existing organization, and continued to support Tutsi domination of the region.

But the Kingdom of Rwanda was formed in the 15th century by the Tutsi, and dominated with and without the Europeans until the overthrow of the Monarchy in 1962 by the Hutu. No European power "forced Hutus and Tutsis to live together with the Tutsis in charge", it had been that way for over 300 years before the European came to the area.
 
When I said "we" I meant those of us currently living in the USA. Not our ancestors. Not our great grandparents or their generation. Just those of us who are currently alive and live in the US.
 
This is what I would like an answer too...Where the HELL is the rest of the industrialized world in feeding hungry nations...Where the hell are all the super oil rich arab nations, and where the hell is the UN who we give billions too...Where did this freakin attitude come from that everything that costs money or everyone who needs it...it has to be the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WHO PROVIDES IT...bs, ive had enough of that...Let china feed africa with OUR money

Well, the US is the worlds leader in donated food, becaue it is the worlds leader in food production.

And sorry, do not expect food from the Middle East. They have lots of oil, but they are net importers of food themselves. Their only major exports are generally Oil and Pearls. And you can't eat either of those.
 
Other than the size of the group, what's the difference?

Call it "groupthink".

Modern nations generally do not look down on other nations and consider them as having no rights, and have no compulsion against totally destroying them to get wht they want. Yea, there are some like that (those that want to destroy Israel come to mind), but for the most part nations have learned to live peacefully with each other.

Tribalism on the other hand generally seperates people into "us" and "them". And as long as you are not "us", anything you want to do to "them" is fair game. The last time I looked, there have not been swarms of French sweeping into Germany or Monaco to kill the people that live there just because they are not French. You do not have bands of Welsh being slaughtered by Scotts simply because they are not Scotts. Other then in former Yugoslavia, the last major "tribal" form of violence I can think of in Europe was that in Ireland, and even that has calmed down a lot in the last decade.
 
Personally, I think it's ridiculous when people say that people in Africa starve because of us.

People say that the only way we can afford to live as well as we do is because of poor children in Africa. This is utter garbage. Barely anything, other than a bit of oil, is exported out of Africa. There are starving children in Africa mainly because the continent is a jumbled mess of civil wars and religious terrorism.

Sure there are children in India/China/etc. working to make our shoes, but that's not our fault.

Not so much our fault overall, but the West's fault in general.
 
Well, the US is the worlds leader in donated food, becaue it is the worlds leader in food production.

And sorry, do not expect food from the Middle East. They have lots of oil, but they are net importers of food themselves. Their only major exports are generally Oil and Pearls. And you can't eat either of those.

Wasnt talking food...was talking good ole CASH..and the middleeast has more than we do....how about china coughing up some of the excess american dollars they have....this isnt pre WW1 ..today there are alot more countries doing very well if not better than us and they kick in SQUAT...how about South Korea coming up with a few bucks...im tired of everyone looking at us for everything and some of our own people constantly clammering we have to help this one and that one...HELP OUR OWN for a change....
 
Last edited:
It's not like Africa is a single nation :shrug: Some countries are much better off than others. Some regions have serious issues while others don't . . . nature, Europe (in the past) and present day political and foreign aid policy makes a difference . . . nothing contributes 100% to any of it.

People generally view Europe (European Nations) as doing well but many countries are struggling while others are thriving. . . for a variety of reasons. It's all very complicated.
 
Who is we? If you mean Berlin folk conference answer is Completely - it is entirely our fault.
 
Wasnt talking food...was talking good ole CASH..and the middleeast has more than we do....how about china coughing up some of the excess american dollars they have....this isnt pre WW1 ..today there are alot more countries doing very well if not better than us and they kick in SQUAT...how about South Korea coming up with a few bucks...im tired of everyone looking at us for everything and some of our own people constantly clammering we have to help this one and that one...HELP OUR OWN for a change....

This has nothing to do with it. After all, you can't eat cash. And the only natins that can donate food are thse that produce a large surplus of food.

And currently, that is generally the US, Canada, and Europe. China really has no food extra to donate, more and more lately they have been shifting to having to import food themselves.

And the Middle Eastern nations do take a front seat when it comes to the distribution of the food. Because of political reasons, these are normally the countries that do the "grunt work" of taking the donated food and getting it to those that are starving. Saudi Arabia takes the lead there, followed by UAE, Kuwait, Russia, India, South Korea, then Qatar and Turkey. And as a part of their National Income, Saudi Arabia leads again, with .15% of their national income going to food distribution. The US comes in 6th with .03%.

So we provide a smaller percentage of our production, but we produce so much ofit that we are the world's leader. And other nations that do not produce a large surplusdo their job in the distribution end. Many of these nations are also world leaders in supplying Doctors, Nurses, and other medical staff to overseas clinics. So it all evens out in the end.
 
Africa wasn't helped by European imperial powers but at the end of the day its 2012, Europeans left a long time a go and at some point Africa has to take some responisbility for itself.
 
Are we to blame for Africa's current state?

Not our fault at all.
ive heard plenty of arguments for this too.
its ridiculous.
 
Depends on who you mean by "we."

Africa largely could have succeeded but for political instability and violence. But the instability partially comes from drawing arbitrary lines on a map and imposing the political construct of a modern "state" in a place where it never existed.
We should carpet nuclear bomb, then redraw the borders according to where tribes and ethnicities used to live.
 
Unfortunately, feeding people doesn't fix their problems, and probably makes their problems worse, in reality.
Africans will never improve unless they have to pay the full price for their refusal to change their self-destructive habits. They starve because they'd rather join warlord gangs than do the hard, unexciting work of farming. We are intefering with evolution if we bail out people whose disasters are their own fault.
 
Well, the US is the worlds leader in donated food, becaue it is the worlds leader in food production.

And sorry, do not expect food from the Middle East. They have lots of oil, but they are net importers of food themselves. Their only major exports are generally Oil and Pearls. And you can't eat either of those.
But the petrocrats can buy our food with their oil loot and donate it to the Africans.
 
Only white mans burden-style paternalism would assume responsibility for Africa
 
Personally, I think it's ridiculous when people say that people in Africa starve because of us.

People say that the only way we can afford to live as well as we do is because of poor children in Africa. This is utter garbage. Barely anything, other than a bit of oil, is exported out of Africa. There are starving children in Africa mainly because the continent is a jumbled mess of civil wars and religious terrorism.

Sure there are children in India/China/etc. working to make our shoes, but that's not our fault.

I agree with you. Parts of Africa had been under European; read "white man's" empire for generations, so, of course now that they're having problems, the lead white guys (the US) is responsible for their upkeep. Those countries have so many tribal feudalists running their territories that steel everything that anybody sends theat the epople in need never get anything - without paying for it . . .

I think we should just abandon some of those places all together and let hell have its way with them, or until those poeple get so fed up at being ripped off an abused that they do something about it themsleves: we did.
 
But the petrocrats can buy our food with their oil loot and donate it to the Africans.

The already spend money in the form of transportation and distribution of the food we provide. Look back at the amount of national income spent in the programs, and you see they spend a much higher percentage then the US does.

With high bulk low cost commodities like rice, often times the actual transportation cost is higher then the cost of the item.

And there really is not much of a surplus leftover to buy. The surplus that the US donates is taken after the amount of food that is needed for internal needs and export has already been deducted. If they tried to buy more food, that will be comming out of consumption stocks, which will have an inflationary effect on the food you and I buy. Essentially, we will be subsidizing the donation of more food via higher prices paid at the store.

Some problems you just can't solve by throwing money at them.
 
Back
Top Bottom