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
46The other side of that debate is that .... the outside influence could work with Africa to make the continent self sufficient and capable on its own. Several studies and research has shown that if properly set up and organized, the African continent has more than enough resources to produce its own food supply, clean water supply and energy production.
Unfortunately, instead of the outside world helping Africa to get to this point .... the world instead uses Africa as just another place to exploit and make money out of. In the short sighted vision of the first world ... it's more lucrative to make a bunch of money now by taking advantage of poor dying people than it is to help them become productive members of the global economy.
It's a prime example of how as a civilization we build and maintain our world on exploitation, coercion and death
23Unfortunately, instead of the outside world helping Africa to get to this point … the world instead uses Africa as just another place to exploit and make money out of. In the short sighted vision of the first world … it’s more lucrative to make a bunch of money now by taking advantage of poor dying people than it is to help them become productive members of the global economy.
I would argue it's more complex than that. The very conditions created by European colonization have resulted in extreme instability and corruption in the resulting, mostly-arbitrarily drawn states, which heavily discourages investment from rational (though amoral) actors. It's not that the rest of the world market doesn't want Africa to be more "Developing Southeast Asia" than "Place we get raw resources from", it's that the conditions European colonization foisted upon it make getting there from this point very difficult.
10Nation States are just another tool of the powerful to subjugate, a means to keep us divided as if we weren't the same species.
Instead we see being a united species as some evil conspiracy, which is why I'm not really a fan of our species anymore. We'd rather have a chance of beating our fellow man than equitably sharing the fruits of this world. We don't love the person on the other side of the table, we want to screw them and get more. That disgusts me, personally.
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Africa is poor purely because of outside influences
This is simplistic and naive to the point it feels like propaganda.
6Your 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.
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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.
42WTF are you talking about? The Europeans that "killed and burned" the natives mostly stayed, they call themselves Americans now. Look at a map of America at the time of the revolution, and you'll see there was a lot of killing and displacing natives after the USA's independence. Don't blame this on modern day Europeans, blame this on your ancestors (assuming you're american).
25Native person here. Europe does not just get to absolve itself from the genocide that happened in North America. By upholding the systems that enacted the colonization in genocide of indigenous folk, the world over, you perpetuate and uphold the harm caused. This is your history, so this is your fault.
4
I'm European so I might be biased, but I haven't really heared anyone "complaining about the Americas having no distinct culture or ancient structures".
4It's just white Americans trying to shift the blame to Europeans that stayed
6
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.
35My 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.
2Africa 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.
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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.
-18My thoughts haha. Downvotes incoming
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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.
16After we killed Gadaffi in 2011 suddenly everyone from Lybia started hopping on boats to Europe. Don't they like their new
war-torn countryfreedom?6Same shit with the American "border crisis"
Oh, why are they fleeing countries we couped and refusing to stay in Mexico, where the cartels dress like the military but with better gear?
2
"We did nothing but exploit them and let them be exploited by our companies. Why can't they help themselves???"
15Lots of people on here who seem to be under the bizarre impression that colonialism ever ended.
12Wounded Africa gets up: .... hey Europe, give me a hand
Europe: .... takes a baseball bat to Africa's knees .... why can't Africa stand up for itself?
12Subsaharan Africa: "Oh no! These Turkish and Arab invaders are terrible! Surely Europe, which also fights with the Turks and Arabs, will help us?"
Europe: "Actually, we've decided to make it worse."
Africa: "Oh no"
Europe: "MUCH worse."
Some rare exceptions, particularly in the earlier period, aside
12
Same goes for South America and the US.
Those motherfuckers are plotting to make economies that serve their societies?! We can't have that, have to keep those markets open for our owner's exploitation!
Take em out!
9Yeah Czech Republic did immense damage to poor Africans. Finland too.
9Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, Serbia, Switzerland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, Norway, Iceland would like to chime in.
0
If your blood isn’t boiling yet from what the west is sponsoring in Gaza, you can have some fun learning of what Belgium (and the US) did in the Congo after they “left”.
3Stopping sponsoring UNRWA for its role in October 7th attacks was a good first step. More companies, like the ones that gave irrigation pipe to Palestinians only for them to transform it in rocket launchers are soon to follow. And many more. Zero tolerance for terrorism by stopping sponsoring it in Gaza! I agree!
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Looking anti-meme to me lol
2See * The Looting Machine: Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth*
1I had a fascist tell me that Africans fucked themselves and Europe saved them, yeah...
0Sounds like Americans bitching an out the migrants.
0I read a book about the Congo. One thing that really stood out to me was the Malaysian guy on the UN boat. The only transport in the interior of the Congo is a UN paid gunboat.
He basically said "this country had colonialism my country had colonialism. They can't keep using that excuse forever. This country is shit today because of the locals, they need to make it better instead of acting like they have no control over their own country."
The best sub Saharan countries were the ones that had the most white influence. WW2, America and Russia kinda fucked up the exist though.
-8"this country had colonialism my country had colonialism. They can't keep using that excuse forever. This country is shit today because of the locals, they need to make it better instead of acting like they have no control over their own country."
I think comparing the colonialism of Malaysia and the Congo is incredibly idiotic. The Belgian Congo under Leopold is arguably one of the most harrowing examples of people in bondage in human history.
They really aren't even similar forms of colonization, which makes sense considering Malaysia was colonized nearly 300 years before Congo. Malaysia was also composed of a more uniform ethnic group, while the Congos borders were invented by colonizer states diving up the continent.
Most of the problems in Africa are a direct result of Europeans creating nation states with no regard to historical ethnic conflicts.
7Some Malaysian guy working for the UN in Congo said it not me.
The problem is tribal regions in Africa are so small that the countries would be tiny. Plus there is a lot of aggression between the different tribes, they have been at war forever but luckily when guns got to the country it was with the whites keeping law and order. They stopped a lot of tribal conflicts m. When the whites left all this tribal conflicts resurfaced and genocides happened but now with guns.
It's not like anyone even today and can say what the borders should have been. Sure there are mistakes and there would be an issue with borders however they are divided. But at some point it's what's you got and how you got to deal with it.
Malaysia is a very "divided" country with Chinese, Indians, Maylays but they aren't a divided country.
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Oh look... a white supremacist.
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