Africa

In the aftermath of Robert Mugabe’s ouster as Zimbabwe’s president, I’ve been reading a lot of articles about sub-Saharan Africa’s problems that fail to acknowledge some grave issues for the people of those countries:

1. Africa had problems before it was colonized by Britain, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Portugal, and Belgium.
2. Indeed, IMO it was colonized because of those problems.
3. Mugabe was hailed as an anti-colonialist hero. You see how that turned out.
4. Whatever of Africa’s problems were caused by colonialism, its biggest problems now are corruption, tribalism, factionalism, and just plain bad government.
5. That billions of dollars are fleeing the countries of sub-Saharan Africa to fill private accounts in European banks isn’t the fault of the European banks but they’re not helping matters.
6. Debt is a serious problem for many sub-Saharan countries.
7. Most of that debt is held by the IMF, the World Bank, European banks, and China.

In fact most of the articles have been poppycock. If you’re going to solve problems, you’ve got to understand what they are.

I also think that the most important thing that the United States could do to help poor, sub-Saharan countries is to end our agricultural subsidies but that’s a topic for another post.