[quote author=Ileke-IdI]Africa is a continent, not a country. A continent with several countries, with several states, with several regions with several cultures. Please be more specific next time.[/quote]ture but the magic thing is in most of these nations
Gbawe: It is indeed the trut[/b]h. What is written below is what Africans themselves must first learn to discern and neutralise if we are to move forward. We can "neutralise" Africans under-developing Africa, if ordinary Africans learns to hold leader accountable , [b]and insist they deliver, instead of making excuses for them. Ultimately, it is African leaders who, by far, fail Africans the most.
“HOW AFRICANS UNDER DEVELOP AFRICA ” CredoWriters: Wakdok, Samuel Stephen.
Recalling our undergraduate days in the University of Jos , many of us in the department of Economics like others in Sociology, History, Political Science, Law etc were captivated by Walter Rodney’s book “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa”. The title was as inviting to those with Marxist philosophy/leanings as much as the content of the book. Dr. Rodney’s book is a clarion call for us to regret colonialism and chat down neo-colonialism. Of course the West has exploited and still exploits Africa ; her land, resources and people, but have they always done this alone? Has the West whether as explorers or colonialists, as investors or neo-colonialists, as Aid providers or Creditors succeeded in exploiting Africa without the active collaboration of Africans?
Without confining Walter Rodney’s book or title of his book to the recess of history, rather in trying to juxtapose his work on the reality that has revealed itself over time we must seek to elucidate “How Africans under develop Africa”. It is inundating and heart breaking to x-ray why Africa is underdeveloped and how Africans are still under developing Africa .
[b]In pre-colonial Africa , it was Africans who raided villages and towns especially on the west coast, captured fellow Africans and sold them as slaves to the white slave drivers. Lagos thrived on this and king Kosoko was very comfortable with slave trade in his domain. No sooner had Spain pulled out of Western Sahara in 1976 than Morocco invaded and annexed the territory. In spite of all the international outcry and pressure, atrocities are still committed against the people of Western Sahara .
[b]The capitalists assisted Mobuto Sese Seko to kill Patrice Lumumba in Congo renamed Zaire and now DR Congo. His remains was burnt to ashes, put in a plane and scattered over the country to prevent even his ghost from resurrecting. Mobuto went on to become one of the worst despots of all times and was richer than his country until the rebel forces of Laurent Kabila pushed him out in May 1997. Today after nearly two decades of wars and conflicts, DR Congo is among the most dangerous countries in the word. Despites having the largest contingent of UN Peace keepers in the world; it has been dubbed the rape capital of the world because of the mass velocity of rapes especially in its eastern region by both government and rebel forces.
When Idi Amin Dada took over power in Uganda in 1971 he taught the world a hybrid of what illiteracy, cruelty and power drunkenness can do. He did not spare any one be it his wife, Central Bank Governor, Archbishop or judges. Before he was ousted by Tanzania forces in 1979 he had turned Uganda ’s currency into toilet money and littered the streets of Uganda with blood of 300,000 Ugandans and Asians. Yoweri Museveni came to office in 1986 as a soldier and shouted to the world that the problem of Africa were despotic leaders. He just won another presidential term to rule Uganda despite opposition’s claims of rigging the elections. Joseph Koni’s the lord resistance Army rebel forces have been fighting a war in northern Uganda with atrocities like rape and limb cutting spreading into South Sudan, Central African Republic .
Robert Gabriel Mugabe became the white man’s nemesis in the then Southern Rhodesia after he successfully fought both the British colonialists and Ian Smith who had declared unilateral independence from Britain . A charismatic leader took Zimbabwe to independence in 1980 and it became one of the best economies in Africa .Today Mugabe is gunning for another term in 2012, and has helped the West to wreck Zimbabwe ’s economy with sanctions. Zimbabwe had the sole privilege of achieving what was called “run-away inflation” hitting millions in percent of inflation at the height of its economies and printing single currency of billion Zimbabwean dollars. One third of Zimbabweans live in exile or are seeking economic/political asylum.[/b]
The United States and Apartheid South African backed rebel forces UNITA led by Jonas Savimbi fought one of the bitterest civil wars Africa had ever seen in Angola against the Marxist regime of Dos Santos. It took the killing of Savimbi in February 2002 for the war to end. Today Angola is trying to rebuild but decades of war and Jose’ Eduardo Dos Santos 36 years in power have not improved the lot of average Angolans.
Master Sergeant Samuel Doe who shot himself into power in 1981 took Liberia to the brink until the civil war led by Charles Taylor broke out in 1989. The war destabilised the region of West Africa with many lives lost both citizens and peace keepers; and scattered Liberian refugees across West Africa for about 20 years. The war also spread to Sierra Leone because of the urge to control its diamond as a financing tool. Many citizens were brutally murdered and many others who survived were left limbless. Ivory Coast which was the model of political and economic stability and it once housed the headquarters of the African Development Bank had its serenity shattered after the 1999 coup of General Guei. The world’s number one producer of Cocoa experienced a bitter civil war between 2000 and 2003. The last presidential election stand off between Laurent Gbagbo and Allasan Quattara almost took Ivory Coast back to the precipice.
Togo, Gabon and Guinea all had despots who ruled for over 30 years with Togo and Gabon having the sons succeeding their fathers. Equatorial Guinea with its oil wealth has less than a million people. Yet the oil wealth has not improved the lot of the populace but only the family and cronies of President Teodore Obiang Nguema Mbasago who has spent over thirty years in power. He is also the current chairman of the African Union which boasts of a good number of sit tight leaders. Little wonder the African Peer Review Mechanism cannot add much value to Africa .
The wars between North and South Sudan which ended with the Comprehensive Pease Agreement of 2005 led to the independence of the South in July 2011 after more than a million deaths in one of Africa ’s longest wars. Western Sudan has also seen enough carnage since 2002 where the government back supporter of APC have been attacking the people of Darfur creating the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Omar El Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of Genocide. Sudan was the first international headquarters of al qaeda which has seen the distribution of terrorism around Africa and the word. Somalia ’s case is seemingly hopeless, that country is the number one failed state in the world. After years of misrule by former leaders they have gone for twenty years without a functional government with tribal war lords, pirates and lately the Islamic extremist al shabash making the country lawless. About a million Somalis are now at the risk of death because of famine in the horn of Africa . Chad and Niger house the poorest regions of the world.The 2008 post election violence in Kenya left over a thousand people dead, closely replicated by the 2011 post election violence in Nigeria which killed over two hundred people. The story of Nigeria is a pathetic one. Once baptised the giant of Africa , a country with rich human and natural resources has been brought to the brink due to years of bad leadership. The mother of all carnages took place in Rwanda as the 1994 Rwandan genocide left an estimated one million people dead in 100 days. Sub-Saharan Africa’s last absolute monarch in the landlocked Swaziland only parades virgins on a yearly basis to choose a new wife from annually. He is mostly abroad and spends little or no time in his country.
The northern part of Africa which seemed to be better off economically was in the firm grip of despots. Revolutions in that part have left thousands dead, scattered the economies and disrupted tourism which was their mainstay. Libya ’s Gaddafi has given the west an excuse to seek to re-colonise that country.
From North to South, East to West except for a few countries and leaders, the story of Africa is the same. Economic woes, insecurity, civil wars, internal strives and conflicts, ethnic and religious cleansing, looting of public wealth, capital flight, lack of infrastructure and capacity development have become the hallmarks of Africa’s underdevelopment. With the vast presence of arable lands, ironically Africa is heavily dependent on food imports and food aids. With cheap and abundant labour, Africa cannot generate employment to transform her economy and empower her people.
The elasticity of corruption in Africa is like an unchained spirit. Trillions of dollars meant for the development of the continent have been stolen and stashed in foreign lands by African leaders both dead and living, past and present. The penchant for misuse of public goods and massive show of shamelessness are so high.
[b]Everything the developed West have ever done is first to secure the future of their citizens, but the reverse is the case in Africa . The military dictatorships in Latin America and Indonesia laid solid foundations for those regions economic success stories of today, where as the military juntas in Africa regrettably were the very ones who institutionalised corruption. The Greeks gave the world democracy, The Romans gave the world the Senate, the British gave the world a Parliament, and the United States gave the world the Presidency. In all these we see a commitment by both the leaders and the led to develop a system which will drive the transformation of their polity, economy and people. Democratic regimes have not done much to expedite the cause of Africa’s transformation; rather countries like Nigeria operate the most expensive yet wasteful democracies in the world. Africans have the highest impudence at breaking laws and over the years the rule of law does not hold any significance in the lives of the people especially those who have access to the tools of power. No African country is likely to the Millennium Development Goals by the target year of 2015, as basic as these goals are like poverty reduction, water and sanitation, reduction in infant and maternal mortality among the others. While people and leaders in other parts of the world are making progress to improve their nations and people, Africans are deliberately making efforts to under develop Africa . Africa has been underdeveloped with the blood of Africans on the streets of Africa more by fellow Africans than anyone else. Shame![/b]
Being among the least-known (by outsiders) of all living human groups, the origins of the Negrito people is a much debated topic. The Malay term for them is orang asli, or original people.
They are likely descendants of the indigenous Australoid populations of the Sunda landmass and New Guinea, predating the Austronesian peoples who later entered Southeast Asia.
Alternatively, some scientists[who?] claim they are merely a group of Australo-Melanesians who have undergone island dwarfing over thousands of years, reducing their food intake in order to cope with limited resources and adapt to a tropical rainforest environment.
Anthropologist Jared Diamond in his book, Guns, Germs, and Steel suggests that the Negritos are possible ancestors of the Aboriginal Australians and Papuans of New Guinea, groups regarded as Australoid.
[b]A number of features would seem to suggest a common origin for the Negritos and African pygmies, especially in the Andamanese Islanders who have been isolated from incoming waves of Asiatic and Indo-Aryan peoples. No other living human population has experienced such long-lasting isolation from contact with other groups.
These features include short stature, very dark skin, woolly hair, scant body hair and occasional steatopygia. The claim that Andamanese pygmoids more closely resemble Africans than Asians in their cranial morphology in a 1973 study added some weight to this theory before genetic studies pointed to a closer relationship with Asians.
Other more recent studies have shown closer craniometric affinities to Egyptians and Europeans than to Sub Saharan populations such as that of African Pygmies. Walter Neves' study of the Lagoa Santa people had the incidental correlation of showing Andamanese as classifying closer to Egyptians and Europeans than any Sub Saharan population.[/b]
Multiple studies also show that Negritos from Southeast Asia to New Guinea share a closer cranial affinity with Australo-Melanesians. Further evidence for Asian ancestry is in craniometric markers such as sundadonty, shared by Asian and Negrito populations.
It has been suggested that the craniometric similarities to Asians could merely indicate a level of interbreeding between Negritos and later waves of people arriving from the Asian mainland. This hypothesis is not supported by genetic evidence that has shown the level of isolation populations such as the Andamanese have had.
However, some studies have suggested that each group should be considered separately, as the genetic evidence refutes the notion of a specific shared ancestry between the "Negrito" groups of the Andaman Islands, Malay Peninsula, and Philippines.
A study on blood groups and proteins in the 1950s suggested that the Andamanese were more closely related to Oceanic peoples than Africans. Genetic studies on Philippine Negritos, based on polymorphic blood enzymes and antigens, showed they were similar to surrounding Asian populations.[6] Genetic testing places all the Onge and all but two of the Great Andamanese in the mtDNA Haplogroup M, found in East Africa, East Asia, and South Asia, suggesting that the Negritos are at least partly descended from a migration originating in eastern Africa as much as 60,000 years ago. This migration is hypothesized to have followed a coastal route through India and into Southeast Asia, which is sometimes referred to as the Great Coastal Migration.
Analysis of mtDNA coding sites indicated that these Andamanese fall into a subgroup of M not previously identified in human populations in Africa and Asia. These findings suggest an early split from the population of migrants from Africa; the descendants of these migrants would eventually populate the entire habitable world. Haplogroup C and haplogroup D is believed to represent Y-DNA in the migration.
A recent genetic study has found that unlike other early groups in Malesia the Andamanese Negritos lack the Denisovan hominin admixture in their DNA while other Negrito groups may show some varying degree of Denisovan ancestry in their DNA. Denisovan ancestry is found among indigenous Melanesian and Australian populations between 4-6%
Billyonaire: The Minister must be made to Apologize to Nigeria and Nigerians for such statement.
Nigeria is the 6th Oil Producer in the world - biggest in Africa. Nigeria has a population of over 160 million people - Most populous in Africa Nigeria has the biggest military in Africa - the toughest in Africa Nigeria has won big brother many more times than SA Nigeria has the best brains in Africa Nigeria is the home to the richest man in Africa Nigeria is the home to biggest banks in Africa
I wanna stop here in my sincere quest for an apology from that minister.
all that oil and a majority of the people lives on less then one dollar a day and have the over 160 million people does not help the problem and you damn sure don't have the biggest military, it will be embarrassing to have the biggest military and can't handle a few Islamist and religious riots. it seems when Nigerians are comparing themselves to other nations you say "Nigeria" but if not it's Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba etc
KingMichael777: I wouldn't go to places like Chicago, New Orleans or Detroit thinking like that... Black British gang culture were influenced by black Americans. Must of the British thugs I seen, don't look that tough in my opinion.
Machete is more deadlier, because its more gory and shows the guy using it is nuts. Anyone can pull a trigger, guns kill you fast. But using a machete to hack someone to death.. you must have a crazy mind.
Ironi:Lets face it, if the whitemen had not shown up in Africa, say Nigeria, you would still be running around butt naked and eating each other.
Just recognize the truth and stop the pretence.
Yep, you may have oil which makes you a little arrogant, but again lets face it, the white man had to disclose to you that you have oil and even so there was not a damn thing you could have done about it if he had not come to extract from the ground for you.
nyameke: That's why I said its very debatable but I will still stand by my statement..
Lmao at the bolded though. you had me chuckling.. but you have to admit that statement is very condescending and hypocritical because you and I know Afro Caribbeans are just as guilty.. in fact all of us black men value and worships butts lol and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. There is just and place and time for everything that's all. The only sad and bad thing is when one makes butts the major and only priority.
KingMichael: Does Terry not know that Caribbeans invented grinding and booty dancing? Caribbean act just like AA's here in the states, but sometimes worse... You can take my words, because I'm part Caribbean(Indian Trinidadian).. Not all Caribbeans value education. The only black group in America that truly values education are Africans.
KingMichael: I know blacks are not the only at a disadvantage in Latin American countries... Just look at Mexico and you'll see a lot of poor natives. The point I'm trying to make is that compared to black Americans and other blacks of the diaspora, blacks in Latin American countries have it worse because of the extreme caste system. I mean the ethic grouping in Brazil is outrageous and inaccurate compared to USA one. You have a point in mainstream, but when I mean in mainstream is that they are big in their country's.
When I look up Latino/Latina singers, I hardly find any black ones. I know some neighborhoods in America are crap, but compared to Brazil... It's nothing..
Black Americans are still more established in America, than Black Brazilians in Brazil.
Even though Brazil's economy is growing, it's poverty is still worse than USA and it's mostly Black and Mixed Race Brazilians that have it hard. So hard that women go prostitution for money. If America never had a Civil Rights, than we AA's would be like black Brazilians... Latin America still hasn't had a civil Rights, but it seems things are changing and they might have one.
it will be worse than black Brazilians. Brazilians have civil Rights they are just poor
KingMichael: I may have went overboard when I said that Black Brazilian have none of some of the things I listed, but Black Latinos/Latinas still have worst in the diaspora compared to others(AA's, Jamaicans, Barbadians)... I know Brazilian is on the way of having a civil rights, but the majority of the blacks there are still poor. Especially in the Bahia region.Latin American countries still didn't get their civil rights. If they did, then they would be like AA's.
Bahia is not poor and not all Latin American nations have a lot of black mostly just Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, and Dominican republic, Panama.
KingMichael: You totally missed my point... And this doesn't really prove anything. Most of the mainstream singers in Latin American countries are white or white/indian mixed.. Sure there are some are some mainstream singers here and there, but there aren't that many. And watch any Latin American film and you'll see that there are no black actors/actress in site. Also there are barely any black models in Latin American countries. Most of the videos you showed are not mainstream. I have have yet to see a black Billionaire, CEO, large number of black Actors, Scientist, Businessmen, Mainstream Singers(like Beyonce or Whitney Houston) in any Latin American country. Because in Latin American, there's a caste system.
Watch this video and you'll see how being black in Brazil is difficult and in Latin America in general.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQ4wtKW3kEE indigenous are just as disadvantage. as for Mainstream singers that's justified since they speak Spanish/Portuguese, how many Mainstream African/Asian singers are there? little to none. white and white looking is consider "beautiful" in most Latin America. most black neighborhoods in America are crap just like Latin America. Brazil's poor is declining so things are getting better. the average Brazilian look like these people
KingMichael: Still in Brazil.. Most blacks aren't allowed in certain parts in the country, like in most Latin American countries.
Black Americans fought in the civil rights to have the same equality as whites(which was stupid)... Now their are black actors, scientist, CEO's, singers, businessmen, doctors, billionaires,etc,etc...
Black Brazilians have none of those things.. Trust I know, my bro went to Brazil. I'd rather be black in America than in any Latin American country.. Heck blacks in Latin America countries aren't even allowed on television...
Politics › Re: Man Testing ‘Bullet Proof’ Charm Shoots Son Dead by TerryCarr(m): 7:13pm On Sep 02, 2012
http://credoworld..com/2011/09/how-africans-under-develop-africa.html
