Over the last 50 years, the world has struggled to maintain an economic balance and stability, while flourishing countries try to maintain a steady income to support its people and relations with other countries. Therefore, when a country like Africa fails to maintain a stable government and economy, super powers such as America decide to intervene with its relations. Africa has great potential to become another pillar of the world’s economic structure with its mass amounts of uncultivated land. Unfortunately, corruption and irresponsible governments hinder that progress. Foreign aid, while helpful, should be limited to a yearly amount because it allows the government to brush of responsibility and gives room for corruption; it creates a media bias, and doesn’t solve the foundational issues.
A majority of Africa is either ran by a democratic type of government or by dictatorship. The issue this presents is corruption and irresponsibility by the governments. “Africa's economic troubles are also, in large measure, self- inflicted. Since independence, politics has helped to stunt productivity. Africa's new leaders had as their models the centralized and coercive colonial states, whose raison d'etre was to raise revenue through the extraction of labor and produce.”(Whitaker) Many African government officials do not have a sense of obligation to the lands that they are supposed to be caring for. This allows drug cartels and gangs to run the trade systems coming in and out of the continent. These cartels begin to control the state’s economy and judicial systems by enforcing their own laws. “The effect of African poverty on the incubation of epidemic disease; the rise to power of warlords and mafias, operating outside the rule of law ...
... middle of paper ...
...licts and civil war rather than economic growth and national prosperity.” (Carson) This brings back the point of the corruption and ignorance in Africa is ruining many opportunities. The country cannot be saved if the problems aren’t fixed at the roots.
Works Cited
Whitaker, Jennifer Seymour. "Africa: Should the U.S. Care?" Great Decisions 1996: 62-71. Web. 24 Jan. 2014.
Carson, Johnnie. "Shaping U.S. Policy on Africa: Pillars of a New Strategy." Strategic Forum sept. 2004: 1-7. Web. 25 Mar. 2014.
Birdsall, Nancy, And Others. "How to Help Poor Countries." Foreign Affairs Vol. 84, No. 4 Dec. july: 136-152. Web. 3 Dec. 2013.
May, Madeleine. "Africa Has Huge Growth Potential." Cape Times. N.p., 30 May 2013. Web. 24 Jan. 2014.
Ron, James, And Others. "What Shapes the West's Human Rights Focus?" Contexts Vol. 5, No. 3 summer 2006: 23-28. Web. 3 Dec. 2013
It is thought-provoking, in the sense that Africa’s need for foreign created a race to the bottom, much like what Pietra Rivoli described in The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy. Due to some African states’ reliance on foreign aid in order to mine and profit on their resources, they allow business standards to be lowered and for Chinese firms to tip the contracts moresoever in the favor of Chinese firms. This lowers the potential earnings of African states by lowering royalty rates, for example. Additionally, Burgis’ research was thorough and transparent. When he did not receive a response or if his questions were dodged, he made it obvious to the readers. Sure, some could view this book as too anecdotal to be used as a credible source of Africa’s situation. However, this is due to the nature of the system Burgis is writing about; after all, they are shadow states for a reason. Some readers will be saddened by this text, others angry, most curious to learn more, but above all, everyone will be intellectually stimulated and
Every year, more and more money is donated to Africa to promote democracy in order to get rid of the powerful coups in many countries through out the continent. While the coups are declining and democratic governments are being established, the economic growth and development of Africa is not anywhere it should be considering the abundant natural resources and coastline that the continent possesses. Even though countries, like the United States of America, donate millions of dollars they are a large reason why Africa is underdeveloped economically. The Trans-Atlantic Slave trade is the most devastating event in the history of the world. Nearly 14,000,000 men, women, and children were displaced, sold into slavery, and killed by the trade routes.(
While the United States has a long-standing foothold on the oil in Africa, China has been dominating the other natural resources available for the past 20 years (Bhorat 2013). Additionally, the current perception of President Obama in Kenya seems to have changed dramatically over the recent years. While much of the letdowns were due to high expectations on the Kenya’s population, the general consensus was that President Obama has not done much to help improve the current state of the Kenyan economy. The current programs in Africa are programs that were enacted or established by President's Clinton and George W. Bush (Mwangi 2013). This has allowed the Chinese government to move in and expand operations in the region.
Waters Jr., Robert Anthony. “Historical Dictionary of United States-Africa Relations”. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2009. Electronic (Print)
Africa is a continent with two fronts. First is the façade that Americans create with our misrepresentations and stereotypes. They tend to be negative and create a negative image for those who live on the continent. The other front is the truth. Although there are some truths in American connotations, it isn’t the full truth. The stereotypes make two people look bad – Africa and those who do the stereotyping. Misrepresentations are created from a variety of different things, but it is up to the ignorant to teach themselves the truths that lie in Africa.
There are many things that cause poverty in Africa. The main reason is that the rich in Africa hog all the money and resources causing a country where there are rich people and poor people, there is ...
Africa has long been a nation of conflict and strife. Certain countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have a prolonged history of corrupt leaders, violence and lack of resources. These conflicts often can lead to spill over and create wars in their neighboring countries. When a weak state has internal conflict it often spreads to surrounding weak states as it did with many of the countries in central Africa. This type of crisis will often involve the entire world in a variety of capacities such as militaries, foreign aid and the global economy. Congo especially has proved to create problems that continue to persist in the modern world and much of that is due to leadership of Motubu Sese Seko. “The conflict [in Congo] produced tremendous carnage: as many as 3.8 million dead and many more injured or displaced. Both phrases of the war (1996-97 and 1998-2002) involved domestic militias, a massive foreign invasion, and shifting alliances – with Angola, Rwanda, Uganda and Zimbabwe playing major roles. Even though the was has officially ended, peace remains elusive”(Atzili 2007 pg 141). One player’s internal conflicts spread through an entire continent and affected the whole world and caused enormous damage. All countries need to strive to maintain strong institutions to be a good global citizen and one of the keys to this is leadership.
Priscilla. “The World Economy and Africa.” JSpivey – Home – Wikispaces. 2010. 29 January 2010. .
Meredith, Martin. The Fate of Africa: A History of Fifty Years of Independence. New York: PublicAffairs, 2005.
Africa has battled the slave trade and the loss of so many of her valuable children. Africa has battled colonization of her land and the exploitation of her vast resources. The continent has come out of these battles beaten down and shaken up but still standing. With the help of Wangari Maathai’s “The Challenge For Africa” I hope to point out how Africa and its nation states can raise themselves to new levels of greatness, fight off the ills of neo-colonialism and achieve this beautiful dream of Nelson
Located in the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia is the second most populated country in Africa. It has the tenth largest land mass in Africa (nearly twice the size of Texas), a population of approximately ninety-one million people (CIA 2013), and a rural to urban population ration of approximately 6 to 1 (Abelti, et al. 2012). Like other nations in sub-Saharan Africa, Ethiopia suffers from many of the same social factors that have deepened inequality across the continent. Poverty is widespread; access to quality education and healthcare is inadequate; modern infrastructure and improved sanitation are inconsistent or non-existent (Abelti, et al. 2012). Other high-risk factors have also been present, such as extended conflicts involving the long term mobilization of armed forces, governmental and political instability, and gender inequality (McInnes 2011). This forced Ethiopia, like many of its African neighbors, to turn to the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) for foreign aid and with it, the neoliberal policies and structural adjustment programs that have been so instrumental in deepening inequality in the Global South. Although previous governmental transitions had caused considerable political instability within Ethiopia, the nation possesses a strong central government allowing Ethiopia to resist many of the IMF’s recommendations and seek funding from alternative sources, such as China, to pursue massive infrastructure development within Ethiopia (Giorgis 2013). In this paper, I will discuss the controversy surrounding one of these development projects, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, and how it has shaped – or has been shaped by – inequality.
Easterly, William Russell., and Ross Levine. Africa's Growth Tragedy: Policies and Ethnic Divisions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Institute for International Development, Harvard U, 1996. Print.
Over the last few years, the issue of corruption--the abuse of public office for private gain--has attracted renewed interest, both among academics and policymakers. There are a number of reasons why this topic has come under recent inspection. Corruption scandals have toppled governments in both major industrial countries and developing countries. In the transition countries, the shift from command economies to free market economies has created massive opportunities for the appropriation of rents, excessive profits, and has often been accompanied by a change from a well-organized system of corruption to a more chaotic and deleterious one. With the end of the cold war, donor countries have placed less emphasis on political considerations in allocating foreign aid among developing countries and have paid more attention to cases in which aid funds have been misused and have not reached the poor. And slow economic growth has persisted in many countries with malfunctioning institutions. This renewed interest has led to a new flurry of empirical research on the causes and consequences of corruption.
Many unsolved problems in many African countries, but the issue of the rise of corruption are disturbing, and the amends it has done to the polity are vast. The fear of fraud leads to restrict movement of documents in offices, slow traffic on the highways, port congestion, ghost workers syndrome, queues at passport offices, police extortion tollgates and gas stations, vote irregularities among others. Even the nutty people on the road remember the devastation caused by bribery - the funds allocated for their success disappear into some people pockets. Thus, some people believe corruption is the bane of many African countries. Corruption is the main obstacle to slow down, and knock African economy growing. The problem keeps happening in Africa, and the issue will hardly be solved.
There is no doubt that European colonialism has left a grave impact on Africa. Many of Africa’s current and recent issues can trace their roots back to the poor decisions made during the European colonial era. Some good has resulted however, like modern medicine, education, and infrastructure. Africa’s history and culture have also been transformed. It will take many years for the scars left by colonization to fade, but some things may never truly disappear. The fate of the continent may be unclear, but its past provides us with information on why the present is the way it is.