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”.
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
The 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
Africa is poor purely because of outside influences
This is simplistic and naive to the point it feels like propaganda.
Your 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.
I 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.
"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.
Some 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.
Yeah Czech Republic did immense damage to poor Africans. Finland too.
Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Ukraine, Serbia, Switzerland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, Norway, Iceland would like to chime in.
"We did nothing but exploit them and let them be exploited by our companies. Why can't they help themselves???"
