I lived in Nairobi for a few months in 2004, staying with host families. What amazed me was how resilient the people are. The obstacles they have to overcome on a regular basis are things we take for granted in the "West." Yet the people don't complain and keep going forward. I thought that if ever the infrastructure could be advanced to reduce those obstacles, we would see places just take off.
At that time, there were lots of Internet cafes popping up all around the city and cell phones were becoming quite common.
Since then, I know many Kenyans are now using their cell phones for mobile banking and sending payments across the country to relatives and friends. Technology is playing a big role in circumventing slow bureaucracies. Many of my friends are now on Facebook when some of them didn't even have email in 2004.
I'm pretty confident we'll see some economically strong countries in Africa in my lifetime.
The real revolution in Africa happenned when it opened up to the world. Africa has always been completely isolated from the rest of the world till very recently. Recently, cellphones arrived, internet arrived, equal access to the information on par with the Western countries arrived.
And the results are impressive: most of the wars have ended, the age of coups is over, african professionals are going back, business is now being done with countries from everywhere.
Africa is not yet a good investment opportunity, but it is the best market for physical goods at the moment.
"most of the wars have ended, the age of coups is over"
Really? There may be fewer wars, but there are still a lot (look at the list of ongoing conflicts on Wikipedia). There was a coup in Niger a week or two ago. Things may be getting better, but they are not good.
Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only 2 are in Africa. And of those two the sudanese war, which has only resulted in ~2,500 deaths I'm not sure can be called a war.
Compare those with the wars of the 70s and 80s, I think this is a remarkable period of stability.
The coup in niger was for an actual breach of democracy - the democratically elected president tried to overstay his term, and he was stopped by the military. Which is at it should be. They have also appointed a civilian prime minister.
> Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only 2 are in Africa.
Can you give a citation?
As an example, South Africa is basically engaged in a civil war with itself (22,000+ people die violent deaths).
Zimbabwean life expectancy fell by more than 20 years - more people die there. Zim is basically a civil war (which nobody would acknowledge). Eastern DRC - easily more than a thousand, the same with Sudan.
Also note that sub-Sahara Africa only has a population of 700 million. Asia has a population that is two to three times larger.
> The coup in niger was for an actual breach of democracy - the democratically elected president tried to overstay his term, and he was stopped by the military.
You are ignoring a few things - the ruling parties is becoming incredibly intertwined with government (i.e. it is not democratic anymore, even if they hold elections). Sure, it is a bit more stable - but I doubt that it is better.
There were also recent coups in Mauritania, Madagascar.
For people like you who want to believe that Africa is in a war, no citation will do most likely.
The Asian wars are killing a hell of a lot more people than the African wars also.
If you want to believe that nothing is getting better, then let's not continue the conversation. If you are willing to actually look at the facts and compare the 80s to now, then we can talk.
> For people like you who want to believe that Africa is in a war,
I happen to live in Africa. You ignored all of the examples I gave you. Zimbabwe has probably one of the largest displaced populations in the word – yet you do not view this as a “war”.
Yeah, it doesn’t include Zimbabwe. It doesn’t include the eastern DRC. So you use unfinished or badly written WP articles as your source? Or do you use an extremely strange definition of conflict?
> The Asian wars are killing a hell of a lot more people than the African wars also.
Again, you are wrong. Firstly, of the Asian countries you mentioned, only India counts as a 1000+ deaths per year (with a population of 1.5 times that of sub-Sahara Africa).
> If you want to believe that nothing is getting better, then let's not continue the conversation.
You seem to base your argument on ignorance and self-delusion that is typical of the African renaissance movement. So I doubt that this conversation would be informative from your side.
> If you are willing to actually look at the facts and compare the 80s to now, then we can talk.
You made the statement “Of the ongoing conflicts with 1000+ deaths per year, 6 are in Asia and only 2 are in Africa.” which is blatantly false (by your own citation). Sure the place stabilised since the 80ies – only because the USSR fell (a major sponsor of conflict).
Then again, the 90ies an early 00ies were not particularly rosy (Rwanda, DRC war).
> My citation says that there are 6 in asian and 2 in Africa. How is this false?
You use an extremely broad “definition” of Asia (i.e. instead of the Africa, Middle-East, Asia) you group everything that is remotely in Asia as Asia. If we take your definition into account, the population of Asia is 5.7 times that of sub-Sahara Africa. You also conveniently leave out civil wars from that list (e.g. Eastern DRC, Zimbabwe, etc…).
Why is Zimbabwe left out? Do you know that thousands of people either die through state famine or killed by Zanu thugs?
> And Iraq has way more than 1000+ deaths a year.
Ahh… yeah an American war in the Middle East. Let’s group that with “Asia” and compare a land-mass of 4 billion people to a continent of less than 1.
> Living in Africa does not make you an authority. Point to some proof for your statements.
I have shown you numerous shortcomings in your Wikipedia article. Yet you persist to compare apples and oranges (sub-Sahara Africa is small compared to Asia).
Maybe living in Africa (and having lived in various African countries) does not make me an expert. But neither is someone who never even visited the continent and relies on half-baked WP articles. You are in denial about Africa and the violence in Africa.
From your posts I cannot determine if you are just extremely ignorant or if you are a troll. For your part I hope that you are a troll.
For convenient definitions of "conflict", sure. But that doesn't necessarily mean Africa is that much better a place to live. For example, there might not be a "conflict" in Liberia right now, but the place is still hell on Earth.
> Africa's most robust economies, such as those in Ghana, Botswana, and South Africa
South Africa is not nearly seeing a “brain gain”. We lose qualified professionals to first world countries, yet only get semi-qualified people from other African countries (a nett loss for Africa). Along with the little qualified people that we get from other African countries, we also get 4 million+ illegal immigrants.
At almost all research institutions, the average age is high. South African universities (the best in the continent) are dropping spectacularly off international rankings (e.g. Shanghai Jiao Tong world ranking). All research indicates that South African research is declining in both quality and quantity (e.g. this article: http://www.up.ac.za/academic/iti/SA_Research_publication_rec... and other articles by the same author).
By and far, the industries in many African countries are driven by mining, with the state creating an artificial middle class of useless civil servants.
The apparent growth that Africa experienced in the past 5 years is just an extension of the commodity boom – the same structural problems remain. Corruption is still there, education is still shit, etc… It can be said that the countries are more stable – but that is all.
They leave out the Angolan example – the majority of investment in that country is done by Chinese companies in exchange of oil.
> Aliko Dangote, Africa's richest black entrepreneur, has also cashed in on this consumer culture, with a net worth of $2.5 billion, according to Forbes.
They also leave out the part that he is heavily connected with the ruling party of Nigeria. There are many entrepreneurs such as this – basically African Oligarchy (other examples are Tokyo Sexwale, Patrice Motsepe, etc…).
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I may sound negative, but I really have doubts in the past year about the future of South Africa in particular. It seems that corruption is now completely untamed and the ruling party are infighting on who gets the spoils of the government tenders (so called “tenderpreneurs”). The Mbeki government at least had the decency to try and hide the corruption.
Secondary education is basically on the verge of death (in spite of ever increasing allocation of budgets) and the government is doing its best to destroy the last functional universities.
People on all sides of the spectrum in SA are starting to get sick of the system. White people are sick of crime and taxation, poor black people are sick of living in squalor (with nothing changing in the past 20 years). There have recently been quite a few flair-ups of “service delivery” protests (black people that protest because nothing is done to their plight – e.g. in Balfour, Baberton, Khutsong etc..).
At that time, there were lots of Internet cafes popping up all around the city and cell phones were becoming quite common.
Since then, I know many Kenyans are now using their cell phones for mobile banking and sending payments across the country to relatives and friends. Technology is playing a big role in circumventing slow bureaucracies. Many of my friends are now on Facebook when some of them didn't even have email in 2004.
I'm pretty confident we'll see some economically strong countries in Africa in my lifetime.