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So, here we are in the 21st century, and Africa is still considered the poorest continent in the world. How can that be? Many have different opinions as to what went wrong in Africa. Is it colonialism? Afterall, colonialism totally messed up the African social, political and economic system. But that ended decades ago. Why are things still a mess in most African countries, with the exception of a few shining (if somewhat tarnished) stars like Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, Senegal or Botswana?
Is it the current international system, or the favorite villan, the IMF and World Bank?
What about the African people? What have they done to change the system? What can they do? What can we do as "Westerners" to try and "fix" Africa's problems?
I made comments at the last Blog site about how humans have this drive for "want" and how that drive is holding back so many African societies because of the power hungry leaders. I'm not going to repeat what was said there but I do want to add, and inquire to anyone else who may read this, that education is the solution to all problems. I think, that as the "west", if we focused on education, starting with the bottom, the least educated, and worked up to get the youngest generation's brains working and wanting to learn, eventually we could turn ourselves and Africa around. For example, with regards to the AIDS epidemic, all of the money in the world could be donated to purchase condoms but if someone doesn't know, is uneducated about, the purpose and point of a condom, no one will ever take it seriously. I personally met people last summer in Tanzania that were convinced that the AIDS problem is inevitable to everyone in Africa and what difference did it make if they got it if they were going to die at age 50 anyway. Shocking, I know. We are all spending enormous amounts of money educating ourselves in College because we know we can't live, work or sustain ourselves through good decisions and a good job without it. We need to assume that people everywhere want to be educated, and from people that i've met, who, on the surface seem to have nothing, do want to be educated, and pour our efforts into education. Then, people will have the power to mobilize against that dictator who is hosing them with water, or not vote to add to the power of corrupt. And if it came down to the fact that they were all staring down the barrels of guns, at least they would be proud of what they are doing. We stood down the barrels of guns when the British ruled our land, but pressed forth because we knew and understood what and why we were doing what some viewed as crazy. Education is the ultimate weapon. People will have the ability to make good, independent decisions. This I think would be a huge first step towards Africa's problem of current underdevelopment. Thoughts anyone....?
Education can be a double-edged sword, depending on the type of it. Yes, education can help stop the AIDS epidemic, encourage the overthrow of a dictator, etc, but it causes problems too. An educated society tends to create better health care and more human rights, but it also fosters materialism and egocentrism. As a result, people live longer, greedier lives, as the expense of others. An uneducated society tends to have shorter life spans, but they also tend to stress the values of community more. People may live shorter lives, but they normally don’t feel as lost as those in educated societies, because they have a definite and important part in their own community. Which is more important, a long, relatively lonely life with luxury or a shorter, complete life with a caring community? It is an extremely difficult question to answer, because most people have not lived in both.
So yes, a bit of education would likely solve the problems mentioned in the above comment, but does it actually improve their quality of life? Is this even something that we can answer?
I'm not saying we shouldn't work hard to educate more people. It isn't, however, the solution to all problems because it creates many more new ones. Unfortunately, the ideas of materialism and egocentrism (brought to Africa mostly by colonialism and the slave trade) have destroyed much of the community values that had previously been present.
Good food, I'm still hungry...
I do see your point. Education, at least the way "we" are taught, does direct one towards a life of work work work for the benefit of one's own success. But is that the education's fault or the fault of the society for which the education is molded to. We live in the US, obviously we as citizens are going to be trained to live the capitalistic lifestyle of materialism. But education doesn't always have to be geared to spit out people with our capitalistic goals. What if we came up with an education program for Africa aimed at teaching the things that were lost during colonialism such as community and value for the humanity of living and not the materialistic riches of humanity. We could think outside our "America" box on this one, do ourselves, Africa and the world a favor with training people that possess such values for the future. So, I don't think it's the education's fault for the secondary problems we see with our education. I think it's the society's fault for what the education trains it's students to become. Education for the sake of educating, learning about humanity, history of past roots, especially for the people in Africa, whos roots have been distorted by colonialism, traditions and values of one's surroundings, before outside intervention, I think is still the answer, not education for the sake of achieving a job that will make you money to buy stuff. Like I've said before, we are going to have to approach this growing African and soon to be global, crisis from a new angle to avoid, to the best of our human ability, the trap of falling into the same, greed, want, power hungry, blind-eye road we've looked down in the past.
What ingredients would you add to this meal...?
I agree with some of what Matt Colip has to say but not all. I believe to a certain extent that education is the answer, but to a larger degree Africians need to exercise control. They need to control for example their sexual desires. They know what condoms are and how to use them but the men refuse to use them because they have less sexual satification. Often times an Africian goverment official starts out with the best interests at heart but becomes corrupt because they cannot control their greed for power and money.
Sexual self control is not something that can work with uneducated people. Just because someone knows what a condom basically does, doesn't mean they are educated about it. And condoms is not the primary issue, just one example of an issue thats success is directly related to education. I understand that there are other strategies that need to be put into place other than education, but education is, I think, the first step. Asking people to control themselves is only something educated people can rationalize worth doing over instinct. After all, it's easier to punch or shoot someone then it is to sit down and be rational, in the name of self control. We must educate before we can ask for self control among any population of humans. We are, basically animals with basic instincts, the only difference is that we have the ability to educate ourselves and in the process, become rational beings.
Come on Matt
Oh please.......how do you justify the leaders who are educated taking advantage of their power and become corrupt? How do you explain the Africans who know about Aids and continue to have unprotected sex? Don't try to tell me that if these people had a High School Diploma they would begin to have protected sex. I don't buy it. I believe that it’s a matter of a lack of self-discipline and poor choices.
I rationalize my argument and counter yours by saying that regardless of what we do, in the end people are going to act they way they please. If someone wants to be corrupt, against all other productive options, he or she will. If someone wants to take the risk of not wearing a condom because it feels good when they know there's a 1 in 5 chance of contracting AIDS, they will. My original point was not to say that we can't control humans through education. What I'm maintaining is that nothing is possible without education. It is the first step. You can't tell me that education is not the root of all successful modern societies. I don't buy that the answer is to tell them to exercise control as you suggested. None of us ever exercise control. Look everywhere for that fact. In this country alone, we live in an obese society with one of the highest gun violence rate in the world. Where's the self control here, and we're educated. We clearly don't exercise control in our lives and we arguably have it the best. How can you begin to ask Africa to "have control" if they are up against odds we can't even fathom. Using our country alone as an example, education and self control are not related, but education and success are. And, the greatest chance anyone has of not making poor choices, as you said in your last sentence of your last comment, is to "educate" yourself about it first. Education is still the first step in the process of Africa's success. From there, it's up to the individuals to act according to what they think is the wisest descision as a people.
About Africa, AIDS and condoms.
You can see the destructive effect that not promoting education and the use of condoms has on one African country -- Uganda--which has in the past been heralded for its aggressive approach to dealing with AIDS. USAID, the FIrst Lady of Uganda, and the Ugandan government, have tried to encourage abstinence instead of the use of condoms.
Take a look at this recent article from Human rights watch on Uganda and its AIDS policies:
http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2005/09/14/uganda11744.htm
Have you ever considered that the Aids virus is a means of population control for a continent, in this case Africa, that can't support its own people?
Yes, AIDS just so happens to put restraints on Africa’s growing population, but that does not mean it is a good thing. AIDS is not helping Africa by making room for others to live; rather, the virus is slowly tearing the continent apart. People are suffering and becoming more hopeless everyday. That hopelessness has the ability to tear families, communities, and even countries apart. If you are a person infected with AIDS whose main concern is to live into the next day, how are you supposed to care about improving your country? Shouldn’t we try and help those who are suffering from AIDS—which could very well be through education—so we can focus on some of the other problems Africa is faced with?
Okay Stacy & Jon... you're missing the point here: you might think it's the right thing to help Africa deal wtih AIDS, but what happens when they don't want to help themself? Hello! Condoms, condoms, condoms! But let's talk aboutu custom, custom, custom! The men don't want to wear condoms because it doesn't feel good -- I read somewhere that in Southern Africa the women actually put things in their private parts to make them drier -- which is supposed to give the men more pleasure -- but also causes a higher probability for acquiring HIV/AIDS... so you can go on and on about how we should help Africa with AIDS -- but Africans have to help themselves first!
Well yes, Africans must help themselves, but many of them need to learn how to successfully do that. Some of the earlier discussion emphasized the importance education, which could easily be a way of helping Africans help themselves. It would be wrong to say that we should leave Africa alone and let the continent solve its own problems. That's just going to perpetuate many more difficulties, which would only worsen the current situation. So anonymous, why is it so bad to help?
In response to Anonymous and Stacy,
Anonymous, we can't just say, "help yourself" and leave them alone. We, as developed nations, should provide some sort of stucture. I think the structure should be in the form of providing means for education as in what Stacy and I agree upon, in conjunction with some form of the method that was proposed by Ben in the other blogspot window about stategically choosing those African nations that have the greatest chance for success and making them examples to other African nations in struggle.
Anonymous, are you saying that we should let them help themselves completely with everything, or just with AIDS? Either way, I disagree entirely with the idea of "letting Africa deal with it's own problems." That idea, to me, won't solve anything, just amplify the worsening situation. We, developed nations, need to be a part of the process for, I think, many reasons from out of simple care for our fellow man as well as the fact that developed nations are, to some extent responsible for their situation.
Jon brought up the issue of 100% debt relief. I am not quite sure how I feel about it, but I think I lean more towards the side against it. If people do not learn how to budget money and save, who says that if we give them debt relief that they won't go into debt again? I think that it is good that some African countries are given debt relief because they have proven they can handle it. There should be a set a standards a country must meet in order to be eligible for debt relief. Just like the European Union-- the 10 most recent countries that were added had to meet a set of human rights and economic standards before they were accepted. African countries should follow this example. Debt relief should go to any country that has proven they know how to manage money.
Kristy:
I agree with the idea of setting a standard that a country must meet before 100% debt relief is considered. Giving all African nations 100% debt relief won't teach them anything about money management, just like it would not do us any real good either.
Even the US has a hard time managing money. We owe 7.9 trillion dollars to the world. Doesn't sound like proper money management to me.
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