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 continent 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 repudiate responsibility and gives room for corruption; it creates a media bias, and doesn’t solve the foundational issues.
Even though a majority of Africa is either run by a democratic type of government or by dictatorship foreign aid should still be limited due to repudiation of responsibilities and permits corruption. “Africa's economic troubles are also, in large measure, self- inflicted. Since independence, politics have 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, o...
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...icts 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.
The impact of the Structural Adjustment Programs imposed by International Financial Intuitions (IFIs) such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund on the developing countries of Africa has led to the destruction of Africa’s social sectors and has handicapped Africa in its fight with poverty, the AIDS pandemic, and keeping children in school.
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.
In this section, I will provide a brief history of U.S. military involvement on the African continent, starting with the Barbary Wars and working up through the current date. This historical documentation will highlight the change in the role the United States has played in Africa [post 9-11???]. Prior to 9-11, the United States’ interactions were mainly [capture summary here]. Since [?], however, the continent has faced a marked increase in violent extremism and terrorism leading the United States to partner with many African nations in counterterrorism initiatives. These, and other initiatives, mean an increasing number U.S. service members are deploying to Africa to take part in training, humanitarian issues and military operations. These military activities are run by United States African Command, a recently created combatant command.
Every year, donors from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) give billions of dollars in foreign aid, with the United States contributing a large percentage of this sum (Eischen 2012) (Figure A). However, the amount and way in which this money is handled has given rise to heavy criticism. Books such as Dambisa Moya’s Dead Aid: Why Aid is Not Working and How There is a Better Way For Africa and the innumerable news articles lamenting the state of the corrupt bureaucracies of receiving countries not only discuss the inefficiencies of foreign aid but also accuse these programs of being harmful (Ayodele et al. 2005). One such article claimed that, due to inefficiencies and corruption, at least twenty percent of aid is completely lost (Chakraborty 2013).
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 ...
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
In the mid 1980s Africa was struck by a period of famines, desertification, refugees, human rights violations, mutually destructive violence, health problems and economic decline. “among the economic factors, severe balance of trade deficits caused by weak world commodity prices, fluctuating interest rates which cause national debts to swell to unbearable limits, and a severe drop in international aid investment combined to create frustratingly high levels of social-economic hardship.”(Quainoo 6) The issues Africa was facing brought a great deal of doubt to it’s people’s faith in authoritarianism, and eventually led to many protest demanding democratization.
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.
Africans should not blame Mr. Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Britain, The World Bank, George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America, any western developed country or the United Nations for attempting to redress through the Commission for Africa report, and decades of imbalances and injustices visited on Africans by both African rulers and their western collaborators. It is this callous and wicked conspiracy that has brought the beautiful and virgin continent on her knees, largely impoverishing its people and turned them into beggars, crying babies and laughing stocks of the global community.
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.
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.