Africa | Economy,Culture,Religions,Famous Attractions

Do you know about Africa? It is a continent with plenty of natural resources is indisputable. Yet people in Africa are characterized and decrepit by endemic hunger, genocides, wars, corruption, massive underdevelopment and all sorts of countless sufferings. Judging this beautiful continent from its natural resources, one would expect to see people cruising in an age of high mass consumption. Instead, Africa is full of people still struggling with their take-off process. Much of the population lies in poverty, hopelessness and underdevelopment that have remained a constant even in a 21st century experiencing huge technological advancements and globalization.

But the poverty in Africa is also very terrible all over the world I believe, the causes of poverty in Africa are deep-rooted, interconnected and paradoxical. Africa, the cradle of humanity, encompasses some of the most resource-rich areas of the planet. Africans would, in fact, be capable of sustaining their economies and even giving aid to other parts of the world. Something, therefore, must have gone terribly wrong for it to be the poorest of all the continents.

The reason for Africa’s poverty lies in its history and the mindset which this has created both inside and outside its borders. For 3 centuries, the continent was emptied of millions of its strongest people, captured to work as slaves overseas in order to develop other economies. This had the arguable effect of delaying the establishment of economical, political and social structures that might have been comparable with those found elsewhere in the world.

The abolition of slavery opened the door to colonialism, which, while in one sense only a different form of slavery, did bring much-needed benefits such as industrial development, better education and access to medical care. However the colonising Europeans, by means particularly of the bias of the education they provided, groomed Africans to be servants and consumers in a world where white men were the overlords.

The result was that African countries were gripped by impossible debts to foreign regimes, and at the same time ruled by tyrants from among their own people who in many cases were supported by those same foreign regimes. As the rulers took control of the honey pot of the natural resources and forced their countrymen into poverty, the seeds of civil war were sown.

Africa’s poverty is a disgrace in a world of food surpluses and mass communication. However the reasons behind it are far from simple. A history of injustice set in motion a vicious circle of lack of resources to pay for education, and lack of education to produce and refine resources. This is compounded by devastating health problems, climate difficulties, and predation by more economically advanced nations which, while providing assistance under the impetus of their people’s knee-jerk reactions to specific disasters, have yet to change their underlying attitudes.

Nomadic grazing of livestock was once a way of life, but now population figures are too high and land ownership is too rigid for it to be possible. Over-grazing and over-farming lead to degradation of the land, giving rise to the need for further land to be cleared through slash-and-burn with little regard to the associated loss of biodiversity. Where strict measures – including against poaching – are not put in place, the wild animals which can be a source of revenue through tourism are depleted.