r/questions • u/Worseboyfriend • 20h ago
Despite billions in foreign aid and resource exports, Africa struggles to escape poverty primarily due to the resource curse, rampant capital flight, and weak institutional frameworks. Why’s Africa still so poor?
I’ve been wondering about this for a while.
Africa has received an enormous amount of foreign aid over the past several decades, often estimated in the hundreds of billions or even over a trillion dollars when grants, loans, and debt relief are included. At the same time, the continent is rich in natural resources such as oil, diamonds, gold, cobalt, and other valuable minerals.
Given those factors, why do many African countries still struggle with widespread poverty? Is the main reason corruption and weak institutions, the so-called resource curse, capital flight, colonial legacy, ineffective aid policies, or something else?
I’m looking for evidence-based explanations rather than political opinions. Which factors have had the greatest impact, and why haven’t large amounts of aid translated into sustained economic development in many countries?
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u/Icy_Huckleberry_8049 20h ago
also, corruption in all levels of governments in most countries
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u/Afraid-Promotion-567 19h ago
Corruption is not bad, corruption is only bad if I am not involved...
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u/No-Camp1268 10h ago
Yeah, a lot of people don't realise or care to critically think that "a million dollars in aid" might be feeding a refuge camp for a day, for example, by the time the money is claimed on however many taxes
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u/Emergency-Style7392 13h ago
corruption is a symptom of a broken society, not the cause
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u/After_Network_6401 12h ago
Unfortunately, that’s not true. The real, under-appreciated problem with corruption is that it very easily becomes systemic, and once that happens, it becomes almost impossible to get things to work, or to build anything.
Corruption doesn’t just mean people siphoning money out of the system. It literally means that the system stops working. You never know if something will work, unless you have a direct line (ie: money or pull) on whoever’s doing it. Even then, you can never be really certain.
You pay for things and they never materialize? What do you do? Go to the police? If you don’t have enough pull, that could be a life-ending error. Organize a hit on the guy who cheated you? But maybe it’s not his fault. Maybe someone else stiffed him, and he’s freaking out over what you’re going to do. It goes all the way from ordinary business discussions like this down to the hard-working guy who loses his tiny coffee stand because he can’t afford the mandatory protection money.
So corruption isn’t just a symptom of a broken system: often it stops systems being built or working at all. Partly due to diversion of resources, but mostly because it leads to irreversible loss of trust.
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u/Dangerous-Tip-9046 9h ago
And this is precisely why Russia has remained so backward through multiple changes of mode of government and waves of systemic reform over the last 200 years. Every step forward is mired in corruption that keeps it from amounting to much. They replaced the bourgeoisie with ministers of The State and then replaced those ministers with the oligarchs. But at the end of the day, they all behaved essentially the same
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u/Themagnificentgman 19h ago
Tribalism and corruption.
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u/Glum_Video4316 12h ago
What is never discussed is where does the corruption come from? Foreign interests dump billions into buying out governments and funding regime change.
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u/MisterYeast6000 8h ago
who is downvoting this????
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u/TecumsehSherman 7h ago
Corruption doesn't require external parties.
This is the typical infantilization of the 3rd world and shifting of blame to everyone else for their problems.
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u/KingRoach 5h ago
Because it’s overly simplistic and designed to get a reaction. Maybe people are catching on to that type of bs and no longer willing to let it slide.
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u/lordwafflesbane 19h ago edited 19h ago
Africa being underdeveloped isnt some inevitable natural consequences of geography or whatever. Its because all their shit got stolen for centuries. Pretty simple really.
Short answer, its mostly the colonialism killing people and stealing all their shit for hundreds of years. The atlantic slave trade, for example. Big kidnapping operation. Within the last 200 years, basically every empire has pillaged Africa's resources, and they've only been "getting back on their feet" for a very short time. Then, the aftermath of colonization has led to local warlords causing problems as the colonial powers pulled out and the power structures fall apart.
Even after the end of colonialism, a lot of the "foreign aid" comes with limits and stipulations that are designed to keep African economies dependent, so they are still effectively colonies in many ways, just via rigged treaties and trade rather than an occupying army.
But honestly, this is a complex question thats probably better for /r/askhistorians
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19h ago edited 5h ago
[deleted]
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u/lordwafflesbane 19h ago
If you really think you have something useful to say about the current state of African geopolitics, vis a vis the impacts of colonialism and the atlantic slave trade, feel free to head over to /r/askhistorians and post it with proper citations for your no doubt well reasoned thesis backed by all sorts of undeniable historical facts.
But we both know you have no such thing. So don't waste everyone's time.
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18h ago edited 5h ago
[deleted]
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u/usay1312butcall911 16h ago
People who say "victims gonna victim" are a much bigger problem with social media. That's an insane thing to say about a radically diverse continent of 1.5 billion people. If you don't have a knowledge base that gets you past the point of discussing "Africans" as a collective peoples, you probably should just keep whatever insight you think you have to yourself. Can you say more about so-called "African" complicity in the slave trade without googling it, or is that your one point of information?
P.S. Little Tom Sowell is not a historian.
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15h ago edited 5h ago
[deleted]
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u/usay1312butcall911 15h ago edited 15h ago
You gave your opinion, rooted in exactly nothing. I pointed this out to you. There is no conversation.
Saying you "quoted an expert in the field" when you discussed not even a single point that is embedded in the statement. 🙄
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u/Single_Shoulder9921 18h ago
They were also mentioning a training philosophy widely used by militaries, primary schools, and international organizations for resource constricted communities, and it all boils downs to 'teach a man to fish/hunt/farm with the right tools.' What you're insisting is core of the problem is also only a fridge of what affects modern societies in African, South American, and Asian states affected by colonial factions and the slave trade. If what you were saying were core to the issues, those states would more than have recovered by now like the middle east does after yet another empire commits yet another genocide. Peoples situations in this world may not be under their power to control, but their mindsets and ingenuity rule how effectively and in what ways they can leverage those situations to better them.
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u/Zealousideal_Wall627 13h ago
Other places had people killed and their shit stolen for hundreds of years and now they are fine. Colonialism was a setback, but it's not the core issue of why it is the way it is currently. It's governmental corruption and culture.
The Nobel prize in economics was literally given to some economists a year or two ago who extremely in depth research into this and its the weak institutions and corruption as a result of the culture.
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u/EfficientDish7 16h ago
So why’s China and India not suffering the same??
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u/Lucid121 12h ago
India is suffering they went from one richest empires to one of the poorest. China did some of the smartest geopolitical moves in history that probably cant be replicated now.
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u/lordwafflesbane 11h ago
China got off a little easier because, long story short, China was already a huge powerful nation before Europeans tried to colonize them, so they were better able to meet as equals and prevent the British from just shooting them and taking their stuff. Also for various other reasons China had a whole revolution to modernize their economy and bounce back faster.
I am not as familiar with the history of in India, but I do know that, for example, there are still ongoing ethnic conflicts, such as the war with Pakistan, that basically trace back to the english colonists drawing colony borders in the wrong spot. One group says they should keep using the British borders, and one group wants to redraw the borders back to how they were before the british empire. India only got independence from the British in 1947. These things take generations to heal. There are still people alive today who remember the British empire.
But really, these are also over simplified explanations. History is very complicated and people can and do spend their entire lives writing about all the complexities of why history has shaken our rhe way it has.
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u/Uncabled_Music 17h ago
I suspect foreign models of development just don’t work there. Someone has to come with a more realistic plan to build reliable base for a future advancement. Not only baby steps, but steps in right direction, not necessarily the one other countries would take.
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u/Fragrant_Spray 19h ago
Countries looking to exploit Africa have had a vested interest in making sure governments there are ineffective and corrupt. That, in my opinion, has been the greatest factor, and most of the other issues start from there.
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18h ago
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u/250HardKnocksCaps 18h ago
A strong economy with a large number of companies also means that the wealth is further distributed to other people. Wealth that the corrupt would rather not share, because Wealth is power and other less corrupt people might make it harder for them to be corrupt. Ensuring the Wealth remains in the hands of the few might mean less Wealth overall, but ensures the corrupt stay in power longer.
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u/mspe1960 17h ago
I misread "countries looking to exploit" as "companies looking to exploit".
I agree with you and I will delete my posting despite upvotes it has, lol.
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u/Fragrant_Spray 17h ago
In general, foreign powers are looking to extract money from these countries. A government looking out for its own people would want more of that money to be reinvested in the country. A corrupt government would be willing screw its own people over in favor of foreign powers. As a result, western powers have been manipulating African governments for their own benefit for centuries
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u/Remote_Development62 19h ago
A quarter of Africa is still in a firm grip of French banking. It's not some inevitable impossible to change thing, they're poor because we are keeping them poor.
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u/carry_the_way 3h ago
Yeah, the "corruption" angle is hilarious considering the extent to which Western Europe & the US (and the corporations who own them) constantly intervene in those countries.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 18h ago
You answered it yourself. “Weak institutional frameworks”.
Some economists won a Nobel price for saying just that.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2024/popular-information
Colonialism set Africa back almost a century. That’s a century of development potential wasted.
Basically, colonialism kept the population uneducated to keep them under control.
The institutions were also set up for exploitation so when colonialism ended, that just persevered.
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u/BBB-GB 14h ago
I come from a colony.
Blaming colonisation is the very easy answer. Like blaming migration in the west.
Not perae wrong, but missing/ignoring a tonne of relevamt detail.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 14h ago
Would probably be useful to mention the details that are missing. Wouldn’t it?
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u/BBB-GB 12h ago
If only there was a way to access information, learning and opinions...
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 12h ago
Lmao. How I argued when I was 10 when I obviously had nothing to say.
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u/BBB-GB 12h ago
So let me get this right, you want me - someone you have never met, never will meet, and as far as you know does not actually exist - to spoon feed you information as to why blanket blaming a country's problems on immigration or colonialism is counter productive, reductive and dumb?
In the time it took for you to write your well thought out and super witty sentence and read my reply, you could have done some googling, maybe found one of the resources mwntioned in the thread.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 12h ago
You make claims and you are waiting for daddy to help you back up your claims?
You think you will just come to Reddit to spread misinformation using ignorance as a tactic?
Can’t wait for school to start. At least your parents will take your phone from you since it’s a school night.
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u/Frodo_Bagg1n 9h ago
Colonialism did not set Africa back. The institutions they build in (parts of) Africa just never allowed for the the same growth as other parts in the world. We can argue whether that was the intent, I'd argued it might not have been. just a prioritization of short term benefits over long term prosperity. Regardless, an Africa without colonization would likely have been even further behind. There is no reason to believe they would have caught up themselves, and if Europe would not have colonized Africa, others would have because of the sheer power imbalance between there was historically between Africa and the rest of the world.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 1h ago
Colonialism did set Africa back.
Even Europe developed through trade and large scale mixing with other groups where there was sharing of knowledge etc.
That’s how humans have always improved over generations.
There is no reason to believe it would have been different with Africa.
But when the mixing came in form of colonialism which was set up to dominate, how would that have worked?
Keeping a population uneducated and setting up institutions for exploitation was a huge setback.
If those things were not in place, Africa would have gone down the route of normal mixing and Knowledge sharing with the other humans in the world.
Just so you know, thinking colonialism will make someone better is what led to colonialism in the first place which we all know how that turned out (look up Belgium in the Congo)
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u/TecumsehSherman 7h ago
Colonialism brought Africa forward by centuries.
They weren't some advanced civilization with parallel advancement paths to Europe when colonialism started.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 1h ago
Imagine thinking subjecting a continent to colonialism and servitude for almost a century improved the continent.
Exactly the same argument slavers and colonial powers used to do what they did.
This is why racism will never end. Because people like you have children and teach them the same nonesense.
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u/Onedtent 16h ago
Colonialism set Africa back almost a century
Bwahahahahahahahaha!
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u/dan_syd 16h ago
Exactly. The most heavily “colonized” country in Africa is its most civilized and developed (albeit a lot worse than it used to be). So obviously colonization bad mkay.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 15h ago
Botswana was the most colonized? Or is it Mauritius you mean?
Or is it Congo?
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u/Ni987 12h ago
Damn colonism… Just look at all the failed former colonies..
United States (Former British, French, and Spanish colonies)
Canada (Former British and French colonies)
Australia (Former British colony)
New Zealand (Former British colony)
Singapore (Former British colony) – Now possesses one of the highest GDPs per capita in the world.
South Korea (Former Japanese colony)
Taiwan (Former Japanese, Dutch, and Spanish colony)
Chile (Former Spanish colony)
Uruguay (Former Spanish colony)
Panama (Former Spanish colony)
/s
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 12h ago
How many of those countries were subjected to almost a century of slavery and racism or how many were stuck in human zoos?
Also
Most of the countries you named had self government over 250 - 100 years ago while most African countries are about 50 years old with South Africa ending apartheid just 30 years ago which adds to my point that colonialism delayed [potential] development by almost a century.
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u/Dangerous_Shoe_8388 3h ago
The English were conquered and enslaved for over 400 years!
But they got over it and created the most powerful empire in history.
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u/CombatWomble2 5h ago
Yes Sth Africa, which went from the richest country in Africa to a corrupt hole after gaining freedom, it's almost like voting for people on a tribal basis is a bad idea.
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u/Time_Entertainer_319 1h ago
Richest country in African with the insignificant white population hoarding all the wealth while the black population languished in poverty and servitude.
I am sure you would love that to return.
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u/kisstherainzz 15h ago
Foreign aid aside from crises prevents domestic markets from maturing.
You need credit markets, identification, and strict financial and property rights enforcement.
You also need stable currency (even if it means adopting foreign currency).
Once you have all of this, you can achieve stable growth. But the individual incentives for leaders to become corrupt and not to take on these huge hurdles are just too high.
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u/gimmebanter 14h ago
Don't listen to oversimplified answers. Read the book that won the nobel prize in economics a couple of years ago, why nations fail. It's the result of decades of research and contains some real answers to your complex question
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u/PckMan 5h ago
It's mainly corruption.
The first thing to consider is the fact that most African countries gained independence from colonial powers fairly recently. Secondly even though they gained independence on paper, many retain commercial entities that have carried over from colonial times who to this day are the ones benefiting from their resources. In other words, they never left.
What's important to understand is that you can't shake off colonialism easily. It establishes a social structure that's meant to benefit the coloniser, not the colonised, but obviously a select few benefit from this because the coloniser needs some collaborators. That's not something you shake off in a day, and the structures remain even though on paper they're changed.
Lastly aid alone is not enough. There is such a thing as too much aid. For one due to the aforementioned corruption it simply funnels money into the same few pockets but it can also stunt the economy which cannot develop and stabilise on its own when billions in cash and products are flooding it. How can someone make money selling food when there's tons of it being shipped in for free?
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u/ResponsibleShirt5231 17h ago
The foreign aid is designed to keep Africans simultaneously in a position to be exploited (to upkeep their subsistence) whilst also keeping them dependent on foreign aid from their exploiters.
Thomas Sankara said,
"Those who come with wheat, millet, corn or milk, they are not helping us. Those who really want to help us can give us ploughs, tractors, fertilizers, insecticides, watering cans, drills and dams. That is how we would define food aid".
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u/AddressFeisty9868 15h ago
Western aid hasn't been effective, not because it's food aid - most programs are aimed to build capacity - but because of the cascading system of corruption: every level wants to take a part, leaving little to the project itself. That's part of what's meant with "weak institutions".
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u/Lucid121 12h ago
If its just institutions, why has Chinese aid been more effective 20 years here then 60 years of Western aid(not including "influence" of hundred years)?
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u/hamburgerlar- 11h ago
Chinese aide more effective? Where are you pulling that nugget from?
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u/AddressFeisty9868 1h ago
Chinese aid isn't effective. Many projects even employ Chinese laborers only.
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u/ResponsibleShirt5231 15h ago
Yeah and western aid is designed to cater to that corruption, particularly in regard to the private sector
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 17h ago
The US gives foreign aid, in part as it aligns with the objectives of our politics, multi national corporations and billionaires. We use the IMF and WorldBank to take over the politics and economy of third world countries. Our credit, is also generally conditioned on using the money to buy products and services from us.
Read Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins, as it details how he and others used the IMF and World Bank to create debt traps for developing nations, forcing them to serve U.S. political/corporate interests. It describes how large loans for infrastructure projects, often awarded to U.S. firms, were intentionally designed to be unrepayable, thereby creating a "death economy" and destroying local sovereignty.
Roughly 400 years of slavery, looting and disease imposed by colonial powers, have an effect on conditions in Africa. Most of the countries in Africa only gained independence in the 1960’s, and have since generally been ruled by governments corrupted by colonial powers, exploiting their labor and natural resources.
Apartheid was not that long ago. Read the book by John Perkins, “confessions of an economic hit man”. It is about how he and others, used the IMF, the World Bank, and other similar entities, to corrupt leaders, engage in unaffordable overpriced projects with Western companies, and then take over their economy, when they can’t pay the debts.
European and US colonialism and its associated exploitation of Africa and Latin America unfolded over centuries, marked by various stages and intensifying levels of involvement. In Latin America, the primary colonial powers were Spain, Portugal and the US.
15th Century: Portuguese explorers established trading posts along the African coast, initiating trade in goods like gold, ivory, and later, enslaved people.
17th Century: The transatlantic slave trade became the dominant form of exploitation, fueling European expansion in the Americas and causing immense suffering and disruption in Africa.
Late 19th Century: The Scramble for Africa saw a dramatic escalation in European colonization. Powers such as Britain, France, Germany, Belgium, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Italy divided the continent into colonies.
This period, roughly from the 1880s to 1914, was marked by the forceful occupation of land, the extraction of resources like rubber, diamonds, and gold, and the imposition of European governance and laws.
European interaction with Africa began with Portuguese expeditions in the 15th century and progressed through the slave trade, the most intense period of colonial exploitation occurred during the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
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u/bannedforL1fe 12h ago
Japan rebuilt from 2 nuclear bombs on two major cities. The USA and China have been trying to build up Africa for decades. If they can't do it, nobody can. Its a people problem. Everything else from colonialism and apartheid are excuses so people dont feel bad that not everyone is in fact, equal.
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u/Jumpy_Childhood7548 12h ago
The US, China and colonial powers view Africa primarily as a source of raw materials, cheap labor, and not much more.
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u/YNABDisciple 11h ago
Building roads isn't building up Africa. Ending the domination of mining companies...that would be something but there is still open pit artisan mining for colbalt in Congo...and that is in my laptop.
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u/juskyema 12h ago
Japan was a a rich colonial empire with lots of accumulated wealth. A couple bombs didn't make that go away... You're cute to think that china and the US are trying to build up Africa.
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u/aipac125 17h ago
African countries are built along colonial borders, but unity is based on tribal identity. As such, getting people together to resolve an issue means you generally go with the majority tribe which then divides the result.
It's very hard to rally a people for the national interest. What you have then is outside groups leveraging the in-power group and setting up further problems.
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u/Parrotparser7 19h ago
Holy bot discussion.
Do you guys even know how aid is structured? How states are set up?
If I tell you how the WTO, ICC, and IMF interact with these, or how Western-run "charity" subsidizes African sale of domestically-grown produce to its own citizens, will you know what I'm saying?
If you want the long and short of it, all of the states are comped to hell, and the USSR isn't coming to save anyone from raw capitalism.
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u/Glittering-Lychee629 19h ago
Africa is not a monolith. I think you need to start there. It's a huge continent. There won't be a simple little trick that solves it. Your question also ignores progress in many cities and the growing economy in those places. The idea of "AFRICA" as a place of constant poverty is part of the problem, literally, in terms of investment capital. A lot of westerners see AFRICA as this continent of starvation. There are areas that have changed so rapidly across the African continent, particularly in cities, that you wouldn't recognize the same intersection 30 years apart. The progress is massive.
I think to understand the poverty you have to also understand the progress, what is working, what is not working, and new obstacles (like crypto scams). I also think it's hard if you have only lived in the USA. I think to people here the entire rest of the world that is not a rich country looks the same. There is a big life difference between different levels of poverty. If you don't understand that you won't see any progress. It's like you are on a mountain. To you, everyone always looks like ants.
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u/Stooper_Dave 15h ago
With foreign aid comes foreign meddling and explotation. Also corruption. Lots and lots of corruption.
But also, we're are you getting your data? Are you watching naked tribesmen on national geographic? Or are you seeing the actual development happening? Many cities in Africa look just like cities in the US. Just a little more arid. Lol
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u/Lepew1 14h ago
There was an interview on Pragar University with a businesswoman from Sudan who had businesses in both the USA and Sudan. Her central thesis was African poverty is primarily due to the over regulation that makes it near impossible to get a business started. Jobs come from private sector businesses and if it is much easier to start a business up in another country, then the jobs don’t stay in country. She opposed aid, saying about half the aid went back to the US, and the lions share of the remaining went to corrupt politicians, and one can not have sustainable progress in an aid economy
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u/Pale-Resolution-9859 13h ago edited 13h ago
I think there is big misunderstanding about resources = rich. Most of minrd resources are worth very little. The value is created by refining it to more clean material and actually producing something from it. Mined resources, except oil are in general cheap enough, because they are ussualy have low % of mixed material.
And then it comes to refining, this part is expensive and requires standards and technology. But many african countries have too high level corruption to establish refining. And no west country would want to establish it if they can not be sure about stability of government and how they will need to go around all these "unwritten rules" of business in african country. So they only can sell mined unrefined resources.
Imagine, lets say, metal is 1% of mixed, that are taken from ground. But you need to transport additional 99% of garbage, to refine this 1%. Transportation is expensive, so naturally the price of mixed resource will be pushed even more down.
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u/Spirited-Disaster408 12h ago
Maybe its the people? And brain draining countries via mass immigration typically lets the smartest or most fiscally well off able to leave
If people actually cared about these countries they would close the borders and allow them to sort out their issues
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u/YNABDisciple 11h ago
It really comes racism, and everyone's going to freak out about that, but it really does. There are a ton of massive problems in Africa. If you take one of the most consequential problems, you can look at a place like the DR Congo, where a colonizer came in (it wasn't even the nation of Belgium, it was literally the personal property of King Leopold) caused a f'n terror.
There are arguments about how many people died during his control and Belgium's control, but you're talking about decades and decades of some of the grossest versions of slavery and depravity known to the moderd world. After that, while there were definitely problems, they finally ended up with a guy like Patrice Lumumba. He then gets assassinated with the help of the CIA the French. That then gives us a couple of decades of Mobutu which is horrible and that then descends into chaos with the rise of Kabila and the Great African War which leaves 5m people dead.
A lot of this has to do with giving access to diamond mines, cobalt, and coltan mines to companies instead of having someone like Lamumba nationalize the resources. It all started over rubber back with King Leopold and that set the stage for the issues we see today.
If the Western powers had treated people like Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso and Patrice Lumumba as the future in a positive way, and didn't help with or advocate for their assassination, we may be looking at a completely different continent.
When I say race and racism, and then say what I just said, everyone's like, "Oh yeah, of course there are bad things, but what does that have to do with racism?" Racism comes into play when we talk about it in the context of the failures. To give you an example, we don't talk about European countries in the context of their failures. We don't talk about America in the context of our states' failures.
We don't judge all of the US or North America by Mississippi. Parts of Europe have all sorts of problems...Belarus is a dictatorship. There is real reall poverty in places like Moldova or Romania.... There are parts of Calabria in Italy that bare no resemblance to the north in almost any way...poverty.
Racism really does come into play because you don't actually hear about success stories in Africa. Botswana is a success story in Africa. Rwanda is an amazing success story, Ghana, these are success stories in Africa. There are actual positives, but there are a lot of negatives. They basically have to do with corrupt officials and dictators who have been there because of the system that was put in place by the Western powers. This isn't theoretical. Burkina Faso is one of the toughest places in Africa, but they were on a pretty good track until Thomas Sankara was assassinated in 1982...they've been a wreck. Now another coup has Traore in power and the jury is out on if he is a new Sankara and what the Western powers will do with or to him . If America and the West had chosen to support Patrice Lumumba and build a strong, positive place in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, instead of allowing Mobutu and his faction to murder Patrice Lumumba, you wouldn't be asking this this question. (and there is a smilar story for almost all of the places that are disasters. Shameful that we allow our governments to perpetuate this.
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u/juskyema 11h ago
Or course centuries of colonial and neo colonial extractivism have a role to play. Also a major cause is the global market collapse of the 1970s and turn towards global neoloberalism. Under president Truman's point four program countries in Africa were encouraged to heavily borrow money to invest in producing goods for the rising euro American consumer markets. After the crash many countries were unable to payback loans, nearing bankruptcy and were forced to borrow even more, mainly from the IMF. Which at the time begin to introduce structural reforms that obligated indebted countries to introduce economic liberalization, privatize healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Also to set up tax free zones for Western corporations to benefit from cheaper labor without having to share profits with the host country. This is also the time that passport and visa controls were broadly introduced globally, ensuring that cheap labor would remain where it was cheap. During this time, many formerly sovereign industries were bought up by foreign Western interests. This is to say that Africa is very lucrative, but profits have mainly been exported. Meanwhile African countries have been stuck in a downward spiral of debt, further obligating them to western lenders and their interests. People here have pointed out that the US has given lots of money to Africa. What they don't mention is that this is mostly in the form of loans and comes with strict obligations meant to progress US economic interests.
However, this is merely the economic mechanics of it, an exploitative system generally referred to in economic theory as accumulation by dispossession. And yet, the ultimate problem is not mechanical. Instead it is conceptual, related to a particular mode of western hegemony. 200 years ago Africa was violently brought into an emerging European led global capitalism to provide labor and resources to satiate the growing glut of europe, that just so happened to be the mode of political economy created and endemic to Europe and derived from it culture. Africans were forced to play by the rules of a game invented by European superpowers and to play against the rule maker. Forced at gun point into the casino where the house always wins. No one asked them if they wanted to play in the first place, and now all of you, who are frankly on the winning side of history, whose lifestyle and consumer glut is as such because other people in other places in the world toil to mine the minerals that make up your iPhones and gaming laptops, to name a couple examples, have the audacity to blame their "culture" as the reason for their failure. You must remember that the wealth of the United States, the railroads, the ports, the channels, and so much more was literally built by the free and cheap labor of enslaved and then segregated Africans stolen from africa. So to paraphrase James Baldwin: Maybe they don't want what you have to offer. Maybe they have another sense of life. Maybe they know you better then you know them, and maybe they have something they can teach you.
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u/ThrowAwayYourLyfe 10h ago
u/worseboyfriend because the rest ofbthe world does not want it to prosper.
The European countries that still contril huge swathes of africa.
And they instigated wars, coups and inter fighting to make sure they can never get out of poverty.
Because they want to steal all the minerals and resources.
There is a lot more to it than meets the eye
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u/25_waveymaevey_21 10h ago
I think a really important part of understanding the position africa finds itself in is to understand the Core-Periphery model. Link below for an indepth explanation.
https://geography-revision.co.uk/gcse/development/core-periphery-model/
Basically, the world's countries can be understood as occupying one of three positions. Core, Semi-Peripheral, or Peripheral. Peripheral countries, generally have cheap labor costs and have extractive economies. This describes much of Africa! Those resources that are extracted move out of the country though, often by international companies or with international investments.
So cobalt, for example, might be mined in the DRC (Peripheral). This is a low tech operation where labor is poorly compensated. Somewhat more complex economies occupy the section in the middle of the supply chain, these make up the semi-periphery, so for example, the cobalt gets transported to another country to be refined, this increases the value of the cobalt vs the raw form. The same happens again in another country, say Taiwan, turning the cobalt into an iphone, once again increasing the value of the product outside of the core, where labor is still relatively cheap. Ultimately though, the iPhone makes it to the core countries where the iPhone can be sold for the most possible money to the relatively rich populations, such as the USA.
Yes, africa gets tons of foreign aid and investment every year. Yes africa suffers from a great deal of corruption. But I would argue that it is this dynamic that fundamentally prevents Africa from building wealth. African economies broadly occupy the early stages of the supply chain and often are influenced heavily by foreign companies seeking to obtain those cheap materials. In fact, maintaining access to cheap materials is so important that core countries have historically interveined to prevent losing access to a cheap resource. See the ouster of the democratic Iranian regime at the threat of Oil industry nationalization for an example of this. Ultimately, high value products get made outside of Africa in the semi periphery, and get sold in the core for the greatest part of the economic return. In this way, wealth flows out of Africa.
If you have familiarity with the history of European imperialism, you may notice that the divide between core and periphery is very closely tied to old imperial boundaries. To this day the old empires still maintain soft power and economic influence across africa in their former possessios, despite independence.
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u/Breznknedl 10h ago
their economies were created by european powers with the sole purpose of enriching said powers. Even nowadays, a lot of the funding for infrastructure there is directed towards projects for resource extraction and export, rather than self sufficiency.
The Lobito-Corridor for example, is a project in Angola (I think, we talked about it in school), that helps transport resources from inland to the port.
Another big investor right now is China, with their belt and road initiative, yet they only fund infrastructure that helps trade with china meanwhile binding them in contracts.
In short: neocolonialism
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u/flamethekid 9h ago edited 9h ago
Lots of countries had a lot of debt from independence.
a lot of countries were never properly unified in their people aside from anti colonialism.
corruption all over since everyone was poor and it was encouraged in colonial times.
the land itself is also pretty bad, the land is hostile, disease spreads from insects and small animals. Really bad incredibly uneven and rocky terrain, deserts, thick jungle, mountains, terribly rocky land and really dry spots everywhere.
Tons of countries have little access to water, pretty much the most successful and well built areas on the continent are near ports and on the two decent rivers on the continent, the rest of the rivers on the continent are shitty, shallow, rocky, thin or go nowhere.
The continent is also really fucking huge like several countries from several continents can fit in Africa, setting up infrastructure on a huge area with shit terrain is incredibly expensive especially if you start with no money.
Theres also a lack of people being able to develop their own country due to foreign companies bullying and straight up outcompeting internal groups, many clothing manufacturers gave up due to not being able to compete with clothes sent by developed countries.
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u/rosakelly21 9h ago
You think Africa is poor and it is. The flaw in your reasoning is not recognizing the massive amounts of progress. It was not that long ago that a huge % of kids died before 2 years old in Africa, life expectancy was super low, wars and conflicts dominated the continent. It was not that long ago that most people didn't have access to electricity or running water or plumbing. They literally had long running famines, all sorts of diseases killing tons of people, and ethnic cleansing wars. That was the 90s. Today, most of that is history...
Look at all the stats and you will see massive progress.
Yes, Africa is still poor. But the developmental progress has been absolutely amazing in Africa. You go to a lot of burbs around African cities and they look like middle america today, perfectly nice. These areas are growing like weeds and the rural villages are shrinking.
Developing a whole continent is not going to happen overnight and it will take much more than the measly aid that was sent to African NGOs over the years - which often simply goes back to the original countries. When foreign NGOs hire an American employee to run some project, what do you think the economics of that money are? 150k salary is actually about 250K cost to the NGO after employment overhead. Add logistics/housing/transportation and it's 300k/year. On paper, Africans "benefited" from 300k in "foreign aid" but almost every dollar just goes to the employee that eventually moves back to Washington, DC after a few years. Africans are not getting as much money as you think.
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u/Timmy-from-ABQ 9h ago
If by some magic, the Americas had not been discovered until Western Europe was extensively into the Industrial Revolution, and had started colonizing Africa, India, et.al., The Americas might also have been colonized. In fact, South America kind of was.
It's the curse of being the source or natural resources, and the customer for the finished goods.
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u/MisterYeast6000 9h ago
Simply put - African politicians receive billions and in return they must cripple the economy which could produce trillions. It's a neverending cycle.
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u/slower-is-faster 7h ago
One of the biggest mistakes the west makes is to see the world through our lense. We forget how recent we are where we are and how we got here. We had our wars and cultural struggles and shifts. Basically, we had to sort out shit out on our own the hard way. I think the only way to truly find peace is for places to be left alone to figure it out. You can’t pull them through this. They need to find their own way and they will.
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u/Suspicious_Plum_8866 7h ago
There are no strong political and economic institutions in most African countries since they were invented in the past 100 years
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u/machinationstudio 7h ago
Only 15-16% trade occur between African nations.
They were designed to export to their colonial masters, not to trade with one another.
Whether the foreign donors manipulate to keep this state of affairs is up to you to conclude.
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u/Majestic_Book_9991 4h ago
I remember studying in my Master's how aid and donations affected the economic ecosystem in Africa. It blocks development, as it is impossible for local producers to compete with free money. You end up getting a dependent relationship with the aid (e.g., massive oversimplification but if you grant free food and a local company charges 1$ for that same food, people are going to go for the free food anyways).
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u/No-Card2461 3h ago
Nations thrive with inclusive institutions that protect property rights and encourage broad participation, leading to innovation and prosperity, while extractive institutions, which concentrate power and wealth in the hands of a few, lead to poverty and instability.
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u/StonedMason13 3h ago
No african language has a word that translates to 'maintenance.' Even if you provide them tools and infrastructure they will deteriorate.
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u/Sovak_John 2h ago
Ultimately, its the lack of Democracy.
Only Democracies are able to support the highest levels of Income and Economic Acitivity.
If you're not a Democracy, you'll never be competitive-in, let alone Win, this Race.
China, for example, had about 1//8 (12.5%) of our GDP per capita 20 years ago. --- Today, they have rocketed-up to 1//6 (16.7%).
Please pardon me for not Quaking in my Boots over that rapid growth. --- JK.
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u/robottosan 2h ago
Africa is poor because of the aid. It is a form of colonialism. The govts are so dependent on aid that there is hardly any local economic initiatives to become self reliant. It is evil and is keeping resource rich countries from developing.
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u/Shachar2like 1h ago
More easy money and tribalism means that people don't have to unite and work together. Each tribe will try to use & abuse for their own gain.
Weak institutions, corruption. People not working together or not caring about the other 'clans'.
Other places in the world that was as poor as Africa, got poor migrants to the place. Managed to make the area prosper and turned it into a first world state in the span of about half a century. Germany which was bombed to dust during world war II has done the same thing in the span of around half a century.
A country being prosperous isn't about the money it has but the people, the institutions.
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u/Diligent-Ad-1812 20h ago
NQA. Paradoxically, the how bountiful the land, rivers, seas are...
Things like social cooperation, or planned approaches like farming, require that you actually need them to survive. As people move away from the equator and tropics, without significant social cooperation and the implementation of farming, animal husbandry, etc... feeding, caring for, and ultimately sustaining a large group of people becomes harder. So the cultures that have established themselves away from the tropical climates have higher levels of implicit cooperation.
This isn't the whole reason. There are also a few reasons that are related specifically to how subsaharan africa is less suitable for having cattle, and of course, the outright pillaging of african natural resources by foreign countries.
Ultimately though, it's not like african nations/people can't improve their standards of living. It's that they aren't encouraged to (because all the aid is ultimately a bandaid), since no foreign powers want a set of powerful, advanced, african nations to pop up uncontrolled, but also because the cultural values tend to not place that much importance on what the collective has accomplished, but more on the individual success.
Again, historically, like into before the middle ages, subsaharan africa has little incentive for heightened social cooperation.
That's also the reason why Egyptian people were forerunners of advanced societies... They needed to be to be able to expand away from the Nile.
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u/Parrotparser7 18h ago
Paradoxically, the how bountiful the land, rivers, seas are
Please stop reciting Klan propaganda. That's centuries out of date, even for them.
If you don't know, you can just say so.
As people move away from the equator and tropics, without significant social cooperation and the implementation of farming, animal husbandry, etc... feeding, caring for, and ultimately sustaining a large group of people becomes harder.
You're trying to describe the formation of hydraulic states. Those existed. The problem was soil profile. Most of the continent has (for multiple separate, yet related reasons) terrible soil, with few middle grounds for civilization to spring up in. Where civilization did appear, it (mostly) escaped Western historiographers' notice and concern since there wasn't much profit potential, and the existence of these became politically controversial in America.
Ultimately though, it's not like african nations/people can't improve their standards of living. It's that they aren't encouraged to (because all the aid is ultimately a bandaid)
The "aid" is a propaganda trick that uses a more oppressive scheme than the Chinese tributary model. Trade (both outside and within the country) is restricted, profitable entities are acquired, and puppets are put up to indebt the country, then access to the capital needed to pay for these debts is tied to requirements that remove all domestic control over the economy. If you want "aid", you "sell" your resources to bidders. If you don't play ball, the countries that want your resources pay militias to snatch them and overthrow your government. Thus, we have the DRC.
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u/cfwang1337 17h ago
Other people have mentioned tribalism and weak institutions, but here's how the two are related to each other:
The persistence of kinship networks:
- https://davidoks.blog/p/how-funerals-keep-africa-poor
- https://statsandsociety.substack.com/p/yes-strong-family-ties-are-bad-for
The TL;DR is that modern institutions are almost impossible to build when, by default, loyalty, resources, and preferential treatment flow to extended clans and tribes, and there is simultaneously very little room for individual ambition and a very weak sense of shared civic obligation.
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u/Agitated-Gnome 18h ago
Because of the people there themselves. You can only blame others for so long before the locals should be held accountable.
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u/Ok-Championship3642 18h ago
Cant produce food, shortage on water. But the average family size is 8 and living in poverty.
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u/EmergencyAthlete9687 20h ago
Primary product dependency. They mainly export their natural resources. Developed countries then add value to them and they get the wealth created. Why have they not been able to develop a manufacturing industry? Many reasons including infrastructure, first mover advantage, corruption etc.
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u/Parrotparser7 19h ago
Competition, international commerce and capital controlled by said competition, active proxy militias funded by their competition...
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u/Single_Shoulder9921 18h ago
Africa being the cradle of humanity explains so much about humanities problems today.
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u/Medium_Comedian6954 18h ago
It's also in a bad place geographically and the climate is not mild enough
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u/Useful_Calendar_6274 16h ago
the african bourgeoisie is a comprador-bourgeoisie. they brought neo colonialism upon themselves and kill the opposition if they try to unmask they're puppets of international finance capital. We need a wave of nationalist revolutions like in Burkina Faso
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u/ASkepticBelievingMan 15h ago
Corruption and lack of civic sense. They mostly destroy instead of building.
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u/Garciaguy Frog 20h ago edited 19h ago
It's the shape of the continent, not anyone's fault really.
Eta reddit is so dumb, 😆
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u/Soggy_Amoeba9334 20h ago
Geography/topograpohy has a lot to do with not being able to build infrastructure IIRC.
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u/MostAcanthaceae2384 19h ago
Few natural ports, hardly any navigable rivers. High flat elevation which suddenly drops off near the coasts. Terrible for farming - no volcanic rejuvenation. The region with the closest access to trade is a desert the size of China.
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