I have a set of data here. Since World War II, the world's aid to Africa has exceeded $1 trillion. Both developed and developing countries have helped Africa. The top countries are the United States, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Canada and other developed countries, while the countries that receive the most aid in Africa are Ethiopia, Egypt, Tanzania, Nigeria, Kenya and Congo.
Looking back, these receiving countries are still very poor. It can be said that a large amount of aid has not lifted them out of poverty. In fact, there are reasons for poverty in Africa, including their national characteristics and international humanitarian assistance.
For example, medical facilities in Africa are very backward, and various infectious diseases are prevalent here; In fact, Africa has its own systematic medical tradition and technology, and even some small workshops can produce drugs for these diseases. However, international humanitarian aid sent a lot of free medical materials to Africa, which directly led to the bankruptcy of some local medical industries, because there was no money to earn and no money to carry out medical research and development.
Therefore, international humanitarian assistance has also stifled the development of local medical industry in Africa to a certain extent; People are eagerly waiting for free medical supplies from western countries. Who else will pay for local medical drugs? So poverty in Africa cannot be solved by international support, so what is the truth of poverty in Africa?
International humanitarian organizations are too generous, resulting in a large number of local enterprises unable to develop.
Since the founding of the United Nations, the World Health Organization and the World Trade Organization, these international organizations have begun to allocate a large number of world support materials to Africa based on international humanitarian principles; From infrastructure projects, machinery and equipment, train tracks to medicines, clothing, food and drinking water, it can be said that many countries in the world have provided all-round assistance to Africa.
In particular, some big countries, in the spirit of sympathy and charity, generously gave Africa some materials that their countries did not want. Therefore, African countries and people are waiting for international support every day, and their awareness of self-survival and self-development has gradually dissipated. However, when the world is peaceful and the country is stable, some Africans want to develop the national market economy. They borrowed a lot of loans to develop local industries in China.
However, when a large number of their products were produced for the market, they found a very serious problem. The domestic market is full of similar goods with good quality and low price. The workmanship and cost of these goods are far from those of local industries in Africa, and even many products are directly collected for free. How can African local enterprises, which have just started, seize the market due to such market competition?
Instead of using aid funds for development, Africa has made people more lazy.
Because of the heat in Africa, there are many mosquitoes here, and some Africans see business opportunities. They borrowed money to produce mosquito nets. However, before their mosquito nets were delivered to the market, some international charities donated a large number of mosquito nets, which directly led to the complete bankruptcy of some African businessmen. The generosity of international humanitarian organizations directly leads to the lack of room for survival and development of basic industries in many parts of Africa. Therefore, the local free economic system cannot be established. Can such Africa develop?
If you are lucky enough to travel to Africa, you will find that the local blacks do nothing every day, and many fertile lands in the fields are uncultivated and overgrown with weeds; When you deeply understand the mentality of the local people, you will find that the African mentality has been fascinated by international aid. They no longer devote their energy to survival because they know that international organizations will not let them starve to death. Therefore, under the guidance of this mentality, African blacks would rather concentrate on playing every day than working in the fields.
Poverty Factors in Africa —— Reflections
There is a proverb in China: "Help the poor first". Modern Africa has always been a colony of western countries. Western colonial countries sent technology and equipment to Africa and greedily absorbed African resources. For African blacks, in the eyes of westerners, they have only two functions: labor and goods.
In other words, during the colonial period, the meaning of black existence was to draw resources for westerners or sell them to others as commodities; After nearly a hundred years of colonial rule, western whites only let African blacks do the hardest and least technical work, and all the technical work was done by whites themselves.
So gradually, African blacks have gradually changed from initial reluctance to muddling along. Anyway, they do whatever white people tell them to do, don't think about it. So Africans exercise strong bodies, but lose the ability to think.
The backwardness of education in Africa is left over from colonial times.
At the same time, western whites have been suppressing the ideological enlightenment and educational development of blacks. White people worry that once black people master wisdom, it will bring them endless troubles. Therefore, white people directly put an end to the opportunity for black people to receive education through various means. Without the enlightenment of knowledge, blacks can only learn from the previous generation, but how much wisdom can the previous generation have?
So generations of black people are caught in an infinite loop. They can't get useful knowledge and don't know why the facilities built by white people work so efficiently. I don't know why the white car runs faster than the lion. In this environment, with the passage of time, black people's thinking ability and wisdom enlightenment are gradually assimilated from generation to generation, becoming representatives with developed limbs and simple minds.
Africans' innovative ideas and self-confidence have long been destroyed.
There was once a movie about a black child who invented the technology of irrigating fields with wind-driven water sources. A black child often sees crops in the field, and the planted food crops are constantly wilting because of the hot weather. However, there is nothing adults can do about it. They can only save food by begging for rain again and again.
However, this child doesn't think so. When he first saw the windmill turbine, he suddenly had inspiration. Can a windmill turbine be invented to pump groundwater and achieve the purpose of irrigating grain? However, when he told his father what he thought, his father refuted him mercilessly and told him not to be wishful thinking. This kind of thing is not for us black people to do.
If we are ordinary people, we will basically give up after being severely rejected by adults before our dreams are realized, although in the end, the children overcame all difficulties to develop windmill turbines and successfully irrigated the fields. However, the child's ending is not good. He didn't go to school or become a scientist, but inherited his father's family business and became a farmer.
After listening to this story, you may understand why black people are getting poorer and poorer. In fact, it is not that they have not tried, but that blacks have suffered too much in the past century, and their national pride and self-confidence have been ruthlessly destroyed by whites. Therefore, blacks have endless inferiority complex, which also makes them afraid to touch their own thoughts and knowledge, because they don't believe that they can surpass whites in wisdom.
Poverty Factor in Africa-Environment
There is no doubt that poverty in Africa has its natural causes. Many areas are not suitable for human survival, especially the Sahara desert. There are still many areas where rainfall is insufficient and the natural environment is seriously damaged. Due to various man-made reasons, many ecosystems on their own land have been destroyed.
Not only that, Africans are used to making quick money, so how can they make quick money? Hunting rare animals, cutting down trees and selling water sources, Africans sell all the gifts of nature to westerners as raw materials; However, the gift of nature is only once, and once it is destroyed, it cannot continue to develop. As a result, various environmental dilemmas have emerged in Africa, such as the sharp decline of grassland resources, the sharp expansion of desert areas, and the emergency depletion of groundwater resources.
However, Africans have no consciousness or ability to manage the environment, because they are too poor and they have no national strength to restore the environment. Therefore, under this endless cycle of development, Africa can only sit and watch the desert getting wider and wider and the fertile land getting narrower and narrower.
final result
Although Africa is rich in mineral resources, these are the products of plundering by developed countries, and the exploitation of mineral resources has brought serious damage to the local ecological environment. Although the colonial era is long over, the industrial systems of most African countries are still not perfect, and the aid donated by the international community is used for distribution, not for economic and industrial construction, resulting in Africa still exporting raw materials, and industrial upgrading has a long way to go.
Of course, there are many reasons for poverty in Africa. The population growth is too fast, far exceeding the carrying capacity of the land. The long colonial history has given Africans qualitative thinking, lacking confidence in development and innovation, and even strong self-confidence. However, the unique natural resources in some parts of Africa and a large amount of international aid make Africans lack the sense of hardship and form a lazy character of "starving to death and not drilling wells".
In short, poverty in Africa comes from both the international and the self; But the most important thing is that if Africa wants to eradicate poverty, it must first eradicate ideas. What's the use of giving more money internationally if even the ideas are not laid in place? At the same time, Africans should see their own shortcomings and endure the pain of reform to rectify the country (Africa's political situation is unstable and corruption is particularly serious). Only in this way can African blacks truly embark on the road to prosperity.