Kenya

[JHE]

Anyone got a sensible theory on why Africa seems to always suffer these problems?

One aspect of the problem in Africa is that many countries, with borders carved out by imperial powers, have the potential for inter-ethnic conflict built into them.

Such ugly potentials being bloodily realised is definitely NOT a peculiarly African problem. The Balkans are not in Africa! (That's just taking a recent European example - or set of examples. It would be easy to find other, greater examples and more distant examples.)

 

[RhymnRzn]

It's that wicked whore Babylon manipulating the scene for all the covetousness and oppression she can pull off.

According to the severall abilities of the rulers and clergy to organize a year of liberty and restoration, to make a liberal distribution to these evidently impoverished people, and to publish tidings (the prophet Micah says about their spirit, how the rulers and clergy bite with their teeth, saying peace; yet do not put into the mouths, to make peace possible: even meanwhile they are preparing for war): according to their severall abilities, as it is written "to whom much is given, much is required", should these people be kept back from bloodshed.

 

[camouflage]

And there was me looking for a thread to vent my frustrations and dismay at the news again being filled of Africans dying at their own hands.
I don't buy this cultural weakness argument. There are small states like The Gambia that have managed to build themselves a nice country where you talk to a 70 yeard old man and he can't remember the last time someone was murdered!*

Anyone got a sensible theory on why Africa seems to always suffer these problems?


*True Story

Don't you think that in that case the Gambia does not suffer from the same drawbacks as Kenya then? Same thing Botswana IIRC, due to never having been a European colony. Those nations aren't culturally scarred and therfore don't have deep festering seams in their cultures waiting to burst out in riots and war from vast slews of poverty infested shanty town while Western vultures pick over the hills for all the resources and cheep labour and cracked market-sovereignty they can get, occasionally shitting out "aid" and hand-wringing "what are we to do?"-summits to cover the stink.

 

[camouflage]

It's that wicked whore Babylon manipulating the scene for all the covetousness and oppression she can pull off.

According to the severall abilities of the rulers and clergy to organize a year of liberty and restoration, to make a liberal distribution to these evidently impoverished people, and to publish tidings (the prophet Micah says about their spirit, how the rulers and clergy bite with their teeth, saying peace; yet do not put into the mouths, to make peace possible: even meanwhile they are preparing for war): according to their severall abilities, as it is written "to whom much is given, much is required", should these people be kept back from bloodshed.

WTF...

 

[Brainaddict]

Don't you think that in that case the Gambia does not suffer from the same drawbacks as Kenya then? Same thing Botswana IIRC, due to never having been a European colony. Those nations aren't culturally scarred and therfore don't have deep festering seams in their cultures waiting to burst out in riots and war from vast slews of poverty infested shanty town. While Western vultures to pick over the hills for all the resources and cheep labour they can get, aoccasionally shitting out "aid" to cover the stink.

As far as I know the only country in Africa that wasn't a European colony or 'protectorate' was Ethiopia. One of only two countries in the world that weren't colonised apparently (the other being Thailand). Though I can't think who colonised Mongolia off the top of my head - the Ruskies maybe?

The Gambia and Botswana were both under the British according to Wikipedia.

 

[Idris2002]

Botswana, at least, was a protectorate rather than an outright colony.

And while it has done quite well since independence, it's extremely difficult for trade unions to organise, politics remains a tool of the elite in spite of the (under-institutionalised) two-party system, and I've seen reports of child malnutrition there - a disgrace in a country that is supposedly an economic success story.

 

[Brainaddict]

Thing is, though protectorates did get off more lightly, the colonisers still messed about with them by supporting certain leaders and fiddling around with their politics through external pressures and using British Residents and the like.

 

[urbanrevolt]

I'm reading Britain's Gulag- pretty shocking- it suggests that in the 50s up to a million Kenyans were imprisoned and many tens perhaps hundreds of thousands interrogated with torture http://www.amazon.co.uk/Britains-Gulag-Brutal-Empire-Kenya/dp/022407363X

I think colonialism- both the historic vairiety- and neo i.e. present colonialism- ripping off markets, paying local elites to protect business interests has everything to do with the problems of Kenya