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Behind the image: Poverty and 'development pornography'
By Rotimi Sankore
In a world where graphic pictures of starving children are used by development agencies to raise funds from the public in the rich world, ROTIMI SANKORE critiques the phenomenon of ‘development pornograpy’ and argues that it has contributed towards deeper prejudice. New ways must be found to reach the public and more clearly explain the real reasons behind poverty in Africa, he states.
For decades, development and aid charities in the western world have believed the best way to raise funds from the public for their work is to shock people with astonishing pictures of poverty from the 'developing' world. An iconic poster example of these pictures is one of a skeletal looking 2 or 3 year old brown-skinned girl in a dirty torn dress, too weak to chase off dozens of flies settling on her wasted and diseased body and her big round eyes pleading for help. 'A pound means a lot to her'; 'a dollar can mean the difference between life and death'; 'Give something today' are generic riders.
This approach is partly based on the philosophy that 'a picture is worth a thousand words'. Since the development of photography and the mass media, this has been the mantra of any remotely competent photo editor and in modern times campaign and advertising executives.
The Make Poverty History Campaign, Millennium Development Goals and the Commission for Africa have again focused attention on existing poverty in Africa, Asia and Latin America. New targets have been set just as in the 70's and 80's when the target to end world poverty was the year 2000. New targets mean new campaigns and the type of images used to draw attention to the famine in Ethiopia in 1984 and 1985 will need to be updated. Unlike previously however, there are now even more development charities competing for a limited 'market' of givers. The implications are clear. Each image depicting poverty needs to be more graphic than the next to elicit more responses.
As some psychologists have argued, increasing levels of violence on television normalises violence. Subsequent images of violence then need to be more graphic to make an impact. Likewise an addiction to pornography demands increasingly graphic images to provoke even minimum arousal - in this case, a sense of outrage necessary to sustain similar levels of giving. But despite the number of lives saved or enhanced by aid, the most horrendous pictures do not and are incapable of telling the whole story; neither will development charities conclusively solve the problem of poverty that exists worldwide.
Increasingly graphic depictions of poverty projected on a mass scale by an increasing number of organisations over a long period cannot but have an impact on the consciousness of the target audience. That is the desired objective. But there can also be unintended consequences. In this case, the subliminal message unintended or not, is that people in the developing world require indefinite and increasing amounts of help and that without aid charities and donor support, these poor incapable people in Africa or Asia will soon be extinct through disease and starvation. Such simplistic messages foster racist stereotypes, strip entire peoples of their dignity and encourage prejudice.
Some may genuinely think that this is mere exaggeration. But when a leader of the Conservative opposition announces bombastically that under his government, all immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers would be subjected to tests for tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS in order to save the National Health Service millions of pounds, you can tell he thinks he is on to a vote winner. He either sincerely believes most people from those places carry dangerous diseases, or his strategists believe this will tap into the fears and prejudices of millions of voters. Either option is offensive and no amount of denials will avoid the fact that such prejudice is based on negative stereotypes. And where have most of the negative stereotypes come from? Your guess is as good as mine. Periodic appeals for donations using graphic and stereotypical images of poverty reach millions every year. The intentions may be good, but some of the consequences are not. Additionally many Africans and Asians resent negative stereotypes of their continents as anybody would, and find them offensive no matter what cause they are employed for.
Over time, there has been gradual but increasing awareness that pictures can lie even when they are a 'true' likeness of an instant in time. In the former Eastern bloc, images of poverty stricken homeless people in the 'West' were the only picture many had of capitalism. In today's world of digital media and convergence there is a clear understanding by media experts that often-repeated images can and do create a false consciousness of what is real.
While the poverty is real, the subliminal message development 'pornography' conveys is unreal. There has been some development alongside the poverty and the causes of poverty are far more complicated than single pictures can ever convey. In Africa for instance, previous undemocratic rule facilitated or conveniently accepted by many western governments - to fight off the threat of 'communism' - has ensured institutional imbalances in the development of the political and democratic process. As a result former dictators and their cronies have exclusively accumulated fabulous wealth necessary to meet absurd financial conditions set by biased electoral bodies in many countries. Actual electoral expenses that are unregulated run into hundreds of thousands of dollars and in huge countries such as Nigeria (population 130 million) even millions. And then there is the pre and actual ballot rigging using the mass media and state apparatus. Add to this layers of repressive laws - originally introduced by colonial governments to suppress restless natives - that have led to the death, imprisonment, intimidation and exile of tens of thousands of intellectuals, activists, lawyers, journalists, trade unionists, students and scientists and it is clear that most of those managing these economies and societies are not the best qualified to do so.
One dares not even go back to the consequences of 400 years of slavery that directly or indirectly killed and took away over a hundred million Africans and in the process disrupted all social and political development for four centuries, or subsequent colonial repression that in some places lasted over a 100 years. Most of Africa has been independent for only between 10 and 46 years and for most of that period many countries were ruled by left and right wing or simply mad dictators supported by cold war enemies jostling for strategic influence.
With all the slavery, colonialism, mass murder, repression, looting, corruption, trade imbalances, an doutrageous interests on dubious loans that have gone on for 500 years it is no wonder the continent is bruised and battered. No continent subjected to the same conditions would have fared better.
No pictures can explain this. What development 'pornography' shows is the result, not the cause of five centuries of aggressive exploitation of a continent. The relatively smoother development in parts of Asia exists because no industrial scale slavery and destruction of society was imposed there for four centuries. Unlike in Africa, the foundation of most Asian civilisation and culture remained largely intact. Colonialism suspended the natural trajectory of development in Asia that then continued once its yoke was lifted. Were it not for the immortality of the pyramids and scattered records of past African civilisations, the entire continent might have well been declared a historical wasteland.
Without clear explanations of why poverty persists in the developing world, the western public will tire of giving and sooner or later there will be a backlash; some argue that such fatigue has already begun to set in. For now negative stereotypes may already have been so ingrained that the level of ignorant prejudice that facilitated the transatlantic slave trade, the holocaust against European Jews, Apartheid and genocides from the Balkans and Cambodia to Rwanda may have already taken root.
This is no exaggeration. The first step towards institutionalised prejudice, exploitation and violence has always been a false mass belief that other peoples or sections of society are unequal, sub-human, vermin, dangerous, treacherous or whatever is propagated until it becomes an 'accepted truth'. The most universal example of consequences of such false beliefs is the exploitation of and violence perpetuated against women in all societies. Development 'pornography' has unwittingly contributed towards prejudice and must find new ways to reach the public before its good intentions irreversibly facilitate bad ones. Most importantly, what the developing world needs is a reversal of the institutional imbalances that have facilitated repression, exploitation, incompetence and corruption and a pledge from western interests to allow their people to freely define their future.
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African British perspective on the politics of Live 8, G8 and the UK media
In the focus on Africa in 2005, it has often been hard to find African voices as opposed to European “experts”, while self-proclaimed saviours like Bob Geldof have been all to quick to declare, for example, that ‘a great justice has been done’ by the G8 meetings. A recent report by Ligali, an organisation that campaigns for social, economic and cultural equality on behalf of the African community in Britain, highlights these contradictions and concludes that the solutions to Africa’s problems do not reside in the corridors of Westminster or the White House but will come from African people themselves.
Africa is helpless. Africa is poor. Africa is, according to the song, a ‘world of dread and fear’ (Do They Know It’s Christmas? (Feed the World) written by Bob Geldof and Midge Ure)
These myths have pervaded the British psyche and its media for decades. The ignorance, racism and misinformation that inform these culturally and politically constructed illusions were particularly prevalent earlier this year preceding the G8 Summit at Gleneagles. The Summit and the subsequent rowdiness stirred by its supporters - the most boisterous and arrogant of who was the musician, Bob Geldof – ensured that people throughout the British Isles were forced to confront one of the greatest injustices perpetrated by humankind on their fellow human; the reality of how centuries of economic and human exploitation that has resulted in the people of the Continent of Africa facing poverty, malnutrition, disease and ultimately, cultural disempowerment.
Unfortunately, the opportunity to seriously and intelligently discuss the issues and solutions that relate to Africa’s development and empowerment was lost as an overtly racist motivation informed the media agenda and ensured that not only were the same old myths propagated about Africa but that new ones were added to the mix. In addition, the guilt complex that inhabits the British psyche was easily pacified by white wrist bands or, as in the case of many a right-wing newspaper editor, by attempting to dissolve any sense of responsibility that people in the West might feel for repairing the damage their politics and economies have inflicted on African countries.
As an organisation whose primary work currently involves monitoring the media for offensive representation and actively challenging the inaccuracies and inequality inherent in that representation, we have noted the flourishing trend of myth making and the equally prevalent tendency to actively silence informed African voices who talk about African affairs in favour of European experts who talk from a eurocentric perspective about African affairs, ultimately to the benefit of their respective nations. This becomes increasingly problematic when the solutions that the so-called European experts want to instigate are in direct contradiction with what African people themselves want and need.
Even as a media organisation, we have found it challenging to say the least, to find African voices in the mainstream media talking about African affairs. And so, the Making of an Impoverished History was written. Initially, it was to be a brief article summarising the media’s approach to Africa but we soon realised that ‘brief’ was perhaps not the way to go about this. We had to contextualise the matter, historically and globally, and so embarked on making this a more comprehensive but accessible report that provides a more joined up picture of the politics behind the G8 Summit, the Live 8 event and its figure head, Bob Geldof, and the British media debate about Africa.
In highlighting these issues, came the inevitability of dealing with the notion of giving charity versus the responsibility of encouraging justice and how the British media have fought against the latter with strategies of defence and denial. This gave rise to headlines including ‘Why I wont be squandering any more money on Africa' and documentaries such as Channel 4’s ‘Living with Aids’ which, along with a barrage of other media outputs reinforced the notion that Africa’s current situation is the fault of African people and therefore people of the West need not feel a sense of responsibility about African issues. Of course, when you look into the instances of corruption, fraud and commercial exploitation that occur on the Continent, a European, American and most recently Asian corporate or indeed governmental influence is not far behind. From the rampant practice of selling cheap and second-hand rifles to just about anyone who will pay the right price, to the contemptuous reluctance of Western banking institutions to relinquish the financial benefits they get from holding the accounts of a small number of corrupt African leaders, corruption and exploitative profit making has proved to be a very Western affair.
The Make Poverty History campaign, the Live 8 concert and the Geldof agenda also pervaded the media reporting. Here, the media found an apparently liberal guise behind which they could conceal their prejudices and racist presumptions. Bob Geldof, far from being the liberal saviour of Africa as many referred to him as, displayed his utter contempt for African opinion in the way he actively ignored it and ensured that his voice, his agenda and his vision of Africa was viewed as the definitive stopping point. At the time, this was hard enough for African people to bare but following the redundant exercise that was the G8 Summit and the way in which its seemingly laudable objectives have subsequently fallen, and some would say been pulled apart, Sir Bob’s announcement that ‘a great justice has been done’ is not only arrogant but disenfranchising and frustrating for the African people who know that his ridiculous assertion could not be further from the truth. Of course, now the media are suffering from Africa fatigue and therein sets the apathy.
In researching this report, it became obvious that for African people, the solutions to Africa’s issues are multifaceted and originate not in the corridors of Westminster or the White House but from African people themselves. The stories that we will rarely if ever hear about in the media are some of the success stories of African development, the workable solutions designed for and by us, examples of good governance and the revolution needed to overturn trading injustice. Some of these are addressed in our report but in truth, because of its specific remit, it is something that will have to be covered in depth at a later date. However, we have always been a solutions orientated organisation and therefore ended the report with ways in which we can continue to aid our own progress and the rebuilding of our great Continent. The British government clearly have responsibilities including the enforcing of anti-corruption legislation and stemming its drain of skilled African people from the Continent. However, we also focused on some of the ways in which the African Union, African governments and African people in Diaspora can develop Africa through self-determinate means.
* This is a summarised version of a report produced by Ligali (pronounced lee-ga-lee), entitled “The Making of an Impoverished History”. Ligali is the African British Equality Authority. African British is the term now used to describe the community previously mislabelled as Afro Caribbean, Black British, UK Black, Coloured and Black. It embraces all British nationals with antecedents originating directly from Africa or indirectly via African diasporic communities, such as those in the Caribbean and South America. Ligali actively campaigns for social, economic and cultural equality on behalf of the African community. Ligali is a non profit voluntary organisation. Through investigation and monitoring, we aim to challenge, identify and recommend workable solutions to current social issues that refuse to recognise the equal and inalienable rights of African people in the UK. Our main objectives are to turn talk into action and apathy into productivity.
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Band Aid and 'self-obsessed, angst-driven Western do-gooders'
By Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem
The Band Aid Album, ‘Do they know its Christmas time’, which sold millions of copies and directly raised even more millions of dollars for the relief of famine in Ethiopia 20 years ago is again being released in time for this Christmas. As in 1984 it is widely expected that the album will be a runaway success.
Apart from the millions of dollars raised then and to be raised now, what both the album and the Live Aid concert it inspired in July 1985 (which was watched reportedly by over 1.5 billion people across the world) achieved was to raise awareness about hunger, starvation and famine in Africa. The bloated tummies of underfed babies clutching at emaciated breasts of a hunger-ravished mother or the multitudes of flies and army of other insects holidaying on the mouths and bodies of desperate children, women and men in refugee camps became the dominant image of Africa in the global media. What we saw with our eyes on televisions became engraved permanently on our minds. It was successful in causing almost a stampede of humanitarian concern and focus on Africa.
However it had its own unintended consequences then and twenty years on these negative consequences have a greater impact in that they perpetuate the popular perception that Africa is a basket case continent and Africans are a hopeless and helpless people.
The fact that the same song could be re released without altering the lyrics and with similar accompanying horrible pictures on televisions, in newspapers and other more widely accessible multi media today than then speaks volumes. It is either an admission of failure of previous efforts or a confirmation that Africa is indeed a basket .
I am particularly irked about that dubious line: ‘Thank God tonight its them instead of you’! The only variation on the theme is that instead of targeting Ethiopia last time around it is Sudan that is competing for the sympathy of the West as Africa's most hellish of hells!
It is an indictment of Africa's leaders and also the powerful countries, individuals and institutions within the international community that despite all the awareness and pangs of conscience in the last 20 years, fellow human beings can still be facing such penury, humiliation and starvation in a world with ‘enough for our needs but not enough for our greed’ as Mahatma Ghandi once put it.
However as Africans we can be disgusted, ashamed and rightly critical of the deliberate use/abuse of those horrible images that strip us of our dignity and humanity, but we should be more outraged that Africans (through acts of both omission and commission) have been largely responsible for such continuous misery inflicted on our own peoples. Band Aid, Live Aid or any of the busy body Western NGOs raising huge sums of money on these images did not create them, they are merely exploiting them for their multi-million dollar humanitarian mega business. Therefore the first responsibility and admission of guilt is ours and ours alone. It is up to us to put an end to the brutalisation and extreme pauperisation of our own peoples.
But the Humanitarian agencies also have to ask themselves whether their chosen methods have worked or are working. Or if the end now justifies the means and that end is about their unaccountable power to play god with the destiny of poor people by merchandising our people’s suffering. They often defend the use of the bad images as necessary to raise awareness and prick the conscience of the world (most of the time they mean, Europeans and Americans!). One is bound to ask of Live Aid and Band Aid that after 20 years what the harvest of this conscience safari has been if they have to use the same images and record two decades later.
It has always intrigued me why the conscience of the West can only be pricked by degradation of other peoples. The process of getting westerners to part with their donations end up dehumanizing and degrading Africa. Instead of creating the much needed understanding and solidarity it creates an unequal power relation with psychological hang-ups about superior and inferior peoples; one is a permanent donor and the other is a permanent supplicant. That one-way street does not lead to understanding, rather it institutionalizes a ‘we know best’ attitude on the part of the humanitarian industry. It also makes the humanitarian agencies married to bad news from Africa, thereby becoming professional merchants of our misery. It will seem that the worse the situation is the better for their fund raising drives! Needless to say that this breeds cynicism among those who are supposed to be grateful for the kind help they are receiving.
The more important lesson of the 20 years of Band Aid must surely be bringing into sharp relief the naiveté of those years that symbolic acts of genuine human solidarity will somehow change the hearts and minds of the powerful both in Africa and internationally. They can throw a few coins at the problem to appease immediate pressure and gain public mileage but the real change will only come from raising the power questions that turn drought into famine. It is politics and power that makes Africans seemingly more vulnerable to hunger and starvation than other peoples. Africa is not a poor continent but our peoples are poor because they are powerless over their resources. People are powerless in their countries and our countries are impotent in global power relations. That is why we get fleeced on all fronts.
Charity may offer an instant fire brigade service but it cannot be a substitute for sustainable long-term solutions. Why is it that Ethiopia that received massive humanitarian support twenty years ago is today one of the least recipients of long-term development aid in Africa? Even if it gets more help in aid, as long as it continues to get bad terms of trade and returns for its coffee and other raw materials, like other African countries, it will continue to run a deficit economy needing aid. Many of our countries especially those beloved by IMF/World Bank and Western Countries as ‘doing well’ have become aid addicts while the humanitarian interventionists and NGOs have become aid pushers. The extreme poverty faced by many Africans in a majority of our countries is structural and unless both the internal and external dimensions of that unequal power relation are transformed I can assure you that in another 20 years, when Bob Geldof and many of his original collaborators would have become Old Age Pensioners (OAPs) they may still be organizing Band Aid 3. I think Saint Bob and Bono in the past few years have come to realize this and that's why they are talking less about charity but more in terms of trade, equity, global justice, debt cancellation, etc. Soon they will have to engage with reparation for Africa for both historical and contemporary depletion and pillage of the continent and her peoples and also the structural linkage between the prosperity of the West and the poverty of global humanity. This shift is necessary in order to build a global alliance (rather than self -obsessed angst -driven Western do-gooders and their selective conscience) that can truly make poverty history in this new millennium.
* Dr Tajudeen Abdul-Raheem is General-Secretary of the Pan African Movement, Kampala (Uganda) and Co-Director of Justice Africa
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Aewa, There is only so much that the west can do for africa. Corrupt Afican governments have been the major problem, as they have been in much of the third world. Lets make one thing clear. Western tax payers and companies do not have a moral responsibility to gibve the third world all of our money. With that in mind lets hear some possible soulutions from your point of view.
-------------------- God Bless President Bush Posts: 5822 | From: USA | Registered: Jan 2004
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Hore, your comment is EXACTLY what this thread is pointing out. First off, after YEARS of colonialist exploitation, Europeans try and act as if they have the MORAL high ground, by acting as if Africans are begging for hand outs. Pictures like those of feed the children and other groups only serve to reinforce this opinion and DONT really present a SOLUTION to the problem. Then, on top of that, act as if the companies in the third world are NOT the reason BEHIND the corruption of the governments. The governments are CORRUPT because this is the ONLY way that western countries can continue to RAPE the country of all its resources without the AFRICANS being able to profit from their OWN resources. This is not an issue of GIVING Africans ANYTHING, it is an issue of EXCLUDING Africans from ANY opportunity to profit off of their own natural wealth. If it wasnt for this form of NEO COLONIALISM, Kwame Nkrumah and Patrice Lumumba would NOT have died, there would be a United States of Africa and there would be AFRICAN owned companies profitting off of the resources of the land and generating wealth for the people of Africa, not the West. The corrupt forms of government in Africa started in the time of Nkrumah and Lumumba, supported by the West, for the sole purpose of PREVENTING Africans from gaining TRUE political and economic control of their lives and destiny. Of course, westerners do not want us to see this TRUTH, they want to live in a fantasy world where European companies are PURELY innocent bystanders in the strife of Africa, where Africans are TOTALLY incapable of doing for themselves without WESTERN hand outs. This has NOTHING to do with what is going on in Africa and a free Africa has NOTHING to do with getting hand outs from the west. A free Africa is an Africa WITHOUT Western meddling in the affairs of sovereign African countries, by providing arms and support for rebels in order to main the free flow of cheap resources to Western manufacturers.
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the problem is the african goverments not investing in their countries infrastructure..and not useing their resources wisely.
I don't fault the starveing people in that country as much as I do the people in power in them countries..
Posts: 1172 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by mike rozier: the problem is the african goverments not investing in their countries infrastructure..and not useing their resources wisely.
I don't fault the starveing people in that country as much as I do the people in power in them countries..
NO. The problem is the western countries and companies that support these same corrupt officials so that they can RAPE the countries of their mineral wealth. During the cold war Africa was split between the Eastern and Western powers. Corrupt dictators were blindly supported by the West to keep the Russians at bay, similar to the way we supported Saddam in the past. This legacy remains even though the Russians no longer are a threat. Focusing on these governments without those that support them, and the so-called rebel movements, like Executive Outcomes, is another example of Europeans DENYING their role in the situation in Africa and trying to play innocent and self-righteous.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Originally posted by mike rozier: the problem is the african goverments not investing in their countries infrastructure..and not useing their resources wisely.
I don't fault the starveing people in that country as much as I do the people in power in them countries..
this is not true anymore,africa is changing.there were always states by the way that invested in there infrastucture,some more than others,but today things are happening overall more so.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by mike rozier: the problem is the african goverments not investing in their countries infrastructure..and not useing their resources wisely.
I don't fault the starveing people in that country as much as I do the people in power in them countries..
this is not true anymore,africa is changing.there were always states by the way that invested in there infrastucture,some more than others,but today things are happening overall more so.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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MANY AFRICAN STATES do have a certain amount of control of the resources,some more than others.
let's not by into the western media hype that africa is helpless because it is not. that is the purpose of the post in ther first place.
read the more postive news about africa below. many african states now are and heading in the right direction.
growth is strong .
come on guys let's not fall in to horemheb trap.i hope i did not waste my time showing african cities,roads,schools and other things are being built and rebuilt. I HAD ENOUGH of this negative news,and when there is bad news or bad news told by the racist or misinformed,it is not even the whole truth,and some cases just flat out lies. here is some info first posted by ausar.
In the waiting area of a large office complex in Accra, Ghana, it's standing room only as citizens with bundles of cash line up to buy shares of a mutual fund that has yielded an average 60 percent annually for the past seven years. They're entrusting their hard-earned cash to a local company called Databank, which invests in stock markets in Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana and Kenya that consistently rank among the world's top growth markets.
Chances are you haven't read or heard anything about Databank in your daily newspaper or on the evening news, where the little coverage of Africa that's offered focuses almost exclusively on the negative -- the virulent spread of HIV/AIDS, genocide in Darfur and the chaos of Zimbabwe.
Yes, Africa is a land of wars, poverty and corruption. The situation in places like Darfur, Sudan, desperately cries out for more media attention and international action. But Africa is also a land of stock markets, high rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of Africa that functions. And this Africa also needs media attention, if it's to have any chance of fully joining the global economy.
Africa's media image comes at a high cost, even, at the extreme, the cost of lives. Stories about hardship and tragedy aim to tug at our heartstrings, getting us to dig into our pockets or urge Congress to send more aid. But no country or region ever developed thanks to aid alone. Investment, and the job and wealth creation it generates, is the only road to lasting development. That's how China, India and the Asian Tigers did it.
Yet while Africa, according to the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corp., offers the highest return in the world on direct foreign investment, it attracts the least. Unless investors see the Africa that's worthy of investment, they won't put their money into it. And that lack of investment translates into job stagnation, continued poverty and limited access to education and health care.
Consider a few facts: The Ghana Stock Exchange regularly tops the list of the world's highest-performing stock markets. Botswana, with its A+ credit rating, boasts one of the highest per capita government savings rates in the world, topped only by Singapore and a handful of other fiscally prudent nations. Cell phones are making phenomenal profits on the continent. Brand-name companies like Coca-Cola, GM, Caterpillar and Citibank have invested in Africa for years and are quite bullish on the future.
The failure to show this side of Africa creates a one-dimensional caricature of a complex continent. Imagine if 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and school shootings were all that the rest of the world knew about America.
I recently produced a documentary on entrepreneurship and private enterprise in Africa. Throughout the year-long process, I came to realize how all of us in the media -- even those with a true love of the continent -- portray it in a way that's truly to its detriment.
The first cameraman I called to film the documentary laughed and said, "Business and Africa, aren't those contradictory terms?" The second got excited imagining heart-warming images of women's co-ops and market stalls brimming with rustic crafts. Several friends simply assumed I was doing a documentary on AIDS. After all, what else does one film in Africa?
The little-known fact is that businesses are thriving throughout Africa. With good governance and sound fiscal policies, countries like Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Senegal and many more are bustling, their economies growing at surprisingly robust rates.
Private enterprise is not just limited to the well-behaved nations. You can't find a more war-ravaged land than Somalia, which has been without a central government for more than a decade. The big surprise? Private enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu has the cheapest cell phone rates on the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern city of Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest satellite phone technology. The electricity works. When the state collapsed in 1991, the national airline went out of business. Today, there are five private carriers and price wars keep the cost of tickets down. This is not the Somalia you see in the media.
Obviously life there would be dramatically improved by good governance -- or even just some governance -- but it's also true that, through resilience and resourcefulness, Somalis have been able to create a functioning society.
Most African businesses suffer from an extreme lack of infrastructure, but the people I met were too determined to let this stop them. It just costs them more. Without reliable electricity, most businesses have to use generators. They have to dig bore-holes for a dependable water source. Telephone lines are notoriously out of service, but cell phones are filling the gap.
Throughout Africa, what I found was a private sector working hard to find African solutions to African problems. One example that will always stick in my mind is the CEO of Vodacom Congo, the largest cell phone company in that country. Alieu Conteh started his business while the civil war was still raging. With rebel troops closing in on the airport in Kinshasa, no foreign manufacturer would send in a cell phone tower, so Conteh got locals to collect scrap metal, which they welded together to build one. That tower still stands today.
As I interviewed successful entrepreneurs, I was continually astounded by their ingenuity, creativity and steadfastness. These people are the future of the continent. They are the ones we should be talking to about how to move Africa forward. Instead, the media concentrates on victims or government officials, and as anyone who has worked in Africa knows, government is more often a part of the problem than of the solution.
When the foreign media descend on the latest crisis, the person they look to interview is invariably the foreign savior, an aid worker from the United States or Europe. African saviors are everywhere, delivering aid on the ground. But they don't seem to be in our cultural belief system. It's not just the media, either. Look at the literature put out by almost any nongovernmental organization. The better ones show images of smiling African children -- smiling because they have been helped by the NGO. The worst promote the extended-belly, flies-on-the-face cliche of Africa, hoping that the pain of seeing those images will fill their coffers. "We hawk poverty," one NGO worker admitted to me.
Last November, ABC's "Primetime Live" aired a special on Britain's Prince Harry and his work with AIDS children in Lesotho. The segment, titled "The Forgotten Kingdom: Prince Harry in Lesotho," painted the tiny nation as a desperate, desolate place. The program's message was clear: This helpless nation at last had a knight -- or prince -- in shining armor.
By the time the charity addresses came up at the end, you were ready to give, and that's good. Lesotho needs help with its AIDS problem. But would it really have hurt the story to add that this land-locked nation with few natural resources has jump-started its economy by aggressively courting foreign investment? The reality is that it's anything but a "forgotten kingdom," as a dramatic increase in exports has made it the top beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a duty-free, quota-free U.S.-Africa trade agreement. More than 50,000 people have gotten jobs through the country's initiatives. Couldn't the program have portrayed an African country that was in need of assistance, but was neither helpless nor a victim?
Still the simplistic portrayals come. A recent episode of the popular NBC drama "Medical Investigation" was about an anthrax scare in Philadelphia. The source of the deadly spores? Some illegal immigrants from Africa playing their drums in a local market, unknowingly infecting innocent passersby. Typical: If it's a deadly disease, the scriptwriters make it come from Africa.
Most of the time, Africa is simply not on the map. The continent's booming stock markets are almost never mentioned in newspaper financial pages. How often is an African country -- apart, perhaps, from South Africa or Egypt or Morocco -- featured in a newspaper travel section? Even the listing of worldwide weather includes only a few African cities.
The result of this portrait is an Africa we can't relate to. It seems so foreign to us, so different and incomprehensible. Since we can't relate to it, we ignore it.
There are lots of reasons for the media's neglect of Africa: bean counters in the newsroom and the high cost of international coverage, the belief that American viewers aren't interested in international stories, and the infotainment of news. There's also journalists' reluctance to pursue so-called "positive stories." We all know that such stories don't win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening in Africa doesn't need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That's not a "positive" story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. I imagine a lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.
My independent film was made possible by funding from the World Bank, for which I am extremely grateful. But the bank wouldn't have had to step in if the media had been doing their job -- showing all Africans in all facets of their lives. In a business that's supposed to cover man-bites-dog stories, the idea that Africa doesn't work is a dog-bites-man story. If the media are really looking for news, they'd look at the ways that Africa, despite all the odds, does work.
Carol Pineau, a journalist with more than 10 years of experience reporting on Africa, is the producer and director of the film "Africa: Open for Business," which premiered last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
[/QUOTE]
quote:Originally posted by kenndo: great post ausar,put more up like this in the future because this is the type of talk i like,but one thing ,india and china have not made it all the way yet, but they are getting there fast.
Countries for which no information is available are not included in this list. Rank Country GDP - per capita (PPP) Date of Information 1 Bermuda $ 69,900 2004 est. 2 Luxembourg $ 55,600 2005 est. 3 Equatorial Guinea $ 50,200 2005 est. 4 United Arab Emirates $ 43,400 2005 est. 5 Norway $ 42,300 2005 est. 6 United States $ 41,800 2005 est. 7 Ireland $ 41,000 2005 est. 8 Guernsey $ 40,000 2003 est. 9 Jersey $ 40,000 2003 est. 10 British Virgin Islands $ 38,500 2004 est. 11 Iceland $ 35,600 2005 est. 12 Denmark $ 34,600 2005 est. 13 San Marino $ 34,600 2001 est. 14 Canada $ 34,000 2005 est. 15 Hong Kong $ 32,900 2005 est. 16 Austria $ 32,700 2005 est. 17 Cayman Islands $ 32,300 2004 est. 18 Switzerland $ 32,300 2005 est. 19 Australia $ 31,900 2005 est. 20 Japan $ 31,500 2005 est. 21 Belgium $ 31,400 2005 est. 22 Finland $ 30,900 2005 est. 23 Netherlands $ 30,500 2005 est. 24 Germany $ 30,400 2005 est. 25 United Kingdom $ 30,300 2005 est. 26 France $ 29,900 2005 est. 27 Sweden $ 29,800 2005 est. 28 Italy $ 29,200 2005 est. 29 Isle of Man $ 28,500 2003 est. 30 European Union $ 28,100 2005 est. 31 Singapore $ 28,100 2005 est. 32 Gibraltar $ 27,900 2000 est. 33 Taiwan $ 27,600 2005 est. 34 Qatar $ 27,400 2005 est. 35 Monaco $ 27,000 2000 est. 36 Spain $ 25,500 2005 est. 37 New Zealand $ 25,200 2005 est. 38 Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) $ 25,000 2002 est. 39 Liechtenstein $ 25,000 1999 est. 40 Israel $ 24,600 2005 est. 41 Andorra $ 24,000 2004 42 Brunei $ 23,600 2003 est. 43 Bahrain $ 23,000 2005 est. 44 Greece $ 22,200 2005 est. 45 Faroe Islands $ 22,000 2001 est. 46 Macau $ 22,000 2004 47 Aruba $ 21,800 2004 est. 48 Cyprus $ 21,600 NA 49 Slovenia $ 21,600 2005 est. 50 Korea, South $ 20,400 2005 est. 51 Bahamas, The $ 20,200 2005 est. 52 Greenland $ 20,000 2001 est. 53 Malta $ 19,900 2005 est. 54 Czech Republic $ 19,500 2005 est. 55 Portugal $ 19,300 2005 est. 56 Kuwait $ 19,200 2005 est. 57 Puerto Rico $ 18,600 2005 est. 58 French Polynesia $ 17,500 2003 est. 59 Barbados $ 17,000 2005 est. 60 Estonia $ 16,700 2005 est. 61 Trinidad and Tobago $ 16,700 2005 est. 62 Hungary $ 16,300 2005 est. 63 Slovakia $ 16,100 2005 est. 64 Netherlands Antilles $ 16,000 2004 est. 65 Guam $ 15,000 2005 est. 66 New Caledonia $ 15,000 2003 est. 67 Virgin Islands $ 14,500 2002 est. 68 Martinique $ 14,400 2003 est. 69 Lithuania $ 13,700 2005 est. 70 Poland $ 13,300 2005 est. 71 Latvia $ 13,200 2005 est. 72 Oman $ 13,200 2005 est. 73 Argentina $ 13,100 2005 est. 74 Mauritius $ 13,100 2005 est. 75 Saudi Arabia $ 12,800 2005 est. 76 Northern Mariana Islands $ 12,500 2000 est. 77 Malaysia $ 12,100 2005 est. 78 South Africa $ 12,000 2005 est. 79 Croatia $ 11,600 2005 est. 80 Turks and Caicos Islands $ 11,500 2002 est. 81 Libya $ 11,400 2005 est. 82 Chile $ 11,300 2005 est. 83 Costa Rica $ 11,100 2005 est. 84 Russia $ 11,100 2005 est. 85 Antigua and Barbuda $ 11,000 2002 est. 86 Botswana $ 10,500 2005 est. 87 Mexico $ 10,000 2005 est. 88 Bulgaria $ 9,600 2005 est. 89 Uruguay $ 9,600 2005 est. 90 World $ 9,500 2005 est. 91 Saint Kitts and Nevis $ 8,800 2002 est. 92 Brazil $ 8,400 2005 est. 93 French Guiana $ 8,300 2003 est. 94 Iran $ 8,300 2005 est. 95 Tunisia $ 8,300 2005 est. 96 Thailand $ 8,300 2005 est. 97 Kazakhstan $ 8,200 2005 est. 98 Turkey $ 8,200 2005 est. 99 Romania $ 8,200 2005 est. 100 Turkmenistan $ 8,000 2005 est. 101 Colombia $ 7,900 2005 est. 102 Guadeloupe $ 7,900 2003 est. 103 Macedonia $ 7,800 2005 est. 104 Seychelles $ 7,800 2002 est. 105 Anguilla $ 7,500 2002 est. 106 Algeria $ 7,200 2005 est. 107 Panama $ 7,200 2005 est. 108 Ukraine $ 7,200 2005 est. 109 Cyprus $ 7,135 NA 110 Dominican Republic $ 7,000 2005 est. 111 Saint Pierre and Miquelon $ 7,000 2001 est. 112 Namibia $ 7,000 2005 est. 113 Belarus $ 6,900 2005 est. 114 Belize $ 6,800 2005 est. 115 Bosnia and Herzegovina $ 6,800 2005 est. 116 Gabon $ 6,800 2005 est. 117 China $ 6,800 2005 est. 118 Cape Verde $ 6,200 2005 est. 119 Reunion $ 6,200 2005 est. 120 Lebanon $ 6,200 2005 est. 121 Venezuela $ 6,100 2005 est. 122 Fiji $ 6,000 2005 est. 123 Peru $ 5,900 2005 est. 124 American Samoa $ 5,800 2000 est. 125 Palau $ 5,800 2001 est. 126 Samoa $ 5,600 2002 est. 127 Dominica $ 5,500 2003 est. 128 Saint Lucia $ 5,400 2002 est. 129 Philippines $ 5,100 2005 est. 130 Cook Islands $ 5,000 2001 est. 131 Grenada $ 5,000 2002 est. 132 Nauru $ 5,000 2005 est. 133 Serbia and Montenegro $ 5,000 2005 est. 134 Swaziland $ 5,000 2005 est. 135 Albania $ 4,900 2005 est. 136 Paraguay $ 4,900 2005 est. 137 Azerbaijan $ 4,800 2005 est. 138 El Salvador $ 4,700 2005 est. 139 Jordan $ 4,700 2005 est. 140 Guatemala $ 4,700 2005 est. 141 Guyana $ 4,600 2005 est. 142 Armenia $ 4,500 2005 est. 143 Jamaica $ 4,400 2005 est. 144 Sri Lanka $ 4,300 2005 est. 145 Ecuador $ 4,300 2005 est. 146 Morocco $ 4,200 2005 est. 147 Suriname $ 4,100 2005 est. 148 Egypt $ 3,900 2005 est. 149 Maldives $ 3,900 2002 est. 150 Syria $ 3,900 2005 est. 151 Micronesia, Federated States of $ 3,900 2002 est. 152 Wallis and Futuna $ 3,800 2004 est. 153 Indonesia $ 3,600 2005 est. 154 Niue $ 3,600 2000 est. 155 Cuba $ 3,500 2005 est. 156 Iraq $ 3,400 2005 est. 157 Montserrat $ 3,400 2002 est. 158 Georgia $ 3,300 2005 est. 159 India $ 3,300 2005 est. 160 Angola $ 3,200 2005 est. 161 Bolivia $ 2,900 2005 est. 162 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines $ 2,900 2002 est. 163 Nicaragua $ 2,900 2005 est. 164 Vanuatu $ 2,900 2003 est. 165 Honduras $ 2,900 2005 est. 166 Vietnam $ 2,800 2005 est. 167 Mayotte $ 2,600 2003 est. 168 Papua New Guinea $ 2,600 2005 est. 169 Ghana $ 2,500 2005 est. 170 Saint Helena $ 2,500 1998 est. 171 Lesotho $ 2,500 2005 est. 172 Cameroon $ 2,400 2005 est. 173 Pakistan $ 2,400 2005 est. 174 Marshall Islands $ 2,300 2001 est. 175 Zimbabwe $ 2,300 2005 est. 176 Tonga $ 2,300 2002 est. 177 Cambodia $ 2,200 2005 est. 178 Mauritania $ 2,200 2005 est. 179 Bangladesh $ 2,100 2005 est. 180 Sudan $ 2,100 2005 est. 181 Kyrgyzstan $ 2,100 2005 est. 182 Guinea $ 2,000 2005 est. 183 Gambia, The $ 1,900 2005 est. 184 Laos $ 1,900 2005 est. 185 Mongolia $ 1,900 2005 est. 186 Moldova $ 1,800 2005 est. 187 Senegal $ 1,800 2005 est. 188 Uzbekistan $ 1,800 2005 est. 189 Uganda $ 1,800 2005 est. 190 Burma $ 1,700 2005 est. 191 Solomon Islands $ 1,700 2002 est. 192 Togo $ 1,700 2005 est. 193 Korea, North $ 1,700 2005 est. 194 Haiti $ 1,700 2005 est. 195 Cote d'Ivoire $ 1,600 2005 est. 196 Chad $ 1,500 2005 est. 197 Rwanda $ 1,500 2005 est. 198 Bhutan $ 1,400 2003 est. 199 Nepal $ 1,400 2005 est. 200 Nigeria $ 1,400 2005 est. 201 Congo, Republic of the $ 1,300 2005 est. 202 Djibouti $ 1,300 2002 est. 203 Mozambique $ 1,300 2005 est. 204 Burkina Faso $ 1,300 2005 est. 205 Mali $ 1,200 2005 est. 206 Sao Tome and Principe $ 1,200 2003 est. 207 Tajikistan $ 1,200 2005 est. 208 Benin $ 1,100 2005 est. 209 West Bank $ 1,100 2003 est. 210 Tuvalu $ 1,100 2000 est. 211 Kenya $ 1,100 2005 est. 212 Central African Republic $ 1,100 2005 est. 213 Eritrea $ 1,000 2005 est. 214 Tokelau $ 1,000 1993 est. 215 Liberia $ 1,000 2005 est. 216 Ethiopia $ 900 2005 est. 217 Niger $ 900 2005 est. 218 Zambia $ 900 2005 est. 219 Yemen $ 900 2005 est. 220 Madagascar $ 900 2005 est. 221 Afghanistan $ 800 2004 est. 222 Kiribati $ 800 2001 est. 223 Guinea-Bissau $ 800 2005 est. 224 Sierra Leone $ 800 2005 est. 225 Burundi $ 700 2005 est. 226 Tanzania $ 700 2005 est. 227 Congo, Democratic Republic of the $ 700 2005 est. 228 Comoros $ 600 2005 est. 229 Somalia $ 600 2005 est. 230 Malawi $ 600 2005 est. 231 Gaza Strip $ 600 2003 est. 232 East Timor $ 400 2004 est.
This page was last updated on 13 June, 2006
Rank Order - GDP - real growth rate
Home Reference Maps Appendixes Download Datafile
Countries for which no information is available are not included in this list. Rank Country GDP - real growth rate (%) Date of Information 1 Azerbaijan 26.40 2005 est. 2 Angola 19.10 2005 est. 3 Equatorial Guinea 18.60 2005 est. 4 Armenia 13.90 2005 est. 5 Liechtenstein 11.00 1999 est. 6 Cyprus 10.60 2005 est. 7 Latvia 10.20 2005 est. 8 Faroe Islands 10.00 2001 est. 9 China 9.90 2005 est. 10 Estonia 9.60 2005 est. 11 Dominican Republic 9.30 2005 est. 12 Venezuela 9.30 2005 est. 13 Kazakhstan 9.20 2005 est. 14 Ethiopia 8.90 2005 est. 15 Qatar 8.80 2005 est. 16 Argentina 8.70 2005 est. 17 Libya 8.50 2005 est. 18 Vietnam 8.40 2005 est. 19 Afghanistan 8.00 2005 est. 20 Tajikistan 8.00 2005 est. 21 Belarus 8.00 2005 est. 22 Liberia 8.00 2005 est. 23 Congo, Republic of the 8.00 2005 est. 24 Cuba 8.00 2005 est. 25 India 7.60 2005 est. 26 Lithuania 7.50 2005 est. 27 San Marino 7.50 2001 est. 28 Hong Kong 7.30 2005 est. 29 Laos 7.20 2005 est. 30 Uzbekistan 7.20 2005 est. 31 Cook Islands 7.10 2001 est. 32 Moldova 7.10 2005 est. 33 Georgia 7.00 2005 est. 34 Mozambique 7.00 2005 est. 35 Trinidad and Tobago 7.00 2005 est. 36 Sudan 7.00 2005 est. 37 Pakistan 6.90 2005 est. 38 United Arab Emirates 6.70 2005 est. 39 Peru 6.70 2005 est. 40 Congo, Democratic Republic of the 6.50 2005 est. 41 Uruguay 6.50 2005 est. 42 Panama 6.40 2005 est. 43 Singapore 6.40 2005 est. 44 Russia 6.40 2005 est. 45 Sierra Leone 6.30 2005 est. 46 Mongolia 6.20 2005 est. 47 West Bank 6.20 2004 est. 48 Nigeria 6.20 2005 est. 49 Iran 6.10 2005 est. 50 Saudi Arabia 6.10 2005 est. 51 Senegal 6.10 2005 est. 52 Jordan 6.10 2005 est. 53 Algeria 6.00 2005 est. 54 Cambodia 6.00 2005 est. 55 Chile 6.00 2005 est. 56 Chad 6.00 2005 est. 57 Mali 6.00 2005 est. 58 Sao Tome and Principe 6.00 2004 est. 59 Czech Republic 6.00 2005 est. 60 Bahrain 5.90 2005 est. 61 Solomon Islands 5.80 2003 est. 62 Bangladesh 5.70 2005 est. 63 Iceland 5.70 2005 est. 64 Sri Lanka 5.60 2005 est. 65 Turkey 5.60 2005 est. 66 Indonesia 5.60 2005 est. 67 Albania 5.50 2005 est. 68 Serbia and Montenegro 5.50 2005 est. 69 Mauritania 5.50 2005 est. 70 Slovakia 5.50 2005 est. 71 Gambia, The 5.50 2005 est. 72 Cape Verde 5.50 2005 est. 73 Bulgaria 5.50 2005 est. 74 Bosnia and Herzegovina 5.30 2005 est. 75 Malaysia 5.30 2005 est. 76 Bhutan 5.30 2003 est. 77 Israel 5.20 2005 est. 78 Rwanda 5.20 2005 est. 79 Kenya 5.20 2005 est. 80 Colombia 5.10 2005 est. 81 Zambia 5.10 2005 est. 82 Philippines 5.10 2005 est. 83 Madagascar 5.10 2005 est. 84 Samoa 5.00 2002 est. 85 Egypt 4.90 2005 est. 86 South Africa 4.90 2005 est. 87 Turks and Caicos Islands 4.90 2000 est. 88 Kuwait 4.80 2005 est. 89 Ireland 4.70 2005 est. 90 World 4.70 2005 est. 91 Bermuda 4.60 2004 est. 92 Botswana 4.50 2005 est. 93 Burkina Faso 4.50 2005 est. 94 Thailand 4.50 2005 est. 95 Syria 4.50 2005 est. 96 Romania 4.50 2005 est. 97 Niger 4.50 2005 est. 98 Gaza Strip 4.50 2003 est. 99 Ghana 4.30 2005 est. 100 Tunisia 4.30 2005 est. 101 Oman 4.30 2005 est. 102 Honduras 4.20 2005 est. 103 Barbados 4.10 2005 est. 104 Hungary 4.10 2005 est. 105 Andorra 4.00 2004 est. 106 Costa Rica 4.00 2005 est. 107 Croatia 4.00 2005 est. 108 Uganda 4.00 2005 est. 109 Turkmenistan 4.00 2005 est. 110 Nicaragua 4.00 2005 est. 111 Bolivia 4.00 2005 est. 112 Ecuador 3.90 2005 est. 113 Norway 3.90 2005 est. 114 Korea, South 3.90 2005 est. 115 Slovenia 3.90 2005 est. 116 Belize 3.80 2005 est. 117 Taiwan 3.80 2005 est. 118 Cyprus 3.70 2005 est. 119 Luxembourg 3.70 2005 est. 120 Macedonia 3.70 2005 est. 121 Greece 3.70 2005 est. 122 Aruba 3.50 2004 est. 123 Namibia 3.50 2005 est. 124 United States 3.50 2005 est. 125 Djibouti 3.50 2002 est. 126 Benin 3.50 2005 est. 127 Bahamas, The 3.50 2005 est. 128 Denmark 3.40 2005 est. 129 Spain 3.40 2005 est. 130 Saint Lucia 3.30 2002 est. 131 Guatemala 3.20 2005 est. 132 Poland 3.20 2005 est. 133 Antigua and Barbuda 3.00 2002 est. 134 Mexico 3.00 2005 est. 135 Tuvalu 3.00 2000 est. 136 Mauritius 3.00 2005 est. 137 Guernsey 3.00 2003 est. 138 Comoros 3.00 2005 est. 139 Burma 2.90 2005 est. 140 Canada 2.90 2005 est. 141 Papua New Guinea 2.90 2005 est. 142 Anguilla 2.80 2001 est. 143 Cameroon 2.80 2005 est. 144 Macau 2.80 3rd Quarter 2005 145 El Salvador 2.80 2005 est. 146 Japan 2.70 2005 est. 147 Sweden 2.70 2005 est. 148 Nepal 2.70 2005 est. 149 Paraguay 2.70 2005 est. 150 Australia 2.50 2005 est. 151 Puerto Rico 2.50 2005 est. 152 Grenada 2.50 2002 est. 153 Reunion 2.50 2005 est. 154 Brazil 2.40 2005 est. 155 Ukraine 2.40 2005 est. 156 Yemen 2.40 2005 est. 157 Somalia 2.40 2005 est. 158 Guinea-Bissau 2.30 2005 est. 159 Central African Republic 2.20 2005 est. 160 Finland 2.20 2005 est. 161 New Zealand 2.20 2005 est. 162 Gabon 2.10 2005 est. 163 Eritrea 2.00 2005 est. 164 Guinea 2.00 2005 est. 165 Haiti 2.00 2005 est. 166 Suriname 2.00 2005 est. 167 Virgin Islands 2.00 2002 est. 168 Kyrgyzstan 2.00 2005 est. 169 Austria 1.90 2005 est. 170 Greenland 1.80 2001 est. 171 United Kingdom 1.80 2005 est. 172 Swaziland 1.80 2005 est. 173 Morocco 1.80 2005 est. 174 Switzerland 1.80 2005 est. 175 Brunei 1.70 2004 est. 176 European Union 1.70 2005 est. 177 Fiji 1.70 2005 est. 178 Cayman Islands 1.70 2002 est. 179 Belgium 1.50 2005 est. 180 Kiribati 1.50 2001 est. 181 Jamaica 1.50 2005 est. 182 France 1.40 2005 est. 183 Tonga 1.40 FY03/04 est. 184 Burundi 1.10 2005 est. 185 Netherlands 1.10 2005 est. 186 Vanuatu 1.10 2003 est. 187 Micronesia, Federated States of 1.00 2002 est. 188 British Virgin Islands 1.00 2002 est. 189 East Timor 1.00 2004 est. 190 Togo 1.00 2005 est. 191 Marshall Islands 1.00 2001 est. 192 Palau 1.00 2001 est. 193 Netherlands Antilles 1.00 2004 est. 194 Malta 1.00 2005 est. 195 Cote d'Ivoire 1.00 2005 est. 196 Korea, North 1.00 2005 est. 197 Germany 0.90 2005 est. 198 Monaco 0.90 2000 est. 199 Lesotho 0.80 2005 est. 200 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 0.70 2002 est. 201 Lebanon 0.50 2005 est. 202 Portugal 0.30 2005 est. 203 Italy 0.10 2005 est. 204 Tanzania 0.00 2005 est. 205 Niue -0.30 2000 est. 206 Dominica -1.00 2003 est. 207 Montserrat -1.00 2002 est. 208 Saint Kitts and Nevis -1.90 2002 est. 209 Guyana -2.50 2005 est. 210 Iraq -3.00 2005 est. 211 Malawi -3.00 2005 est. 212 Seychelles -3.00 2005 est. 213 Maldives -5.50 2005 est. 214 Zimbabwe -7.00 2005 est.
This page was last updated on 13 June, 2006
Rank Order - GDP (purchasing power parity)
Home Reference Maps Appendixes Download Datafile
Countries for which no information is available are not included in this list. Rank Country GDP (purchasing power parity) Date of Information 1 World $ 60,710,000,000,000 2005 est. 2 United States $ 12,360,000,000,000 2005 est. 3 European Union $ 12,180,000,000,000 2005 est. 4 China $ 8,859,000,000,000 2005 est. 5 Japan $ 4,018,000,000,000 2005 est. 6 India $ 3,611,000,000,000 2005 est. 7 Germany $ 2,504,000,000,000 2005 est. 8 United Kingdom $ 1,830,000,000,000 2005 est. 9 France $ 1,816,000,000,000 2005 est. 10 Italy $ 1,698,000,000,000 2005 est. 11 Russia $ 1,589,000,000,000 2005 est. 12 Brazil $ 1,556,000,000,000 2005 est. 13 Canada $ 1,114,000,000,000 2005 est. 14 Mexico $ 1,067,000,000,000 2005 est. 15 Spain $ 1,029,000,000,000 2005 est. 16 Korea, South $ 965,300,000,000 2005 est. 17 Indonesia $ 865,600,000,000 2005 est. 18 Australia $ 640,100,000,000 2005 est. 19 Taiwan $ 631,200,000,000 2005 est. 20 Turkey $ 572,000,000,000 2005 est. 21 Iran $ 561,600,000,000 2005 est. 22 Thailand $ 560,700,000,000 2005 est. 23 South Africa $ 533,200,000,000 2005 est. 24 Argentina $ 518,100,000,000 2005 est. 25 Poland $ 514,000,000,000 2005 est. 26 Netherlands $ 499,800,000,000 2005 est. 27 Philippines $ 451,300,000,000 2005 est. 28 Pakistan $ 393,400,000,000 2005 est. 29 Ukraine $ 340,400,000,000 2005 est. 30 Saudi Arabia $ 338,000,000,000 2005 est. 31 Colombia $ 337,500,000,000 2005 est. 32 Belgium $ 325,000,000,000 2005 est. 33 Bangladesh $ 304,300,000,000 2005 est. 34 Egypt $ 303,500,000,000 2005 est. 35 Malaysia $ 290,200,000,000 2005 est. 36 Sweden $ 268,000,000,000 2005 est. 37 Austria $ 267,600,000,000 2005 est. 38 Switzerland $ 241,800,000,000 2005 est. 39 Greece $ 236,800,000,000 2005 est. 40 Algeria $ 233,200,000,000 2005 est. 41 Vietnam $ 232,200,000,000 2005 est. 42 Hong Kong $ 227,300,000,000 2005 est. 43 Portugal $ 204,400,000,000 2005 est. 44 Czech Republic $ 199,400,000,000 2005 est. 45 Norway $ 194,100,000,000 2005 est. 46 Denmark $ 188,100,000,000 2005 est. 47 Chile $ 187,100,000,000 2005 est. 48 Romania $ 183,600,000,000 2005 est. 49 Nigeria $ 174,100,000,000 2005 est. 50 Ireland $ 164,600,000,000 2005 est. 51 Peru $ 164,500,000,000 2005 est. 52 Hungary $ 162,600,000,000 2005 est. 53 Finland $ 161,500,000,000 2005 est. 54 Israel $ 154,500,000,000 2005 est. 55 Venezuela $ 153,700,000,000 2005 est. 56 Morocco $ 138,300,000,000 2005 est. 57 Kazakhstan $ 124,300,000,000 2005 est. 58 Singapore $ 124,300,000,000 2005 est. 59 United Arab Emirates $ 111,300,000,000 2005 est. 60 New Zealand $ 101,800,000,000 2005 est. 61 Iraq $ 94,100,000,000 2005 est. 62 Slovakia $ 87,320,000,000 2005 est. 63 Sudan $ 85,650,000,000 2005 est. 64 Sri Lanka $ 85,340,000,000 2005 est. 65 Tunisia $ 83,540,000,000 2005 est. 66 Burma $ 78,740,000,000 2005 est. 67 Puerto Rico $ 72,700,000,000 2005 est. 68 Syria $ 72,330,000,000 2005 est. 69 Bulgaria $ 71,540,000,000 2005 est. 70 Belarus $ 70,680,000,000 2005 est. 71 Libya $ 65,790,000,000 2005 est. 72 Dominican Republic $ 63,730,000,000 2005 est. 73 Ethiopia $ 62,880,000,000 2005 est. 74 Ecuador $ 56,900,000,000 2005 est. 75 Guatemala $ 56,860,000,000 2005 est. 76 Croatia $ 55,760,000,000 2005 est. 77 Ghana $ 54,450,000,000 2005 est. 78 Lithuania $ 49,210,000,000 2005 est. 79 Uganda $ 48,730,000,000 2005 est. 80 Uzbekistan $ 48,240,000,000 2005 est. 81 Angola $ 45,930,000,000 2005 est. 82 Kuwait $ 44,770,000,000 2005 est. 83 Costa Rica $ 44,680,000,000 2005 est. 84 Serbia and Montenegro $ 43,560,000,000 2005 est. 85 Slovenia $ 43,360,000,000 2005 est. 86 Cameroon $ 40,830,000,000 2005 est. 87 Congo, Democratic Republic of the $ 40,670,000,000 2005 est. 88 Korea, North $ 40,000,000,000 2005 est. 89 Nepal $ 39,900,000,000 2005 est. 90 Oman $ 39,650,000,000 2005 est. 91 Turkmenistan $ 39,540,000,000 2005 est. 92 Cuba $ 39,170,000,000 2005 est. 93 Azerbaijan $ 37,920,000,000 2005 est. 94 Kenya $ 37,150,000,000 2005 est. 95 Uruguay $ 32,960,000,000 2005 est. 96 El Salvador $ 31,240,000,000 2005 est. 97 Luxembourg $ 30,740,000,000 2005 est. 98 Cambodia $ 30,650,000,000 2005 est. 99 Latvia $ 30,290,000,000 2005 est. 100 Paraguay $ 29,080,000,000 2005 est. 101 Cote d'Ivoire $ 28,520,000,000 2005 est. 102 Zimbabwe $ 28,370,000,000 2005 est. 103 Tanzania $ 27,070,000,000 2005 est. 104 Jordan $ 26,800,000,000 2005 est. 105 Mozambique $ 26,030,000,000 2005 est. 106 Bolivia $ 25,950,000,000 2005 est. 107 Equatorial Guinea $ 25,690,000,000 2005 est. 108 Lebanon $ 23,690,000,000 2005 est. 109 Qatar $ 23,640,000,000 2005 est. 110 Bosnia and Herzegovina $ 22,890,000,000 2005 est. 111 Panama $ 22,760,000,000 2005 est. 112 Estonia $ 22,290,000,000 2005 est. 113 Afghanistan $ 21,500,000,000 2004 est. 114 Honduras $ 20,590,000,000 2005 est. 115 Senegal $ 20,530,000,000 2005 est. 116 Yemen $ 19,370,000,000 2005 est. 117 Guinea $ 18,990,000,000 2005 est. 118 Albania $ 18,970,000,000 2005 est. 119 Trinidad and Tobago $ 18,010,000,000 2005 est. 120 Botswana $ 17,240,000,000 2005 est. 121 Burkina Faso $ 16,950,000,000 2005 est. 122 Cyprus $ 16,850,000,000 2005 est. 123 Madagascar $ 16,360,000,000 2005 est. 124 Mauritius $ 16,090,000,000 2005 est. 125 Nicaragua $ 16,090,000,000 2005 est. 126 Macedonia $ 16,030,000,000 2005 est. 127 Bahrain $ 15,830,000,000 2005 est. 128 Georgia $ 15,560,000,000 2005 est. 129 Chad $ 14,790,000,000 2005 est. 130 Papua New Guinea $ 14,370,000,000 2005 est. 131 Namibia $ 14,230,000,000 2005 est. 132 Haiti $ 14,150,000,000 2005 est. 133 Mali $ 13,560,000,000 2005 est. 134 Armenia $ 13,460,000,000 2005 est. 135 Rwanda $ 12,650,000,000 2005 est. 136 Jamaica $ 12,170,000,000 2005 est. 137 Laos $ 12,130,000,000 2005 est. 138 Niger $ 11,280,000,000 2005 est. 139 Kyrgyzstan $ 10,650,000,000 2005 est. 140 Zambia $ 10,590,000,000 2005 est. 141 Iceland $ 10,570,000,000 2005 est. 142 Macau $ 10,000,000,000 2004 est. 143 Gabon $ 9,535,000,000 2005 est. 144 Togo $ 8,965,000,000 2005 est. 145 Tajikistan $ 8,730,000,000 2005 est. 146 Benin $ 8,553,000,000 2005 est. 147 Moldova $ 8,175,000,000 2005 est. 148 Malta $ 7,926,000,000 2005 est. 149 Malawi $ 7,524,000,000 2005 est. 150 Mauritania $ 6,891,000,000 2005 est. 151 Brunei $ 6,842,000,000 2003 est. 152 Martinique $ 6,117,000,000 2003 est. 153 Bahamas, The $ 6,098,000,000 2005 est. 154 Swaziland $ 5,658,000,000 2005 est. 155 Burundi $ 5,654,000,000 2005 est. 156 Fiji $ 5,380,000,000 2005 est. 157 Mongolia $ 5,242,000,000 2005 est. 158 Lesotho $ 5,124,000,000 2005 est. 159 Sierra Leone $ 4,921,000,000 2005 est. 160 Somalia $ 4,809,000,000 2005 est. 161 Reunion $ 4,790,000,000 2005 est. 162 Central African Republic $ 4,784,000,000 2005 est. 163 Barbados $ 4,745,000,000 2005 est. 164 Congo, Republic of the $ 4,631,000,000 2005 est. 165 French Polynesia $ 4,580,000,000 2003 est. 166 Cyprus $ 4,540,000,000 2005 est. 167 Bermuda $ 4,500,000,000 2004 est. 168 Eritrea $ 4,471,000,000 2005 est. 169 Jersey $ 3,600,000,000 2003 est. 170 Guyana $ 3,549,000,000 2005 est. 171 Guadeloupe $ 3,513,000,000 2003 est. 172 New Caledonia $ 3,158,000,000 2003 est. 173 Gambia, The $ 3,024,000,000 2005 est. 174 Cape Verde $ 2,990,000,000 2005 est. 175 Bhutan $ 2,900,000,000 2003 est. 176 Suriname $ 2,818,000,000 2005 est. 177 Netherlands Antilles $ 2,800,000,000 2004 est. 178 Liberia $ 2,755,000,000 2005 est. 179 Guernsey $ 2,590,000,000 2003 est. 180 Guam $ 2,500,000,000 2005 est. 181 Aruba $ 2,130,000,000 2004 est. 182 Isle of Man $ 2,113,000,000 2003 est. 183 Andorra $ 1,840,000,000 2004 184 West Bank $ 1,800,000,000 2003 est. 185 Liechtenstein $ 1,786,000,000 1999 est. 186 Belize $ 1,778,000,000 2004 est. 187 Virgin Islands $ 1,577,000,000 2002 est. 188 French Guiana $ 1,551,000,000 2003 est. 189 Cayman Islands $ 1,391,000,000 2004 est. 190 Maldives $ 1,250,000,000 2002 est. 191 Guinea-Bissau $ 1,185,000,000 2005 est. 192 Greenland $ 1,100,000,000 2001 est. 193 Faroe Islands $ 1,000,000,000 2001 est. 194 Samoa $ 1,000,000,000 2002 est. 195 San Marino $ 940,000,000 2001 est. 196 Northern Mariana Islands $ 900,000,000 2000 est. 197 Monaco $ 870,000,000 2000 est. 198 Saint Lucia $ 866,000,000 2002 est. 199 British Virgin Islands $ 853,400,000 2004 est. 200 Solomon Islands $ 800,000,000 2002 est. 201 Gibraltar $ 769,000,000 2000 est. 202 Gaza Strip $ 768,000,000 2003 est. 203 Antigua and Barbuda $ 750,000,000 2002 est. 204 Seychelles $ 626,000,000 2002 est. 205 Djibouti $ 619,000,000 2002 est. 206 Vanuatu $ 580,000,000 2003 est. 207 American Samoa $ 500,000,000 2000 est. 208 Mayotte $ 466,800,000 2003 est. 209 Comoros $ 441,000,000 2002 est. 210 Grenada $ 440,000,000 2002 est. 211 Dominica $ 384,000,000 2003 est. 212 East Timor $ 370,000,000 2004 est. 213 Saint Vincent and the Grenadines $ 342,000,000 2002 est. 214 Saint Kitts and Nevis $ 339,000,000 2002 est. 215 Micronesia, Federated States of $ 277,000,000 2002 est. 216 Tonga $ 244,000,000 2002 est. 217 Turks and Caicos Islands $ 216,000,000 2002 est. 218 Sao Tome and Principe $ 214,000,000 2003 est. 219 Palau $ 174,000,000 2001 est. 220 Marshall Islands $ 115,000,000 2001 est. 221 Anguilla $ 112,000,000 2002 est. 222 Cook Islands $ 105,000,000 2001 est. 223 Kiribati $ 79,000,000 2001 est. 224 Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) $ 75,000,000 2002 est. 225 Nauru $ 60,000,000 2005 est. 226 Wallis and Futuna $ 60,000,000 2004 est. 227 Saint Pierre and Miquelon $ 48,300,000 2003 est. 228 Montserrat $ 29,000,000 2002 est. 229 Saint Helena $ 18,000,000 1998 est. 230 Tuvalu $ 12,200,000 2000 est. 231 Niue $ 7,600,000 2000 est. 232 Tokelau $ 1,500,000 1993 est.
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Yes, Africa does have its success stories. However, you cannot try and escape the fact that RACISM and economic exploitation that were JUSTIFIED and THRIVED due to racism, have as much a role in Africa NOW as ever. Overt racist colonial governments may have been overthrown, but in their place, neocolonial governments and rebel groups backed by foreign money and arms, still ravage the country. The ENEMY of Africa in the 21st century is STILL racist policies designed to exploit Africa and its resources, while the people are left to die and rot in the sun. Aids, wars, corrupt governments, malnutrition, hunger and disease are all part of the "plan" to keep Africa destabilized, so that the West can always come in and TAKE the resources they want, with little or no competition or resistence. This also allows the West to act as a savior of Africa, while looting the resources and giving African people little in return. So these success stories must be seen in the light of the struggle AGAINST the forces put into play by the neocolonial foreign policies of the oppressive western economic and political powers. Of course this gets no coverage because Africa must stay a third world country, which only really means subservient resource and cheap labor producing nation to 1st world countries.
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I thought supercar just said africa is not a country.you do not listen man.
some states in africa are really second world in terms of development,a few for the moment are first WORLD IF look at gnp ppp and when the gnp ppp rises in years to come this would change again. THINGS ARE ON THE MOVE IN AFRICA and africans are not waiting for a handout like some would like to believe.african states like european states have different rates of development.
I could do what most of the western media does and show a poor run down street in a country in europe ,or show some homeless person and say look at those poor europeans,europe is so poor.that is the same kind of crap they do when it come to blacks and africa alot of times.There is postive as well as negative,but most times the negative is distorted or most of it not true.most africans are living postive lifes despite the problems,but you would not get that type of info on average from the drive by media in the west most of the time.
I AM not here to debate this time,just giving out some facts,just have to look for it because the media in the west on average in not going to give it to you.
The bbc does a better job however,but they still have their bias and at times incorrect info. that is the news business,their job is to give mostly bad news.news sources even admit that bad news sells.
Most things that are happening is good news in africa. one man,a cop even told me he is from ghana,and when he went back,many things have change.
Ghana he told me was advancing and doing good.this is an example of just one african state,but he did not need to tell me because i read about it and see new pictures of new buildings, schools,road,factories etc etc and this is happening in africa more so today than EVER before.
EVEN ivory coast before the civil war had a highly developed infrastructure,roads,etc and it is still there.things seem to be calming down thanks to the west african forces.
The term third world was just a word that got stuck to countries outside of western europe,america and japan.it really meant not to be allies with the west or eastern part of europe.
For goodness sake some news reporters even call south korea third world but we know that is not true.one bbc reporter said libya was a poor country and that is a flat out lie.
At the time libya was a upper middle income country but now it is a rich state because it's gnp ppp is over 10,060 dollars. you could look at the post above for info on gnp ppp .
See the trap,for some folks it does not matter how advanced africa was in the past or how FURTHER advanced it is is becoming,africa/BLACKS PERIOD will never catch up to a racist in his/her mind,so forget them as long has they do not hurt or kill.
YOU CAN'T let them set the rules. To a racist if all of africa caught up to europe tomorrow in terms of technology and living standards that is to them still not enough.THEY do not even admit that africa in terms of technology and standards of living was more advanced than europe as awhole.some nations today in africa in terms of technology as whole is first world.some on average is really second world with some first world technology in there.these nations are closer than ever getting to first world status.so to a certain extent forget the racist as long has they don't hurt, kill,teach kids in schools, etc etc .
Africa is catching up in the tech. field,some states more than others and south africa being one of the most advanced nations on earth,africa aswhole is feeling that impact.that is why i post this info for those who want to know what is truly going on.
A RACIST knows the real truth but never would admit it but some do not know or care to know because thier mind is made up,so i say forget them and live you life,as long as they don't get in the way.
this info is for those who are sick of negative news and often incorrect info on africa.
let's not forget what nigeria has done to bring as much peace in west africa as possible,or south africa helping in central africa to bring peace. many of those old african corrupt leaders are dead or gone.afica has a new leadership and africa's future is in the hands of africans, nobody else.africans are in control of their future just like asia,latin america or europe,and all nations today are not as independent as the west would like you to believe.in fact the west is more dependent than most areas of the world.
folks wonder if britain , japan, and many others control america. if they pull thier investments out america would fold like a cheap camera.
THE LEADERS that really need to be kick out,is in sudan,zimbabwe now,mauritania,all of north africa and just a few other places.as a awhole now africa is stable and growing but the media loves to show the countries that have civil war(or the usual suspects,but most of africa is at peace.OF course ivory coast was abit of a surprise,but at the same time not really a surprise if you know that nation history,but things are stablizing there and let's hope soon the nation is one again.oh i forgot to say ivory coast has a electronics industry.
Even in the countries that have civil war progess in certain areas is happening. sudan grows and builds,but i would still like those leaders to be kick out because they are anti-african. nigeria's leader has been doing good,but he wanted a another term,but the senate said no.
this is good news the system work.nambia,botswana. mozambique,angola,kenya,ghana,senegal,mali,etc etc,have good enough leaders and calling them corrupt is not true and not fair.bush and his crew these days are more corrupt.
these leaders have been fairly elected in free,democratic countries ,i can't say the same for america.every country have some form of corruption,but for africa things for the most part is changing and things are moving.most countries in africa are democratic.THE LEADERS of south africa,angola,nambia,mali etc etc are not dictators.only the misinform and those who do not kept up with currect info kept saying that.nigeria for an example has a free press.
no white man is controlling,zimbabwe for a example,in fact the leader of that state control awhole country with a iron fist,and nobody is going to tell me britian is pulling the strings.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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we know the bad news,but tell you the truth,alot of it is made up or the news many times is not telling the whole true story and to me a half lie is a whole lie.
MANY AFRICAN STATES do have a certain amount of control of the resources,some more than others.
let's not by into the western media hype that africa is helpless because it is not. that is the purpose of the post in ther first place.
read the more postive news about africa below. many african states now are and heading in the right direction.
growth is strong .
come on guys let's not fall in to horemheb trap.i hope i did not waste my time showing african cities,roads,schools and other things that are being built and rebuilt. I HAD ENOUGH of this negative news,and when there is bad news or bad news told by the racist or misformed,it is not even the whole truth,and some cases just flat out lies. here is some info first posted by ausar.
In the waiting area of a large office complex in Accra, Ghana, it's standing room only as citizens with bundles of cash line up to buy shares of a mutual fund that has yielded an average 60 percent annually for the past seven years. They're entrusting their hard-earned cash to a local company called Databank, which invests in stock markets in Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana and Kenya that consistently rank among the world's top growth markets.
Chances are you haven't read or heard anything about Databank in your daily newspaper or on the evening news, where the little coverage of Africa that's offered focuses almost exclusively on the negative -- the virulent spread of HIV/AIDS, genocide in Darfur and the chaos of Zimbabwe.
Yes, Africa is a land of wars, poverty and corruption. The situation in places like Darfur, Sudan, desperately cries out for more media attention and international action. But Africa is also a land of stock markets, high rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of Africa that functions. And this Africa also needs media attention, if it's to have any chance of fully joining the global economy.
Africa's media image comes at a high cost, even, at the extreme, the cost of lives. Stories about hardship and tragedy aim to tug at our heartstrings, getting us to dig into our pockets or urge Congress to send more aid. But no country or region ever developed thanks to aid alone. Investment, and the job and wealth creation it generates, is the only road to lasting development. That's how China, India and the Asian Tigers did it.
Yet while Africa, according to the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corp., offers the highest return in the world on direct foreign investment, it attracts the least. Unless investors see the Africa that's worthy of investment, they won't put their money into it. And that lack of investment translates into job stagnation, continued poverty and limited access to education and health care.
Consider a few facts: The Ghana Stock Exchange regularly tops the list of the world's highest-performing stock markets. Botswana, with its A+ credit rating, boasts one of the highest per capita government savings rates in the world, topped only by Singapore and a handful of other fiscally prudent nations. Cell phones are making phenomenal profits on the continent. Brand-name companies like Coca-Cola, GM, Caterpillar and Citibank have invested in Africa for years and are quite bullish on the future.
The failure to show this side of Africa creates a one-dimensional caricature of a complex continent. Imagine if 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and school shootings were all that the rest of the world knew about America.
I recently produced a documentary on entrepreneurship and private enterprise in Africa. Throughout the year-long process, I came to realize how all of us in the media -- even those with a true love of the continent -- portray it in a way that's truly to its detriment.
The first cameraman I called to film the documentary laughed and said, "Business and Africa, aren't those contradictory terms?" The second got excited imagining heart-warming images of women's co-ops and market stalls brimming with rustic crafts. Several friends simply assumed I was doing a documentary on AIDS. After all, what else does one film in Africa?
The little-known fact is that businesses are thriving throughout Africa. With good governance and sound fiscal policies, countries like Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Senegal and many more are bustling, their economies growing at surprisingly robust rates.
Private enterprise is not just limited to the well-behaved nations. You can't find a more war-ravaged land than Somalia, which has been without a central government for more than a decade. The big surprise? Private enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu has the cheapest cell phone rates on the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern city of Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest satellite phone technology. The electricity works. When the state collapsed in 1991, the national airline went out of business. Today, there are five private carriers and price wars keep the cost of tickets down. This is not the Somalia you see in the media.
Obviously life there would be dramatically improved by good governance -- or even just some governance -- but it's also true that, through resilience and resourcefulness, Somalis have been able to create a functioning society.
Most African businesses suffer from an extreme lack of infrastructure, but the people I met were too determined to let this stop them. It just costs them more. Without reliable electricity, most businesses have to use generators. They have to dig bore-holes for a dependable water source. Telephone lines are notoriously out of service, but cell phones are filling the gap.
Throughout Africa, what I found was a private sector working hard to find African solutions to African problems. One example that will always stick in my mind is the CEO of Vodacom Congo, the largest cell phone company in that country. Alieu Conteh started his business while the civil war was still raging. With rebel troops closing in on the airport in Kinshasa, no foreign manufacturer would send in a cell phone tower, so Conteh got locals to collect scrap metal, which they welded together to build one. That tower still stands today.
As I interviewed successful entrepreneurs, I was continually astounded by their ingenuity, creativity and steadfastness. These people are the future of the continent. They are the ones we should be talking to about how to move Africa forward. Instead, the media concentrates on victims or government officials, and as anyone who has worked in Africa knows, government is more often a part of the problem than of the solution.
When the foreign media descend on the latest crisis, the person they look to interview is invariably the foreign savior, an aid worker from the United States or Europe. African saviors are everywhere, delivering aid on the ground. But they don't seem to be in our cultural belief system. It's not just the media, either. Look at the literature put out by almost any nongovernmental organization. The better ones show images of smiling African children -- smiling because they have been helped by the NGO. The worst promote the extended-belly, flies-on-the-face cliche of Africa, hoping that the pain of seeing those images will fill their coffers. "We hawk poverty," one NGO worker admitted to me.
Last November, ABC's "Primetime Live" aired a special on Britain's Prince Harry and his work with AIDS children in Lesotho. The segment, titled "The Forgotten Kingdom: Prince Harry in Lesotho," painted the tiny nation as a desperate, desolate place. The program's message was clear: This helpless nation at last had a knight -- or prince -- in shining armor.
By the time the charity addresses came up at the end, you were ready to give, and that's good. Lesotho needs help with its AIDS problem. But would it really have hurt the story to add that this land-locked nation with few natural resources has jump-started its economy by aggressively courting foreign investment? The reality is that it's anything but a "forgotten kingdom," as a dramatic increase in exports has made it the top beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a duty-free, quota-free U.S.-Africa trade agreement. More than 50,000 people have gotten jobs through the country's initiatives. Couldn't the program have portrayed an African country that was in need of assistance, but was neither helpless nor a victim?
Still the simplistic portrayals come. A recent episode of the popular NBC drama "Medical Investigation" was about an anthrax scare in Philadelphia. The source of the deadly spores? Some illegal immigrants from Africa playing their drums in a local market, unknowingly infecting innocent passersby. Typical: If it's a deadly disease, the scriptwriters make it come from Africa.
Most of the time, Africa is simply not on the map. The continent's booming stock markets are almost never mentioned in newspaper financial pages. How often is an African country -- apart, perhaps, from South Africa or Egypt or Morocco -- featured in a newspaper travel section? Even the listing of worldwide weather includes only a few African cities.
The result of this portrait is an Africa we can't relate to. It seems so foreign to us, so different and incomprehensible. Since we can't relate to it, we ignore it.
There are lots of reasons for the media's neglect of Africa: bean counters in the newsroom and the high cost of international coverage, the belief that American viewers aren't interested in international stories, and the infotainment of news. There's also journalists' reluctance to pursue so-called "positive stories." We all know that such stories don't win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening in Africa doesn't need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That's not a "positive" story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. I imagine a lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.
My independent film was made possible by funding from the World Bank, for which I am extremely grateful. But the bank wouldn't have had to step in if the media had been doing their job -- showing all Africans in all facets of their lives. In a business that's supposed to cover man-bites-dog stories, the idea that Africa doesn't work is a dog-bites-man story. If the media are really looking for news, they'd look at the ways that Africa, despite all the odds, does work.
Author's e-mail: capineau@aol.com
Carol Pineau, a journalist with more than 10 years of experience reporting on Africa, is the producer and director of the film "Africa: Open for Business," which premiered last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
quote:Originally posted by mike rozier: the problem is the african goverments not investing in their countries infrastructure..and not useing their resources wisely.
I don't fault the starveing people in that country as much as I do the people in power in them countries..
this is not true anymore,africa is changing.there were always states by the way that invested in there infrastucture,some more than others,but today things are happening overall more so.
thats good to hear.between africas wildlife tourisum, and it's nateral resorces...I figure they should have a decent chance at developeing into decent nations.the problem like anywhere in the world, with any goverment, is controlling coruption in the goverment..some may disagree with me, but I feel the US consitution, does the best job in the world at that..even though it's far from perfect....if african countries can controll their leaders.....and put in checks and balences...I feel many of them with time can thrive..
take eygpt for example....my tour guide there told me he had to come up with 300 thousand dollars to give to the goverment to start his own tourist company...in the US it costs 500 dollars....
the key is the US doesn't constrict its people's opportunity to make buissness..in doing so ,people can be successful, and the goverment gets it's cut in taxes...this way everyone wins, for the most part...
Posts: 1172 | Registered: Apr 2006
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quote:Originally posted by kenndo: we know the bad news,but tell you the truth,alot of it is made up or the news many times is not telling the whole true story and to me a half lie is a whole lie.
MANY AFRICAN STATES do have a certain amount of control of the resources,some more than others.
let's not by into the western media hype that africa is helpless because it is not. that is the purpose of the post in ther first place.
read the more postive news about africa below. many african states now are and heading in the right direction.
growth is strong .
come on guys let's not fall in to horemheb trap.i hope i did not waste my time showing african cities,roads,schools and other things that are being built and rebuilt. I HAD ENOUGH of this negative news,and when there is bad news or bad news told by the racist or misformed,it is not even the whole truth,and some cases just flat out lies. here is some info first posted by ausar.
In the waiting area of a large office complex in Accra, Ghana, it's standing room only as citizens with bundles of cash line up to buy shares of a mutual fund that has yielded an average 60 percent annually for the past seven years. They're entrusting their hard-earned cash to a local company called Databank, which invests in stock markets in Ghana, Nigeria, Botswana and Kenya that consistently rank among the world's top growth markets.
Chances are you haven't read or heard anything about Databank in your daily newspaper or on the evening news, where the little coverage of Africa that's offered focuses almost exclusively on the negative -- the virulent spread of HIV/AIDS, genocide in Darfur and the chaos of Zimbabwe.
Yes, Africa is a land of wars, poverty and corruption. The situation in places like Darfur, Sudan, desperately cries out for more media attention and international action. But Africa is also a land of stock markets, high rises, Internet cafes and a growing middle class. This is the part of Africa that functions. And this Africa also needs media attention, if it's to have any chance of fully joining the global economy.
Africa's media image comes at a high cost, even, at the extreme, the cost of lives. Stories about hardship and tragedy aim to tug at our heartstrings, getting us to dig into our pockets or urge Congress to send more aid. But no country or region ever developed thanks to aid alone. Investment, and the job and wealth creation it generates, is the only road to lasting development. That's how China, India and the Asian Tigers did it.
Yet while Africa, according to the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corp., offers the highest return in the world on direct foreign investment, it attracts the least. Unless investors see the Africa that's worthy of investment, they won't put their money into it. And that lack of investment translates into job stagnation, continued poverty and limited access to education and health care.
Consider a few facts: The Ghana Stock Exchange regularly tops the list of the world's highest-performing stock markets. Botswana, with its A+ credit rating, boasts one of the highest per capita government savings rates in the world, topped only by Singapore and a handful of other fiscally prudent nations. Cell phones are making phenomenal profits on the continent. Brand-name companies like Coca-Cola, GM, Caterpillar and Citibank have invested in Africa for years and are quite bullish on the future.
The failure to show this side of Africa creates a one-dimensional caricature of a complex continent. Imagine if 9/11, the Oklahoma City bombing and school shootings were all that the rest of the world knew about America.
I recently produced a documentary on entrepreneurship and private enterprise in Africa. Throughout the year-long process, I came to realize how all of us in the media -- even those with a true love of the continent -- portray it in a way that's truly to its detriment.
The first cameraman I called to film the documentary laughed and said, "Business and Africa, aren't those contradictory terms?" The second got excited imagining heart-warming images of women's co-ops and market stalls brimming with rustic crafts. Several friends simply assumed I was doing a documentary on AIDS. After all, what else does one film in Africa?
The little-known fact is that businesses are thriving throughout Africa. With good governance and sound fiscal policies, countries like Botswana, Ghana, Uganda, Senegal and many more are bustling, their economies growing at surprisingly robust rates.
Private enterprise is not just limited to the well-behaved nations. You can't find a more war-ravaged land than Somalia, which has been without a central government for more than a decade. The big surprise? Private enterprise is flourishing. Mogadishu has the cheapest cell phone rates on the continent, mostly due to no government intervention. In the northern city of Hargeysa, the markets sell the latest satellite phone technology. The electricity works. When the state collapsed in 1991, the national airline went out of business. Today, there are five private carriers and price wars keep the cost of tickets down. This is not the Somalia you see in the media.
Obviously life there would be dramatically improved by good governance -- or even just some governance -- but it's also true that, through resilience and resourcefulness, Somalis have been able to create a functioning society.
Most African businesses suffer from an extreme lack of infrastructure, but the people I met were too determined to let this stop them. It just costs them more. Without reliable electricity, most businesses have to use generators. They have to dig bore-holes for a dependable water source. Telephone lines are notoriously out of service, but cell phones are filling the gap.
Throughout Africa, what I found was a private sector working hard to find African solutions to African problems. One example that will always stick in my mind is the CEO of Vodacom Congo, the largest cell phone company in that country. Alieu Conteh started his business while the civil war was still raging. With rebel troops closing in on the airport in Kinshasa, no foreign manufacturer would send in a cell phone tower, so Conteh got locals to collect scrap metal, which they welded together to build one. That tower still stands today.
As I interviewed successful entrepreneurs, I was continually astounded by their ingenuity, creativity and steadfastness. These people are the future of the continent. They are the ones we should be talking to about how to move Africa forward. Instead, the media concentrates on victims or government officials, and as anyone who has worked in Africa knows, government is more often a part of the problem than of the solution.
When the foreign media descend on the latest crisis, the person they look to interview is invariably the foreign savior, an aid worker from the United States or Europe. African saviors are everywhere, delivering aid on the ground. But they don't seem to be in our cultural belief system. It's not just the media, either. Look at the literature put out by almost any nongovernmental organization. The better ones show images of smiling African children -- smiling because they have been helped by the NGO. The worst promote the extended-belly, flies-on-the-face cliche of Africa, hoping that the pain of seeing those images will fill their coffers. "We hawk poverty," one NGO worker admitted to me.
Last November, ABC's "Primetime Live" aired a special on Britain's Prince Harry and his work with AIDS children in Lesotho. The segment, titled "The Forgotten Kingdom: Prince Harry in Lesotho," painted the tiny nation as a desperate, desolate place. The program's message was clear: This helpless nation at last had a knight -- or prince -- in shining armor.
By the time the charity addresses came up at the end, you were ready to give, and that's good. Lesotho needs help with its AIDS problem. But would it really have hurt the story to add that this land-locked nation with few natural resources has jump-started its economy by aggressively courting foreign investment? The reality is that it's anything but a "forgotten kingdom," as a dramatic increase in exports has made it the top beneficiary of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a duty-free, quota-free U.S.-Africa trade agreement. More than 50,000 people have gotten jobs through the country's initiatives. Couldn't the program have portrayed an African country that was in need of assistance, but was neither helpless nor a victim?
Still the simplistic portrayals come. A recent episode of the popular NBC drama "Medical Investigation" was about an anthrax scare in Philadelphia. The source of the deadly spores? Some illegal immigrants from Africa playing their drums in a local market, unknowingly infecting innocent passersby. Typical: If it's a deadly disease, the scriptwriters make it come from Africa.
Most of the time, Africa is simply not on the map. The continent's booming stock markets are almost never mentioned in newspaper financial pages. How often is an African country -- apart, perhaps, from South Africa or Egypt or Morocco -- featured in a newspaper travel section? Even the listing of worldwide weather includes only a few African cities.
The result of this portrait is an Africa we can't relate to. It seems so foreign to us, so different and incomprehensible. Since we can't relate to it, we ignore it.
There are lots of reasons for the media's neglect of Africa: bean counters in the newsroom and the high cost of international coverage, the belief that American viewers aren't interested in international stories, and the infotainment of news. There's also journalists' reluctance to pursue so-called "positive stories." We all know that such stories don't win awards or get front-page, above-the-fold placement. But what's happening in Africa doesn't need to be cast in any special light. The Ghana Stock Exchange was the fastest-growing exchange in the world in 2003. That's not a "positive" story, that's news, just like reports on the London Stock Exchange. I imagine a lot of consumers would have found it newsworthy to learn where they could have made a 144 percent return on their money.
My independent film was made possible by funding from the World Bank, for which I am extremely grateful. But the bank wouldn't have had to step in if the media had been doing their job -- showing all Africans in all facets of their lives. In a business that's supposed to cover man-bites-dog stories, the idea that Africa doesn't work is a dog-bites-man story. If the media are really looking for news, they'd look at the ways that Africa, despite all the odds, does work.
Author's e-mail: capineau@aol.com
Carol Pineau, a journalist with more than 10 years of experience reporting on Africa, is the producer and director of the film "Africa: Open for Business," which premiered last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
[/QUOTE]
I think it's good you stay positive, and I might add, that into todays global ecomony, africa has just as much chance at success, long term, than anyone else..
the key is the people controlling the goverment. if you don't have that...nothing will work...the goverment has to be keeped in controll by the people..and Im not talking about communisum....because we all have seen that is a road to nowhere..
I think Christanity, has alot to do with it too...not goverment controlled roman catholic pope stlye Christanity...but protestant Christanity..
in fact you could call protestant Christanity the founder of America..
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SOUTH AFRICA HAS A MORE ADVANCED CONSTITUTION THAN AMERICA.In fact it has the most advanced one in the world if you see what's in it. america does have some good points and some bad points.
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If China was capable of bringing 400mio. of its citizens out of poverty in 20 years--whitout help from rich countries, then tell why can't African countries do the same? What is it that holds back?
Sure, colonialism is over, then tell me why the westerner forces, the same people we kicked out, keep returning- but now they call them self " peacekeepers, NGOs"
quote:What are the NGOs doing?
In the days of old-fashioned colonialism, the metropolitan powers sent their officials to live in Africa and directly run the colonies. Today they do so indirectly through NGOs. This month, we take an indepth look at the activities of the thousands of foreign NGOs and their local spinoffs who now hold the continent in thrall, and ask whether they are Africa's new colonisers. This analysis is by Rotimi Sankore.
At the beginning of last month, the Nigerian and international media were full of news that Nigeria had been granted debt relief to the tune of $31bn by the Paris Club of “rich Western nations”. Nigerian government officials were ecstatic. Towards the end of the news reports, it was mentioned matter-of-factly that a millennium development committee had been set up which will be chaired by Nigeria’s president, Olusegun Obasanjo, “to monitor what happens to the debt relief”.
The committee would include representatives of Oxfam and ActionAid, two international development charities or NGOs. The committee, inaugurated on the eve of the G8 Summit in Gleneagles, is also monitoring the UN Millennium Development Goals. Anyone remotely familiar with the nature of executive presidencies, and in particular Obasanjo’s presidency, will know that monitoring by the president means nothing will happen to the money without his and the committee’s approval.
In effect, two international development charities will be helping “monitor” and implement budgetary policy to the tune of $31bn in Africa’s most populous country of an estimated 130 million people – without an electoral or democratic mandate to do so.
quote:The scramble for African oil Daniel Volman, director of the African Security Research Project in Washington DC, on how oil is leading to another scramble for Africa, this time not by the usual suspects who met in Berlin in 1884-86, but by the oil guzzlers from across the Atlantic. “Whether all this will lead to something greater – and potentially far more perilous – cannot be foreseen at this point, but it is certainly something that bears close watching, given the dangers this could pose for Africa and its people,” he warns.
After decades of Cold War, when Africa was simply viewed as a convenient pawn on the global chessboard, and a further decade of benign neglect in the 1990s, the African continent has now become a vital arena of strategic and geopolitical competition for not only the US, but also for China, India, and other new emerging powers. The main reason for this is quite simple: Africa is the final frontier as far as the world’s supplies of energy (both oil and natural gas) are concerned.
World oil production is only just meeting demand and old fields are being drained faster than new production can be brought on line. Supplies will be tight for the foreseeable future, so any new source of supply is significant. Most importers are also trying to reduce their dependence on Middle Eastern oil. In the next 10 to 15 years, most of the new oil entering the world market will come from African fields because it is only in Africa – and to a lesser extent in the volatile Central Asia region – that substantial new fields have been found and brought into production.
Therefore, as in the Middle East and the Caspian Sea region before it, Africa is now a target for military intervention by the US, France, China and other powers competing to gain control over energy supplies. The most public expressions of this linkage have come from American officials.
quote:Originally posted by kenndo: nigeria's population is over 140 million now.
nigeria population is about 200 million. The census was not able to account for everyone in that country.
Posts: 671 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Every person in Nigeria should be wealthy. The place is flooded with oil and should be a paradise. the fact that it is not defines the problem. We can only do so much to help there problems.
-------------------- God Bless President Bush Posts: 5822 | From: USA | Registered: Jan 2004
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Again, Africa is one of the wealthiest continents in the world as far as natural resources. Before European conquest and colonialism Africans had their own industries that processed and refined raw materials into the goods that were in demand at the time and sell them to foreign markets.
It was only during European colonialism that native industries were destroyed and replaced with those run by European companies. Now that the Europeans are gone (with exception of South Africa), Africans are forced to sell their raw material for cheap prices while foreign companies still process the materials and sell them get paid at much higher prices.
Not all but many nations in Africa in the global market are nothing but giant sweatshops to say the least.
The old ludicrous white fantasies of black racial inferiority are no good because many of these Africans are intelligent and educated enough to be accepted in the most prestigious and elite colleges in the West! Many of them come to the West because they have better jobs and thus economic resources.
It's true that some African nations are beginning to catch up with the West, but how long with Africa as a continent be able to recover completely from its bankruptcy and become a major player in the economy that it was centuries ago?
Posts: 26238 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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Again, Africa is one of the wealthiest continents in the world as far as natural resources. Before European conquest and colonialism Africans had their own industries that processed and refined raw materials into the goods that were in demand at the time and sell them to foreign markets.
It was only during European colonialism that native industries were destroyed and replaced with those run by European companies. Now that the Europeans are gone (with exception of South Africa), Africans are forced to sell their raw material for cheap prices while foreign companies still process the materials and sell them get paid at much higher prices.
Besides that, fact is, many African, if not most of them, are net exporters of capital; the never-ending and increasing debts have a considerable impact on this.
quote:Djehuti: Not all but many nations in Africa in the global market are nothing but giant sweatshops to say the least.
No different from any other regions, where "globalized" corporations are taking advantage of "cheap" labor, under oppressive conditions. Parent companies often make the excuse that, for the currency of host nations of these foreign corporations, the subjects of that "cheap" labor are fairly paid. For instance, people in the U.S. complain about high-tech companies moving jobs to India. Well, the Indians are on the lower receiving end, for providing at least equal if not superior productivity but getting paid less than their American counterparts for doing the very same tasks.
quote:Djehuti:
It's true that some African nations are beginning to catch up with the West, but how long with Africa as a continent be able to recover completely from its bankruptcy and become a major player in the economy that it was centuries ago?
...when colonial-incurred debts have been 'unconditionally" withdrawn, fair trade policies in the likes of WTO, e.g. allowing for subsidies or protection of local or home grown industries in "developing" countries until the said developing nations are able to attain a widened market enough to compete with other Nations with established larger markets, and only thereafter, should any application of restrictions on 'protection' of home markets be applied; this in addition to not leaving out the overhaul of institutions like UN, to be democratic in "actuality" than only in principle...i.e. on paper but not in practice.
Ps - Kenndo is right to reiterate the point that Africa is a continent, with nations with varying levels of successes, as well as problems. For instance, it is outright ridiculous and apparently ignorant to just assume that in every African nation people are starving, suffering from AIDS, living in huts or rural environments, don't vote in presidential or state official elections or have no such systems in place, fighting one another based on "tribal" affiliations or live in an unstable polity, and so forth. Sure these problems exist in certain locations on the continent, but not everywhere; there are places in Africa, people outside, and perhaps even on the continent don't realize exist, simply because the polity is peaceful, stable and not making news outside Africa, which is almost always only the case, when it is negative, rather than talk of success stories. This is not do deny ongoing "neo-colonial" tactics being used to keep African nations in "check," which notwithstanding some nations best efforts or successes, largely remain in place.
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African governments are poorly run because of tribalism that is openly practised by the elected presidents. Because our leaders openly abuse resources in favour of their tribesmen, I cannot trust any of the governments except for Botswana and South Africa. No public system works well in Kenya except for the foreign missions based in the country and continue to assist the poor in vast parts of the country. Duncan Mboyah, Nairobi, Kenya.
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Africa has always been a continent with many ethnic groups and identities. Europe has ALWAYS used tactics to divide and conquer Africa by fomenting struggle between ethnic groups and USING these conflicts to conquer Africans for their natural wealth and FORCED cheap labor. What is happening now is no different than before, except the West denies their involvement in PROPPING UP these oppressive goverments and maintaining ethnic conflict in the name of destabilization. Destabilized African countries are easily preyed upon, since the people will have no infrastructure or modern amenities and therefore will DEPEND on the West to help them get back on top. But the West WONT help them get back on top, since they WANT Africa to stay destabilized, since a stable Africa with strong independent NATIONALIST Governments would be a THREAT to the economic WELFARE system, where Europe gets RICH for very little investment off African resources. That is why it is in the West's BEST interest to KEEP African countries destabilized.
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quote:Originally posted by Horemheb: Every person in Nigeria should be wealthy. The place is flooded with oil and should be a paradise. the fact that it is not defines the problem. We can only do so much to help there problems.
double standard. everyone should be wealthy in america because of it's gnp . everyone should be wealthy in western europe because of of conquring most of the world for a short time in history in the late 1800's
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World Bank Chief Sees Africa as Continent of Hope
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allAfrica.com
June 24, 2005 Posted to the web June 25, 2005
Tamela Hultman Baltimore
Saying that Africa must be sold on the merits of its potential and not just on the basis of its needs, the World Bank's new president told an international group of business leaders meeting in the United States that reducing poverty and supporting economic development in Africa will be his top priority.
Paul Wolfowitz, speaking June 23 at the U.S.-Africa Business Summit in Baltimore, Maryland, said his recent week-long trip to Nigeria, Burkina Faso, South Africa and Rwanda had convinced him that despite heart-rending poverty, which must be addressed, Africa is a good bet for foreign investors.
"There is no question that there is an enormous, compelling moral urgency to the conditions of Africa and there is no question that there are needs," said Wolfowitz, who took office June 1. "But there is a lot more going on than just need," he said. "Africa may be on the verge of being a continent of hope."
Frank Fountain, DaimlerChrysler senior vice president and chair of the Corporate Council on Africa, which organized the summit, pointed out that Wolfowitz's first meeting outside the Bank was with a group of organizations working on African issues, that his first trip was to Africa and that his first public speech outside Washington was to the African business conference. He is giving substance, Fountain said, to his statement that African development will be his top priority as World Bank president.
Wolfowitz said his trip to Africa had exposed him to the growing economic opportunities in the region. He said progress towards good governance and against corruption were signs of a new spirit, and he urged both American and African business leaders to pour money into private sector development. Aid is important, he said, and can contribute to funding the necessary infrastructure, such as roads to bring goods to market, but he said the growth of businesses is needed to put Africans to work and to guarantee prosperity.
"The real goal is not just foreign investment in Africa," he said, "it's domestic investment in Africa. The real goal is not just foreign corporations operating in Africa. It's African companies growing from small businesses to medium-size businesses to big businesses."
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african schools. infrastructure is being build and expanding. Use our pull-down menus to find more stories
Nigeria: FG Signs MoU On HP/Nepad E-Schools
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This Day (Lagos)
April 5, 2006 Posted to the web April 6, 2006
Onyebuchi Ezigbo Abuja
The Federal Government has entered into a memorandum of understanding with NEPAD e-Africa Commission and Hewlett-Packard (HP) consortium to provide information and communication technology infrastructure and training to some selected educational institutions in the country under the NEPAD e-school initiative.
Six secondary Schools have been chosen to benefit from the pilot phase of the project which will be implemented by a consortium of HP and Microsoft along with 12 other notable names in IT industry such as Cisco System, Oracle and Advance Micro Devices (AMD).
The Schools are Federal Government Academy, Suleja, Niger State, Federal Government Girls College, Odogbolu, Ogun State, Federal Government Girls College, Bakolori, Kastina State, Federal Government Girls, Owerri, Federal Government Science and Technical College, Uyo in Akwa Ibom State and Federal Government Science and Technical College Lassa.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Minister of Science and Technology, Prof. Turner Isoun said the ICT revolution currently sweeping through the continent is an evidence that Africa is now ready to re-invent itself and to drive its developmental goals to greater heights.
He said vital role of ICT in modern economic development has underpinned the need to invest in young people by impacting appropriate skills and scientific knowledge to students that would equip them adequately for future challenges.
The Programme Commissioner/Co-ordinator of Human Development of NEPAD, Prof. Peter E. Kinyanjui said the project would not only be for the benefit of the students but also the communities harbouring these schools who would gain from the spiral effect.
He said for any School to qualify as NEPAD school it must be connected to Internet facilities.
Kinyanjui said NEPAD is developing a symbolic partnership known as Information Society Partnership for African Development (ISPAD) where the private sector was being invited "to join hands with the government to really move Africa forward".
The NEPAD scribe said about 600,000 schools in Africa are expected to benefit from the E-school programme on the long run.
He described the approach being adopted for the crystallization of ICT development in the continent as 'end to end solution' strategy that would combine provision of necessary ICT infrastructure as well as the training needed to consolidate on the IT revolution.
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Managing Director of HP, Dr. Lloyd Atabansi said the event signifies the commencement of a major paradigm shift in the way the country's reform has been pursued as regards the education of both the present and future generations of economic, social political and technology drivers.
He said with the signing of the MOU, the NEPAD e-school initiative, which is a major priority will begin to take form, adding that the project centres on
equipping the schools in Africa with the appropriate technology that will assist teachers to deliver lessons to students using ICT.
---------------------------------------------------------------- south africa
quote-u.n. A recent government discussion paper on social trends, 'A nation in the making', noted that expenditure on social grants may have helped reduce the number of poor people from 18.5 million in 2000 to 15.4 million in 2004.
my comment-about 3 million folks out of poverty by 2004.sounds like great progress to me.15.4 million folks are poor,the rest belongs to the middle and rich classes.heck i didn't even know that the poor was smaller than that. sounds like out of the 46 million folks in 2004 15.4 million were poor.
It seems that most folks are not poor and the poor in the years to come will decrease because gnp is growing.let us not forget besides gnp,their is the private economy.
about 300 billion dollars OR MORE is in this private economy and south africa has been investing from within for along time.outside investments have grown as well over the years.
there is alot more good news than bad.most africans are not waiting for handouts like some folks like to believe.they are on the move and making progress with or without anybodies help.
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PanAfrica: Promising Economic Outlook and Democratic Strides Seen for 30 African Countries
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May 26, 2006 Posted to the web May 26, 2006
Cece Modupe Fadope Washington, DC
In a promising assessment of Africa's economic health, a new report says economic activity rose five percent during 2005 and is projected to reach 6 percent in 2006 and 2007. The report was issued this week by the African Development Bank (ADB) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
"Africa has recorded good economic performance overall," said Celine Kauffmann, OECD economist and a team leader on the preparation of the study, which is titled "The 2005/06 African Economic Outlook" and profiles 30 countries. ADB membership includes 53 countries in Africa and 25 countries from Asia, Europe and North and South America. The OECD includes 30 developed democracies, including the United States and all members of the European Union.
Kauffman noted that the continent has also made significant strides in democratic gains with the "decline of political instability." She said some countries that were fragile are strengthening, and that peaceful political transitions are holding sway, though tensions still tend to flare around election time.
Among signs that the continent is stirring, the report noted "the combination of better fiscal discipline, rising commodity prices, debt reduction and low inflation has led to a more favorable outlook than it has been for many years."
Natural resource and raw material exports are still the mainstay of Africa’s contribution to the global economy. Not surprising, oil is leading the growth. Oil exporting countries including Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria edged out the others, "though trends for oil importers also looked good." Higher coffee prices helped both Ethiopia and Uganda.
Many countries are making concerted efforts to diversify and add value to their commodities, especially in food processing. There is also a rising output of metals and minerals for export as more countries de-emphasize aid in favor of trade and investment. And with the boom in commodities, investments are on the rise, said Antoine van Agtmael, President and CEO of Emerging Market Investors Corporation, who participated in a breakfast presentation of the report in Washington, DC.
The emphasis on trade and investment appears to present OECD countries with more competition for Africa’s resources unlike what happened in the past. New players including China and India along with some Islamic countries are finding their feet and driving a south-south flow in investment and trade. Van Agtmael envisions a not so distant future where OECD countries’ role in the continent will be trumped by emerging countries.
The Outlook highlights internal and external reasons for setbacks in development and poverty eradication. There’s the adverse consequence of the recent spikes in global oil prices. Oil importing countries are expected to have deficits that will squeeze resources from sustainable development and anti-poverty programs. Furthermore, the lack of transportation infrastructure remains a serious barrier to social progress.
Many Africans are still stranded without options for moving around. The result of limited road access means that "the rural poor spend quite considerable and wholly unproductive time." The consequence on personal time used in running daily errands like "collecting water, obtaining fuel, getting to school, clinic, or the market" leave people with little time for other necessary social engagements. And where there is transportation, safety is a big concern.
Then there’s the shortfall in donor commitments, which will retard continental efforts towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Donors fell 50 percent short of commitments on development aid in 2005, though debt cancellations helped in some countries.
The report notes a renewed donor interest in financing infrastructure projects, especially in the transportation sector and says this could benefit countries that have a transportation development plan.
For all its upbeat projections, the Africa Economic Outlook offers only a broad view of economic prospects on the continent. It does not predict the possibility of broad-based growth or how individual African lives will benefit.
note-mycomments-some african states do have developed or highly developed infrastructure like namiba,south africa and some others and infrastructure is developing in other states,some faster than others of course. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Promising Economic Outlook and Democratic Strides Seen for 30 African Countries Economy Booms As Growth Sets 10-Year Record Police Summon Web Site Contributors Toll Rises to 54 in Petrol Tanker Explosion Former Fighters Ordered Off Rubber Plantations
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Kenya: Economy Booms As Growth Sets 10-Year Record
(Page 2 of 2) The study is normally released ahead of the annual Budget and summarises economic activity in the country. It is supposed to form the basis for cash allocation and economic policy. The launch was at Kenyatta International Conference Centre when the report was formally handed to Finance minister Amos Kimunya, who reads his first Budget in Parliament in the middle of next month.
Tourism was the star performer with 13.3 per cent growth. Its earnings grew from Sh38.5 billion to Sh48.9 billion. Others were transport and communications, which includes mobile telephony and road transport, with 8.3 per cent; building and construction at 7.2; agriculture and forestry with 6.7; wholesale and retail trade 6.4; and, manufacturing with five per cent.
As a result of the reported accelerated growth, Kenya managed to get 44,500 people employed in the so-called modern economy with the balance of jobs arising in the Jua Kali sector.
"Total employment in the modern and informal sectors increased by 5.9 per cent from 7.8 million in 2004 to 8.3 million in 2005," said Mr Obwocha.
Increased jobs in the private sector were mainly in agriculture and services. The public sector reduced employment by 0.6 per cent.
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East Africa Sustainable Development Economy, Business and Finance Kenya
Numbers showed that Kenyan employees were theoretically laughing all the way to the bank with total wage bill up 17.8 per cent, from Sh506.5 billion to Sh596.9 billion. This was nevertheless cancelled out to a large extent by a rise in the price of goods and services of 10.3 per cent - that inflation level was nevertheless lower than the previous year's 11.6 per cent.
Of the total amount paid, the private sector wrote cheques worth Sh397.5 billion, which was 23.3 per cent up on 2004 levels.
Spending on health went up from Sh17.6 billion to Sh19 billion with the number of clinics up three per cent from 4,767 to 4,912. Immunisation coverage rose from 59 to 63 per cent.
Sustainable Development Economy, Business and Finance Kenya
Economy Booms As Growth Sets 10-Year Record Former Fighters Ordered Off Rubber Plantations Government Plan to Fight HIV/Aids Is Working, Deserves Donor Support Sudanese Rebel Infiltration of Refugee Camps Could Lead to Suspension of Aid - UN 50,000 Suffer in 'Forgotten Crisis' - UN Food Agency
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PanAfrica: Promising Economic Outlook and Democratic Strides Seen for 30 African Countries
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May 26, 2006 Posted to the web May 26, 2006
Cece Modupe Fadope Washington, DC
In a promising assessment of Africa's economic health, a new report says economic activity rose five percent during 2005 and is projected to reach 6 percent in 2006 and 2007. The report was issued this week by the African Development Bank (ADB) and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
"Africa has recorded good economic performance overall," said Celine Kauffmann, OECD economist and a team leader on the preparation of the study, which is titled "The 2005/06 African Economic Outlook" and profiles 30 countries. ADB membership includes 53 countries in Africa and 25 countries from Asia, Europe and North and South America. The OECD includes 30 developed democracies, including the United States and all members of the European Union.
Kauffman noted that the continent has also made significant strides in democratic gains with the "decline of political instability." She said some countries that were fragile are strengthening, and that peaceful political transitions are holding sway, though tensions still tend to flare around election time.
Among signs that the continent is stirring, the report noted "the combination of better fiscal discipline, rising commodity prices, debt reduction and low inflation has led to a more favorable outlook than it has been for many years."
Natural resource and raw material exports are still the mainstay of Africa’s contribution to the global economy. Not surprising, oil is leading the growth. Oil exporting countries including Angola, Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria edged out the others, "though trends for oil importers also looked good." Higher coffee prices helped both Ethiopia and Uganda.
Many countries are making concerted efforts to diversify and add value to their commodities, especially in food processing. There is also a rising output of metals and minerals for export as more countries de-emphasize aid in favor of trade and investment. And with the boom in commodities, investments are on the rise, said Antoine van Agtmael, President and CEO of Emerging Market Investors Corporation, who participated in a breakfast presentation of the report in Washington, DC.
The emphasis on trade and investment appears to present OECD countries with more competition for Africa’s resources unlike what happened in the past. New players including China and India along with some Islamic countries are finding their feet and driving a south-south flow in investment and trade. Van Agtmael envisions a not so distant future where OECD countries’ role in the continent will be trumped by emerging countries.
The Outlook highlights internal and external reasons for setbacks in development and poverty eradication. There’s the adverse consequence of the recent spikes in global oil prices. Oil importing countries are expected to have deficits that will squeeze resources from sustainable development and anti-poverty programs. Furthermore, the lack of transportation infrastructure remains a serious barrier to social progress.
Many Africans are still stranded without options for moving around. The result of limited road access means that "the rural poor spend quite considerable and wholly unproductive time." The consequence on personal time used in running daily errands like "collecting water, obtaining fuel, getting to school, clinic, or the market" leave people with little time for other necessary social engagements. And where there is transportation, safety is a big concern.
Then there’s the shortfall in donor commitments, which will retard continental efforts towards the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). Donors fell 50 percent short of commitments on development aid in 2005, though debt cancellations helped in some countries.
The report notes a renewed donor interest in financing infrastructure projects, especially in the transportation sector and says this could benefit countries that have a transportation development plan.
For all its upbeat projections, the Africa Economic Outlook offers only a broad view of economic prospects on the continent. It does not predict the possibility of broad-based growth or how individual African lives will benefit.
Promising Economic Outlook and Democratic Strides Seen for 30 African Countries Economy Booms As Growth Sets 10-Year Record Police Summon Web Site Contributors Toll Rises to 54 in Petrol Tanker Explosion Former Fighters Ordered Off Rubber Plantations
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AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
Kenya: Economy Booms As Growth Sets 10-Year Record
(Page 2 of 2) The study is normally released ahead of the annual Budget and summarises economic activity in the country. It is supposed to form the basis for cash allocation and economic policy. The launch was at Kenyatta International Conference Centre when the report was formally handed to Finance minister Amos Kimunya, who reads his first Budget in Parliament in the middle of next month.
Tourism was the star performer with 13.3 per cent growth. Its earnings grew from Sh38.5 billion to Sh48.9 billion. Others were transport and communications, which includes mobile telephony and road transport, with 8.3 per cent; building and construction at 7.2; agriculture and forestry with 6.7; wholesale and retail trade 6.4; and, manufacturing with five per cent.
As a result of the reported accelerated growth, Kenya managed to get 44,500 people employed in the so-called modern economy with the balance of jobs arising in the Jua Kali sector.
"Total employment in the modern and informal sectors increased by 5.9 per cent from 7.8 million in 2004 to 8.3 million in 2005," said Mr Obwocha.
Increased jobs in the private sector were mainly in agriculture and services. The public sector reduced employment by 0.6 per cent.
Relevant Links
East Africa Sustainable Development Economy, Business and Finance Kenya
Numbers showed that Kenyan employees were theoretically laughing all the way to the bank with total wage bill up 17.8 per cent, from Sh506.5 billion to Sh596.9 billion. This was nevertheless cancelled out to a large extent by a rise in the price of goods and services of 10.3 per cent - that inflation level was nevertheless lower than the previous year's 11.6 per cent.
Of the total amount paid, the private sector wrote cheques worth Sh397.5 billion, which was 23.3 per cent up on 2004 levels.
Spending on health went up from Sh17.6 billion to Sh19 billion with the number of clinics up three per cent from 4,767 to 4,912. Immunisation coverage rose from 59 to 63 per cent.
Sustainable Development Economy, Business and Finance Kenya
Economy Booms As Growth Sets 10-Year Record Former Fighters Ordered Off Rubber Plantations Government Plan to Fight HIV/Aids Is Working, Deserves Donor Support Sudanese Rebel Infiltration of Refugee Camps Could Lead to Suspension of Aid - UN 50,000 Suffer in 'Forgotten Crisis' - UN Food Agency
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Nigeria experienced slowing growth in 2005, but increased oil and gas revenues enabled a current account surplus, and are being used to upgrade infrastructure and aid economic diversification. South African GDP grew by 5 per cent last year, driven by domestic demand as well as export opportunities.
note-nigeria growth rate was revised and it's growth did not slow down,it increased last year.
Nigeria's GDP growth decelerated in 2005, but increased oil and gas export revenues enabled the country to run a current-account surplus. Part of the increase in revenues is being used to upgrade infrastructure in order to lay a solid foundation for future growth. Additionally, agriculture has been the focus of recent policy measures to promote economic diversification and the revitalization of sectors other than the hydrocarbons sector.
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quote:Originally posted by mike rozier: so your not parinoid doug..the world really is against you?
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.
You are right and what I said has nothing to do with paranoia it is TRUTH. Funny how some want to deny the actions of the West both historically and currently under the term of "paranoia". Paranoia has NOTHING to do with seeing reality for what it is and dealing with the situation in the best way possible. How many were killed as a result of the oppression of Leopold and the Belgians in Congo? How many were killed as a result of the oppression of the French in Ivory Coast. Many DONT know the history of oppression and outright GENOCIDE that took place during the 1800s in Africa, but MILLIONS is a small number when counting such atrocities.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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Ps - Kenndo is right to reiterate the point that Africa is a continent, with nations with varying levels of successes, as well as problems. For instance, it is outright ridiculous and apparently ignorant to just assume that in every African nation people are starving, suffering from AIDS, living in huts or rural environments, don't vote in presidential or state official elections or have no such systems in place, fighting one another based on "tribal" affiliations or live in an unstable polity, and so forth. Sure these problems exist in certain locations on the continent, but not everywhere; there are places in Africa, people outside, and perhaps even on the continent don't realize exist, simply because the polity is peaceful, stable and not making news outside Africa, which is almost always only the case, when it is negative, rather than talk of success stories. This is not do deny ongoing "neo-colonial" tactics being used to keep African nations in "check," which notwithstanding some nations best efforts or successes, largely remain in place. [/QB]
right most nations are at peace and most are making progress despite some problems.even the nations that had a civil war there is some progress.most of the congo is at peace and most of the congo is not at war today.let's hope thier is more peace.THERE is less corruption there than before but there is always more room for progress.will corruption ever go away in the world?no,but it could be reduced so that greater progress could happen and that is happening.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
note-most of africa's debt has been cancelled this year. nigeria's debt has been cancelled making room for rebuilding.on the bbc world news,zambia is making greater progress because of the cancelled debt.south africa paid it's last debt a few years ago,that is why there is greater progress today.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by kenndo: note-most of africa's debt has been cancelled this year. nigeria's debt has been cancelled making room for rebuilding.on the bbc world news,zambia is making greater progress because of the cancelled debt.south africa paid it's last debt a few years ago,that is why there is greater progress today.
I must have missed it. When were these cancellations realized?
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
after the g8 summit.they were talking about nigeria one night on the bbc a few weeks.the topic comes up time to time on the bbc world news on wnyc new york.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by kenndo: after the g8 summit.they were talking about nigeria one night on the bbc a few weeks.the topic comes up time to time on the bbc world news on wnyc new york.
I am aware there was a talk of possible debt cancellations for several African nations at the said summit last year, but I wasn't aware that it was ever realized. Were these "unconditional" debt cancellations, and do you have a link to the said news?
Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
here is a example of one african country that is making progress,but this was before the g8 and now after.nigeria now has the largest foreign exchange reserves in africa,larger now than south africa.progress is happening faster now in nigeria.let's hope they kept it up.we all know that there would always be two steps forward and one step back.this is the nature of advancing,but let's hope there are more steps forward than backward,and as time goes on,less backward steps.
note kenya did not get it's debt cancelled because they said that country could deal with it.that's too bad,but despite that problem kenya is making progress today.let's hope they kept it up.
examples of nigeria/and africa advancing.there are more pictures in my picture thread about nigeria and other african states.
abuja,nigeria
future project central business district abuja
[QUOTE=skipperBill]Wow... I didn't know Abuja was so developed and beautiful. Thank you so much for the pictures guys. Please post more[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=boris89]Nigeria is on the fast past. I love Abidjan n but Abuja just might be the city in africa wih the most cranes. Oil rich Nigeria is showing its Might![/QUOTE]
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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quote:Originally posted by kenndo: after the g8 summit.they were talking about nigeria one night on the bbc a few weeks.the topic comes up time to time on the bbc world news on wnyc new york.
I am aware there was a talk of possible debt cancellations for several African nations at the said summit last year, but I wasn't aware that it was ever realized. Were these "unconditional" debt cancellations, and do you have a link to the said news?
I DO NOT have the link now.oh some of that info is above in arwa post above.for more info on that i will send you a private email first.some of this info is there or you could find the person with this info there.
it is hard to find these links for the moment.i heard it mostly on the radio.but i will try to find some links for you later.
In the meantime open up your private email.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
here is one article i found on the computer.i do not have the direct link,but i found this from the link i sent.this deals with fighting corruption and getting back some money that belongs to nigeria. ----------------------------------------------
September 27, 2005—The Governments of Nigeria and Switzerland, working together with assistance from the World Bank, have taken a significant step toward the return of funds which have been looted from Africa.
The Swiss Government is returning to Nigeria $458 million stolen by the late military dictator General Abacha and deposited in Swiss banks. The Swiss have already transferred $290 million of the money.
“The agreement that has been reached between Nigeria and Switzerland is a landmark agreement,” said World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz at a press conference this morning with Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala and Swiss Secretary of State in the Ministry of Economic Affairs Jean-Daniel Gerber.
“It sends a signal around the world that there is no safe harbor for stolen funds," he said.
Wolfowitz said it was one of the first cases of stolen funds being repatriated and could set an important precedent. “Corruption is not just the problem of developing countries. The developed countries have a responsibility, too, and part of that responsibility is to make it as hard as possible for corrupt governments to hide the money that they steal and to help in its return.”
The Nigerian government has been very committed to fighting corruption and has made it clear that its focus on transparency, good governance and fighting corruption was real, Okonjo-Iweala said. “We are grateful that the Swiss Government has set an example for others.”
For its part, the Swiss Government had a fundamental interest in ensuring that it did not receive illicitly acquired assets, Gerber said, and the country’s banking secrecy laws did not apply to assets of criminal origin.
“Repatriating illegally acquired funds is an important tool in the fight against corruption…It also is a significant potential source for development financing,” he said.
According to Okonjo-Iweala, the returned funds would be put directly into poverty-reduction programs.
“We want to assure the public that money were are getting back is put to use in poverty reduction and work creation programs, to support health, education, agriculture, roads, water, everything that has to do with improving the lives of the Nigerian people,” she said.
The World Bank is helping the Nigerian Government through a Public Expenditure Management and Financial Accountability Review (PEMFAR) to ensure additional budget resources, including these and other repatriated funds, are channeled to support these key sectors. The Swiss Government is providing support for the review with a grant.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Sixth, avoid being pictured in the presence of African men, the source of all these troubles and scourges, but include a few white men from any relief agency, and of course lots of listless African women squatting under some leafless tree and staring emptly into the air, or chewing some stick patiently waiting for something to happen. Seventh, choose the landscape carefully, certainly avoid lush vegetation, anything that looks like fresh water; dry, dusty arid and semi-arid areas make the best background for they add ecological drama to Africa´s eternal woes. Eighth, dress modestly, no bling-bling for the rappers among you, preferably in an appropriate safari garb adorned with a hat, it could be a helmet even, especially for those of delicate caucasian skin for protection from the sweltering tropical sun. Ninth, never, ever show the five-star hotel and the city you are actually staying in to which you happily return after the cameras are shut off and before jetting back to the familiar comforts of stardom now immensely enriched by your hard earned humanitarian credentials.
Tenth, when you get back home try to get on Oprah, if that fails one of the TV magazine shows that love stars with a heart will do, or you could go on David Letterman or Jay Leno and show that you still have a sense of humor despite all the agony you have seen; audiences want humanitarian stars with a light touch, not priestly agony and admonition written all over their faces – they want to feel good about themselves, not guilty about the tribulations of tribes and tribal tragedies in far away Africa.
You know you have really arrived as a global African humanitarian when you can talk to President Bush and Prime Minister Blair, the champios of democracy, development and peace (don`t believe those malicious stories about Iraq and Afghanistan and Guantanamo) in the same week or in the same venue, say, the G8 Summit, and if you can call yourself, or better still you can be called by your admiring fans, Mr Africa and Ms Africa without blushing. And yes, the ability to organize a global event, a rock concert is best for the depoliticised youth who love music and to dance, without Africans is the ultimate accolade, it`s godly in its intoxicating possibilities to liberate Africa from itself.
Lol, but so true.
-------------------- Truth - a liar penetrating device! Posts: 5964 | Registered: Jan 2005
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quote:Originally posted by kenndo: here is one article i found on the computer.i do not have the direct link,but i found this from the link i sent.this deals with fighting corruption and getting back some money that belongs to nigeria.
It is funny how the West likes to focus SOLELY on corrupt governments as the SOLE reason why Africa is poor and NOT the fact that these SAME countries with corrupt governments have a veritable who's who of international corporations making billions in profits while the people starve. The reason Africa is so poor is NOT just because of corrupt governments. The reason Africa is poor is because of the Western economic powers USING Africa as the source of cheap raw materials that they use to generate HUGE profits for themselves and their economies. Without Africa being destitute and in chaos, these countries would not be able to continue the colonial legacy of extirmination of African peoples in order to exploit the natural resources. So, nothing has changed in Africa in all reality, except that the foreign colonial powers HIDE behind corrupt governments and MANIPULATE the crisis in many parts of Africa for their OWN economic gain. The hypocrisy is trifling when the west, after 400+ years of feeding off the death and destruction of African peoples, acts SHOCKED at how bad off many Africans are, as if they WERENT the primary culprits in the first place. Look at ANY African country and find out how many Africans are making the money out of all the richest people in the country. Sure, the corrupt government official may be rich, but outside of him and his cronies, how many citizens have big money? Not many. Most of the people with big money in Africa are FOREIGNERS, mostly called expats, meaning foreign nationals who stayed in an African nation after its independence, to maintain the land, plantations and mineral deposits that were TAKEN from Africans by the colonial regimes. Through these and other intermediaries and mercenaries, the former colonial governments maintain a stranglehold on Africa's development and keep them from truly being able to prosper from the natural wealth of the country. In fact, almost NEVER is this NET export of money from African countries talked about when discussing poverty in Africa. It is as if the West wants to separate the PROFITS of the big companies like DeBeers and Firestone from ANY relationship to the economic woes of the companies they operate in. Funny how they conveniently forget the history of how they GOT to be so big in Africa in the first place........
So, lets keep in mind that while African countries may have been liberated from OVERT colonial control, they are still very much under control of NEO Colonialist capitalists, who view Africa as nothing more than a INVESTMENT opportunity (money vacuum) for Whites, same as it always was. If you want to REALLY understand the reasons for poverty in Africa, read the histories of the companies ACTIVE in African nations and the RACIST practices and idealogies of those behind those companies. Cecil Rhodes of South Africa, King Leopold of Belgian Congo and many other Western Capitalists are the reason for the suffering in Africa today, because of a LEGACY of European exploitation of Africa for its resources, which is the ONLY reason Europeans went to Africa in the FIRST place. They did NOT just go there because Africans were DIFFERENT. For them Africa was NOTHING more than a pure ECONOMIC exercise, nothing more and nothing less. In fact, Leopold wanted to make Belgium great and spoke at great lengths on WHY Belgium needed to colonize Congo, massacre millions of Congolese and use the rest as slave labor. Europeans have NEVER been fair about wealth distribution and EVERYTHING about their history in Africa is one of OUT AND OUT greed, death and destruction for Africans. So when you see these 6th and 7th generation European capitalists and land owners in their exclusive game parks and reserves, think that this OASIS was built directly on the back of MILLIONS of dead Africans and CONTINUES to be.
Posts: 8889 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
THe only nation that i know of in africa,that has outsiders living in that state and hold alot of land is still south africa.there has been some progress there and soon,there would be more. outsiders do not control africa.north africa is a different case as far as i am concern.
YOU HAVE TO STOP BLAMING NEO-COLONIALISM.IT HAS little to do with problems today.IT WAS THE PAST AFRICAN LEADERS who where doing evil.today many african leaders are doing there best to stamp out corruption,so please stop the whining.congo,kenya,etc,control there own resourses.ALL this helpless sounding talk does nothing to help the problem.certain parts of africa is not poor by the way.many things have change in africa. this is why i stop or slowed down listening to talk radio.the right wing talks about africa not doing better now and the left,say the same thing for different reasons.it seems they have one thing incommon.black folks don't know what they are doing,and that is just non-sense.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
THe only nation that i know of in africa,that has outsiders living in that state and hold alot of land is still south africa.there has been some progress there and soon,there would be more. outsiders do not control africa.north africa is a different case as far as i am concern.
YOU HAVE TO STOP BLAMING NEO-COLONIALISM.IT HAS little to do with problems today.IT WAS THE PAST AFRICAN LEADERS who where doing evil.today many african leaders are doing there best to stamp out corruption,so please stop the whining.congo,kenya,etc,control there own resourses.ALL this helpless sounding talk does nothing to help the problem.certain parts of africa is not poor by the way.many things have change in africa. this is why i stop or slowed down listening to talk radio.many from the right wing talks about africa not doing better now and many on the left,say the same thing for different reasons.It seems they have one thing incommon,black folks don't know what they are doing from their view point,and that is just non-sense.
Posts: 2688 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I DON'T want to hear constant bad and distorted news that much these days.iahd to say one last thing since i will not be reading anything on that other thread.doug i will send some good news by email and you will be surprise,so really this is my last comment in public on this forum abou this too.I NEED TO HANG WITH POSTIVE THINKERS.NEGATIVE THINKERS WEAR YOU OUT.
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the problem is the african goverments not investing in their countries infrastructure..and not useing their resources wisely.
I don't fault the starveing people in that country as much as I do the people in power in them countries..
I replied:
^Africa is not a country.
Now, some more words worth noting from an apparent politically-conscious author, Prof. Zeleza, from Arwa’s aforementioned link:
Only the story about Charles Taylor, the notorious former Liberian president, arriving in Holland, his face downcast with humiliation, represented a fresh script; well, almost, for the commentary soon reverted to style about Africa`s proverbial genius for producing dictators…
I also knew Ms. Jolie had given birth to her daughter with Mr. Pitt in Namibia, or rather Africa as the geographically challenged media kept repeating **as if there are no individual countries** on this vast continent. Individuality, the naming of countries and people, in a country that believes it invented or at least perfected individuality seems strangely absent when it comes to Africa.
Inidividaul nationhood is apparently an attribute reserved for those living in the blessed parts of the world, sometimes referred to, in bigoted company, as the `civilized`countries, or less offensively as `western`, or as the `global North`in the polite bureaucratic language beloved by the United Nations and politically correct cosmopolitans. It is certainly not for the benighted masses of the `Third World´, a word that has seen better days, or the `global South`, or let`s just say Africa, the sorriest places of them all. This is also to digress…
**Tribes**, tribal, tribalism: harsh, contemptuous, condemnatory words that evoke nothing but primitivity, savagery, backwardness, primeval communities and conflicts. Words that are reserved for Africans and those `indigenous` peoples in Asia and South America that are periodically discovered in some remote jungle by National Geographic or featured on Discovery Channel.
But it is modern Africa that has still tribes everywhere, a whole continent that is held to ransom by the primordial pathologies of ancient tribal life. Africans are stamped with tribal marks from birth to death.
Tribes are beyond history, they have always existed in Africa, they explain everything: the poverty, the civil conflicts, the corruption, the dicatorships. European colonialism failed to stamp out the tribe, postcolonial modernization withers in its glare, contemporary democratization has no chance in its suffocating shadows…
Whereas in other parts of the world issues and conflicts may be named as political, economic, social, environmental, class, gender, religious, or cultural, in Africa they are almost invariably about tribes and tribalism.
Nobody of course talks of tribes in Europe, except in reference to the remote past, of contemporary tribal conflicts in the Balkans, in Northern Ireland, in Spain. European groupings are defined as `nations` and their conflicts deemed national or nationalist conflicts and accorded specific characteristics, combatants, causes, closures, and consequences. In Asia people are often divided into ethnic or communal groups and their conflicts termed ethnic or communal. Nations for Europe, ethnicities for Asia, tribes for Africa, a sliding scale of civilizational status and possibilities…
Ms. Jolie was obviouly in good company despite her limited education and obvious ignorance of African histories, cultures, societies, polities, and economies. She was merely repeating received western wisdom on Africa. Tribes may have long been banished from the academic vocabularly in Africanist discourse, but they are alive and well in the mass media. But even in the academy the term sneaks in from time to time as I discovered at a party when I first arrived at Penn State when a head of a certain otherwise progressive department who had done a little comparative research in Africa asked me: What tribe are from? My shocked gasp said it all, but just to make sure that she got the message, I sent her an e-mail explaining the politics of the term `tribe` to which she responded with a groveling apology. But many a western journalist assigned to the hardship African beat defend the use of the term `tribe` on account that Africans themselves use it. One student of mine returned from a four week study abroad in Kenya feeling empowered to use the term and challenged my allegedly western liberal antipathy to it. There was a time when African `groupings` were called `nations` before the rise of colonial racism and academic anthropology, and in my language the term used for African and European groupings is the same, `mtundu`.
`Tribe` is an acquired term of colonial self-denigration, not self-definition, let alone self-empowerment…
Western reporting on Africa rests on four well-tested mantras: selectivity, sensationalism, stereotyping and special vocabularly.
quote:Originally posted by kenndo: THe only nation that i know of in africa,that has outsiders living in that state and hold alot of land is still south africa.there has been some progress there and soon,there would be more. outsiders do not control africa.north africa is a different case as far as i am concern.
YOU HAVE TO STOP BLAMING NEO-COLONIALISM.IT HAS little to do with problems today.IT WAS THE PAST AFRICAN LEADERS who where doing evil.today many african leaders are doing there best to stamp out corruption,so please stop the whining.congo,kenya,etc,control there own resourses.ALL this helpless sounding talk does nothing to help the problem.certain parts of africa is not poor by the way.many things have change in africa. this is why i stop or slowed down listening to talk radio.the right wing talks about africa not doing better now and the left,say the same thing for different reasons.it seems they have one thing incommon.black folks don't know what they are doing,and that is just non-sense.
Kenndo, I blame neo-colonialism because it DESERVES to be blamed. Trying to act as if there isnt a colonial legacy in African politics is LUDICROUS. Almost EVERY African country has MAJOR fereign "investments" that are producing wealth for foreign entrepeneurs:
Nigeria: Shell, BP and others Congo: various mining and mineral consortiums and Debeers.
Liberia: Firestone tire and rubber and other mineral interests.
quote: Concession Deals. Natural resource and land concession contract deals drew notable attention during the NTGL’s tenure because of their financial significance and potential long-term effects on national development. U.N. experts and donor governments questioned the propriety of a March 2005 monopsony diamond concession deal with a previously unknown firm, which was later cancelled.22 Some observers also questioned the NTGL’s award of offshore oil exploration permits to three relatively obscure firms just prior to elections. The NTGL also signed two major long-term natural resource concession deals. One, with the Firestone group of companies, extends and amends a previous series of concession agreements, first signed in 1926, giving Firestone rights to large plantation areas for the cultivation of rubber.23 The contract was amended, in part, because Firestone contended that it was unable to exploit its holdings due to fighting over the last decade and a half, and in order to boost foreign investment in Liberia. The deal gave the Firestone group surface rental and other rights to nearly 200 square miles of active or proposed rubber plantation land for 36 years in exchange for $.50 per acre per year and various investments, tax payments, social and infrastructure development outputs, and various other commitments. It may be extended for another 50 years after renegotiation. Another deal, with Netherlands-based Mittal Steel Holdings, provides for the rehabilitation or construction of diverse mining, administrative support, processing, and transport infrastructure intended to support the extraction and shipment of iron ore from northern Liberia. It gives Mittal a variety of surface rental, mineral license, iron ore extraction, transport infrastructure construction, and other rights in exchange for diverse capital investments, totaling about $900 million, and royalty, lump sum, tax, and other payments to the government. The initial term of 25 years is extendable for additional 25-year terms, if certain criteria are met. Both deals drew criticism from some civil society groups that contended that the NTGL lacked a legal mandate to negotiate long-term concessions, that such functions could only be carried out by a duly elected government, and that such deals should be negotiated in a manner more favorable to Liberian economic and other national interests.24 The contracts were also politically controversial. The Mittal deal was the subject of rival bids by the large mining firms Global Infrastructural Holdings Limited (GIHL), BHP Billington and Real Tito, and its ratification was contested legally and in parliament. Some civil society critics have alleged that the deals were not undertaken in a transparent manner. Mittal has denied that charge, and maintains that the contract was won in a “transparent and competitive bid process” and will bring significant foreign investment and infrastructure development to Liberia.25 The former U.S. Ambassador to Liberia John Blaney reportedly pushed for requirements that, regardless of what firm was awarded mining rights, a major railroad that would be rehabilitated under such a deal be made a multi-use railroad.26 The Firestone contract drew attention for other reasons. Some Firestone plantation workers have complained about poor working conditions and high production quotas. Some environmental advocacy groups and residents living near Firestone rubber processing facilities have alleged that chemicals used in latex processing are polluting wells, rivers, and water life. The Firestone group also is the subject of a class action suit brought in California by the International Labor Rights Fund, an advocacy organization that says its goal is to counter child, forced, and other abusive labor practices internationally, including through litigation. The suit allegesthat Firestone employs children, practices forced labor, involuntary servitude, and negligent employment practices. Firestone categorically denies these charges, describing the suit as “outrageous” and “completely without merit.” It maintains that its operations comply fully with Liberian laws and asserts that its workers are all adults of legal working age, are union-represented, are paid well above prevailing wages, are provided with social services, and that Firestone is bringing much needed investment to Liberia.
You CANT get ahead by allowing foreigners to OWN ALL of the resources and get 90% of the profits from your natural resources. You CANT get ahead by depending on HANDOUTS from foreign companies. You get ahead by OWNING YOUR OWN and MAKING PROFITS, period.
Note that this is exactly what is happening in ALL of Africa's countries. Foreign companies are making shady deals with various African governments with LITTLE to show for the African people. Yet this is called "development". Development HOW? Stop sitting back and talking nonsense and not UNDERSTANDING the issues. Firestone should not BE in Liberia in the FIRST place. That LAND was SUPPOSED to be for the former slaves from America for them to feed and SUPPORT themselves, yet through some political trickery, Firestone gets ALL of the land in Liberia for pennies on the dollar and uses almost SLAVELIKE labor to produce the rubber. The new president, Miss Shirleaf, is a former member of the WORLD BANK, certainly NOT an institution known for promoting and supporting African economic INDEPENDENCE.
In every area of agriculture and raw materials in Africa FOREIGNERS are the making MOST of the money, whether it be OIL, GAS, DIAMONDS, COBALT, COLTAN, COTTON, RUBBER, SUGAR or anything else. The FIRST problem is the fact that these companies got ACCESS to these resources MAINLY from the old colonial occupiers of Africa. The SECOND problem is that these companies, backed by Western governments, have gotten access to these resources by supporting various neocolonial and NON progressive governments in the region. In fact, it is COMMON practice for the World Bank to FORCE African countries to make deals that GIVE AWAY most of the wealth of their countries to Western companies in return for EXPENSIVE loans from the World Bank and DUBIOUS economic projects. THIS is the neo colonialism I am talking about and this is STILL going on all over Africa to this day. Bottom line, African countries will NOT advance as long as MOST of the money from the natural resources in the country is going OUT of the country. In America and the West, such a situation would be UNTHINKABLE, yet in African countries, this is EXACTLY the sort of VOODOO economics that the West, through the World Bank and IMF are PUSHING!
If it wasnt for colonialism and racist expoitation by Europeans Africans would be making MOST of the money from their own resources and would NOT be in the situation they are in today. No amount of pleading for us to BLAME Africans as the sole reason for this is going to change that fact. ALL of this goes back to the independence movements in each African country and what HAPPENED to the former colonialists in those countries. In MOST cases, the former colonialists made DEALS with the Africans to KEEP their plantations and mines in return for PROMISES of reconcilliation, much like South Africa. Well, FIRST, this is NONSENSE, since the whole POINT was to TAKE BACK that which had been STOLEN in the first place, not make a DEAL for it. Second, these former colonialists had no INTENTION to GIVE anything back to the Africans. This situation exists ALL OVER AFRICA and is very much the same as what has been happening in South Africa. How can Africans sit and WAIT for the WHITES to give back the land and wealth they stole from them? The whites WONT give it back, because they FOUGHT HARD to TAKE it from Africans "fair and square". These neo-colonial governments and their corrupt officials are just a SIDESHOW to divert attention from the REAL problem in Africa which is the fact that MOST of the profits from land and mineral wealth in Africa is being made by FOREIGNERS, which was the WHOLE POINT for them going into Africa and EXPLOITING Africa in the FIRST PLACE.
quote: or the first time, Zambia Sugar shares were actually listed on the Lusaka Stock Exchange and are fairing well.
However, a darker and more depressing scenario amid this success story has been unfolding.
Most contentious of all is the quality of life on the estate which according to some workers who preferred anonymity for fear of reprisals from management has deteriorated.
It is alleged that management has issued an order to all residents on the estates to register their domesticated animals and keep them secure in their dwellings failure to which stern punishment would be meted out.
A household is only allowed to keep one dog while all other forms of domesticated animals such as chickens are banned The growing of backyard vegetables or maize is also outlawed.
The residents of the estate have also been given an unconstitutional curfew time where anyone found driving or walking after the prescribed time unless so permitted is charged.
On conditions of service, the union is currently locked in a disputed case over a driver who was fired because he had given a lift to his wife who had lost a relative on a company truck to Lusaka.
Another classic example is where management has suspended all forms of transportation to workers except for a 60 seater bus which is only released for funerals.
Ironically, a brand new Mercedes Benz bus has recently been bought for as few as five to six managers’ kids who attend the nearby Musikili school.
Such and many more industrial related matters have continued to dampen the workers’ morale at the firm.
Worse still, incidences of racial slurs against the indigenous Zambians are also on the increase.
A top manager two months ago had his docket handed over to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) after he made racially inclined disparaging remarks about Zambian businessmen and local staff.
The complaints were registered after a team of goods and services suppliers called on him to discuss business plans but were spurned.
They reported the matter to the local police who in turn handed the case over to their superiors and ultimately the DPP.
The manager is alleged before his posting to Zambia last November to have been locked out of his office at a sugar firm in Swaziland by irate workers after he passed such racial remarks.
This forced government authorities to demand his immediate deportation.
Another complaint workers have is about how Zambian university graduates with vast experience were being systematically sidelined from their jobs and replaced by certificate holding South African novices who were actually being taught the job by the same Zambians.
The workers said the immigration department should critically study these work permits and carry out on the spot assessments of the jobs that need so called expatriate staff.
They alleged that most of the jobs that were Zambianised even over a decade ago were slowly being reclaimed by expatriates.
A classic example is about a Zambian university graduate who had been understudying a top agricultural job for over 17 years until he was retired.
Most of the time they claimed expatriates came into the country at the pretext of teaching the indigenous workers understudying them the job when in actual fact they were in the jobs full time for extremely long periods.
In a separate interview with Mazabuka member of Parliament, Griffith Nangomba who confirmed the numerous problems afflicting Zambia’s foremost sugar firm, he revealed that a more pressing industrial dispute was brewing and unless positive intervention was made soon, there would be a crisis.
Mr Nangomba reveals that when Illovo Sugar bought off the firm, all workers should have been paid their gratuity and start off on new work contracts.
But despite interventions at ministerial level, management was adamant about the commitment they went into with the union and workers and that was causing unnecessary friction.
He adds that the sugar firm has instead opted to divert all the money earmarked for the workers gratuity into a retirement scheme and will only pay such monies upon an employees’s retirement or retrenchment date. “Zambia Sugar has the capacity to pay its workers no doubt about it.
Mr Nangomba says he has also received numerous complaints from the town’s business association and individual suppliers about how indigenous Zambian suppliers have been systematically phased out from supplying big contract goods and services with the firm opting for South African firms.
In this case, he says, many Zambia Sugar widows who indirectly depend on the firm for survival have been left in the cold.
He laments and prods Government not to turn a blind eye to such growing negative sentiments and complaints from workers but quickly intervene in the matter.
So please stop with the propaganda about the Western companies being SAVIORS of the people of Africa from the EVILS of corrupt governments. The point is that the WHITE racists who ORIGINALLY colonized Africa are STILL at work behind the helm of many of Africa's LARGEST corporations, since LITTLE has been done to them by Africans since independence. The fact that LITTLE of consequence was done to RETURN the land and mineral wealth of the countries BACK to Africans has allowed these people to STAY in a position of ABSOLUTE economic power over their African subjects. The current plan is to MAINTAIN this position and EXPAND it, allowing FOREIGNERS to INCREASE their ownership and profit making at the EXPENSE of Africans. This is NOT fair, since these foreigners are ONLY in this position in the FIRST place because of their colonial past.....
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I didn't know Abuja was so developed and beautiful. Thank you so much for the pictures guys. Please post more[/QUOTE]
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