Do you think there are not already successful people in Africa, and have been for centuries? Do you not realize that Africa is already a rapidly developing part of the world economy? Do you think when the bourgeois places a factory in a town, that automatically means that they will help fund the school and hospital as well?
Africa's problems are primarily due to lack of access of the ability to develop human resources. The reasons for this lack of ability to develop human resources is not primarily a problem of educational personnel, but a problem that in order to get the capital to develop their material resources, they normally take structured IMF loans that place strict caps on the amount of social spending that they are allowed to do.
Now, you would think, 'Gee, if these loans are so bad, why would they take them, are they stupid?' They take them because if they attempt to develop their country in any other way, their governments have this weird habit of being overthrown by coups. Coups that are definitely in no way connected to the multiple undisclosed (except by random leaks) U.S., British and French military bases all over Africa. Or if they are not overthrown by coups, they are subjected to international sanctions. Now, theoretically even some of the social spending that is allowed could help, but most of the time, the guys doing the coups are pretty corrupt guys, so they tend to pocket a large percentage of the loan money that comes in. This is done with the full knowledge of the IMF, as multiple U.N. reports have documented this process. At this point, you could even call it sanctioned bribery, but legally it's just development loans.
Wealthy individuals going over and developing education will not change anything if there is not a political or economic system in place that can effectively utilize those talents, which means they will inevitably move to greener pastures. And even if that is rarely what they do, normally they just open up a factory that employees people at far below U.S. minimum wage, though you can argue that it is still higher than most of the local wages, but that is how neo-colonialism works. The exploitative relationship remains the same, and the infrastructure remains undeveloped.
The Chinese generally do things differently, in that they usually bring in their own firms AND workforce to create these large infrastructure projects that they themselves fund. You can argue that this is just imperialism, but it clearly is a completely different relationship. The Chinese generally only work with governments that they trust will allow them to complete the projects they set out to commit. And Chinese firms will hire African labor, engineers (at exploitative rates still but that's the nature of the business) and have been known to donate to engineering scholarships at African universities. As that one African prime minister said, "When the Chinese visit we get a hospital, when the West visits we get a lecture". And it has been showing huge results for African economies helping previously struggling countries grow their economies by even 1-2% a year as these workers then go on to spend the money they earn in the local economy, sometimes at Chinese businesses and sometimes at African businesses. It's still capitalism, but it's a capitalism that is marginally more aimed at partnership and development than Western style business and loan capitalism. We will see how that affects their long term poverty levels, the overall wealth and government corruption, but signs are looking at this being a winning strategy as long as it lasts.
However, the only reason this works is because it is a Chinese foreign policy strategy, organized by their foreign office, and then bid on and executed by Chinese firms. It's not random individuals fucking off and starting their own private "learn how to be an entrepreneur" or "L33t programmer" schools in Africa.
The likelihood of an African-American becoming a political leader in an African country is minimal, the cultural barriers and understanding to accomplish that are incredibly high. It's literally not the problem.
The problem is that if that if wealthy African-Americans going over and educating Africans is the policy you want to pursue, the only way to actually effectively pursue it is with a massive hundred million dollar campaign that ALSO develops the infrastructure to create places of employment for these newly educated Africans to work and earn money. Again, what they need is hospitals, not lectures. Anything else is spitting in a pond to make it a lake. It would almost be more effective for wealthy African Americans to lobby for the U.S. government to loosen it's lending policies to African countries.
I'm not being negative. I am reading the geo-political situation as it exists and why, to the best of my knowledge, it exists, and then attempting to be realistic about the amount of work that actually has to be done to change that situation.
Do you think there are not already successful people in Africa, and have been for centuries? Do you not realize that Africa is already a rapidly developing part of the world economy? Do you think when the bourgeois places a factory in a town, that automatically means that they will help fund the school and hospital as well?
Africa's problems are primarily due to lack of access of the ability to develop human resources. The reasons for this lack of ability to develop human resources is not primarily a problem of educational personnel, but a problem that in order to get the capital to develop their material resources, they normally take structured IMF loans that place strict caps on the amount of social spending that they are allowed to do.
Now, you would think, 'Gee, if these loans are so bad, why would they take them, are they stupid?' They take them because if they attempt to develop their country in any other way, their governments have this weird habit of being overthrown by coups. Coups that are definitely in no way connected to the multiple undisclosed (except by random leaks) U.S., British and French military bases all over Africa. Or if they are not overthrown by coups, they are subjected to international sanctions. Now, theoretically even some of the social spending that is allowed could help, but most of the time, the guys doing the coups are pretty corrupt guys, so they tend to pocket a large percentage of the loan money that comes in. This is done with the full knowledge of the IMF, as multiple U.N. reports have documented this process. At this point, you could even call it sanctioned bribery, but legally it's just development loans.
Wealthy individuals going over and developing education will not change anything if there is not a political or economic system in place that can effectively utilize those talents, which means they will inevitably move to greener pastures. And even if that is rarely what they do, normally they just open up a factory that employees people at far below U.S. minimum wage, though you can argue that it is still higher than most of the local wages, but that is how neo-colonialism works. The exploitative relationship remains the same, and the infrastructure remains undeveloped.
The Chinese generally do things differently, in that they usually bring in their own firms AND workforce to create these large infrastructure projects that they themselves fund. You can argue that this is just imperialism, but it clearly is a completely different relationship. The Chinese generally only work with governments that they trust will allow them to complete the projects they set out to commit. And Chinese firms will hire African labor, engineers (at exploitative rates still but that's the nature of the business) and have been known to donate to engineering scholarships at African universities. As that one African prime minister said, "When the Chinese visit we get a hospital, when the West visits we get a lecture". And it has been showing huge results for African economies helping previously struggling countries grow their economies by even 1-2% a year as these workers then go on to spend the money they earn in the local economy, sometimes at Chinese businesses and sometimes at African businesses. It's still capitalism, but it's a capitalism that is marginally more aimed at partnership and development than Western style business and loan capitalism. We will see how that affects their long term poverty levels, the overall wealth and government corruption, but signs are looking at this being a winning strategy as long as it lasts.
However, the only reason this works is because it is a Chinese foreign policy strategy, organized by their foreign office, and then bid on and executed by Chinese firms. It's not random individuals fucking off and starting their own private "learn how to be an entrepreneur" or "L33t programmer" schools in Africa.
So if African-Americans move there they get overthrown in a coup. Well thanks, Mr. Negativity, I guess we just won't help then. Jesus.
The likelihood of an African-American becoming a political leader in an African country is minimal, the cultural barriers and understanding to accomplish that are incredibly high. It's literally not the problem.
The problem is that if that if wealthy African-Americans going over and educating Africans is the policy you want to pursue, the only way to actually effectively pursue it is with a massive hundred million dollar campaign that ALSO develops the infrastructure to create places of employment for these newly educated Africans to work and earn money. Again, what they need is hospitals, not lectures. Anything else is spitting in a pond to make it a lake. It would almost be more effective for wealthy African Americans to lobby for the U.S. government to loosen it's lending policies to African countries.
I'm not being negative. I am reading the geo-political situation as it exists and why, to the best of my knowledge, it exists, and then attempting to be realistic about the amount of work that actually has to be done to change that situation.