Are We Hurting Africa by Helping It?

Wow... no comment

Perhaps the answer is that we're giving them the WRONG TYPE of aid? I don't know what the alternative would be, though.

alex,

if i'm remembering correctly, the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman touch on this subject. Groups like the WTO can use aid to these nations as a shackle for exploiting their resources or using them in other strategic ways.

it is controversial, but worth discussing.

i don't believe refusing all aid is the answer, but it's how it is being done that matters. many great TED talks on this, as well.

Stopping aid isn't the answer though. At best outside aid is clearly just a very large wad of gauze in a very large bullet hole. It's not helping much, but it's doing something.

With stop-gap measures though, one assumes that the doctors are on the way with solutions.

It seems like stepping in and forcing some change is an obvious step, but if the outside governments aren't doing this, then one must wonder why. There has to be some kind of major road block.

They are people, not ants or stray dogs.

I.... Would tend to agree with the author of the article, but not with such generally inflammatory rhetoric.

It is true that much of the land in Africa is at or well above its ecological carrying capacity, especially with the mismanagement of the land and so many corrupt governments over there. Much of the aid given to Africa exacerbates the poor situation.

An example to pull upon would be the Malthusian principle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_principle#The_Principle_of_Population). It's an outdated view of population in the modernized world, but still somewhat true in the poorer, agricultural areas of the world (in Arica or anywhere else). He says that population will generally keep growing at a quick rate until it reaches the maximum food supply, at which point disease, malnutrition and other crises will bring it down to just below that level. This process will continue, where food will limit the population of the area and a strange painful equilibrium will form.

Anyway, as I said, Africa as it currently isn't producing or distributing its food well enough to keep its whole population fed. Large increases in food in the form of aid artificially -- and temporarily -- increase the food supply, which may lead to temporary population growth, followed by more death. So we are leading to a huge amount of pain and hardship in those areas by giving them all the food and medicine aid.

What we need to be doing more of is promoting family planning, contraceptive usage and education of women. This will help get the population down to a level where hopefully everyone will have enough to eat.

oops, I somehow added a space in the URL. here's the correct link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusian_principle#The_Principle_of_Population

I think Kevin Myers is dead right! Someone needed to say it. I am in no way a heartless man, but I said this years ago. You go down there and feed them and in 20 years you have ten times as many and so on. So the aid (and cash machine) continues to roll consuming more and more and more. The balloon is going to pop sometime.

I'm by no means against feeding for the hungry, but I said 30 years ago to relocate them. So it is just not a food hand out but a real rescue.

Arguments like this, always, always, always remind me of Dickens's "A Christmas Carol," to wit:
--
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
--
Mr. Myers would do well to remember that given the flexibility of the term, he could very easily be classified as a member of the "surplus population."

This video on growth and the exponential function might be of interest here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

You should watch all eight parts.

Sure it's people, but it's like feeding a stray cat which in turn has a litter of kittens. Now you have 12 starving cats, thus more suffering.

I actually agree with the article.

Sometimes, there are just too many people in an area. They have to leave (migrate) to find food, or they'll die.

An interesting novel that touches on the topic of foreign aid gone wrong is "One Big Damn Puzzler" by John Harding, though it's set on an island, not in Africa.

Unfortunately, it's the truth. Not only are we feeding these people to allow them to grow up under extremely harsh conditions, but we may in fact be making the root problem worse, too. I don't remember where I read it, but it makes sense: as we increase aid to Africa, we have to assume that more people are surviving to adulthood, which means more people are requiring more resources. These resources simply aren't there to begin with, and effectively adding to the population is going to drain the limited resources that the environment has, to begin with. The land is dead. It needs time to heal, not more people desperate for every drop of nutrients they can get from it.

Unfortunately, the most "practical" solution would be to effectively evacuate large parts of Africa... which is so incredibly impossible and impractical that it leaves me feeling quite helpless.

That might be a more interesting article if the author wasn't clearly out of his tiny mind.

He's obsessed with black men's penises for a start.

We should do like China. Let's start exploit Africa resources. And with the money we give them they can buy weapons from us!
perpetual motion!

My wife is obsessed with black men's penises too, and I'm white.

If you want to complain about Africans breeding then push more programs that promote sex equality, birth control and family planning. Not many people are doing this. Bush sure as hell didn't help with his abstinence only funding.

Also, much of our past aid was turned into income for the most insane warlords the world has ever seen..a lot of them got away with it too as the Western world was very slow to realize what was going on (see the recent post on Neatorama) and look at North Korea.

We aren't hurting Africa by helping it..were hurting it by just throwing money at it, walking away and then wondering why the hell things aren't getting better. Africa is a huge ass diamond mine yet why is it such a poor continent? So many factors..way too simple an article.

I'm reminded of a story from a friend of mine who worked in the Peace Corps. Her village --where she was stationed for two years giving medical treatments, teaching classes, and running a women's clinic-- had a well that an earlier Peace Corps group had dug. But it kept getting clogged. It had been dug and re-dug three times. No one had bothered to train any of the villagers in how to maintain the well, so over time it had simply clogged up with sediment to the point of not even functioning.

The "help" that we sometimes give to poorer nations is often tarnished by the fact that we make no long-term investment in their infrastructure. We give them food for physical survival without educating them for economic survival. We build schools but don't train their people to teach in them. Our help needs to be better directed in this region of the world.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

As harsh as it is, I don't think just handing out aid is doing much good in the long run. They need education so they can learn that what they're doing isn't working, and they need education so they can fix the problems for themselves. Africa needs to learn... not just be given the answers to their problems in the form of money and medicine. Because (as this article rather harshly points out) you'll just end up with a different problem later on: too many people who don't know how to take care of themselves, and not enough resources to support them all anyway.

We need to find solutions that aren't band-aid solutions. We (US, 1st world countries) can't continue to go in and feed them and give them resources without teaching them to fend for themselves. A large part of the problem is that these countries have become dependent on other countries to fix the problem instead of coming up with solutions themselves and learning from it.

What an awful notion! African people aren't stray puppies, they're people. Not feeding them so that the population will do down is not an acceptable solution.

Letting people starve to death will not stop wars and end dictatorships, in fact poverty encourages war and support for dictators. Hungry people will lay their ideals aside in exchange for the promise of better conditions. If a crazy warlord or dictator says he has a plan to get his supporters and countrymen food and health care, they're going to let that glimmer of hope overshadow that he's awful. People who have their basic needs met are able to have the "luxury" of making decisions based on less immediate needs. If you're fed and clothed and healthy, then you can worry about civil rights and ethics and freedom. Until Africans or the West can find a way to meet the most basic of the people's needs, there's no hope of being able to deal with the other injustices.

But meeting Africa's needs is more complicated than just delivering truckloads of food or sending money. There needs to be a lot more work on sustainable changes, permanent solutions instead of emergency aid. More needs to be invested in things like education and industry and agriculture. People need to be educated, both academically, and in things like how to prevent diseases and unwanted pregancy. Education, especially for women, is crucial. Empowerment is important. Giving people, especially females, the economic leverage they need to help themselves out of poverty will help foster the idea that they are the masters of their own destiny and that they can make a difference in their own lives and their country's future. Extreme poverty leads to a sort of hopelessness that's hard to even grasp in the West. People should invest in real sources of income in Africa, factories, farms, businesses etc. Africans aren't stupid. They aren't lazy. They are just people. Maybe the West needs to stop looking at Africa as a place that needs our charity and more at a place that we can invest in.

By the way...If anyone is interest in helping the working poor in Africa, they might look into www.kiva.org At Kiva, you can loan (yes, loan, as in they pay it back) as little as 25 dollars to an individual entrepreneur that you choose in the developing world (lots of them in Africa)and then when the money is repaid you can either cash it out and keep it or choose another person to reloan it to. I'm a kiva lender and I love it.

Letting people starve to death is a great idea. After a few months, no more problem!

Sad to say, Jimbo, that's the idea. Feeding starving people might seem like a nice thing to do, but that dosen't mean we're not messing around with nature in a big way. In any enviroment where you make/break too many of a certain resource for the short-term, nature always comes back and bites us all in the long-term. Depressingly, that resource can also be people.

I don't think any of the reasons this author gives would justify actively killing African babies. So I don't see why it should justify letting them die due to innaction.

The article makes sense.

All ok, and with some realism.
However only if we (the wealthy west, and our big business) also stop taking Africas resources for our own.
Take no more of Africas gold, oil, diamonds etc - and let them develop their own uses and wealth.
Most of Africas's wealth beneifits us - not them.

It amazes me that the majority of people are fine with the idea of healthy women aborting healthy babies in healthy nations, but letting nature run it's course among a people who are too primitive to care for themselves is outrageous. Yes, people who think they can cure AIDS by screwing virgins and can't rid themselves of a disease like Guinea worm (which only requires filtering your water through a t-shirt and yet even villagers who have been told this over and over again keep NOT doing it) are too primitive to take care of themselves.

The only relief sent to Africa should be condoms and 'the pill'.

I'd say this for any suffering continent.

"Yes, people who think they can cure AIDS by screwing virgins and can’t rid themselves of a disease like Guinea worm ... are too primitive to take care of themselves."

That's why they need education, not hand-outs. You don't learn anything by getting a free ride. It's like a mother who does absolutely everything for her kid and then wonders why he can't even do his own damn laundry when he's forty. Except in this case, the stakes are a lot higher than just having no clean underwear.

this is not just a problem with africa, this is a problem with the entire planet. earth cannot sustain our world population with the way we're living right now and the population is only going to go up until just about everyone is suffering.

for those of you saying "they're not animals, they're people" i have to ask what are humans if not another animal on this planet? most of whom*, for some bizarre reason, claim ownership to the entire planet and recklessly inhibit the way of life of so many other species.

i don't say any of this from on top of a tower because i know i'm not helping as much as i could, but the problem at hand is so much bigger than we think. it's not going to take a fraction of us to fix it, it's going to take all of us to fix it, mostly in very small ways. i highly suggest reading daniel quinn's books: ishmael, the story of b, and my ishmael. they talk pretty much exclusively about this subject and i think i agree with him, and the author of the article.

*many "indigenous cultures" have lived in a way that is sustainable and doesn't tax the land. it may be they didn't consciously do this, but this is just how they evolved to do it, because it works. (i know, i know... i'm regurgitating quinn's ideas, but i think they're pretty spot on)

Pesky starving children... they're suffering just makes me feel so icky and guilty and impotent!

Africa is fucked up because of an imperial system that raped the continent of natural resources and of people, which destabilized indigenous government and social order, and from which the West (that's us!) benefited and continues to benefit.

* their, not they're

OMG this is what i've been saying for years. What these people see as aid is just their way of attempting to bring others up to their level. Most of these places we're doing fine before westerners came in and tried to help. They really weren't helping at all, they just introduced more problems that didn't exist before.

The thought in many of these communities is that one must have lots of children too have a better chance of one surviving to carry the family on. But people have come in with their vaccines and food and now the population has blown up because the people are still breeding like crazy not realizing that they no longer need to do that in order to keep their family going.

There is also the introduction of useless technologies into these areas. Even MTV noticed this problem where they showed a girl living in a shack made of trash, BUT SHE HAS A CELLPHONE.

These countries are only third world countries because we compare them to first world countries. What ever was working for them before will work for them now, we just need to allow them to progress on their own instead of going in and trying to speed up the process.

Sadly this is a reflection of the reasons why most people act charitably - they respond to the sense of guilt rather than acting rationally. It's ultimately not about the charity they're engaged in and the good it will do, but a placation of their own anxiety over poverty. Much like a Christian acting out of a fear of hell rather than because of any real empathy for the poor.

I agree not much can be done while the message of 'procreate wildly' is reinforced by their culture.

What I'd really like to know is how this post didn't not get linked with this one?

I'd have to agree with the author; we're not helping much by pouring more money into Africa. But the poverty is only a symptom of the real problems there; the root cause of much that ails Africa is political corruption. Much of the money that comes into African countries gets skimmed off by crooked politicians and bureaucrats. Those same politicians & bureaucrats — or others very much like them — keep the people beaten down so that they remain dependent on the crooked governments. And those same politicians & bureaucrats — or others very much like them — keep getting re-elected in the democratic nations, or fight their way to becoming dictators. Makes one wonder if colonialism was really all that bad a deal.

You'd think that after a couple millennia Africa would have it a little more, umm... together. How is it that Africa has been inhabited for so long and is still such a mess?

@Homer Jay: I was surprised to see so many cell phones in Africa when I visited there in 2004. They're not often seen in the most impoverished ares, because they cost money; if people have no work to produce income, they can't support a phone. Communication is becoming increasingly important as Africa modernizes; cell phone networks are much cheaper to install & maintain than landlines, so it only makes sense to go that way. But I still find it hard to understand how many Africans can justify spending such a large percentage of what little they do earn on cell phones.

How irresponsible and naive to present the problem as such: "We can save them from starvation, at the cost of encouraging overpopulation." Really? Are there no other angles to work from?

To conclude that any aid would exacerbate the problems could be a compelling argument if better posed, especially economically speaking, but still an argument with stronger, more sound opposition.

In truth, the answer the the articles question is "usually," but this article is so absurd, so full of the most destructive kind of arm-chair theorizing--the simple stripped-down kind of reasoning the average person can argue vehemently over some Bud Lights. That kind of folk are usually as un-influential and inept as they are uninformed. But it bothers me to see this in a major paper. Read please. There are hundreds of thousands of pages written by experts in their field which appreciate the impossible complexity of these problems. If everyone so enthusiastically sure of themselves would read just ten of them...

Hey this is a lot of fun, I'm enjoying this discussion, thanks for keeping it civil, everyone.

Andri, I'm gonna have to pick on what you said for a little bit. I've read Ishmael, and its a fun read. But he presents the world in a totally inaccurate way. Native, or indigenous, cultures are generally not at peace with the environment. It may appear that way, and popular culture sure reinforces that stereotype, but it's not accurate.

I'm not going to go into any large specifics here, but Easter Island is an excellent example of an indigenous culture not able to sustain itself. I'd recommend reading Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse_(book) for more info. It's a fantastic book.

Changing topics a little back to population: one more very interesting image to the people who think we're going to overpopulate the earth and we "westerners" should be personally responsible: http://www.prb.org/images07/62.3_01GlblPopGrth.gif

Almost all of this growth happened because we broke the previous barriers of food production during the "Green Revolution". It was actually so successful that the US and Europe dumped cheap food on the rest of the world (in part because of aid, partly to keep out farmers in business now that grain is so cheap).

Demographically, people in agriculturally dominated food-poor nations had been attempting to have large families to run their subsistence farms (kids = free labor :) ). This has just been the cultural norm in many of these regions.

So back to the Green Revolution and Malthusian Principle: we flood their economies with cheap or free food. Infant morality goes WAY down REALLY fast, but cultural norms don't change that fast. So people keep having kids until the culture changes and population skyrockets.

The "west" went through this same thing a long time ago, but it was a gradual process where the norms changed at the same pace of the slow innovation.

Um... now that I've written an encyclopedia... if it's any consolation several demographers expect total global population to drop over the next century as developing nations urbanize and industrialize.

And of course it is more complicated than this. there are corrupt governments, and a nasty colonial history. But this population issue is why I think the majority of our aid money should be going to slowing down the population growth that the green revolution and outdated cultural norms have created.

A 'nasty colonial history' hasn't stopped India or China or Vietnam or Korea from becoming prosperous nations.

As humans, one characteristic many of us admire is generosity. Generosity is not about what your neighbor can give you, but what you can spare for your neighbor.

In a world of limited resources, it would mathematical sense to look at the problem in numbers, what is going in, what is coming out...a chemical equation that is Africa.

But the problem with Africa is not mathematical or biological, its social and there are very human problems caused by humans, and the pain can only be alleviated through human intervention.

On the subject of overpopulation, Bangladesh is the most densely populated country in the world, and they have made amazing strides in keeping population under control by using education and resources brought in by other countries. It took time, but they have had great successes in bringing down the birth rate. Similar resources and education should be provided...

Of course, most of the problems come from who is in power. While the world shakes their head at these horrible people, someone is still buying the diamonds and other resources they do horde to keep them rich.

Because the earth has limited resources, humans should be more keen on figuring out how to save the continent of Africa instead of simply throwing stuff at it or suggesting we turn our heads and plug our ears (while pouring resources into wars and ships to get us off the planet).

Life seems to work in cycles, whether it be biofeedback, human history, or the earth itself recycling. Many believe that human life began in Africa, and ignoring the continent may be the beginning of the end.

@ andrew

thanks for the tip, i'll have to give it a look. i've been curious about arguments against quinn's work but haven't had the easiest time spotting them.

his obviously bigoted rhetoric is scary, and what's more scary is people reading this on neatorama, and slightly agreeing with his stance that all Africa gives back to the world is AIDS.
oh my god, please, on the off chance that ignorant fuckers read this blog and decide to comment on serious issues like this inbetween posts about murder mysteries and eating rats to make them feel worldly and smart,
maybe you should just steer clear of these topics all together.
lest you lose more intelligent and level-minded readers who actually possess the abilty to critically think.

Like someone said before.
This is a country full of PEOPLE, not STRAY CATS, DOGS, or plottable statistics. REAL LIVE HUMAN PEOPLE.

how about you invade, rape and pillage a country for hundreds of years, then say the horrible shit the author said in his article, and tell me how you like the backlash. can you seriously agree let alone defend his opinion.

fuck, (this and the comments) totally bummed my day.
we as a race are doomed with thinkers like this amongst us.

i'm tipsy and make more sense then the proponents of this idea.

alex, poor taste yo

You also have to take into consideration the fact that many 1st world countries don't want any more competing countries to join their ranks; governments would rather be seen 'helping' a poorer country than actually raise that country up to their level.

I'm Irish and everyone I've talked to was horrified by this article. It's not the first inflammatory article he's written (we all remember the "children out of wedlock are bastards" one from a few years back...) so I hope no one takes this as an indication of the viewpoint of the Irish people. The Immigrant Council of Ireland declared that the article was incitement to hatred and I certainly agree: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2008/0715/breaking64.htm

Ireland has a very good record on its international aid figures, and Irish people personally donate one of the highest amounts per capita in the EU. I hope that this will give a more balanced view of Ireland at least. There are plently of people who will agree to this (to my shame) especially in times of recession and inflation.

We in Ireland should remember when one million people died in the potato famine (a further million emmigrated)- must have done wonders for our surplus population....

This is a racist article, one which places a value on human life. It is an antiquated notion, a relic from Victorian times when simply being poor made you worthless.

ahh! great book reference, chris tackett. i would encourage EVERYONE to read that book. really gives you a bitter perspective of western expoitation and expansion. did you hear baghdad is building a giant ferris wheel and calling it the 'baghdad eye?' it will be in the center of sparkling pools and carnival rides. but on the outside of those fun-filled walls lies destruction and corruption at its finest, all inspired by our oh-so-great politicians and lobbyists. hooray!

but anyway, the problems in africa are not just of this century. it started when european explorers crossed the mediterranean and saw all the "darkies" who needed saving from the devil by introducing the "saving powers" of christianity, and the rest is history. we have been hurting africa for as long as we have known africa was there. if we would have stayed away and let them live in their own conditions, i believe today's conditions would be a different story. the african population may not exist had we left them alone, but that would be natural selection at its finest. who knows.. maybe the people would have flourished? there is no way of telling.

the fact that we went in the first place set a standard. we introduced our own standards and believed their conditions were "unfortunate" because they were not the same as ours. we think we have to "help" them, when in fact we are only trying to "raise" their standards to mirror our own. OUR STANDARDS ARE OURS, AND OURS ONLY. if they wanted our "help" they would have found a way to ask. instead, we just went in and treated them all like lost children. their people lived fine without us there, and they would have continued to if we left them alone. of course we wouldn't have nearly the black/white diversity we have here in the US today had it not been for slavery, but what a terrible way to create diversity.

of course, this raises the question: if the white-europeans hadn't gone to africa to introduce the teachings of jesus, who would have? it's in human nature to explore the unkown, so SOME group of people would have claimed the land as their own to "fix." considering the other majority is muslim, i would guess THEY would have taken the baton. i'm not trying to discriminate against muslims, because i know the vast majority are truly good religious people who mind their own business. and thank-you if you are one of them because the small minority of radicals are ruining your culture, and i feel bad for you. but it would have been those kinds of extremists who would have taken power, and who knows what the conditions would be like today had that happened?

We, in Europe and the US get up to 25% of the worlds resources. So if this argument works with food why not with resources, we only get our fair share.
Or does this argument only apply to Africa?
For centuries now, and continuing today we have looted Africa. For every euro sent in aid at least seven are sent back. We have a vast array of trade rules designed to keep poorer nations in the first bracket of development while we do the processing and service side of industry. Yes there are huge problems-most of them with the system we have created and keep.

To not give aid because people will still have difficult lives is judgemental. People in poverty-stricken nations have difficult lives, but they still manage to love and be loved, and to get enjoyment out of life. I've met people who've traveled to places like India and Africa, and they've commented on how many of those people seem to find ways of getting more enjoyment out of life than we Westerners, who think that we have to have riches to have a good quality of life. How can someone in a slum in Calcutta smile and be happy? I don't know, but I know it happens. Is it my job to tell them their life isn't worthwhile because it's so hard?

A large part of me agrees with the author, although for somewhat different reasons, viz; that by providing handouts (as opposed to education and training) you only make people into dependants. That said, I don't think that there is much in the way of education that can be given by Europeans (from a temperate climate) to Africans who have survived for thousands of years on that continent, and developed good methods for dealing with the natural conditions there. The intervention we might be best advised to make is opposing the spread of social memes, such as religion, that encourage people to breed regardless of the resource available to support their progeny. (Christianity and Islam, basically). I think there is nothing wrong with excess food from one region being shipped to another region. I do think it should be traded/purchased, though, not donated. If the nations of Africa prove capable of repairing themselves, and building viable economies, then they will be able to obtain the resources needed to increase their populations by trading for them. This may seem ruthless, but at what point to you choose to recognise cyclical behaviour and disengage from it? I am not saying that there is no place for charity. In the wake of a natural disaster, aid can be offered, without compunction, but when a nations woes are self inflicted - eg; by letting the population grow out of control, or by agricultural practices that ruin the land, then the emphasis should be upon that nation to recover from that by its own means.
There is a whole other side to this argument, too, which is that it would be greatly to Africas benefit to disengage from Europe because of the terms of the unfair trade 'agreements' that European countries have dictated to African countries in return for 'aid'. If they refuse to play that game, then they wouldn't have to allow the import and sale of subsidised european products, eg, canned tomatoes, the availability of which put many local producers out of business (google for it). At the Gleneagles G8 summit, Gordon Brown, Bob Geldof and others boasted of having written of large amounts of Africas debt. In fact, the amount written of was trivial, and it was tied into the sort of ttrade agreements that I have mentioned.
There is an excellent book on this topic called 'The Lords of Poverty' by Graham Hancock. He details the nature of the governement aid agencies (as opposed to the voluntary aid agencies) and their practices, as well as the fact that much of the food aid sent is often goods that were considered unfit for consumption in the donor country.
Apologies for length.

Natural selection....

Let em tough it out.

I've been to various parts of Africa when I was in the Military.

If they can't survive on their own, maybe they shouldn't.

Feed the Nigerians so they can scam our citizens?
No thanks... Send em condoms as aid, or ammunition...

Andri, you're welcome.

Anne, I'm not sure if you're responding to me or not. My argument about food has nothing to do with it being Africa. It's all about how a population reacts to a huge and sudden drop in infant mortality, and a sudden rise in life expectancy. As I said, the huge population boom didn't happen as much in the Europe because the culture of having large families to work the farms had time to change as Europe slowly became industrialized and urbanized.

You'll find a statistical tendency to larger families in most rural or agricultural areas, and smaller families in wealthier educated urban areas. Even within the US and Europe.

I went to College with some guys from Kenya.
They said:"You Americans have been sending food to Africa for over 100 years--the only result has been more starving Africans."

Euro-whites and weinies have not allowed any of the African countries to defend their borders and their populations from immigration. Cultural "Relativism" has made it impossible to defend and improve their circumstances--it is impossible to pull yourself out of the stone-age if you are supposed to preserve stone-age tribes and social morays like they are in some sort of "ZOO".

The Kenyans described some of the tribes to be as locusts; the are nomadic only in the fact that the destroy the environment in which they live, then move on. The movements of these tribes has resulted in genicidal wars in the past--and the present--in Africa.

Those who are anti-religion have made their bias clear. Christianity condemns promiscuity, as does Islam--They both also condemn pedophilia and sex-for-food. All of which are responsible for the spread of AIDS.

Stone-Age peoples' population was controlled by disease, starvation, and genicidal war; not some sort of "new-age" connection with the land. People who spread and/or believe such are woefully ignorant--regardless of their profession or professed education.

Ok, so I didn't feel like reading EVERYONE's posts... seeing as there were so many of them... but I work in the Charity Sector in Africa, and I deal with this every day...

The truth is this: Africa doesn't need food... it's not a shortage of food that is a problem (yes, in certain areas like Ethiopia it's necessary)... the issue is that Africans have lost their culture to do things for themselves. I think to a great extent this is because people have come and given instead of taught. The old chinese proverb is well illustrated here in Africa... we give to them to feed them, but never teach them to grow, to plan, to strategize. The end result is fed tummies today, hungry minds tomorrow.

Now move look at it from a different perspective, as an African. Here you are in Nigeria, where you hardly have any chance of getting employed. Food isn't particularly scarce, as you can grow veggies or fish for food... so you cruise down to your local fishing spot to pick up some lil' ones for dinner... BANG, suddenly there's this big-ass oil refinery fenced off where you always fished... where did this come from? now suddenly this "Shell" has introduced something called a Cell phone? And it costs less than my groceries? And these "casettes and CDs"? What are these wonderful things? Wow... and all this to take the oil from my land? Sure... take away! Oh, but what if you leave... what then? So you leave us with no resources, you've polluted our water, and given us blank cd's and the remnants of the MTV generation.

Let's be honest here... Helping Africa help itself is the way to go, but up till today the only reason why anyone has shown ANY interest in Africa has been due to it's wealth of resources and minerals. The Corporations and Governments (US, China, UK, etc) have been plundering the continent like the savage pirates they are... leaving nothing behind but old Nike's, satellite dishes and cheap cellphones. Africa cannot save itself because the trade agreements with China secure cheap goods to flood our market... this means that locally produced goods have no where to go...

So before anyone points fingers as to whether Africa should or shouldn't be helped, let's first ask whether our INTENTIONS for helping Africa, and even our METHODS, are sincere.

Seriously, are we going to accept this as a thoughtful and coherent evaluation of the 'Africa Problem'? How do you even progress past the title? Africa = AIDS?!! All Africans have AIDS and are doomed to be turned into circumcised sexual deviants with an AK in one hand and a misguidedly given fistful of our hard earned dollars in the other are they? I'm all for sensible debate on Africa, but this aint it. He's been there.. so what. I've been in a plane but that doesn't make me a pilot. And the fact that he pre-categorises all criticism that this reductivist drivel will draw as self righteous is pretty lame given the tone of the article. If you're really interested, go find out why post colonial countries are amongst the poorest in the world (spoiler alert.. it's something to do with being forcibly asset stripped for decades then continually bullied by western economies). Go find out what the EU and US like to do at WTO trade talks (http://www.actionaid.org.uk/100501/wto_talks_collapse_where_next_for_world_trade.html). There are people who's job it is to think about Africa. Go ask the internet what they are saying. Don't listen to this guy, he seems to have a problem with foreigners, and there's a word for that (I mean Xenophobic not the other one). Letting people die so they don't get their hands on our stuff is a bit morally bankrupt and.. well just not very nice. Besides, it's a bit rich of us westerners to fret about Africa being a drain on resources. Where do the world best polluters and resource drainers live? If he wants to save mother Earth by population control then we'd better start handing the cyanide pills out amongst ourselves first.

Care and all those other organizations that have been feeding them created this problem. Let them deal with it. It is only multiplying.

Can't we bomb over there for humanitarian reasons?

Ya know... I have to actually agree with that article. Not about Africa giving AIDS part o_O but the rest of it actually makes alot of sense.
I don't think all aid should stop, but maybe a different approach. TEACH them instead of just giving handouts.