Foreign Policy - Africa

The West has poured billions of dollars of aid over the past several decades into Africa, to no avail.

For most countries, there are only 3 sources of wealth:

1. Hard Work
2. Innovation
3. Natural Resources

Japan has no Natural Resources, but is wealthy because of #1 and #2. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and United Arab Emirates are wealthy because of #3, even though they have almost no innovation or hard work (#1 or #2).

Africa is rich with Natural Resources, far more than Europe, Japan, America, Australia or even Canada.

Oil companies pay billions to Nigeria for its abundant oil, yet they still have rampant poverty.
Ethiopia has more geography, natural resources and arable land and has less population than Japan, and yet it was one of the poorest countries in the world. After the removal of Apartheid and the white government in South Africa, the economy has deteriorated and crime has skyrocketed to 350 violent assaults per day in Johannesburg alone.

Equatorial Guinea is wealthy with oil. Oil companies have paid hundreds of millions to its government. However, the government is corrupt and has not passed that wealth to the people. Instead, the President’s son lives in France with $500 million, drives a Lamborghini, buys thousand dollar suits and enjoys the life of a playboy.

According to CBC News, Chad is another African country that is rich in oil. CBC said:

The World Bank lent Chad money in 2003 to export oil. Since then, they have sold $1 Billion in oil. Despite this, they still have severe poverty. Chad is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. Most of the money is kept by the ruling clan in the government.

In the past 50 years, the West has poured aid into Africa, and yet the number of needy and poor have exploded, not decreased. We believe that continuing with this current strategy will create even more needy and poor in the future. Not only has this solution not worked, it's immoral and unethical to keep making the corrupt African governments richer and to create more poor and needy. It is also wrong to continue to waste Western taxpayers' money.

It's one thing to be wasting your own money and time. It's another thing to be wasting other people's money with a strategy that doesn't work. This is what multiple people, including Bono, do when they urge countries to provide aid to Africa. We believe that it is almost criminal to be wasting other peoples' hard-earned money.

There is a strong correlation between how successful a country is and how competent and corrupt the government is. The more incompetent and corrupt the government, the poorer the country will be. There's already ample incompetence and corruption with Western country governments. It is highly unlikely that African governments are any less incompetent or corrupt than Western governments. In fact, they are reported on the news to be extremely more corrupt and incompetent. This is corroborated by this video on ted.com.

Human Beings are easily capable of murder, torture and genocide. This seems to happen incessantly. Corruption, stealing and fraud is child's play.

In summary, pouring more money into Africa will simply go down the drain.

We believe that most of the aid never gets to the people due to corrupt, incompetent governments and warring factions. If anything, the money goes into the pockets of the leaders, who then move to the West, such as the French Riviera, to live the high-life with our millions of dollars.

Read our proposed solution.