re: Why Is Africa Continent Still Full Of “Developing Countries “?

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the World bank and IMF, among individual nations, provide money to corrupt dictators for the right to extract minerals at bare bottom prices and allow them to do their murder/genocide/rape to keep the party going.

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Exactly. That accounts for a bunch of countries with poor development indicators, like Equatorial Guinea, which has a high per capita GDP but high poverty. The problem of predatory elite exists in many African countries. Other countries, like Botswana, which has good rates of growth and protection for minorities, suffers from an AIDS crisis which affects 25% of their population. The other reasons for slow rates of growth are domestic unrest, armed conflict both foreign and domestic, and inability to assure outside investors of their continued stability.

Africa is an incredibly large landmass. If we remove the Sahara Desert, an area as larger than the contiguous United States, we are still looking at 22 million square kilometers. The size of the landmass makes it difficult to talk about the continent as a whole, as different regions have different rates of development, as well as different issues, but most countries with poor development indicators suffer the issues mentioned above and by Bengal.

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One theory that I read is that the Silk Road couldn’t get through the Sahara, so Africa lags behind Europe and certain parts of Asia because of this.

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It's more true to say that it was immensely difficult to develop trade with the outside world from parts of Sub-Saharan Africa. East Africa and the Horn of Africa had lots of trade with various groups, ranging from Arab traders to Indian merchants to the Chinese. But given the size of the continent, it was difficult for trade routes to develop over the Sahara, which would have connected West Africa to North Africa, and access to the Western Mediterranean.

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DavidTheGnome

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Not convinced.

Cuz we wuz Kangz and shite til whitey came out of his cave with rifles

Colonialism and likely the savage nature of the inhabitants. The latter I would never admit in polite company by the way, but you guys are special.

Its toxic masculinity.

I never thought I would say this, but my position is basically a combination of Cpt and BamaAtl

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The inability to provide clean people is one of the main deterrents to any progress

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Clean on the inside

Bruh, wasn't North Amercia once colonized by foreign nations?