Africa has a lot of natural resources but has always relied on foreign aid. Nonetheless has famine, poor road network, poor Healthcare etc. Please explain.
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> Africa has a lot of natural resources
People say it about every place, but it’s simply not true. Africa has few natural resources, poor agricultural potential, and extremely poor trading potential.
> why is Africa generally poor
Not so long ago, the whole world was very poor. Africa just stayed poor longer than other places.
[The first place in the whole world which stopped being poor was 1800s England](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrialisation). Since then the “not poor” area is getting bigger and bigger, mostly by trading with countries that are “not poor”. And mostly by sea.
Africa has very difficult time trading with anyone, as it has very little coastline. And it doesn’t have much stuff to trade with – it is very poor in natural resources, is importing rather than exporting food, and is too politically unstable to do mass cheap manufacturing like East Asian countries.
There are other very poor places just like Africa. Like Central Asia (Afghanistan, Tajikistan etc.), or Bolivia. It is same problem – difficult to trade, and no resources to trade with.
Africa can join the “not poor” world if:
* it builds infrastructure – ports, railroads – to trade with what it has
* it achieves enough political stability to let companies invest without civil war or terrorism blowing it all up
This is already happening, but slowly and unevenly.
(all this generally, there are some countries in Africa that did OK, a few have meaningful natural resources, or enough stability)
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