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.
In: 2392
Everyone here all about all sorts of shit, colonialism, corruption etc. And i’m not saying that that shit doesn’t happen or never happened or didn’t expedite the problem, but that isn’t the main reason, by any means.
There is one thing that all great powers throughout all of time had in common. All of them had waterways that they could exploit. There isn’t a single great power throughout history that didn’t have direct access to the sea’s, and this is something that Africa doesn’t have a lot of. Africa, as a continent it very ‘high’ in elevation. As in, most of Africa’s rivers go through massive drops before reaching the ocean/sea. This means that all trade has go through these obstacles before ever being able to reach any trading partners. The only river that doesn’t have this massive drop in elevation is the Nile, and that is precisely the one place in Africa that did have a large, outgoing civilization.
Ultimately this is the same reason why Irak waged war and why the Ukraine is at war right now. It is all about access to water in order to be able to export goods.
Africa’s rivers aren’t all that well suited for traversing upstream. There are too many drops, rapids and shallows for any big ship to traverse. This leaves them out of the trading loop regardless of their natural resources. It doesn’t matter if you hold all the resources in the world if there is no realistic way of exporting those goods. That is what has always happened to Africa. There are plenty of resources, but it is just no economic way of delving them because of the terrain that needs to be traversed.
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