eli5:why is Africa generally poor compared to the rest of the world.

Question

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

Answer 1

Natural resources alone will not make you rich unless you develop the infrastructure needed to extract and export them.

Much of the middle east for example has done this (with copious external help) so they can actually profit from their natural resources. Other countries like Afghanistan and Iran that have not developed their infrastructure as much have also not profited as much from their natural resources.

Another consideration is population. If you have a lot of natural resources and low population, then each person gets bigger individual benefit from those resources. If you have the same amount of resources but way more people, then each person doesn’t really get much.

>Nonetheless has famine, poor road network, poor Healthcare etc. Please explain.

Those are all linked, the road network is inconsistent, so when it’s good, you get a lot of food being transported, and the population increases. Then when it’s bad, suddenly you can no longer transport enough food to feed everyone, and you get a famine. Then people die, the population shrinks a bit, the roads get fixed, and you start a cycle of periodic famines.

Same with healthcare, even if you have foreign doctors providing charity work, you still need a reliable road network to get them in touch with the people who need the healthcare.

So why haven’t African countries developed this infrastructure? Well, infrastructure requires a very stable government to build and maintain, and most African countries simply haven’t had that level of stability. The ones that have (post-genocide Rwanda, Kenya, Egypt and South Africa (sometimes)) also have better infrastructure. And the reasons why their governments are so unstable trace back to colonization and the random borders that were drawn. Unlike Europe and North America, their borders were not created organically through war and local allegiances.