How did Africa become so poor? How did Poverty Start?

[Kofi]

QUESTION: someone asked me online.

I am doing an injustice project on poverty and I just wanted to ask
you guys a few questions. First of all, How did Africa become poor or
how did poverty start in Africa? Second, what does Africa do to change
the amount of poverty in the country; does the government help them
like we get help from our government and organization like in the
United States? And thirdly, what can we do to help Africa, and other
countries like Africa, get through their problems in poverty, or what
awareness could we take? Thank you for your time.

MY ANSWER:

“How did Africa become poor?” is a very big question but I will start with “why Africa remains poor”. I was born in Africa and I grew up in Africa so I do know a lot about the continent Africa. Most of our leaders are very greedy and corrupt people. Poor leadership and Corruption are major reasons why Africa remains poor.

Every year, America and other great donors like the UK send billions of dollars in the form of aid to help the poor in Africa but the truth is that, the poor gets nothing. Instead, the rich ( I mean those in the big offices like the president, ministers, etc) share and use the money to build big mansions for themselves and send their families to live and enjoy better lives abroad while the poor continue to suffer in Africa. Besides the selfishness, our leaders lack the necessary skills needed for good governance. Why do Africans elect bad leaders? the short answer is that, we Africans do not elect bad leaders. The outside world elects these bad leaders for us so they (the outside world) can control our natural resources. I will come back to this point later on in another thread.

Another major problem is poor education. We have just few schools in Africa and the painful part is that, some of these schools don’t even have text books. Most of the children in rural Africa go to school with empty stomachs. When you are hungry, it is very difficult to concentrate in classroom. Unlike in America where primary and secondary education is free, we pay school fees from day one in Africa so those who can’t afford to pay their school fees remain at home. My very good friend in school (in Africa) was very brilliant but because his parents couldn’t pay his school fees, he was kicked out of school. Meanwhile, our leaders continue to spend billions of dollars on luxurious vacations abroad.

Africa has abundance of natural resources. minerals and raw materials like timber, gold, bauxite, manganese, hydropower, salt, etc,. The problem however is that, we lack the "brain-power" that would convert these raw materials into finished goods. we lack the necessary skills, machines/tools to process these raw materials into finished goods so we could sell them at reasonable prices at the international market. In other words, we just sell these raw materials in bulk (unprocessed forms) to the international market at very cheap prices. we are cutting down all our trees and selling them in the form of timber logs at very cheap prices to countries like the United States, etc. instead of first processing the timber logs so we could sell them at reasonable prices at the international market. So at the end of the day, our trees are gone but we gained very little.

As for “how did Africa become poor?”, I cannot give you a specific point in time because several factors contributed. For example, before the slave traders came to Africa, Togo(a country in West Africa) was part of my country (Ghana). We spoke the same native language and shared the same culture but the slave traders divided/partitioned Africa amongst themselves. The English people took over my country(Ghana) while the French people took over Togo. Now we are neighbors but we have different official languages. The problem here is “Language barrier”. We speak English in Ghana but our brothers and sisters in Togo speak French and we don’t understand each other.

“Does the government help them…?” the answer to this question is Yes and No. some of the governments try to help but corruption and illiteracy block the way.

“How can we help?” there are many ways we can help. First of all, spread the word to others. Let others know what is going on around these parts of the world. Secondly, if you can, do it yourself. If you cannot do it by yourself, help those who can do it by themselves because I don’t believe in donating to charity organizatioins.

If America built a school for my village in Africa, a lot of children would get good education and good future. Instead, great donors like America keep pumping money in the form of foreign aid which benefit not the poor but the rich in Africa.

If you want to donate, please do not donate to just any organization you see online. Donate to those who are really doing the job. Donate to only reputable organizations like UNICEF. I don't even trust UNICEF that much but at least they are far better than most others I've heard of.

Those who think that slavery crippled Africa are thinking just inside the box. Every continent had its own share of history. All powerful countries we see today had to go through great deal of suffering before they reached this level. Africans need to blame their own inabilities instead of blaming slavery for all the problems facing Africa today.

Africans don't blame anyone for anything. It's the African Americans who constantly complain and blame their lack of wealth on slavery. Africa's people are the same prosperous people that they were during the 1780's. In actuality, it WAS slavery that weakened Africa. Before slavery, Africa was a civilization that flourished tremendously. UNTIL, the Europeans came along, saw this: and thought "What's wrong with this picture?" So again unless you really know what you're talking about, Sir or Madam.

When Africa was up everybody was happy but the enemies of progress brought about the downfall of Africa and now nobody is happy. not even the enemies of progress themselves. What the world needs to do now is to find a way to bring about back to the top if not, nobody will be happy again and we will continue like this forever.

I was born in Kitwe on the copperbelt a richest province in my country in terms of mineral deposity, i was brought up in different places-Chama a district believed to have the most oil in deposit Zambia though not explored due to lack of developmental will by our money hungry political leaders, Chipata the town which is best created geographically in the entire universy, Lusaka the nation's most busy business town-born in the family of two being the only male and last born i have a huge mountain mounted on me i have to take care of my sweet mother who raised up my sister and i all by herself as i never saw dad. having completed school and done a Diploma in Secondary school teaching, my dream is to have my own learning institution to range from Pre-university level
if all of us have dreams despite the back ground and not looking at the will-less politicians that we have in Africa we can make Africa be Paradise

To be rich as Africa it will only take us Africans to take a central stage in spear heading the development of our beautful continent-WAKE UP AFRICA THE TIME IS NOW start by developing your family, village, district, province, country then Africa-with or without the demn President, governor or MP. the hungry Ghosts!

as for 'how Africa became so poor' Africa is poor because there is no a good system of leadership according to the social environment. according to African situation there must be its own way of getting leaders. it's not necessary to use the system which is used by rich countries.

The big problem we Africans have is the lack of good leaders who are surrounded by a very bad system of getting good deputies. sometimes a leader may have a very good intention towards his/her country, but he does not stand alone to do everything. those who are enabling the leaders to come into power are mostly directing what to do and how it should be done. there is where the problem starts because if you as a leader try to go against their wishes they will do the same way which used to put you in power to remove you or even kill you. for this reason automatically a good leader starts to change and follow the system against his wishes.

for the reason above i think the system of getting leaders has to be changed. may be those who helps leaders to come into power must be aside and never given any post to that government in order to enable that leader to be free to rule without fearing any one who offered the hand during the process of becoming into power.


as for 'How did Poverty Start' poverty was all over the world during those days before starting of technology and before other continents started to become rich. exploration is what brought the different and African continent was the only continent which did not know what was going on outside.

If you are really intersted in why Africa and it's people are so poor. Go Read the website poorofafrica.com. There you will find logical reasons based on Scientific and Economic facts. You will also find how African Poverty can be overcome.

Africa is not for Africans!! the day Africa belongs to Africans , that is the day Africans will stop swimming in a pool of poverty.

African land , its biggest resource, has been and is still exploited to meet the needs of Europe and USA and other countries who are the gretest consumers and it can be seen by looking at the number of obese people in USA, who are now suffering from obesity because of having appetites that there bodies can not handle.

I am an African, and I dont believe that corruption is a reason Africa is in poverty, neither do I believe that the people of Africa are lazy. I believe that our fore fathers made the mistake of smiling at the white man when he came to Africa pretending to spread the Gospel and yet he had alot of hidden intentions. That mistake that our forefathers made , is what is making us pay the price.

Africa needs to be shrewed, stop listening to the white man, his intentions have not changed and they never will, we need to take matters into our own hands and define what is right for us , replace the stupid policies that were placed into our hands and come up with our own that match the needs we have....

the major problem is illiteracy. when people are illiterates they dont understand what goes on around them. if u teach them then they will know what goes on around them and will then be able to question those in power. Africa needs mass but quality education.

illiteracy, laziness, ignorance, religion, bad culture, natural causes, and many more all contribute to Africa's poverty situation.

africa is so poor because they have no money well... not that much money anyways

Africa is not poor my. Africa just have bad leaders. with good leaders to turn things around and with the abundance of natural resources, Africa would be the riches continent ever.