When you think of Africa, you think of poverty, but why is that though? It is indeed because of a preconceived notion fed to the audience by the media and supposedly non-profit organizations.
Visualize not being able to provide enough food for your kids or pay for a medical facility, not even your kid’s clear dental aligners or other orthodontic appliances. Picture the guilt, sorrow, and anguish of African parents. Imagine having a kid who is already under colonial debt. That’s how alarming the situation is in Africa, and so before you travel to the wonderful continent and see the Amazon, there are things you need to remember.
There is a genuine need to be familiar with the concept of neocolonialism to better comprehend, as well as review charitable organizations working with governments in the continent, along with other foreign companies’ questionable agendas.
The concept of neocolonialism warns everyone of the prospective and regressive impact of uncontrolled kinds of help, professions, and direct foreign investments. All of which somehow aims to help and bring progress to African countries.
Understanding the root problem
The realms of colonial Europe, as well as the Cold War superpowers, have paved the way to a new kind of rule over the continent that works as the mine of the world. To understand a problem, you have to go back and study the history of how it was created. New empires controlled not by nations, but by alliances of unaccountable African leaders governing with shadow states, intermediaries that link them to the global source economy, and international business from the West and the East that cloak their corruption in business secrecy.
Everybody seems to have a scapegoat explanation for this heartbreaking phenomenon, mentioning prevalent corruption, useless democratic institutions, and also justice systems, money-grubbing multinational corporations, unethical neighborhoods, and international elites. There are also inexperienced or inefficient international aid companies, battles waged by domestic militias against outdoors armies, and the vestiges of colonialism. Lastly, there is the introduction of a new sort of manifest destiny driven by foreign power players. The economic label is that Africa is poor.
African people loudly lament the consistent interjection of these countries bringing about foreign aid and economic assistance. However, the rewards of robbery are so significant that they provide significant motivations for preserving the status. The aid circulation right into Africa is tiny compared with the value of the resources used to power first-world nations.
Outsiders often consider Africa as a great drain of philanthropy, a continent that guzzles help from other countries, fruitless and barren, as well as contributes little to the global economic situation in return. However, if you look much more carefully at the source market, and also the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world countries, everything looks rather fishy.
So, the economic abuses will certainly continue even if this organization or that corporation, corrupt African president, or foreign robber baron is exposed. As long as people choose to avert their gazes and close their eyes, the looting on African soil will certainly endure.
If gold is said to be mined from Africa, then why are Africans perceived as poor?
Poor individuals typically lack hope for a brighter future because they believe in a lie. The lie of poverty, which is reinforced day-in and day-out is, “You don’t and won’t matter because you have nothing.”
These poor people are helpless when faced with war and natural calamities. When calamities, as well as conflict, occur, they endure so much that they end up traumatized and broken. Calamities caused by illegal logging and mining, and conflicts caused by economic wars. They are unsafe, uncared for, as well as undetected.
Urban locations where numerous unfortunate people live in slum areas are more in danger of diseases. They have a higher death toll when disputes and also military wars erupt or an environmental catastrophe hits.
Poverty is not strictly concerning measuring earnings, income inequality, or the demand for financial growth. Poverty changes everything regarding a person’s life experience. It influences all of an individual’s standards as well as touches every facet of his/her existence. All of this is because their natural resources and rich homes are being looted by those who can.
Africa is a rich continent, filled with wonders of the world that tourists pay to see and experience. That is amazing to realize that people outside the continent appreciate the place for the beauty and culture it has. Hence, it is better when people are also aware of the social and economic issues in Africa. After all, knowledge starts with awareness and interest.
