> The coffee part is odd - what's that about? What does the World Bank have to do with coffee?
The world bank holds many countries to ransom by dictating what they can (or can't do).
Guinea wants to get the internationally accepted price for their Bauxite? World Bank says no, else we'll call in your loan.
Senegal wants to get a fair price for it's resources? Nope, let's put a travel warning on them and decimate their tourism for a year or two.
The list goes on and on and on. I just spent 3 years in Africa at ground level in 35 different countries. The longer you spend there the more you realize.
> Have you ever wondered why all those poor countries around the world sell unprocessed coffee to Switzerland for pennies rather than telling Switzerland to take a hike, processing it themselves and making way more money?
Setting up a factory costs a lot of money, and almost no one is willing to make long-term investments in a corrupt and unstable country.
> The multi-billion dollar loans from the IMF and World Bank have these countries over a barrel, and if they try to change the status quo, they will be sent back to the dark ages instantly.
Botswana, the best-governed country in Africa, has managed its economy well enough to never need an IMF bailout. Meanwhile, Ghana has gone begging for IMF bailouts 17 times [1]. If the Ghanaian leaders (voted in by citizens) weren't perpetually inept, the country wouldn't constantly go to the IMF with begging plates.
> Spending time in Sudan was very educational, though it means I can never get a visa-wavier for the US. Why do you think that is? (Hint: gas in Sudan was 6 cents a liter..., diesel was half that)
Sudan had a murderous dictator who reigned for three decades. He was toppled, but it didn't take long for the country to fall into a current bloody civil war.
> A foreigner can go to the island where the capital is no problem, but try getting permission to go to the mainland - you can't. Even with a valid visa you can't get in. (I camped in view of it here [2] )
Because Equitoreal Guinea is run by a comical dictator who lives lavishly while most of his citizens live in penury. Of course, he doesn't want foreigners to see the mess he oversees.
As an African (Nigerian to be specific), I'm actually tired of foreigners always finding excuses for our problems. It's condescending to assume we have no agency, and everything bad that happens to us is the fault of some foreign boogeymen.
> Though, I suspect what would happen is that coffee roasted in Ethiopia would be somehow worth less than German-roasted
If it was ever done, it would cost 5x or 10x more, thanks to the heavy sanctions placed on processed coffee exported from Ethiopia, but not from Germany.
As another example, I saw endless fields of palm and cocoa plantations all through West Africa. Famously Japan allows imports of raw cocoa with a 0\% tax, though they tax finished chocolate products at over 280\%. This means Africa will never
be able to sell processed cocoa products there, and are forced to be content selling raw beans for a tiny fraction of what they could be sold for if processed.
> Not to pick on you, but I often hear this frasing in the 'first world' and surely you dont 'allow' or 'disallow' internal policies to an sovereign nation?
Oh, it's much simpler than that. If an undeveloped (or developing) country doesn't place nice with the "Developed" rules, the IMF will just bankrupt their currency and send them back to the dark ages.
Why do you think Switzerland is the world's 3rd biggest exporter of Coffee [1], while not growing a single bean ? .. and Germany is number 5.
The IMF doesn't let coffee growing countries like Ethiopia or the Ivory Coast export processed beans, because they want the immense profits going to developed countries. Also the WTO plays a role and just doesn't tax unprocessed raw coffee beans coming out of those poor countries, but taxes processed coffee (and chocolate) goods at astronomical rates.
> The powers that be absolutely will not allow countries like Ethiopia to process the coffee
Yeah....no.
Ethiopia doesn't do processing because there isn't enough capital or stability to justify a multimillion investment in processing.
Vietnam was in the same position developmentally as Ethiopia today in the 1990s, but had a relatively stable government that began working on expanding credit and entrepreneurship.
Ethiopia literally had a civil war barely a year ago, a massive civil war in the 90s, and multiple insurgencies in between.
> West Africa could be so much more prosperous if only they would will their way towards it.
I have just spent a year and a half driving through 20 countries in West Africa. [1]
At times I would have agreed with your comments, though lately I have been taking another tact.
The developed world has stress, heart disease, cancer and hundreds of millions of people going to jobs every day they hate with a passion. People have little or no time for family. People have crushing debt. Life expectancy is going down in the USA.
Obviously West Africa is far from perfect, but I think it's very important to realize the Developed World is also far from perfect, and it would be a shame to have West Africa "Develop" into exactly what we have built with all our failings.
> Are you really complaining about too much aid being given to a continent mostly stricken with extreme poverty?
Yes, absolutely, and there is plenty of evidence that a lot of this aid keeps Africa in extreme poverty.
This is not an extreme, or at this point even a particularly unusual, viewpoint. Some other sources that argue, convincingly in my opinion, why much of the aid given to Africa over the past 50 years has been counterproductive:
https://youtu.be/Jv4cAVzC8xM - good video about a Ghanaian entrepreneur and how NGO aid hurts the economic development of his country
> The powers that be absolutely will not allow countries like Ethiopia to process the coffee they grow any more than they will allow Ivory Coast to process cashews.
While there are still remnants of colonialism at play, in theory capitalism would prefer to do processing as near to production as possible... but that's hard to do in Ethiopia or most other African countries with a really unreliable electricity grid [1]. Ivory Coast has it different - they massively built out power generation [2], but it takes time and money for investments into processing facilities flow in.
Additionally, political stability is one of the largest issues impeding many African countries. Many of them are actively at war, undergo civil war or separatist movements, are governed by dictators or went through prolonged periods of instability. All of this isn't exactly helpful when looking for investors that have to invest millions of dollars up-front - investors want the guarantee that there won't be some government nationalizing away their investment or war destroying it.
> So the ideal situation in my view would be to setup manufacturing hub in African countries. Hire Chinese/Indian/American/Russian manufacturing Engineers and the rich mineral resources in African countries.
Wow, neocolonialism much? This sort of extractive thinking is exactly the reason that countries in Africa remain some of the poorest in the world. Which companies do you think will be bringing in these foreign workers? Do you expect them to settle there?
How many counties can you name for whom bringing large numbers of foreign knowledge workers worked to build up a a strong manufacturing core (apart from maybe operation paper clip [1])?
I have no idea what you're on about. Africa isn't an impoverished nation, nor is it a wealthy nation.
The nations in Africa have a GDP per capita ranging from about $1k (way less than Haiti and Afghanistan) to nearly $40k (similar to Croatia and Greece)
> I know nothing about geopolitics in Africa, but I'd also wish that a few large companies (e.g. Tesla) would source their minerals from countries that can demonstrate political stability and avoid violence.
I agree with the general idea, but I fear the counter-argument that says that this kind of blockage or boycott make the region even poorer which empowers dictators.
>I certainly wouldn't want to buy coffee that was roasted in Ethopia; it would be awfully stale by the time it gets here.
This is the play: hide the profound injustice in an offhand quip. If exporting from Germany is not a problem, why not Ethiopia?
Though, I suspect what would happen is that coffee roasted in Ethiopia would be somehow worth less than German-roasted. Ethiopians would recoup some of the profit that they're missing, but other ways would be found to shortchange them. The root of the issue is he undervaluation of Ethiopian labor and resources so as to secure profit and affordability further down the line.
> These currency reserves largely represent loans China issued abroad, which have been paid off (or are in the process of being served).
I think you missed a crisis in Africa.
Those loans can hardly be paid off, the interest rates are too high and the borrowed loans Kuch for infrastructure projects aren't leading to any improvements / revenue.
If so, show me which have a net benefit for the country where loans are used to pay off mostly Chinese workers.
Every project by China in Africa seems to have failed and putting those countries in debt ( fyi, those projects which China introduced with big fanfare when announced have literally gone mute, business as usual it seems)
> It is not slave wages considering the living costs in the respective countries.
This pisses me off big time. It is more expensive to live in developing countries than in developed countries. Try to wrap your head around it. These countries are developing, so they don't have infrastructure to support their populace.
> there is really nothing in the cards today indicating that Nigeria or Congo, for example, will be significantly better 20 years from now...
I am a Nigerian and I think you are wrong. There is a lot of agitation in Nigeria especially from the young people and an imminent collapse of the old order. An Arab Spring like revolution is imminent. There is a bubbling spring of young and hungry talent on the continent there is a definite acknowledgement that things need to change fast.
That aside, despite the upbeat tone of the article, investment is still very hard to source in Africa despite the fact that the amounts required by the continents entrepreneurs are really small. Most founders require seed funding in the 10 -20k range. I am trying to solve this problem. Anyone interested in joining forces can pm me.
> After three years moving through 35 countries in Africa, this sums up my experience and thoughts on aid money. I have spent considerable time with a ton of UN and NGO people in many different countries, and heard plenty of great first-hand accounts of how things actually work on the ground.
I also worked in Africa (although in a more limited way than you) and I came to the same conclusion, it really was an eye opening. Actually our company which had absolutely zero humanitarian goals (and the CEO himself was very far from those ideals, he was just in for the money) was doing more locally than the vast majority of NGOs there.
> It is not as if European countries sending foreign aid to Africa is some hugely novel and experimental concept. It is well-understood how to do good in Africa and the Danish would be more competent than most at the job.
Actually it’s not well understood at all, and whatever lessons we think we’ve learned aren’t normally applied as aid is emotional and not rational [1]
>...since the whole Middle East and much of Africa are something like a factor of ten worse.. And they get almost no media cover.
I am convinced that there is a secret agenda for letting the majority of Africa just devolve and kill themselves. It seems that should the western world largely ignore the issues of Africa, ~50 years from now corps will be able to move into that region using the same tactics we see today in the ME, and rape it of its resources.
The difference being that China has started this rape already - and has caught the western nations (UKUSA) largely unprepared to follow suit.
Ever play Trade Wars on BBSs in the 80s? That's pretty much what the world boils down to.
The world bank holds many countries to ransom by dictating what they can (or can't do).
Guinea wants to get the internationally accepted price for their Bauxite? World Bank says no, else we'll call in your loan.
Senegal wants to get a fair price for it's resources? Nope, let's put a travel warning on them and decimate their tourism for a year or two.
The list goes on and on and on. I just spent 3 years in Africa at ground level in 35 different countries. The longer you spend there the more you realize.
Read this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FDVMOFU/?tag=roadchoseme-20
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