CNN: Can Democracy Thrive in Africa?

[Dayuhan]

I would say that it is the very unwillingness to criticise or demand/expect better out of Africa for fear of being charged with superior behaviour or racism that contributes to the current state of affairs.

I'm not sure how my expectations or demands contribute to Africa's current state of affairs: I rather doubt that anyone in Africa gives a damn what I expect or demand. And while I would certainly hope that Africans will sort out their affairs faster and with less misery than Europeans, I'm not sure it would be reasonable to expect or demand it.

I suppose Africans might have had a hypothetical right to demand or expect better than they got from the gang of European thugs that ran the place during the age of colonies, but their expectations and demands meant as little in that time as ours do in this time.

And if the gang of thugs (the leadership) sitting in that AU (club) can prevent interference in the internal of sovereign states in respect to human rights abuses and the like then they can continue with impunity. They have reached that point where they have outsiders making excuses for their actions. Well done to them.

"fix" Africa? Africa cannot fix itself so what you want to do? Ring-fence it and them get on with it? Same for medieval Afghanistan?

The question of whether or not we should fix Africa seems somewhat moot until we consider the question of whether or not we can fix Africa. I don't think we can, though I suspect that we could mess it up even more. If you look at the number of dollars and troops we've applied to fixing Afghanistan, and then extrapolate based on relative size and population, it's fairly clear that we haven't a fraction of the dollars or troops that would be required to fix Africa. Then of course we have to consider that the dollars and troops so far applied to Afghanistan have yet to fix anything... I suppose we'll have to leave it to the Chinese, who have a lot more dollars and a lot more troops than we have. They'll choke on it of course, but so would we; better them than us.

Certainly the Africans can't fix Africa right away. Neither can we, or anyone else. I suspect that over the course of a century or two they can probably pull it off. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries East Asia and Latin America seemed beyond salvation; I'm not sure I'd call either "fixed", but they've managed considerable forward progress since we got it through our thick skulls that they needed to sort out their own affairs without our "help".