African countries don’t have the savings levels to enable channelling of this money to infrastructure and public welfare. Heck, we don’t even collect enough tax. So how are we going to do it by ourselves? Even Europe benefited from the Marshall plan by America, a loan that only one European country repaid.
It’s good to dream about Africans doing it themselves. But we are lacking the ingredients to do so. We don’t have the right policy mix, we don’t have the required education system, we don’t have a culture of work ethic, discipline and we don’t have preference to develop the home soil.
Friends do not scam you blatantly as the West has been doing to Africa.Friends exhibit some degree of fairness, where both parties benefit accordingly.
Are you sure savings are the only way Africa can develop? Have you checked the kind of minerals Africa has? Why would we sign away our minerals for deals that do not give back an equivalent of what we are giving away? Like someone pointed up there, Magufuli is busy trying to make his country earn the worth of what it is giving away. That should translate into a fair deal, not being exploited like China is doing.
We do collect enough tax. We do. Where it goes is the problem, or rather how we spend it.
Those are welcome strategies, but we must sign real bilateral agreements where all parties benefit equally. We can revisit the eurobond discussion and cite what it has been used for or where it has disappeared to. Then you will know why even the west and china cannot help us. that is why whether you think we have the right policy mix or not, we have to figure ourselves out and do it. it is the only way we are going to move forward.
You need knowledge to exploit those minerals. Knowledge to build machines, knowledge to convert them into something else and knowledge to market it to markets.
We sign then away cheaply because that is their value. They are primary products and are at the lowest point of the value chain. Does Tanzania possess the machinery to exploit these like Australia? No they don’t. So until these are available we hold little leverage.
We don’t collect enough tax. We have a massive informal sector that does not pay its fair share of tax.
You can’t sign an equal agreement between China and a country whose GDP is equal to some Corporate entity in China. That’s ridiculous. They have more to offer. What should be done is make it go a long way as China did with its Sweat Shops. I agree we need to figure it out but under the present circumstances because they sure as hell not changing
You want to say Africans cannot themselves do what the British brought Indians in the 1890s to do here in Kenya. Si tumeona in another thread how Burkina Faso built a railway for themselves using their own hands and feet, without foreign aid of any kind, in the 1980s, and started producing more than enough food for itself in under 4 years…
Africa can develop on its own, but foreign powers have a vested interest in sustaining the beggar mentality so that they can keep their hand in the cookie jar and siphon off resources.
Just like Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of soup, Africa is selling her birthright for goodies here and now from these foreign entities, not considering the situation 30, 50 or 100 years from now
The sad part is that we are cheering on and claiming that there’s nothing much we can do! I am not sure whether it is the constant reference to Africans as people who cannot help themselves that has finally convinced some of us that we are useless! Mimi hiyo maneno sioni ikiwa ukweli. We can rise from this point and change the continent if we want.
:D:D:D Chief, not sure what this is meant to achieve, but I cannot suffer fools gladly because of my status as an anonymous contributor to a debate on a website! We are all supposed to be against people who sign deals that disadvantage us and our generations like it is currently happening. Examples of countries that have been sold for a song are on those articles that have been copy pasted here. You can see what is happening to Venezuela too currently. Supermarkets go for days without T.P. - tissue paper for chrissakes! (I’m sure @The.Black.Templar wa Venezuela probably alicommit suicide because of that:D:D:D).
I am sure you know what to do in real life.
You are very wrong on this one.The West has forgiven the debt of many developing countries. Highly Indebted Poor Countries (39 of them) have long gotten debt relief from the Western nations, the World Bank and IMF.Zambia being an example.
2.No country in Africa had any form of debt at independence.None.There are no records of indebted African nations in the 1960s and 1970s. Our own country in fact was busy getting grants from the US and to some extent the USSR while TZ was enjoying free money from the USSR and China. It is in the 1980s that African countries went on a borrowing spree. Kenya too.
Debt relief has never worked in Africa because as soon as the debt is forgiven, the African countries go about on a spending spree and borrow again.Nigeria and Zambia are examples of nations that had their debts either forgiven partially and the rest cleared in the 90s and 2000s, where are both countries now???
China never forgives Debt.It will ask for concessions in return.Ask Mozambique!!
